For clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Commenters: 5

::We’re almost there.::

Ostovin found it more than a little creepy to be carrying his grandmother sheathed at his hip.

It wasn’t her, quite, not the woman he remembered; the soul in the sword had been, the High Priestess told him, distilled, hardened. The Empress Ellanasia had been a loyal and wild devotee of Veignevar, and it was that part of her, the wild red woman, that had survived death in the sword. But it was still his grandmother, the woman he remembered best as an ancient, cadaverous figure on the throne, passing him candies and advice about his fighting stance.

The advice had not stopped. ::If you want to win this war, grandson, you’re going to have to do something about your footwork. You sword-fight like a farmer.::

The truth of the matter was, while Ostovin was a loyal servant of the threefold, and strong enough in the red to please the temple, he had never expected to inherit the throne. He was rather far down the line, or had been, but the war his grandmother had instigated had served to winnow the numbers down, until it had been just Ostovin and a cousin. The cousin had slipped and fallen in a rainstorm within hours of their grandmother releasing her ghost, and thus, the would-be-ranger-and-tracker found himself cleaning up his grandmother’s mess.

“We’re there, Os. Your Majesty.” The look his lanky, lifetime-soldier cousin Erenya giving him was half assessment and half concern. He didn’t blame her. He’d be giving himself nervous looks, too, if he had to follow his own orders.

::You ARE nervous.::

“Of course I am,” he muttered. Bad enough to have to live up to your grandmother’s legacy. Worse to have to do it with her watching.

He nodded to Erenya to his right, Igerial (another cousin, another one more suited to this role than he) to his left. “Onward.”

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For Lilfluff‘s prompt.

Commenters: 1

“It’s getting close to time.”

Ellanasia lay comfortably on the slab in the back room of the temple, no companion, now, except the High Priestess of Veignevar. Her family had come and gone. Her courtiers had come and gone. The healers and herb-mongers and attendants, maids and bed-warmers and chroniclers had all stepped in and out in their due time, but now, at the very end of her life, there was time only for Veignevar, and for herself.

“This is going to hurt,” Tabyna warned her. Ellanasia choked on a laugh.

“Everything hurts, most honored one. Everything has hurt for a long time.” The scars from a lifetime of service to the red god ran tracks over her body like a map of her conquests, and every one of them ached with the cold of the coming snows, and the cold of the slab beneath her. “I will welcome the rest.”

“I know you will, Elle.” The Priestess set a kiss on her lips, a thing far more tender than either of them were known for. “I can’t say I’m sad you’re choosing this. I’d miss you.”

Ellanasia smirked, trying not to show how much effort even that cost her, now. “The most complicated ritual in all of the threefold faith, and you’re doing it out of sentimentality.”

“No more than you are, Your Most Exalted Majesty,” her old friend retorted. “I’m doing it out of necessity.”

“Then do it.” She leaned up, struggling, for one more kiss, then set her head on the slab with a thump. “We’re nearly out of time.”

“We are. With Veignevar’s blessing, then, Ellanasia.” The sword slid into her, hurting like nothing she’d ever felt before as it split her ribs and pierced her heart, and then, as the chanting of her priestess slowly faded into whispers, and then into dark silence, the Empress of Callanthe slid into the sword.

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