[center][i][color=aba000][h2]Abeyance[/h2][/color][/i][/center]

Bruised lids opened to view the face of his captor, the bloodied and broken man bound before her like a beast before its master. Her bemused look did nothing to change the image, the slight smirk of arrogance twisting those red lips set against her porcelain face. Leaning forward, she cupped the man's chin in one of her small hands, it nearly disappearing in the tuft of facial hair upon his chin. Those emerald eyes peered past his bloodshot eyes, seeming as if to pierce his very soul with her gaze. With a huff of disappointment, she released him forcefully, knowing that he had nowhere to go.

"Do you know what my ancestor, Baldur von Eisenkern said to the council of kings so many years ago?"

Her voice was deceptively sweet, a lilting tone which would have brought him to his knees if he hadn't already been bound into the low stockade. There was a poison in her tone, however, one which he knew all too well. Her arrogance seeped into that sweet voice, turning her every word into a promise of death or worse.

"I will unite these lands into one, under a single banner, in the name of unity against the outsider, or I will destroy everything in order to deny them our spirit."

He struggled to keep her in focus, his eyes wavering off her face and starting to wander down her body. Of course, she kept to her form, a conservative dress shirt and slacks making her appear less feminine to her captive, though she always chose to dress as such. Rare was it for the Red Queen to be seen in something so womanly as a dress. A scraping sound from behind her drew his attention back to her face and the scowl set deep into her aristocratic features. It was then he noticed the weapon clutched in her hands before her, a stylized lucerne hammer set into the shape of an eagle's head. Vainly he tensed against the restraints, even knowing full well that there was nothing he could do to stop her.

"You." Her lip curled into a sneer, her mood suddenly shifting from the toying tone she previously held to one which openly displayed her hate. "You dare oppose your queen. I was born to rule over you and your kind, those who dare to defy me and rail against my hegemony. The Arisovians know nothing of what is best for them, all of you ignorant pigs who can only roll about in your own filth and call it life."

It was a subtle thing, his reaction of a slight chuckle, but it sealed his fate. Her eye twitched as she heard the low and brief sound, fingers going white as they gripped the haft of the hammer. "You?" He asked, daring to look up at her "You were shit out like every other human. Arisovia stands united against yo-" His words were abruptly cut off by the sound of wood hitting stone, the hammer dropped from her grasp as her eyes lit with hatred the likes of which he had never seen. She howled with rage as she stepped forward and drove her thumbs into his eyes, twisting her hands to hold his mouth shut before he could scream.

The muscles in her arms tensed briefly, her eyes lighting up with her anger, "Then I will burn them all to ash." She whispered the words into his ear just before a surge of bio-electricity coursed through her fingers and into his skull. A smell of burning flesh suddenly filled the air and the body of the man twitched violently against the bindings holding him still. She held the grip upon his skull, a sick smile spreading across her face as a tongue of electricity licked out from his smoking ears, a soft laugh escaping her lips as she finally released the corpse.

"I am your queen!" She screamed the words at the smoking corpse, her bloodied fists balled up at her sides "I rule! This is my country and I will either forge it into a perfect nation or burn it all to ash! You do not decide what is best for you!" Tears ran down her face as she continued screaming at the corpse of the man who had once been a noble of Arisovia, turned rebel when Marianna had shut down their request to become independent and followed up with sieging their capital city. One of the guards in the room stepped forward as she fell to her knees, bringing her hands up to her face regardless of the blood coating them.

"My lady." He rested his hand on her shoulder gently, kneeling down before her to help ease her into a sitting position. "My lady, let us remove this from your sight, it is not worthy to be gazed upon by our rightful queen." She nodded slowly, her entire body shaking as the rage subsided into something else entirely. Looking around, her eyes widened as they settled on the stone walls and the guard between her and the remnants of the prisoner. "Wh-where..." Gently the guard hushed her, offering her a hand that she took hesitantly.

"My lady, the Princess will be arriving shortly." Silently she nodded and accepted his help to her feet, the guard leading her through the door and into the long hallway towards her quarters.

[hr]

A small group met in the cover of darkness just outside the border of Eisenkern on the side of Arisovia, their voices low and nothing except a few embers of lit cigarettes to denote they were even there. Their identities were anonymous, even to each other, for if any one of them knew who the other was, it could bring ruination to their entire endeavor.

"The Red Queen has moved her troops into Arisovia, likely to counter possible rioting coming up on the anniversary of the fall of Grajewo."

"And riot we shall." Another voice added to the first, the cigarette flaring as the speaker took a long draw.

"Yes, and that is exactly what she expects, and will slaughter them all where they stand. Black-Iron marches alongside an entire armored division."

The name 'Black-Iron' brings an unsettling silence down upon the group, a few of them remembering the last time that group was involved in an intervention.

"By the great serpent, the last time those animals were off their leash, they murdered women and children in the streets. [i]Thousands[/i] died that night, many of them innocents not even involved in the rebellion. Does she really mean to keep her rule by the flow of so much blood?"

A new voice spoke up, this one clearly foreign, though her accent hinted at that of the Kzechverin people.

"I do not think you have fully grasped the full picture of what she intends. Arisovia was not a simple intervention."

Murmurs of dissent whispered among the group, along with no few comments against her even adding her voice to the meet.

"While you sit here and talk of standing against her show of force towards the Arisovians, you turn a blind eye to the changes she makes across all of the Hegemony. From the moment she seized the throne in a night of murder, to the sound of troops marching into Arisovia this very moment, the Red Queen has been changing our nation according to her whim. How many laws have been passed, slowly altering the status quo of all of our homelands? Even Kzechverin is not safe from the tendrils of change writhing across this land."

Despite their previous dissenting tone, a few heads nodded slowly in agreement as they looked back to the many policies enacted by Marianna Desrosiers. There had been subtle changes to the lawbooks of all five states over the course of her reign, and the nature of those policies ranged from repealing the ban on work during the holy day, to adjusting the budgets of each nation to allow for larger operating budgets for the state-run industries.

"Now you see why she must be stopped, and why we must not throw our lives away so needlessly in foolish last stands such as Grajewo. You brought the massacre upon yourselves by foolishly deciding to stand against her openly. To war against the Red Queen will only end in death, the world knows this to be true, for her reputation is known far and wide for being ruthless and cold towards all except those in favor with the princess Csilla."

"Then what do we do, just sit here and accept her rule over us like so many dogs at her beck and call?" The voice which spoke up was clearly agitated, his thick accent denoting him as being from the Grajewo region. "You would have us skulk in the shadows and let her tanks roll over our loved ones while we do nothing! How da-" His rant was cut abruptly short by the rapport of a gunshot, the flash of light briefly illuminating a thin, young woman in a mask and robe holding the pistol directly at the man.

"Do you think the Hegemon will listen to your words so willingly? Do you think she will simply accede to your desires for independence? You must all remember that this is the woman who strangled Isaac The Greater in his sleep with her bare hands, and stabbed her little brother to death in the halls of the castle. She does not know mercy nor restraint. If you ever forget this, you will die the same death as your martyrs of Grajewo."

In the distance voices could be heard, their tone hurried and a spotlight sweeping the hillside for the source of the gunshot. Without another word the group scattered into the surrounding brush, knowing that next they meet, it would be under different circumstances and with new plans in hand for the coming storm.