>>5143511>>5143512>>5143516>>5143517>>5143519>>5143520The reflection soon shifts back to the Santana estate, with several people trying to invade the front door as your servants held them against the battering ram the peasantry were using to barge the entrance.
The place was now infested with lepers, the once beautiful garden was dead and vandalized, the pegasus was nowhere near in sight, but the statue of the kraken was still intact as he lived on.
Famine, sickness and poverty were striking all of lower and middle class alike, with the king wasting all resources to look for the missing prisioner Griffith, and not believing Gallahad when saying that you were killed in prison, he quickly fired his best knight and let the monarchy turn into anarchy. Whatever prosperity came to be with the victory over Tudor soon disappeared in the span of two years, with the king doing nothing and the people growing impatient from the crumbling kingdom as his madness grew, they soon resorted to witch hunts and looking for scapegoats, blaming the royal family and whoever sided with them, which usually included the plundered bourgeoisie.
Gallahad was quick to be rehired as a guard with several others in the estate, but even as they managed to fend off against the insurgents for some time, blame would soon fall onto them for raising the one who would imprison Griffith. Murdering the queen somehow didn't look as bad when the king was already planning on destroying the masses, and that narrative somehow shifted into The Falcon being their savior, falsely accused of a crime he did not commit for the sake of Charlotte not becoming the new queen.
"But I was there with Griffith! Everyone in the chapel saw that he was the culprit! How can they suddenly turn heel like this?" You asked Merlina.
"Free will is nothing but a veil of excuses for the weak to justify their one sided war with reality. If they are so blind to ignore magic happening in front of their eyes, what's a few witnesses' testimony worth in a few years from now to push a false narrative?" She shifted her gaze to get a better look inside Jacopo's room, once again bedridden as one of the rats managed to chew at his feet when walking in the garden's tall grass.
"Gallahad, are you sure that my son is still alive? It has been two years since you've said he departed to fight Silver Eyed Merlina..." He asked his knight, slowly losing hope in you ever returning home.
"Of course! The Holy Iron Chain Knights have been looking for any sighting of the occultist, but the swamp has receded so far in that none of them were even able to find the flesh monsters! It must be his doing! I'm sure of it!" Gallahad tries to reassure Jacopo and Michelle, who sensed that the patriarch would not recover.
