The Chronicles of Eriuna

[Ayzek]

"Have you found the standards?"

"Nay, Prince."

"Tch." Lyrn spat, sinking back into his seat. The Phortainese's king's armchair was a rather simple thing, made of wood and engraved in Phortainese cultural and religious symbols. A hawk's head took up the bulk of the backrest, an iron crown on its head and a horizontal endless knot above that. The leather seat was simple and worn. The armrests's ends too were in the shape of the hawk's face, which made them uncomfortable to grip.  It matched the Phortainese keep well: simple and less than comfortable. The throne room, which seemed to double as the council room, was stone and undecorated. The large wooden table and the even-simpler chairs around it were the only other furniture, discounting the lit torches that dotted the walls.

Doren, standing by the doors to the room, watched his prince silently. The Lanlanians officers had taken over the keep with a few guards and were in the process of searching it for anything of value. The standards of Lyrn's grandfather were the key treasure they were after—they were quite valuable to army, and not simply cause they were made of gold. The golden lion, standing triumphantly at the top of the Archking's banner, was a symbol of Lanlanian might and to have one lost was a major blow to the Archkingdom's prestige. Though the destruction of the Phortainese state certainly restored some of it, Lanlanians would never consider the victory complete until they recovered the standards.

Yet no one they captured knew were they were.

"We will keep searching," Doren said, nodding his head as he withdrew from the room.

Lyrn watched him go from the corner of his eyes. When the door closed, he sighed and glanced out the windows. The sky was auburn as the city still burned. The keep's outer walls and the open space in between was not enough to keep the crackles of the flames or the cries of the population completely at bay.

The Raze of Orenhold would last for a week and of the city's sixty-thousand inhabitants, only five-thousand would survive to be enslaved. In the end, only the stone buildings and walls would still stand, charred black with soot from the surrounding field of ash. But the Archkingdom would have avenged the lost Archking Lyrn I and his three Hosts, and sent a clear ultimatum to the rest of the Phortainese cities: surrender or suffer the same fate.