Story
On the third day of the Third Moon’s passing a grand wedding wass held at the palace in the emperor city of Celeres. The princess Aureus was to marry a foreigner from the country across the sea. It had been rather sudden. The civilians had no knowledge of the relationship between the princess and the stranger. The royal family knew about it. The couple had received King Alexander’s blessing. The wedding was planned for the beginning of the season of Rebirth, the time when all of nature celebrated light and life.
The city of Celeres was filled with travelers from all over the kingdom. Everyone wanted to see the wedding. It was to be the celebration of the decade. For this reason the entire royal guard was on duty all around the city. Every visitor that entered the city had to provide ID at the gate to be allowed in. Security was especially heavy around the Chapel of Clarity. The chapel was large enough to hold over 500 nobles. No peasants were allowed inside. However, magicians were projecting images onto the sides of the chapel for all to see. The royal family didn’t want anyone to miss the wedding.
The head priest stood at the front of the chapel, waiting with the groom as the bride walked down the aisle. He wore golden trimmed silk white robes. King Alexander, Queen Carmentis, and Princess Cassandra, the youngest princess, all entered from behind a curtain that covered the back wall. They stood a few feet to the right side of the priest.
The priest began from the Tome of the Gods as the two joined hands. The two were bonded by the vows they spoke to each other.
“I promise to forever love and cherish you. You will be my light and my world. For all eternity my body is one with you” Aureus’s vows were spoken and the priest wrapped a golden thread around her right arm and the groom’s left arm, locking them together.
“I promise to forever take care of you, to give you all the things that you need so that you may never want for anything. For all eternity my soul is one with you,” Regulus, the foreigner from across the sea, spoke his vows to her. The priest intertwined a purple thread into the golden thread.
The priest read from the tome in the ancient language. The book itself began to glow. The threads melded into their arms, completing their union. The thread lines vanished and the couple kissed in front of the whole city of Celeres and the guests that arrived from all over the kingdom. The room was suddenly filled with falling rose petals, a gift from Clara, the Goddess of Fertility and Marriage.
Regulus raised his hands in the air to quiet the audience. The cheers slowly died and everyone was quiet as they tried to hear the words of the foreigner. The crowd waited in anticipation for their new prince to speak. Yet, he didn’t. He just stood there with his right hand raised, his left had been lowed. Then he slashed his right hand through the hair. The trouble then started.
The royal guards that had been guarding the royal family turned on them. King Alexander was a warrior in the royal army when he was younger. He was getting on in years and was not as strong as when he was young but he was able to keep the rebel guards away from the queen and the youngest princess as they tried to run. Guards stepped out from behind the curtain and grabbed the women though. The king yelled in rage as he fought off the rebels to reach his wife and daughter. He died to a sword through his chest as he reached out his arms to his wife. The queen had no ability to fight and the princess’s few magic spells were no match for the guards and they were easily overpowered. Both were taken away behind the curtain so that the crowd could not see what happened to them. They all knew though. The royal family had been assassinated.
Regulus had a hold on his new bride. Aureus tried to run to her family to save them but her husband would not let her. She was a trained sorceress though. Her spells were of a much more advanced level than her sister’s. She blew a fireball in the face of her new husband. The medallion he wore absorbed the fire spell. She screamed as an electric shock filled her body, numbing every inch of her body.
The audience was outraged by what had happened. Some fought, some cried, some hid or vanished, and some bowed down to the new ruler of the kingdom, Regulus.
Regulus was a tyrant. He removed idols from the temples and replaced them with statues of a foreign dark god. He taxed the people to pay for a war against the neighboring kingdom of Sceptrum. Under his rule evil spread and demons began to emerge and feed on humans.
