The City of Flames

Infern was a kingdom of bounty. It glows beneath its shining palace that glows a deep onyx in the daylight and becomes a shadow in the night of obsidian coated rock. Numerous spires rising from its thick, broad walls, each decorated in various iron and stonework marvels to all their respective clans for which they were erected. Some with Gargoyles, others with fashioned metallurgy circling them like roots, or creeping vines.

The palace itself sat on the cliff overseeing the countryside while its gateway fell toward the populated city. It was a grassy place despite the brick streets and lamplight on each corner, maintained by the guards and lit each night. The buildings got more exaggerated the closer you approached the palace gateway and more mundane the farther.

The main block entering the city was rich with art galleries, built out of fine white oak logs, and painted in deep crimson and golden colors. They had a curved architecture to each of the windows and doors that made each seem like a little portal into a new experience, and they glowed with the laughter of parties and warmth of hot fires. It was a place where one went to explore the finer things. The bounties of the King's labors.

More into the depths of the city is where the sound of hooves and marching shoes dotted the streets. Rabble and ramblings aplenty as the buzz of life and the light fog of countless cigars lit and flame spells cast, and it lightly dusted the mid town in a slight fog. The lamplights were less ornate and more tarnished brass and bronze as opposed to the polished gold of the upper town.

The people here dressed fairly well enough. Warm if dusty coats and frilly sundresses filled the streets with gossip and life. Countless many tongues flicking about with rumors of the visitors. A few called him beautiful while others were appalled to see the 'girlish prince'. Many spent countless words speculating on tiny details of this place he came from, and most were unmistakably false.

They pratted between bakeries and cobblers, spending coin on tea and ale and liquor as easily as bread and butter. Their woes were a distant memory when they were in public, anyway. Ravens fluttered by overhead, a common sight in the city as they had been trained for generations to hunt rats. They had gotten very good at it.

One gnawed on a bone as it watched a few meander by the older library as they passed from the decent and pleasant mid town into the downtown. Most of this space was living area, with the most simplistic homes made of rock and wood with little paint beyond children's antics. The streets were well treaded earth and had the soft rumble of running children as many played in the less busy streets.

They laughed and threw a skull around as part of a game of catch. Many began to make up teams as the ladies giggled and passed by. The raven took off, fluttering down the old smoke chute of the library. Its reddish brown exterior was well aged and crumbly, but it still stood as firm as its own. The sign above still glistened with gilded letters. "The Library of Infern."

The raven landed on the cold pot within the chute, shaking itself clean of its sooty coat. It greened lightly as its legs tapped on the iron piece, heavy and swinging above an unlit fireplace.

"Diana?" Called an old haggard woman's voice. From behind the slightly yellowed wood of the front desk, behind which were hundreds of scrolls in shelves that detailed who had taken what when, rose the librarian.

She was withered by time, at least to most. Heavy wrinkles and frail white hair across long splotches skin that she shrouded in only a pale blue and deep black cloak when with visitors or readers. Amber eyes glanced across the dim light of her single candle on the table toward the fireplace.

It was all crumbling. Layered stones that were missing mortar and pieces. It was still locked to the ground by a large boulder fused via metal bars to the basin. It also made it hard to repair and replace, subsequently.

Her old slippers' feet creeks across ancient wooden boards before she knelt down and slowly stroked the bird as it cooed. "You were only to come back once..." Her face lit equally with horror and joy. "I must make ready!"

She busied herself as Diana cawed, flying after the slowly rushing woman as she trudged into the back, locked room. A heavy steel door sealed by three keys slowly opened when she undid its seals. She stepped into the old forbidden archives and breathed in the musty aroma of old paper and quill.

"No time to fret about the details!" She shuffled across old scrolls and books, boney knotted fingers flickering through page after page, parchment after parchment, until at last, she found it.

Sealed in a small square box, tucked into the farthest corner of the dark and musty chamber, illuminated only by the dull glow of her held candle. The box was as dark as the night sky, but it had a single open in its top that was shaped like a crescent moon. She grinned and plucked it from the tiny square section of the organizer and made it as quick as she was able to go to the front desk again. The door closed behind her with a deafening clang, though she was unbothered or unaware due to the deafness brought on by time.

"Here we go old girl. Haha!" She cheered enthusiastically, starting to raise her hands only to groan. "Ow." A hand resting in her aching back as she settled onto the little stool.

She rubbed her hands together, plucking off the lid and revealing a small seed and a single jewel of finely polished moonstone. She plucked the seed and fed it to the raven, smiling as she strokes Diana's feathery head. "Soon, the time will be right. This city of fire will at last burn. Oh, isn't it wonderful, my love?"

'So very wonderful.' The raven returned in her mind, leaning into the hand as she stroked and pet the feathery familiar.

"Soon. Heeeehehehehehehehe!"

...

The ladies walking into the downtown chuckled. A trio of young maids that worked for Princess Aelfrun, they had been picked by her specifically. Each wore leather gaements instead of the lace or silk of most, fitted to their peraonal tastes.

Juliet wore a fine and low-cut bear pelt with it's husband providing the tanned leather for her brown dress. She had made earrings of the pairs teeth, which dangled by the two single curls of her blood red hair, which usually was kept in a lower, tightly set bun. She had the most military look to her with a muscular face and strong jaw. Her nose was larger and slightly wide. She scratched at it with a black gloved finger, which felt nice against her red skin.

Carmen was the quiet one, yet the most feared. She wore only a white dress with long brown hair and little else over her creamy skin, save for the countless scars running up her hands and wrists to the elbow from those she had removed for the Princess. They struggled often, and she grinned at the memory as sharp and hardened fangs peeked out. She was petite and lithe for the level of violence she enacted.

The last was Belle, the most politically minded. She dressed closer to a proper lady, though that comparison was minimal. She wore a skirt of leather armor and trousers that hid chainmail protections. Her torso was clad in a thick cuirass that spilled over with her long black locks, each set in fine little curls that she spent every night to maintain. It gave her a sharp contrast of beauty and power. Her lovely face, soft round and undeniably feminine, helped add to this feeling.

"The prince is smitten for sure." Juliet chuckled as their conversation resumed. Her deeper husky tone lightly booming in the other girls' chests.

"That is an understatement. Aelfrun said he couldn't take his eyes off him." Belle answered. "By the sound of it all, he nearly lost his jaw to the soup."

"Ha! Well, first time for everything right Carmen?" Julliet grinned, remembering her own early attempt at courting Prince Edan. Some bitterness lingered to her shame. Carmen simply gave a soft nod.

"Well, sadly, it seems the king intends to have our lady woo him." Belle sighed, a hand to her forehead. "It is the correct move, but it still pissea me off."

"We are the only ones to know her secret. We can not go spilling now."

"Still, we should ready ourselves." The two argued. Back and forth, talking turned to yelling, which turned to shouting over what to do should this jovial mess turn into a political shitstorm.

"Stand by her." Was all Carmen let out in the clicky rasp that was her voice. The two stopped, mid swing, and grip on one anothers collars as they looked at Carmen. Both sighed, stepping back and dusting off their clothes.

"She's right."

"She's always right." Belle corrected, which earned a brief snort from Juliet, which Carmen let out the lowest of rumbles. Both knew better than to continue.

"Well, let's at least prepare for the worst. Bags, valuables. Be ready case we gotta make a run for it, ay?" Belle smiled, trying to act rational in these growingly tense times.

"That will seem like surrendering, and Aelfrun doesn't surrender." Juliet sighed, knowing her Princess had an ego about what she wanted the size of a mountain, and nearly twice that in attitude.

"Mm..." Belle hummed somberly.

"This is starting to seem like grim tides."

...

The most popular tavern, if anyone were to ask the locals of Infern, would certainly be on the edges between mid town and the living district downtown. A simple seeming corner building with windows illuminated near every night with song and lamplight as joviality and heartiest rang across its rich and well loved timber walls. Its sign was a well-kept mahogany arch that held its name proudly in bold and quite Irish letters, laid down in fresh gold leaf as recently as two months prior.

"Good ol' Bellze's!" Shouted a man as he laughed. Leaned back with his arm wrapped around the prince, Gwenmaris was glad to be away from those stuffy towers and snobby folks. He chugged his ale as he leaned back further on the old, creeping wood stool. Of course, he fell tumbling with an indignant grunt in the polished and numerously scratched floor boards, followed by many booming laughs of the dressed down men.

They all circled and hefted up their bulking comrade with a chuckle. Few wore more than tunics and trousers of faded and dirtied colors, and almost all could count themselves among or hopeful to hold arms. Those who weren't were wise and trusted elders, or firm and hearty laborers in need of a good drink and kinship when they rested their plows.

Edan himself laughed as he dusted off Gwenmaris' dirty brown shirt. "Always so messy."

"Not half as messy as you were taday!" He laughed as many grinned, eager to hear the word fresh from the prince's lips. It hadn't even been a day, and the spread of the tale of Edan's gawking stare had spread far and wide. Many had questions.

"Ain't got a clue what yer on about mate." He rubbed a finger under his nose, playing it off even as he could feel there was no hiding it now.

"Oh ay. Certainly not ya damn near droppin yer jaw inta the soup, n' not over no lamb." He gave a smirk as the men all ooooo'd like school children.

"Come off it!" He laughed as he took a swig and leaned back on his elbow against the bar. "Sides, sure. He's pretty. He's mysterious. N' maybe those eyes are... little intriguin. But don't go thinkin nothin!" He pointed his stein accusatory at Gwenmaris to little effect.

"Mhm. Mhm. Say, I was wondrin. You happen ta notice what color 'is wings were?"

"Orange and a black or maybe dark brown. Wh-" The knowing smirk on his best friend's face, followed by the laughs of the crowd, earned the prince a red face. "What?!"

"Hahahahahahahaha!" Gwenmaris nearly bent over and fell as another man held onto his shoulder with support. "Ya got it bad, mate!" He threw his head back and laughed harder, to which Edan held a hand to his now searing face. There was no hiding it from the city gossips now. No hiding it from Father, if he had not already known just from dinner.

Edan quietly sunk back into his mind as the laughs bled away. He swam in his thoughts as he considered these feelings. He had never quite felt like this before at all. So captivated, so intrigued. Yet, he knew nothing of Nuru yet beyond political chatter. Besides, he was to be betrothed to Aelfrun...

That... bothered him. Not just because it's everything Aelfrun didn't want, there was something else. He felt her arms around him, warming him gently.

'What is this...?' He thought, his words heard only by Her.

'This is the most sacred thing of all.' She whispered gently against his ear. Her voice was like the soft touch of the fire after a cold winter's day. Her arms were as comforting as sunlight and as safe as a home.

'Name it... Please, my love.' I whispered gently to my beloved goddess. To the sole holder of my secrets.

'You already have.' I could feel her smile against my ear, the softness and sincerity of it.

"You good there, mate?" Gwnemaris shook him free of his little trance. Edan blinked, smirked, and slammed his knee between the stout man's own. The loud man grunted, fell to his knees, and whined like a girl. "That's... cheatin...!"

"Ohh, but a wins a win. In my heart. An that's where it really counts, right lads?!" He raised a glass as even Gwenmaris let out a hefty laugh with the men while the prince helped him, hand in hand, back up before crossing arms and slamming back their entire steins.

"Ta God and conquest!"

"To God and Conquest!!" Every man raised their glasses, shouting the royal oath so many knew by heart as earliest as before they could even plant crops.

"Whatever happens, Mate, we got yer back." The man smacked the prince's back.

"Ay. That's my man." And the two drank the night away, leaving the woes of the heart for tomorrow, along with the headaches surely to follow.