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Laughter echoed through the Royal Palati. Thunderous as it shook the walls, fissures formed into pillars before they tumbled and fell. The dark skies swelled with thick clouds, the crackle of lightning bleeding through gray and silver before being thrown to the ground. The fires bloomed on chunks of craggy rock, catching the grass and swirling across the terrain. Just as the fire raged against a deluge of rainwater, an icy wind blew across the palace. Following the path of the wind, the laughter grew louder and louder until it focused on the room of a certain Princess Emilia of Xanthos.
Shaken from her bed, the princess comes face to face with a blinding figure, a thick hand grasping her shoulder before launching her skyward. From the heavens, Emilia would see the fires bloom and spread in spite of the rain, from the corridors of the palati through the countryside of Athenia, passing through its capital until the screams of thousands could be heard, completely eclipsing the laughter.
"You don't think you're really ready for this, do you?"
The screaming stopped when Zeus's voice pierced through the heavens. Gusts of wind extinguished the flames, leaving only burning ash and razed buildings.
Emilia was thrown again through the skies, falling into a familiar pool of water. There lay the Princess of Sorrow, a fat body swollen with rot and water, but the reeling corpse moved, embracing the princess before she parted her chapped and rotten lips to say:
"Why couldn't you save me, Your Majesty?" The words were a shriek in Emilia's ear before becoming a hoarse whisper.
The body collapsed into a heap, and the princess was thrown again through the skies of Athenia. Now, she was in the Senate, in the place of her father and sister. In each space, there was a trembling, rotted figure dressed in the best clothes of a senator.
"Do you want to be with us, princess?"
"Will you stand with us?"
The Senate hall dissolved into nothingness, replaced only by the same booming laughter and the piercing light of thunder.
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