The Bone King, resplendent in his wrath, would hear of no such thing.
His daughter, a mere slip of a girl, dared to challenge the natural
order of things.
Unstoppable power meant nothing to her, nor the wealth of the Graveyard
Kingdom. The intricacies of the magical power of the Lich, destroyed so
many years ago by their ancestor, meant even less to her.
No, she rebelled the day she learned not of her fate but of her
betrothed: a royal from nearby Dover, a noble-born second son who
dreamed of harnessing the power of the Graveyard Kingdom for his own
ends.
Little known to any beyond the nobility that only those born of the
Hero's blood could ever harness that power, all others opened to their
eyes as books, their intentions and thoughts laid bare.
The secrets of the dead meant just as little, leaping to the clarion
call of the current wielder as if they were the Lich itself.
None of that mattered - though she was raised to know and fear her
father, she loved him as well, a sentiment that kept her innocent to the
misdeeds and cruel wars he waged in the name of prosperity.
Unification, riches, power. It all meant only one thing to one held under the sway of the Lichs' mantle: ambition.
And that ambition blinded the Bone King to his daughters' broken heart, to her searching brown eyes and quiet pleas.
The day he declared the marriage to go on with or without her presence,
the day he broke her heart for a final time, was the day she took
matters into her own hands.
And so she fled to the deep, dark heart of the Western Woods. A place
she had been forbidden to go, but a place she had long since noted the
Bone King and his armies dared not penetrate. There, she would find a
way to her own fate.
There, she would learn why her father dare not bother the one place in all of the Graveyard Kingdom.
Walking about in the bright sunlight, she heard the hue and cry of the
people in the lands beyond; a whisper of her power to be already
settling upon her. The mantle of the Lich, even awash in glorious,
dappled sunlight, a constant reminder of the choice she had made and the
life she had left behind.
Yet even here, with so much darkness covering the land, there was
light. Beautiful and warming to the soul, especially after having felt
the cold touch of the power reaching for her. The Bone Kings' words
reached his daughter once again, and she continued on, lost in
contemplation amidst deep sunlight.
Was there a way to retain her true will in the face of the Lich's
power? Could there ever be a way to bring sunlight, such glorious
warmth, to the people?
For that was her true issue in all things - the royalty of the various
kingdoms fought amongst themselves, greedy and ever wanting of more
power. Even her father's so-called Unification was nothing more than
glory, pomp, and the gathering of wealth.
And souls. Always souls.
Yet that blind ambition would become hers upon accepting the mantle, her will lost to the demands of the ancients.
The arranged marriage still stung her on top of everything else, and the
demands of her father in the name of State. To take the power unto
herself and make a puppet consort of the noble, his strategically-placed
lands made hers at the height of marriage.
Wandering within the Western Woods, she sought answers. The balm to
quiet her soul, to soothe the parts of her that had been frozen by the
touch of the Power, the revelation of her bloodline's twisted origins.
And the answers to her questions, the reason behind the Graveyard
Kingdom's quarantine of the Western Woods, awakened to a strange smell
within his woodlands. The Creature stirred, violence beginning to
animate him as he caught onto the scent and took off like a shot, intent
on tearing all intruders apart.
And at first, unsuspecting and quiet, did the Princess first ran afoul
of the unrepentant, unbowed owner of the Western Woods. The one entity,
through twisted magics and horrible happenstance, who lay outside of
the Bone King's nightmarish abilities. His mind would never bend, and
the undead resisted the consecrated grounds of the Western Woods.
It was there that his shadow crossed hers, hungry for violence, ready to destroy...
And at the mere sight of her did she, instead, capture his heart.
