>>5843278And so you did, striding with false authority—but genuine import—all the way up through the maze-like topiaries of the expansive royal gardens, past statues of great warrior and leader, and shrines dedicated to the principle human deities Moroth and Marese, and to all their children tasked to manifest and maintain civilization: farming, and metallurgy, and poetry, marriage and animal husbandry and construction, justice and duty and more.
Curious, for a Dark Queen to shelter behind her Paladin guards, and to maintain her religious reliquary so fastidiously…
You hadn’t told Pearce THAT part of things—not yet. You still needed to decide how to approach Queen Ekaterine of Hawksong, your nominal sovereign and (hopefully) treaty-partner to your fairy friends on Old Maple Hill. Only you and Archmage Henzler were privy to her husband’s rue nature, and the sinister secret of the paternity behind the next heir to Hawksong’s throne… As well as all that this implied about her own allegiances and intentions, and her hidden nature. You didn’t know what the woman looked like, but you knew that most people treated her as a veritable angel-on-earth, as a direct descendant of the legendary line of Paladin Kings who had made Man great and glorious, materially and physically; between that and her unseemly secrets, you pictured someone truly imposing, perhaps a giantess clad in black gown, wearing a spiked crown, with glowing red eyes and deep black make-up.
Imagine your surprise, then, to find instead a rather small, slight woman, younger-looking than Pearce and certainly younger than YOU.