The Azure Shah valued serenity above all else, yet his heart burned for justice.
The Azure Shah favoured the battlements near the Naiftali’ s shore, yet he was partial to the rebuilt gardens.
The Azure Shah was known to disdain horses, yet he found few things more rapturous than his secret rides alongside the Armiger of the Confederation.
The Azure Shah was thought to savour a peculiar fish from the eastern sea, yet he found those so disgusting, he could scarce swallow the damn things.
The Azure Shah had a son and a daughter, yet he had never laid with a woman.
The Azure Shah would never die, yet he stared into his empty, waiting tomb.
Torch in hand, he looked at it, long ago prepared, a nameless, unmarked place for a sarcophagus. Built far in the desert, in a hill that barely jutted out of the sandy hills, where no orc or dragon would look for the burying ground of the Shahs of one of the greatest cities of Mansoureen, the catacomb was the last gift of the Coronate Sisterhood. A peaceful respite, after a life of strangling duty.
It was easy for a Crownbearer such as himself to hate those crones. A life-long act of pretending to be someone you are not, beaten into you with the terror of a fate worse than death. And for what – to shepherd ungrateful, ignorant curs, who he had no part to, who couldn’ t even be bothered to see below his mask? How he wished some days to tear off the masked crown and disappear into the crowd. Sail to the Emerald Isles, perhaps, or become an adventurer for the Empire in Xeominel.
And yet... this was not done out of cruelty; he knew now more than ever. The dragons were real, and their servants had come. A pair of dragonbloods and their cohorts had tried to kidnap the Azure Princess – and how he hated that he couldn't convince himself the sweet girl was his daughter –, but he had been none the wiser. Praise the Almighty for her brother, and the blessing he gave the young man.
He remembered well the previous Azure Prince. With the passing of his predecessor, the much older man taking the role of his son had been the sole candid partner of conversation he had, and become a mentor figure to him. A clandestine man, even by the standards of the Masked Monarchies, he had nevertheless imparted both wisdom and hidden rite on him.
For the Crownbearers had a secret even the Coronate did not know – it was in their own memories where the men and women beneath the mask lived on. The Shah turned back the way he had come – the light of the evening sun but a distant spark in the depth of the millennia old catacomb. It’ s walls stood lined by nameless tombs and caskets – and yet he could name every single one. Many hours he and the old prince spent here – and many had he with the Princess and the blessed Prince. None of them, like him had truly a name. But they had years, desires, fears and accomplishments, and though in truth little, he could name them all.
And he knew that they had all at times cursed their fate. Yet not one had taken the easy path. This duty, this responsibility, this crown was given unto him, no one else, like it had been given unto them. A lineage in purpouse, in memory, if not blood and writ – a dream of a nation free from the long shadow of dragons, carried from the halls of Sanamran which had reared them all as one.
The Azure Shah was forged as a hope, yet it was he that held that hope.
The Azure Shah was no longer a man, yet for now, like he had been so many times before, the Azure Shah was him.
And he too would be remembered.