Merlin 3:2 “Heir Apparent”
The ides of winter, unto the story the same as any other bleak season, fate metes the summer drought to ail all the people, thereon next thus winter cold and callous. There a handsome kulak that bore six daughters to the same woman, each time hoping for a boy but knowing a girl is twice as smart and half as strong. Between the age of his third and fourth offspring he adopted four daughters other when his neighbors could not live thru fever and fugue. Three weeks before or after any of these children’s birthday he died alas of a portly angered heart some years of past, and the very saintly mother had gone of age and ills the like in this bitter cold, leaving ten daughters dour and solemn. Starving and young the young daughters now flee as refugees, parting with only relics to barter, they go with lamps hoping to find better obliges in a town or city, carrying light to bear through the darkness.
By teeming odds five of them liberal and five conservative, five are fools and depart without excessive fuel as the brighter left with small containers replete, and while the suitors they seek are for the time beyond discovery. They nap in places and sleep in others by familiar caves and famous mills abandoned for the season of cold spring, they to find haven or husband to return. At noon of darkness, one of the sisters cries into the air.
Halldora: “Look, a man approaches, seek him.”
They all stand on their feet and array the lamps alight, with worry and ambition the youngest pleads to the prepared.
Nauma: “Give you all to us fuels, for our lanterns are thirsty.”
The man on horse not only rides, but also increases pace to avoid conversation by his predisposed discretion. The eldest young woman peering thru the night turns back and speaks her message.
Soma: “Unless prevention works with ours to yours, go you all instead to men who sell lantern oil, and buy your own.”
In the morn, the road before them reveals their path splitting to two. Soon approached a disconcerting separation occurs as the disadvantaged sisters indeed go to buy fuel, while they are separated a man comes to the wiser sisters holding lanterns in the evening, with him they travail and soon all five are comforted intimately simultaneously to the man from the night. They are content with each of their decisions as known behind the door of the man with five new wives, but the reckless five sisters become scared in their waywardly path, arguing and discomforted they decide to turn aback and find their wiser sisters. Disheveled and tired they find the man’s farm by the coldest hour of morning, they make to his home and knock on his door.
Nauma: “Lord o lord, let us into warmth.”
Leonin: “Verily I may tell you this, you are strangers, so awaken you all, because you know neither the date nor hour!”
Then a traveling man of commercial things, a neighbor of Leonin keeping nearby his servants readily, and shows them his prowess and small fortune in goods. Over the following hours, they travel in the bleak weather and soon to his hacienda, where all things in sight are his belongings. By tyranny this now unbeknownst includes the five sisters who he claims as his wives, to the first wife he gives five chores, to the second and third wives gives two chores, and to the fourth and fifth he gives one chore. Things he thinks befit and as much to his liking, and about his lesser deeds does he commit in his home.
The wiser sisters are most unfortunate for the home does not belong to Leonin, and soon do they realize that for a night of warmth they are now again laborers of peasantry. Hence, for deed, they each carry with on the day that is this day, things to sell at a market shop and Leonin carries two things just as they carry two things. Of his sales, he takes a bag of coins, going forth, and digs elsewhere in the earth, hiding his money from his dullard overlord. After a time the lord of the servants comes and speaks of trivial news with and within the town and unto the many gathers Leonin and the five sisters, who on arrival notice their separated five sisters lavished but chattel of the regent named Roald.
Leonin: “Landlord, five peasants came to me from your land, lo, you have five to sisters these.”
Roald: “Good on you, fair servant and loyal, with little wealth you have been truest, I must and will recognize you on many titles, enter into the joy of marriage.”
Boy: “Lord, you gave me two chores, lo; I have conquered over two tasks.”
Roald: “Well are you, good boy and true, for on little supplies you have been truest, I will call you stronger of that which can be strongest. Pass with joy of the lord.”
A man who has taken no peasants comes, somber and solemn to the point of ambiguity, quiet and curt his very presence draws silence, his hair long and dark, his eyes intensely focused and narrow, the embroidery plain and the colors dark.
Sino: “Lord…I want that you are a severe man, you pick where you have not planted, and you gather together what you have never spread …and I dreading went, and hid your missing peasants in the earth, look, you perceive my words to be thin.”
Roald: “Evil servant and slow, learn that I pick where I plant not – and gather together where I pour not out? To that end, it behooved you to take my money to the men who take wagers. When I came, I received what is mine with usury, so take away from him the peasant. Give it to a man who has ten, for to every man that has me shall give, and he shall increase, but from him that hasn’t, or if I think he has, I will take it away from him, and discard you an unprofitable servant into utter darkness. They’ll lament, and grind their teeth, when Midgard’s son meets his maker and all his Valkyrie with him, as he watches them siege his soul, and all ilk should watch his coffin, and he’ll depart them apart.”
Lord Roald walks, away from Sino, moving between him and the comfortable slave girls, the guards on the right, the folk on the left. Roald sits on a public throne and drinks wine before returning Sino’s debate.
Sino: “Like a shepherd departs sheep from offspring, your slaves on the right and your serfs on the left.”
Roald: “Another wretch for the gods, who wishes be old on rite, gather to the gods, that they are blessed – in my kingdom – you hold denizen the realm given to you, for the makings of empire, I’ve hungered, and made quarry. I’ve thirsted as all young men do and fell into that well, roofless and made prisoner, naked… and hid, (kisses a slave girl who is reticent and reluctant) silk, (touches the silk of a reticent slave girl’s clothes) and pleasure. …I was in prison, and fate visited me, it was a place men should answer Odin ‘lord, seeing your hungry creations, entertaining ye, thirsting, and yet we give our captors drink?’ – and for the homeless, we housed armies, or vulnerable in battle we covered them, or wounded, or captured, we came to the gods?”
Roald stands and slowly walks in prideful prowess toward Sino, whose eyes become slightly darker.
Roald: “Believe you me, if you did to my weakest slave, you did to me, then Odin would tell the youthful to leave, cursed, to hellfire, made for Loki and his Valkyrie, -- hungry, gave me no food, thirsty, you gave no water, abandoned, you gave not harbor, naked, you gave no clothes, wounded, and captured, you gave no sign. Then and they should answer to me! Moreover, should say ‘Lord, tell us when we are hungry, thirsty, orphaned, naked, wounded, imprisoned, how can we serve you more?’
Sino begins to darken with power, dark brightness, presenting an evil within the eyes. The darkness of his vision is the sound of heavy emanation, the wight of ominous burden does not tax the flit of fearful feet, there is alarm rife to all militia beset in a darkened world of misery and remorse.
Sino: “Truly I say to you, how long you did not do one of those things, lest, neither you did for me, all shall perish in everlasting torment. I will judge the men to live forever.”
Soldiers distant part, the ones tasked to protect Roald and keep Sino in custody die from poison in the air, their stomachs twisting in pain, their muscles wrenching for bones to reclaim, their minds going insane. The dark radiance is paralytic and soon the violet magic flares an aura of lightning with tendrils into the air that soon Sino’s hand of death places upon the regent’s vision and soon thusly his face, turning his mind to fire and his blood to dirt. Roald bleeds from his eyes, nose, and mouth and then falls to the ground, Sino of evil transgressions quickly remits his powers and surveys the panicked townsfolk rushing from sight, but the slaved girls scantily clad in the intemperate cool with clothes of nearly infernal summer humbly approaching with their arms at their side, unabatedly drawn to power.