Riven

That day...

It had been so nice. You spent the evening having tea with Her Highness, an honor that once you'd only dreamed of. To have her gaze grace you, her smile warm you, her hand drift across yours... you hadn't felt so alive as you did then. The warmth within her was the only thing that ever seemed to chip away at your frosty exterior. Cold, commanding and domineering with the guardship and the townspeople, it was only her kindness that could seize your reigns.

And how graciously she lavished you with it. You'd almost felt strange, this last while. She visited your station every day, even and perhaps especially when you weren't on any particular assignment, just to talk. She'd linger around as you worked, content to remain even in silence when you couldn't release your focus from the task at hand. She was a benevolent enough leader to realize that some things demanded more attention than even her own countenance.

And then...

Still buzzing from that strange touch she gave you at high tea, you were on your way to bed, though you'd surely have been up all night thinking about it. But... you heard a strange noise in the deathly silence of the castle halls as you passed the Queen's chamber: a loud, croaking, rattling breath, and the faintest impression of footsteps. You hesitated there, worried by the idea of disrupting the Queen's valuable sleep, but chose to crack the chamber door and peek in.

What started as a peek became you throwing the door wide open, furious magic already beginning to boil across your mind and build at your fingertips: there was an intruder! A black-cloaked figure, stepping calmly away from her bed and to her wide open window, blood drooling from a wicked karambit dangling loose from their fingers. They turned, settling wide jade eyes upon you, but you could only see the faintest impression of their face through the magic rolling off of your skin. What should have been enraged curses instead spilled from of your frothing mouth as indecipherable garble, as you began to feel your grip on the charge... slip. It built, and built, without your direction. It was as if you tried to claw it back, to push it down, but it slipped between your fingers at every chance.

You had never felt this way before, and would never feel this way again. Your hand began to collapse under the weight of the magic that was pouring into it, unwinding into ribbons of sickly black and jade. That figure's expression rankled you even further as they, perhaps in realization, calmed. They hoisted themselves into the windowsill as you reeled your hand back to cast a spell, but found it spraying behind you as disordered and uncontrollable light that began to sprawl across the floor like flame. Taken aback by the horror of what had become of you just long enough to give them time to escape, one last glance from the figure was enough to goad your addled mind into releasing your grip on the magic entirely in desperation, while the assailant dove from the window to safety.

Screaming with rage and grief, a part of you exploded into a font of arcane energy, unspooling body and soul into magical calamity, spilling over the room in waves like a typhoon of lit gasoline to torch the Queen's chamber and set the castle ablaze...

What came next... you can't remember. You wish so terribly that you could, but what memory comes next changes by the day. You've begun keeping notes, because it seems that you lose your recollection of everything thereafter more and more as time goes on. Your first note claims that you once recalled being run out of the town by the guardship, missing your arm and severely disfigured. Now, you only remember the first time you felt your metal fingers flex.

Each time you try to recall, it... hurts. It's almost like touching a hot iron, your mind recoils from the thought almost immediately. It's a familiar and wretched burn, almost... almost as if the riven magic that set the castle ablaze claimed part of your memory, too, and still burns through it now, ever streaking towards the present. Everything before that day remains clear in your recollection, but so much of what came after is now seared from your memory.

You worry that flame may never cease to burn, so long as you live to feed it. You wonder what it would take to douse it.