ᴡᴍᴍᴀᴘ: ℌ𝔢𝔯 𝔊𝔬𝔩𝔡𝔢𝔫 ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔰

La Cathédrale Engloutie

🄳-3

In the rose garden, a passing wind brings chill to the air. The roses and their petals rustling in their places, some being plucked off and carried away in the breeze. Athanasia catches a soft, silken, ruby red petal in her hand, and rubs the softness. 

So pure, so whole- just like how she was in the eyes of the people. 

Athanasia brings the petal to her lips, and presses a kiss to it, before slipping it into her mouth. She walks away, her hands clasped behind her, and she hums a little lullaby as she chews the sweet petal. 

She would stay this way forever, you see.

So much like the "red gold" she had been able to bring back through the help of merchants by sea. By connecting their continents through the trade of such valuable herbs and oil, it had brought a staggering rise in stalls and shops in the capital. 

More citizens were coming to settle, and all seemed well. 

Athanasia had left through a passing in the shadows the day before, and had heard that the guard who had been friends with the one she had killed the other day had found the bloody mess that used to be the guy he slapped on the back, went around for dinner- down in the dungeons early this morning. 

A whole interrogation of the rotating guards had just ended as it started soon after, and Jennette who wasn't even part of the discussion with her involvement, was shunted aside as the officials took their time peering around the scene, before laying down their judgement.

Jennette Margarita had done the deed. It was plain and simple to see for everyone there. They had seen her pathetic form that morning, her sleeves ripped, her hair in every which direction with blood smeared upon on her face. 

She could scream all she liked, that she didn't do it- that she didn't know how to even use magic- but with the bishop's testimony, with or without anti-black magic runes set around the palace, she was the person who had done it. 

Jennette could only feel pathetically at a loss, not even given a chance to explain herself, that she had seen a monster in the shadows, that something else had done the act- that she was but a bystander, a poor spectator of the guard's demise. 

It was as if "she" was there in her place, pleading to father for love, and getting shaken off in retaliation. "I have never loved you," he said. 

What was she then? If not his? She was no one.

She had been tortured, and in retaliation, she had killed the man who had dared to do it to her. Some maids sympathized with her, thinking poor girl, even after all she's done, the brutal torture that a girl shouldn't have done to her, is something as terrible, frightening even- as what she had gone through that night. 

But then they see the black nails that dip out of her sleeves, and their sympathy dropped to the bottoms of the underworld, their fear palpable enough to be felt by Cerberus down there. 

No one would dare to come to her aid, whose to know they wouldn't be next because of her arrogance that was known far and wide throughout the lands. 

Just as much as Athanasia was revered by the people, they feared the girl who had entered the palace- hated the girl, the woman- who had wheedled her way inside the place they worshipped down on their knees.

Athanasia had gone down with the church priests that had given up their precious time to be there for the family of the deceased, and she stood quietly, bowing her head in silence, but inside- she was having trouble keeping her happiness locked up tight within herself.