Chapter Text
The carved walls of the City of Dreams - Ashar’taithe - rose high into the sky. A gleaming marble bastion amongst the rolling sands of the Calador Desert. Spires, tall and elegant reach out like fingers, trying to reach the sun, moon, and stars. Trying to reach out and take what is not theirs. To claim the Heavens for themselves, and no one else in selfish greed.
To an outsider, Ashar’taithe is a beautiful place. Just beyond the walls, more white marble houses sprawl across the hills, the green of the farms breaking up the yellow of the sand. The water of the aqueducts and irrigation glints in the sunlight and each tiered layer of the wall has a reservoir running around it, excess water flowing off of the edge and down into the depths of the earth to be stored in aquifers. It’s an impressive feat of magical engineering that ensures not one drop is lost to the heat of the day. Within the tiered layers of the city, each building gets more and more ornate - bleached sandstone turning into marble, the Spire of Saints - the palace where the Emperor resides, ruling the Country of Ashar with an iron fist.
That is where the facade of the shining beacon of hope and light that is the City of Dreams cracks, starting to reveal the rotten core lying underneath it all. Ever since Emperor Caldanan the XII, the first and only son of the beloved Emperor Caldanan the XI - The Dreamseeker - took the throne, did that rot take hold of the City. Streets that were full of love and life now have a tension that permeates the air like a poison. Merchants count their coin, squirrelling it away before it is taken from them. Children do not run or play in the street. They do not stray too far from their mothers, lest the imperial guard takes them.
Erra still remembers the day they came for her brother.
His screams still ring in her ears each time she closes her eyes. The suffocating walls of the wardrobe close around her, her mother’s hand over her mouth to muffle her own cries. Her father begs. It does not work. He is taken, and they are left to pick up the pieces.
Erra remembers the day she found her brother too.
His corpse sways in time with the wind, bones creaking and cracking like some sort of twisted instrument. Vultures have picked his flesh clean, but something deep down tells her that it is her brother hanging from the walls, despite the imperial regalia he’d been clothed in. It’s almost like it’s calling to her. Her brother’s voice rings in her mind, nought but a faint whisper. “Sister, rip his heart out. Tear it from his chest. Fill your teeth with his blood and your stomach with his flesh. Seek vengeance for me, Sister. Kill the Emperor and feast on his soul.”
She takes those words and wraps them around her heart like a sheet of armour and a conviction rises within her. It’s messy, but Erra scales the wall and takes a single bone. His forefinger. That is all she has left of him. Of his soul. It has to be enough.
It will be enough.
Erra fidgets with the bone hung around her neck as she stares up at the open palace gates. Anticipation dances down her spine. She’s never been so close to her goal. Erra can almost taste his blood on her tongue, feel his still-warm flesh slide down her throat. She grins and steps across the threshold to begin her new life.