The Land of Khoria

𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 1

~𝘈𝘭𝘦𝘫𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘢~

I stood there on the balcony of our palace, my dark brown hair blowing in the wind, and my tan skin glowing in the sunlight.

"Mija," I heard a voice call behind me. I turned around to be greeted by the queen, however, she didn't wear her usual warm smile, but rather a sorrowful look.

"Mother," I bowed my head. "Is everything alright?"

She shook her head unhappily, "Unfortunately no. We have run into an extensive amount of trouble. The kingdom has decided to call an emergency meeting. We need to discuss things there."

An emergency meeting...?

She gestured for me to follow her and we hurried down to the room.

When we arrived I gave quick greetings to everyone before sitting down. As I waited for the meeting to begin something hit me...

Where could he be?

I tapped my mother on the shoulder, "Your majesty. Where is the king?"

She looked at me and gulped, sadness filling her eyes. She turned to the crowd of people and began.
"As I am sure you are all aware my husband has been declared missing."

𝗠𝘆 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱.

Missing...? How could my father going missing be possible?

"We are not sure how anybody could have gotten into the palace, due to the number of guards they would have had to get past. It is very unlikely that this was one person committing the crime."

"Do you think it could be The Serpents?!" A man suddenly blurted from across the room.

Everyone gasped and whispering began among them. However, I was just simply confused... who were The Serpents?

My mother banged her fist on the table and with a stern look yelled, "Everyone!"

The whispering quieted immediately.

"I hate to have to say this but we have reason to believe that The Serpents are behind this. While I sent the guards out to the woods to search I had been alerted that there was a snake carved into a tree. Which as you all should know, is The Serpent's signature sign that they put every time they attack. They are so arrogant that they want to be known for their crimes."

My mind was going in circles so I decided to finally speak up.

"Your majesty, Who are The Serpents?"

I could feel people's eyes on me. Why was this such a known thing? I was born into this kingdom whatever was going on I felt like I should know.

She gave out a long sigh, "I've been trying to protect you from this for as long as I could. I assumed or at least hoped that you wouldn't have to deal with this in your lifetime. Sadly, it seems I was wrong and now you need to know. About 15 years ago there was a war where multiple kingdoms throughout the world worked together to fight off the Serpents. Between the monsters and The Serpents, it was going to be impossible to fight on our own. We lost many men, but they lost more. We demolished their forces and caused them to retreat. They've been in hiding since then. I had hoped that they were going to continue to stay away from us, but they have finally retaliated. They must have spent all those years recovering from the war by recruiting new forces."

"So what you're saying is there is a giant army coming to get revenge on us?" Somebody says from the crowd.

My mother was trying to be as calm as possible to protect her kingdom, but I could tell she was internally panicking.

She nods solemnly, "I'm afraid so. We are already preparing our forces and-"

A crash shakes the building.

Everyone looks around, shocked, worried, wondering where it had come from as the queen ordered the guards to split up and check for them. The next few moments were a blur.

There was a boom. Then all I heard was screaming, my vision was fuzzy, decreasing by the second, and the only thing I knew was that I was blown to the ground and there were fires all around me. My arms and face ached from the cuts on them. I could feel myself disconnecting from the real world. I tried like hell to keep my eyes open but as the smoke entered my nostrils, and with my hearing rapidly depleting I couldn't hold on.

I heard one last yell, "Stay away from my daughter!"

Then I slipped into darkness.