The magic no longer flowed through her family’s veins. It had died out generations ago. Or at least that’s what they’d been told. 
House of Cadmus Prompt found on Pinterest

Gyah stood at the gates of her ancestral homeland with her grandparents’ shackles and chains in her hand. A thousand shots were fired in her direction, creating a glow of blues and whites around her that never hit. Once the clicks of spent weapons rang out, she sent the shots back. The wall was clear but the alarms rang out. She sighed. The commotion from inside was easily separated. Screams of the brainwashed innocents. The frantic orders of military near the gates. 

Gyah clinched each set of chains in her hands and took a deep breath. Once they began to glow fire red, she sent them off like drones to survey the land. As she saw the panic firing at her magical creation, she had the land mapped out again. With a thought, she turned them into propellers, metal attracting metal. The armored and armed mowed down. 

She leaned against the gate and focused on the locks until she could push the gates open. She saw her face, her grandparents’, in the faces of the people living near the gates. She removed her hood and a calm washed over her and all of them. Sounds for retreat moved the surviving armed ones back. The people were fixed on her, parting as she walked forward. 

Gyah touched the hands of those she knew were her people. The connection stunted by the chains. A new metal made just for them. But many watching seemed to get the message. Take it off. The cuffs. The earrings. The headbands. The anklets. 

Gyah kept walking, right down the middle of the city. Through the hovels. Through the markets. Through the streets lined and paved with the fresh and pressed shit of the animals of burden and farming that seemed to have freer roam on the broader streets. An army of one that would slowly grow. 

In the distance she could see the jewel of the city. A perched high fortress, beautifully lined with every precious metal. The city, the nation widened more and more as she walked. A tall pillar in the center had inlaid inscriptions that were clearly ill fitted over the original, poorly worn down carvings that held her family name. 

More alarms sounded before her, but chants of her name were beginning to ring out behind her.

D. Ondria

08102024

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