The ruins had been long ago lost to the grasping tendrils of the forest. Once, a palace had stood here; the envy of neighboring kingdoms, a sign of oppression to the people.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne.
In a strange city lying along.
Now though, the portcullis is no more than intertwined rust and ivy.
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, violet and the vine.
The great banquet hall is open to the sky, and shrubs sit around the rotting remains of the massive stone table. Deep below, groundwater covered the bones of those trapped in oubliettes, a proper burial at last.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves
And in the throne room, upon a seat of tarnished gold and decaying skulls, a single mighty tree grew. This place has been abandoned for centuries, not even grave-robbers disturb its deterioration.
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye
Not the gaily jeweled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
The ivy on the portcullis is cut away, the disintegrating metal falling in flakes of rust.
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A hand pushes aside a curtain of vines cascading down from a dull chandelier.
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
Through the mighty banquet halls. The shrubs sit as they have for decades, but they too seem to watch
The hours are breathing faint and low —
The walker passes them by, and stands in the doorway to the throne room. He looks up at the chipped and faded frescos
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Passes by the tree that has rooted itself in a place of power, and places his hands against the stony wall. His fingers fumble among the lichen, and then find a groove. He presses, and the wall slides open, groaning with the dust of years. WIthin the chamber is the statue of a dragon-man. It stands 8 feet high, each scale meticulously carved. Great horns curve back from the cruel face.
"Master, I am here to free you from your curse. I am the last son of the keepers of the secret of the dragon-prince. The day of revelations has come. I speak these words, and spill my blood, and bid you to awaken." He slits his palm with a fallen stone, feeding the lichen with blood.
The carved dragon-prince cracks. An opalescent eye stares out.
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
---
For hundreds of years he has dreamed rocky dreams, but now The Dragon Prince, Florentin Cuza, has awoken once more. His servant stands with head bowed as Cuza breaks free. "Where is the amulet?" Cuza speaks in a language forgotten when his kingdom crumbled.
"Amulet?" the servant's face pales. "It...I..."
Cuza takes a step forward, the fragile tiles of the floor cracking under his weight. "Where. Is. My. Amulet."
Quaking in his boots: "It was taken and hidden away where you could never reach it."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do." With a single talon, Cuza slits the man open from his throat to his waist. He collapses to the ground instantly. Cuza examines his entrails, using divination to see how the future lay.
"It's been taken far away...across an ocean. It is destined that only one may retrieve it. Who?"
Cuza reached into the still-gasping servant's body and grabbed his heart. He twisted, wringing the blood out onto the floor. Peering into the pool, his eyes gleamed with light from another world. A murky picture formed.
A boy running, packages clutched under his arms and between his teeth.
"Let it be so then. A boy will lead the Dragon King to glory."
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