Snippet #2529896

Alherii had been on the road for two days and two nights now. The southern forests of Dheej were far from the centre of the poverty, the city where the wealthy strode side by side with the sick and dying. Their gold silks reflected against the coppers that sat in the baskets of the beggars sprawled across the cold stone floors. Their perfumed bodies masked the stench of the open sewers that ran open in some districts. There were fallen houses inhabited by jobless folk next to ancestral noble homes. This was the city known as Terah, the heart of the land.

Dheej hadn’t suffered like the rest of the land had, just a little too far for the reaches of the poverty. It was a self-sufficient entity whereby the elven folk lived off the land and gave to it from what they took. Their cousins of the northern mountains didn’t prosper by the same lifestyle and had fallen to the parasite that was The Queen. Little by little small tribes, colonies, races had joined with The Queen in hopes of a brighter life, a united life where trade was healthy and the people were one. Each one of these peoples had lost what they had known for centuries all to fuel the madness of the queen. Her innovations, as she called them. The machines that now scarred the once beautiful plains of Terehjsa.

Where there used to be colour was now only black and grey from the smog that hung about the small towns that encircled the great city. The working towns. This is where her precious toys were made. Alherii pushed through these towns. Never had she seen such disregard to the earth, it made her sick to her stomach. No one ate the fruits of the land here, they ate charred meat. Light barely trickled through the blanket of soot that hung above their heads. No bird song laced the air, only the clanging of metal against metal. The warmth came not from the sun but from the furnace that birthed the machines. It was a grim place and a place Alherii had yearned to escape.

And she had, within a few further hours of riding she reached where she needed to be; the old city. Her stomached swelled further with anger as she continued to witness the injustice that was thrown about her. The great divide between the rich and the poor. The discordant harmony that held this decayed town together. It disgusted her. A feeling of distaste continued to grow in her mouth as she stumbled upon The Queen delivering her feigned speech. It was something she wanted to spit out. And as soon as she heard the queen fall silent she did.

“Oh royal friend of mine, who’s heart is filled with such kindness that she claims she suffers for her friends, her people that she calls upon as us, not you and I. Answer me this, why is it that YOU are stood above us and above the filth that run through your city like sullied blood in drying veins. Why is it that I am down here starving with this people, dying with these people, that you call your own. Answer me oh Royal friend with such a kind heart!”

Alherii’s resentment to the land had grown with such valour over the past two days that she was blind to her surroundings. It had not occurred to her that there may be someone leading this procession, nor had it occurred to her that she had interrupted the assembly of Amity, William and Iator as she stood right in the middle of their crowd.