Chapter 331: Predecessor
Drifting in the darkness, Ashlynn had very little sense of direction. Her mind sank deep into the mud and the soft soil beneath it before following the roots of countless trees, moving from on to the next until she’d heard faint sounds and followed them here, but now, it felt like she could move no further and yet the voice was still very, very far away.
"Who are you?" Ashlynn asked hesitantly. "And what do you mean I’ve inherited your curse?"
"I? Who am I?" The voice asked as though she found the question somehow strange. The sound of rhythmic clicking that had accompanied paused and when the voice spoke again, she dod so in a tone that was far more commanding and... regal than before. "I am the Mother of Trees, the first human born a witch. I am Claire du Gaal of the house du Gaal," she said. "Surely time has not forgotten my name so soon?"
As she spoke, a vision appeared in the darkness of a regal woman in her middle years, dressed in rich sapphire blues with dark hair tied in intricate braids. A crest embroidered across the chest of the woman’s dress in thread of silver looked familiar for a moment, but there was something subtly wrong about it that left Ashlynn momentarily confused about the woman’s house before the vision faded away.
"Claire du Gaal?" Ashlynn said, rolling the unfamiliar name around in her mind as she struggled to place it. The crest closely resembled the one used by the Royal Family but it lacked the crown at the top and the crossed swords behind the crest that marked the royal lineage.
"Were you a princess then?" Ashlynn asked, wondering if this woman might have been outside the line of succession. "Or perhaps a member of the royal family’s cadet branches?"
"Royal family?" the voice said, this time sounding surprised itself before it let out a heavy sigh that felt like it was filled with too many emotions to name. "So the old men of the Church pushed little Charles onto a throne in the end."
This time, when she spoke, the vision that appeared in the darkness showed a young handsome man, perhaps a year or two younger than Jocelynn, surrounded by white haired men draped in the gold and white robes of Exemplars or the blood red and gold of the Inquisition. The men of the church seemed to treat the young man with incredible respect when they faced him, but the looks that passed between them were anything but kind.
"They said they saw it written in the stars," the ghostly voice said as the vision faded away. "They claimed that he would be a king whose line would rule for hundreds of years. Has it? Have my little brother’s descendants ruled for hundreds of years since my death?"
"Little Charles," Ashlynn said, shaken as she heard the name, finally understanding why the crest in the vision had looked so unfamiliar. It was the crest of the house of du Gaal before Charles du Gaal ascended to the throne!