by Ellen Wilson
Sevelyn Girls
Part 1: A Trusted Blade
Copyright © 2019 by Ellen Wilson
The following content is intended for mature audiences.
All characters depicted are fictional and any likeness is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Awakening
Mending
Meeting
Watchers
Flower
Lock and Key
Restless
Spirit Beasts
Raid
Awakening
Capriella awoke with a gasp. It wasn’t the sort of start to her day that she was accustomed to; when the rays of the morning sunlight would rouse her from her bed in the Ivory Palace, surrounded and comforted by the softest sheets found in the land and in the warm arms of the queen she loved, the one she belonged to. Instead, there was only destruction to be found here in the uncalm evening.
The dust and debris in the air found her lungs and she was rolling over on her side, heaving and coughing the dirt out. Some of the rubble shifted around from her movement and she spotted the stone, dirtied but still reminiscent of its pearly composition. This carnage, this scene that must have been straight out of hell, was all that was left of the Ivory Palace.
The memory of the battle came back to her then, all at once, and she was scrambling back up to her weak legs. “Lady Fiora…” she croaked, desperately wondering if her queen was even still alive. Capriella managed a single step before her strength gave out and she fell back down to her hands and knees, her long red hair falling across her knuckles.
“Dammit!” she said loudly and coughed again from the exertion. She couldn’t allow herself to be like this, not now, not when Lady Fiora would need her the most. The woman forced herself to her feet again and denied her legs the reprieve they sought, stubbornly standing her ground against the trembling of her limbs. She coughed again and spat the vile dust in her throat to the side.
“Lady Fiora!” she called again, clearer and with more conviction than ever. She could feel the strength returning to her through her determination, and she was walking among the rubble of what was once a magnificent palace, a place thought to be a haven by many and what she could once call home. The woman felt that pain stinging at her profoundly, and she might have grieved if she wasn’t so intent on finding her lady first.
She climbed up on a pile of stones and made to call again before she spotted the woman from the rocky perch. But what she saw sent her heart plummeting: her queen bruised, broken and absolutely defeated. One arm laid out slack to her side, the other folded across over her belly. Her beautiful silver hair was muddied, dirtied and its length fanned out across the rubble around her. That horrible fight was still fresh in Capriella’s mind, the worst they had ever known together, and she knew the warrior woman might very well be dead, strewn across the destruction of her own palace.
“My lady!” she screamed, pacing forward far too quickly for what her legs could manage. Capriella fell forward again and yelped when she skidded her legs and arms on the stone but crawled forward the rest of the way despite it to her great love.
“Lady Fiora!” Capriella cried, trying to rouse the queen as her hand went to the woman’s pale cheek. There was blood there, still wet and pouring from a head wound her lady had endured from the battle, and she dared to find the source of it. She gasped and drew her hand back, ripping away at her own tattered dress before she had something suitable to be used as bandages. Capriella moved quickly to stem the flow of blood but the way her queen’s head lolled lifelessly in her arms had her eyes welling with tears.
“No,” she sobbed, her hands continuing to fumble as they worked the fabric round Lady Fiora’s chin and back up to her head as tight as she could manage. “Please, no.” It felt more futile as she went, attending to her queen’s various wounds. None were so grievous as the one on the woman’s head, but they counted so many that Capriella’s sliver of hope was dwindling with each new discovery. Sickly burns and bleeding gashes on Fiora’s once-pristine figure made the redhead feel as if she might retch all over again, the way her stomach twisted into knots on her.
She finished up, regardless of how those wounds made her feel, or rather precisely because. Capriella was stripped down to her underwear once she was done, standing up to her feet to take in the carnage around her. Lady Fiora was dead. The Ivory Palace had been decimated to nothing but these ruins, and the queen’s most loyal of subjects, the Sevelyn, were scattered now and their power sealed away. Capriella knew that for fact, for she couldn’t bring herself to transform into her other form.
“Dammit, dammit…” she wailed softly, wiping away at the tears in her eyes but only serving to dirty her face with dirt, dust and blood. She knew who had caused this misery, knew too where that villain would be heading next and yet there was nothing that she could do about it. Facing Dyssa as she was would only be a death wish.
“We need you, my queen,” Capriella whispered to herself, dropping back down to her knees as she wrung her hands together. Her tears and sobs were fast returning at a life lost, at the tragic turn this day had taken and at her overall inability to do anything about it. But a solitary cough interrupted her, cutting her wails short as she snapped her head back to her lady’s direction. Lady Fiora coughed again and Capriella was at her side in an instant, turning her over so that her queen could spit the blood and bile forming in her mouth. The bleeding was happening internally as well, which was never a good sign, but the mere fact that this warrior woman was still fighting and clinging to life sparked Capriella’s own again. There had to be something else she could do. The redhead simply couldn’t allow her queen to die now just after she had gotten her back.
The basement, she realized. It was the only part of the Ivory Palace that might have still been intact, and although it mostly served as the kingdom’s secret archives, she was sure there were some stashed away potions or healing remedies that could help her.
“Please wait for me, Lady Fiora. Please, please hang on,” Capriella begged, standing again to survey the area in effort to make some sense of the rubble. She quickly decided where she must go and set off.
Mending
It took hours of work in her drained state, but Capriella pushed on. Lifting heavy stones and digging her way down to the basement was a strenuous task, but each passing minute gnawed at her desperation and reminded her that her queen didn’t have long. That horrid thought was giving her a new strength, powered by an unrelenting loyalty and desire to save Lady Fiora. And by every god and goddess she could recount by name, Capriella swore that she would.
Some slabs she had to work to break to smaller pieces, otherwise she was forced to laboriously move aside the giant stone just to create a path for herself, one that she painstakingly squeezed through. The corridors beneath the castle appeared to be largely untouched by the destruction of the surface and Capriella felt a wave of shame drown her over once she set foot in its halls. No one was to enter without the queen’s permission and what she was doing now was nothing short of treachery. The woman begrudgingly shrugged her guilt off as circumstances intervened.
It was pitch dark save for the little bit of moonlight that spilled in behind her and without her magic she had to resort to fumbling along the wall until she reached a stash of crystals. Capriella grabbed one and tapped it against the wall, and the lightstone illuminated the area around her as she held it high to show her the way.
The light touched along the gallery of portraits
that hung across the wall, and much like the others that had been destroyed above, they were all of Queen Fiora’s Sevelyn women. She made to pass by them without a second thought, but her eyes couldn’t help but look to Penley, missing that companion above all others more dearly. They were all important to the queen and they would find them all again, she was sure, but that one lit a special warmth in Capriella’s heart.
It went cold as she passed the last and sixth of them and she turned her head, spitting on the image of a blonde-haired woman with vibrant blue eyes before she made it to the back wall.
It was here she could assemble the ingredients she would need for her lady and she dropped the lightstone to free her hands to carry it all. Finding her way back wasn’t of any challenge as the moonlight beaconed her exit and she climbed back to the surface, careful not to spill any of the items. She laid them out by her queen’s side and thanked her luck that there wasn’t a breeze to blow away the lighter objects, working on tearing Munk leaves and a thick Gajra root.
Capriella paused to consider which wound she needed to attend to first and decided it had to be her lady’s head. She gently moved the queen to lay in her lap and unbandaged her dress rags, pressing the bits of leaf and root to the open gash before she sprinkled some elixir from a bottle. The woman rebandaged the injury, using a different spot though blood had already soaked through most of the cloth. She might have been reluctant to dirty her queen’s face, but she was even more unwilling to take any risk when it came to her health.
Capriella repeated that action over again on the other wounds until she ran out of the root, so she settled on the leaves and elixir before they too were depleted. It was going to take a miracle of miracles to bring her lady back and she prayed for it to be so. It felt to be all she could do after the energy she had spent, and she fell to sleep on the spot by her lady’s side before she could finish the words.
When Capriella awoke again it was still dark out, though light was beginning to pierce through from the horizon. The woman would have appreciated more time to rest, even upon jagged stone, but Queen Fiora’s shuffling had stirred her from the slumber.
“My lady!” Capriella cried, snapping awakes the instant she saw the other’s eyes open, dazzling green as they captured that slither of light from the sky. It took a moment for her to realize those beautiful sparkles in her lady’s eyes were from tears, something that was made plainly evident when a droplet streaked down her pale cheek. Capriella found something else there as well, something strange, once her queen caught sight of her: alarm.
“What—” Queen Fiora started, recoiling away to her great pain. The woman grimaced and hissed, barely holding back an instinctive yelp through her clenched teeth, yet she still managed to kick her legs out to push away from Capriella. “Who are you?”
The head wound. Capriella’s breath caught in her throat like some invisible vice had wrapped tightly around her chest. The two of them had known each other for over a decade, had loved each other, but now her queen looked to her as if she were some stranger and worse, a threat. As much as that revelation pained her, the queen’s movements were putting her life at risk.
“Do not move, Lady Fiora,” she stated, reluctant to address the queen by any other mean that wasn’t the upmost formal, even if the addressed couldn’t remember. “Your wounds need to heal. I did what I can to help, but you mustn’t disturb those injuries.” It took every bit of resolve she could muster to keep a strong face, but a subtle tremble in her lip ultimately betrayed her.
For the better when Fiora caught sight of it and relaxed. Her memory might not have been there for her now, but Capriella’s concern over her seemed entirely genuine, or at least enough to bring down some of her guards.
The redhead inspected those bandages and decided they would have to suffice. Fiora had reopened a wound on her leg, but the ingredients of healing would still be working their magic to it. Capriella dared to meet the stare of her confused queen before she finally asked, “My queen, do you not remember me?”
Her lady’s eyes narrowed, and she could see the mind straining behind them as they searched for that answer. “I can’t…” Fiora began before shutting her eyes tightly and frowning. “I can’t remember anything.” When she reopened them, she no longer met Capriella’s gaze. Instead she stared out to the distance, her brow furrowed in irritation of her predicament. “I’m not even sure about that name you used for me, let alone being a queen.”
Capriella squinted in response as she processed that. The other might not have remembered who she was, but she did seem to still retain her vocabulary and an unwavering calm that was unrivaled through the lands. Capriella imagined she would be in absolute panic if she could reverse their roles. For better or worse, it was her queen who was suffering from the selective memory loss. A sickness like that was well out of the scope of her healing knowledge.
“For now,” she started, swallowing hard to overcome the lump she felt at the back of her throat. “For now, you need to rest, my lady. Your wounds have not yet healed, and your memory…” Well, that was another thing entirely.
“Your name is Fiora Tymon Winslett, the greatest champion and queen to rule over Unicra from the Ivory Palace,” the redhead began, determined to stay by her lady’s side while she recovered and do what she could to help her remember. “My name is Capriella and I first met you eleven years ago.”
Meeting
Capriella was just a young woman, standing in awe before the majestic Ivory Palace. The stories she had heard in childhood did little justice to convey what towered before her now; gleaming white walls that had been meticulously polished and crafted over a century ago yet continued to stand against the tests of time and weather. Ornate statues had been carved into the rock, and one of the giant, stone eagles that sat perched amongst the towers was said to be a sentient being, servant and guard to the Winslett family.
It was a far cry from the streets and stray cats she had grown fond of over the years. Capriella imagined the princess who lived here had never went hungry a single night, let alone several in succession. They were entirely different worlds. Capriella couldn’t help but wonder what she had done to land in the good graces of fate, that she would be brought here to stay.
The woman she was with cleared her throat and the redhead was taken from those thoughts. “Are you coming, dear?” Madame Ervel asked, waiting patiently with her hands clasped together a few steps ahead. The half dozen knights that traveled with them stood in two rows to their side, unerringly on guard. Capriella skipped a few paces across the bridge to catch up. Madame Ervel was well-known as the head-servant to the Ivory Palace, and although her job had always included an array of duties, this was the only time she had ever escorted a Sevelyn girl.
Capriella was the first one to be found in five years. And she was to be Princess Fiora’s.
Capriella wasn’t really sure how to feel about all that just yet.
Upon entering the palace, she was ushered to a wash room before she could appreciate the grandiose of the interior. The hot bath had the potential to be one of her life’s greatest experiences, if not for the oppressive hands of diligent servants who scrubbed her.
“Get her prim and proper for presentation. I suspect she looks rather well underneath all that dirt and filth,” Madame Ervel had said. The servants took their jobs quite seriously and performed miraculous work on her. Once Capriella was done bathing and dressed in a light, short dress of bright red, she started to truly appreciate what this opportunity might have entailed. She felt light as a feather, relieved of the coat of grime and ragged clothes that had been patchworked to include all sorts of different fabrics to weigh her down.
“You’ll never wear the horrid things again,” Madame Ervel had said.
Then they groomed her hair, a long task that a handful of stylists had bickered about. Her shoulder-length red locks were brushed and put up through an assortment of ways before they at last came to agreement: braided twin-tails that tickled h
er collarbone, held together by sky-blue ribbons.
They stood her before a mirror and Capriella could hardly believe how profound the transformation had been. The servants gathered around her, pleased by the expression of astonishment on her face.
“Much better,” Madame Ervel declared from the doorway. “Now, the Royal Family is waiting to receive her.” Capriella was given some glass, red slippers that forced her to adjust her gait to keep from falling over. By the time they reached the throne room, she had more or less gotten the hang of walking in them.
The chamber was much bigger than any of the other rooms, including the grand entrance hall she had caught sight of briefly before she had been ushered away. There were rows of seats placed along the walls that led up to the great throne that the king occupied. King Kleon Winslett was widely known among his people as terribly powerful and immeasurably kind; yet those that stood against his conquests never received much of the latter. Capriella’s own village rested along the edge of the King’s empire. Ronthorn was small, modest, and freshly acquired territory to the growing mass of Unicra, but the shift in rule hadn’t changed the situation of poverty yet. At least, until orphan girl Capriella was discovered to be Sevelyn.
She knew what the term meant, but she couldn’t help but feel the whole thing was a mistake that had snowballed into something gigantic; the enormity of only now sinking in as she stood before the Royal Family. Madame Ervel was by her side, but the servant was little comfort to the face of things.
King Kleon sat beside his lustrous wife, but the man’s chair was surrounded by four other women who were all equal, yet different, in their beauty. The five of them made up the Sevelyn women in Kleon’s kingdom, his most trusted advisors in all matter worth discussing. They also possessed the unique ability of Binding: a transformation of self to augment the King in the form of tools that he used to wield his great power. For as rare as a Sevelyn woman was, even rarer was an Ankhor male. As far as they knew, King Kleon was the last. Since he’d slain two, his conquests had been uncontested for years.