[hr][hr][center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/SR52k84p/54b4e63d635603b22d80f72a4ba2be54.png[/img][hr][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019e8fda-abae-72dc-b11e-39d057b78113.webp[/img][hr][@Achronum][@Blizz][@Forsythe][@Kirah][@PatientBean][@Trainerblue192][@KazAlkemi][hr][h3][color=AC3EFF][b]As Above[/b][/color][/h3][/center][hr]

The Starlight Citadel was many things to many people. 

A gleaming beacon of hope. A promise of peace and harmony, of unity and cooperation. The central spoke of about which the wheel of Otherworld turned. No kingdom was nearer than the other, no kingdom farther from the shining light - from the grace of their Majestrix, their Saturnyne. It was the throne above all others, the palace floating in the sky, perfect and untouchable. Under its gaze, the fae were safe - under its rule, they were free. 

Giselle had been free, once. Honorably discharged, free to pursue her passions, free to love and to laugh and to dance. 

But freedom had only been a temporary state. 

The Light needed its warrior home. 

It did not ask what the warrior needed. 

It only took. 

Despair threatened to drown her as Giselle stared from the Citadel’s windows, the night sky pierced with crimson bombs. The enemy had done the impossible. Dryador, the Kingdom of Seventy Seas, was burning. If she focused her senses, she could hear the screams of boiling sprites caught on the wind, carried heavenward in a desperate plea for salvation, for deliverance. A plea her Royal Whyness had heard and decided best answered by a child. 

The leather of Giselle’s glove creaked as she tightened her hand into a fist. 

A plea best answered by her [i]daughter.[/i]

It had been foolish of her to send Sabine that sword - foolish of her to assume that her Lady would not notice, that the affairs of Giselle’s heart and her longing for her child would go unnoticed. 

“Be safe, my Light. Be strong,” Giselle whispered. She inclined her head and rested her hand on her chest, right where her locket was concealed. 

“Be brave, Sabine.”

She hoped the wind would carry these words, too.