The Legend of Queen Rowena

Chapter 3: A revival

Sharp prickles ran over my body in waves, painfully ridding me of the numbness.

The nerves in my neck started twitching, causing my head to suddenly snap sideways. I winced as my temple hit the cold floor as a result of my spasms. However uncomfortable the jolt was, it woke me up.

I became more aware as the memories of the previous day came flooding back to me. The betrayal of my servants, my long death, the deal I struck with the red-eyed black-winged god, and now my revival.

I turned myself around so that my belly was on the floor. From there, I pressed my palms against the hard surface and pushed myself up. A crack of pain shot through my back so I stayed still for a moment, allowing the spasms to pass before I moved again. My head bowed downwards while I sat on the floor with my arms supporting me.

I tried not to concentrate on the pain but on the feeling of the floor; its smooth texture and its cool temperature felt great against my flushed body.

I frowned as I thought about how the floor felt. How could it feel so smooth and clean when it was supposed to be covered in dust, grime, and rat droppings?

For the first time since I had lost consciousness, I opened my eyes and looked around me, curious as to what I would find. My eyes bulged and I gasped loudly at my transformed surroundings.

The chapel celebrating Elyon had been about light and holiness - a pale stone room decorated with gold linings, pillars, and a magnificent golden statue of the God.

That sanctuary was now replaced by its complete opposite. The floor of the chapel was an expanse of black marble, so clear and smooth that it looked like I was standing on a black lake. I tentatively stroked the floor with my fingers, Half expecting my digits to dip into it as if the stone was a liquid.

I slowly turned my head and took in all the changes to Elyon's chapel.

The chapel had become dome-shaped with fantastical unrecognizable creatures carved into walls making preposterously exquisite frescoes. They looked so horrifically life-like that I was half expecting them to leap out of the walls and charge me.

At the very top of the dome was a small opening in the ceiling where faint light filtered into the inky black chapel. From the opening, a very slight streamlet of water trickled down the sides of the domed walls and collected in the figures of the hauntingly beautiful carvings.

I watched entranced as the water did not fall to the ground but instead flowed around the curves of the sculptures, weightlessly defying logic. The water sparkled as it twisted and rushed through carvings, wetting the black stones and polishing them in the process.

"Magic..." I whispered breathlessly.

It had been so many years since I had seen magic, a gift that fewer and fewer were born with over the centuries. Even I, a princess born from a long lineage of royalty and nobility could not practice magic. Neither could my father or any of my half-siblings, nor any of the nobility in the empire either.

I winced slightly as I remembered the terrified faces of the people the royal knights had captured. The faces of mages whom the knights had kidnapped and were being forced into slavery by my father. It was a bitter truth that every empire needed mages and sorcerers to prosper, instead of employing them, my father resorted to kidnapping them and threatening their lives to get their cooperation.

Back then, I was a cowardly little princess, too scared to protest against my father's cruelty. But that young girl was long dead now. I was quite literally reborn.

I swiftly turned to face the main ornament of this inky black chapel.

The absolute likeness of my devious helper stood before me, carved from the same black stone the rest of the hall was made from. His gigantic wings spanned the entire dome, the feathered tips of each wing met each other over the door to the chapel. Unlike earlier, his statue was carved in a long draping robe that molded into the floor. This breathtaking statue was the most skilled work of art I had ever seen, surely the highest-paid artists in the kingdom could not dream of creating a statue as realistic or beautiful as this one.