Ring of Cren [18+]

Chapter 13

Anastasia's POV

When Damion, Axe and Krystoph return with Damion Jnr. from the city streets, they come for me, but I've separated myself from my knights, and distanced myself from Rurx.

I am in deep thought, so I go to the northern tower in the Cren.

I walk up a hundred steps until I reach the dusty tower. When I enter, I lock the old and heavy door to secure the space for myself.

I go to a dusty rotten chest, and I take out a diary from my brother Tristen.

He was always writing down his thoughts in here. The tower was his space to brood. No one could come here. He was the eldest son, he would be King, so he liked his privacy to think, and this was his favourite spot.

That was until... my father... and my three brothers... were taken into the Eye.

Vanished.

Quickly dead from the lost war against the Boned.

I'm surprised to see his last entry was actually a day before the battle. He was happy and hopeful for the future.

He was much better at seeing into the Ice than I was. He could see entire visions, while I only saw glimpses.

To be fair he was trained all his life and I was still learning.

I read his diary.

I saw into the Ice. A river that never dried. A green that never died. I found Priscilla waiting for me, dressed in a silk gown. This was an odd vision, but a sweet one. Priscilla was a young girl he had loved when they were just children and betrothed – until she died from illness at least a decade prior. I had only been a few years old myself. So what he described was utopia or plainly impossible if she was alive. He went on. Eli and Deren were playing chess, at peace, no longer fighting as there was nothing to quarrel over. Father was quiet, reading in the library, all his favourites. Anastasia was in the garden with highborn ladies, preparing for a wedding, I believe; but to whom I did not see. No one was enslaved. No one was seeking destruction. I was King, but I didn't wear a crown. All evils were free, but quiet. Why? I fear, they were not hungry, but well fed. – Prince Tristen.

I had been too upset to read his diary until now.

It brings me some peace.

Even though he's dead.

And so many others; gone too.

Eventually, at some non-important time of the afternoon, Damion knocks at the door to the tower, but I grumble at him to leave me be.

To my surprise he does leave, threatening to return at nightfall – before gallivanting away with Damion Jnr, soon threatening to teach him how to stab better.

Hearing their banter made me smile, but hearing the quiet made me even more happy.

It was time I had... time.

To myself.

I knew the Mal Princes, Soren and Fanguard, would be wanting to speak with me further about what action to take.

But right now, as Ice Seer and Queen of the Cren, with my ring still safely adorned on my hand, I wait with Tristen's diary in my hand.

I read through it all, and it brings me further knowledge about how to see better into the Ice.

Eventually the sun starts to set, I start to get hungry, and I find the courage to open the shutters, looking down to the half-vanished city.

I expect to see dark clouds, but instead I see a clear sky – a never sight in the Cren. It was always cloudy. I don't know if I had ever seen a cloudless sky before.