Marika
The dawn was an unwelcome visitor to the eyes of the golden queen as it awoke her from the most peaceful slumber she had in centuries. Thankfully, it did not wake her from what she had briefly feared was a dream as her lover's arms lightly squeezed her in. She sighed comfortably against her breast. "Dawn is a frightful business." She muttered ungracefully, her golden hair a tangled frazzled mess beneath the sheets.
"Isn't it so?" Her lover chuckled as a strong arm reached ober and grabbed Marika's hairbrush. "Sadly, business, we must attend all the same. Come, let's fix that hair of yours." Callused hands gently took and began to brush her golden locks as she begrudgingly sat up with her back to her lover.
"Perhaps I should at last lop it off and be done with it." She mused, a pouting expression visible in the mirrir across their royal suite. "But it is so lovely, and I can do so much with it."
"I say keep it."
"Of course you would think that with your hands all meshed in it."
"You certainly didn't mind where they were last night."
"S-shush you."
"Or that these knots are probably my fault. Then again, you did tell me to pull ha -" a pillow to the face was the knight's reward who burst with laughter soon after.
"Oh, you fouled mouthed woman!" The queen laughed as she continued her pillowy assault.
"Yes, well, one is what they eat, no?" A joking accent Marika couldn't place that earned another hard thwack of the pillow. The knight spilled off the bed with a hearty laugh at that, landing in a heep in mixed pillows and thick sheets.
"You are such an oaf sometimes." She sighed, face in her hand for a moment even as she smiled at her lover. The tangled mess soon unshuffling as the knight arose, stretching with a heavy groan as her body came into stark display for the queen. A bitten lip followed her eyes, trailing along the cut stomach and powerful legs. A woman built to bounce, and oh how Marika tested just how thoroughly those hips could work. She had found it satisfactory indeed.
"Careful," her knight chuckled, "an appetite like that might spoil breakfast."
"Mmm, well... then I shall simply save my eyes for dessert later." A little teasing smirk as the queen stood, letting the sheets fall and reveal her own figure. The knight's stare and slight drooling expression were all the queen really needed before grabbing her covering robes. "Still going to finish my hair, right?"
Her knight scrambled for the brush before rushing behind her as the queen dressed. She carefully worked the brush through for a few good minutes before braiding it into Marika's signature look. "It is remarkable how soft it stays."
Marika blushed at the compliment. "Perks of faith, I suppose."
"Well, to each their own." Was all the knight responded with as she helped tuck the braid back under her robes before putting her lady's hood back up on her. "Blue really suits you." She said tenderly, holding Marika's hand for a little.
"It does?" She asked curiously, turning and meeting her lover's gaze. It was as warming as it was heart-stopping, and both simply sat in that moment for a little while. A few little pecks as they stood close, lost in anothers gaze.
"You are becoming quite the distraction." The knight chuckled.
"Oh, I am the distraction?" The queen retorted with a little smirk.
"Oh yes. Certainly."
"And who is to say you are not the distraction?"
"Hmmm, see as memory serves. It is because I said so." Scooping up her queen in a princess hold that made her gasp.
"Hmph. Well, then you can carry your distraction to breakfast then." The queen crossed her arms yet blushed in spite of herself. She also couldn't stop the little smile that peeked through the pout at being held so gingerly.
"Well, a queen's orders are law." Her knight playfully said as she carried her out of the threshold, her own clothes having been tossed on in the moments between brushing and flirtation.
When the door opened into a chaotic storm of scholars and books fighting randomly raging pots both large and small, all screaming like they had suddenly become swollen with bees. Constructs of the mages made of corpses also seemed to be falling to pieces, as if the death denied to the corpses at last arrived and stole away the force left to animate the limbs.
"What in the name of the greater will...?" the queen muttered as her knight let her down while both grabbed onto their weaponry.
"I don't know, but i think we better leave before we become part of the problem." Her knight responded. Both nodded, quickly dipping through the battles toward the section of the academy they had been told the portal lay.
Both glanced back once, worry coming into their minds. Marika saw in the distance an image of Rennala. Perhaps it was a delusion or a last spell of her former love, but she beckoned both on. A final wave before it scattered to glint dust, and Marika steeled her resolve. Turning and marching through, her knight soon followed.
Both appeared far from the academy on the top of a shattered bridge that once tied the academy to this plateau on the far north of Liurnia. The Atlus plateau, gateway to Leyndell.
"Home is so close now." The queen's eyes turned forward towards the large mountain and its single thin valley that separated them from the great wall of Leyndell. A massacred graveyard of carriaged and patrolling trolls amidst the mud and grime of the broken down roadway instantly brought alarm to the queen. She felt a voice peek in then, but it was not His.
"I am with you, little thread of gold." A gentle, loving voice in her ear. She recognized Rennala and smiled to herself as her grip tightened on the mace.
"There must be a dragon nearby." She announced as both began to mount the forming Torrent.
"What makes you say that?" Her knight asked.
"There are burns and claw marks on the remains. Several of these also look like they had been dropped." Her fingers brushed across one as they trotted by and were coated in soot. "Soot and ash. This isn't a mudfield. It's an ash field."
"That's ominous." Her knight said grimly, tightening her grip on the reigns.
"But nothing we can not over...come...." her eyes widened as they rode slowly up the hill leading to the valley between the mountain peeks. The trolls she had presumed were scouring the carriages were simply laying limp. All life gone from their bodies.
"What happened...?" her knight mumbled questioningly as they rode further up beyond the graveyard of broken and burned carriages. That was when the sound of a dragon's roar tore the air apart and filled it with thick storm clouds.
"Be ready!" The queen shouted as both held tight to the steed and took off up the path. A dark shadow arced across the air, and both leaped from the fading Torrent just as a body brutally tore into the ground where both had been riding mere moments ago.
Marika rolled to her feet and began a small prayer into her seal as she saw her knight draw out her moonlit blade. She raised her hand to the sky as the massive dragon, a grey scaled giant with four powerful limbs alongside its two vast wings that all surged with red lightning, swept its vast and rock like tail at her lover.
Her knight leaped over the swing as her incantation finished, striking her knight's blade with a blast of holy light that split the clouds briefly and came down in a slashing arc that tore through scale and bone. A massive wing fell from the back of the dragon as it suddenly flailed in pain, struggling and failing after a few crashed to take flight again. It growled angrily now, turning from its freshest crater towards the duo as they attempted to regroup in the brief chaos of its own panic. Its remaining wing bristled with mote chaotic red lightning, and its eyes burned hatefully at the duo for the loss of its wing.
"I think we made it angry." Her knight quiped before tackling Marika aside as a surging cone of lightning ripped apart the road they had previously been standing on. It had a deafening boom that tore the air as easily as soil and shredded through with ease on both.
The queen felt her hearing struggle to recover. Ear drums ached as she stumbled back upright to the sound of crashing footsteps and unstable earth. Her eyes righted just enough to see a massive pair of jaws opening to snap down on her just before her knight dove ahead and stabbed her entire arm up into its jaws. Her blade ripped into its upper jaw and came put far above its snout. With a roar of painful determination, her knight then wrenched her blade to the right, ripping it, and the entire upper jaw of the dragon, off. Blood sprayed violently as the beast stumbled and retreated backward.
Her knight stumbled to one knee, just as her left arm fell to the ground without her. Her scream was loud and tearing, but not a scream of defeat.
"Luna..!" Marika started before her knight drew out the scythe she had crafted. Gripping it in one hand, aiming it towards the wounded dragon as it attempted a half curled snarl from its broken maw.
"One more step, and it shall be thy head among the mud next!" Her knight barked. Blood was pooling from the remains of her left shoulder and half remaining bicep. Her eyes blazed with hateful resilience, however, that Marika had never seen. Not even from Him.
"Luna.." she whispered as she stepped forward, searing shut the bleeding wound with only a light hiss from her knight. "Your arm.."
"Can be replaced." She said quietly, eyes never leaving the partly snarling dragon as it stared back resentfully to the knight. The unspoken reasoning that Marika could not be replaced hung in the air and turned the queen's heart in knots.
"Let it go... it can not do any more harm." She whispered, wanting nothing more than to get her knight now to safety. She had stomached enough bloodshed already, and it had not even reached noon yet. Her favorite robe was soaked in ash, blood, and dragon fire soot. Today had already been bad, but now it was worse.
It was then the dragon turned and began to climb the side of the mountain and retreat from the battle. It let out one last half-hearted roar, and the thunder clouds it had formed on arrival crackled once, then twice. Then, they rained, and Marika knew whatever hope for this evening had been thoroughly tarnished.
Yet her arm clung tight to her knight, knowing that they had each other still. That would be enough. It had to be.