[Chapter Size: 2500 Words.]
Third Person POV
Cintra.
...
...
The people of the capital looked from side to side through their windows as they heard the screams of the Nilfgaardians outside. As if it were not enough that everything had begun to descend into chaos the day before, when, suddenly, the palace had been sealed off, preventing anyone from entering, even as the Nilfgaardian guards in the city tried to break down the gate.
Nothing they tried worked, even after sorcerers brought in even more reinforcements from the south, yet they were still unable to breach the castle.
They were panicking, especially with the reinforcements from the south, who had arrived while they were trying to free the most important nobles currently trapped inside the kingdom.
But there were not only people from Cintra there. Many Nilfgaardians had also come to live in the city, and obviously, they were even more frightened.
Then the chaos began a few minutes earlier. Suddenly, lightning bolts began raining down from the sky, striking the Nilfgaardian soldiers.
The men filled the streets as they screamed and died inside their own armor. It was happening throughout the city, while everyone listened to the screams and watched in horror as men were electrocuted.
Everyone was afraid that the lightning would strike them as well. However, the bolts kept falling, unable to hit anyone who was not a soldier wearing Nilfgaardian armor. Even those who tried to hide could not escape. The lightning simply entered through open doors to strike them.
It was as though nature itself were killing those men. But one only had to look at the sky to realize otherwise. There was the silhouette of a person floating above Cintra, glowing intensely green as lightning fell all around her.
That was clearly the work of a sorceress, and a remarkably powerful one, more powerful than any they had ever seen in their lives or ever heard mentioned. Some had also seen a group entering the city. Other sorceresses were among them, attacking even more soldiers as they advanced directly toward the palace, unconcerned by the lightning raining down around them, slaughtering more and more men.
Ciri saw the group passing through the inner gates of the castle wall and quickly clenched her hands. The amount of lightning grew even greater. Suddenly, an enormous rain of light appeared over Cintra. She was pushing herself to the limit, unleashing some of her rage against those who had desecrated her homeland for so many years. Now they would all pay.
Ciri did not kill the Nilfgaardian civilians, of course, even though she knew many of them would hate her after this. After all, she was slaughtering their uncles, brothers, sons, fathers, and husbands who wore the black armor. But her own people were far more important, and she feared no retaliation as she continued massacring the soldiers.
In any case, it finally stopped after that enormous attack, as she looked over the city and realized that she had eliminated most of them. She quickly teleported and joined the group entering the palace at that moment. Several burned corpses were scattered along the way. In that final attack, Ciri had simply slaughtered every soldier who was still within the walls.
Ciri floated above the group and could not help but observe her old home.
It had been restored from all the damage caused by Nilfgaard's invasion when they broke through the gate, from what she could see. Even the garden where she and Madara used to spend time as children was there, intact. The same tree beneath which they had sat, at six years old, to talk about the future remained in place.
Ciri could not help but feel nostalgia and anger, that longing for a time she would never experience again, when she had lived carefree as a spoiled and stubborn little girl, causing trouble throughout the corridors under the watchful eyes of her grandmother, the Lioness Queen.
In any case, she pushed those thoughts aside and joined them, appearing beside Madara. Then she could not help but feel Geralt's, Yennefer's, and the others' gazes upon her.
Certainly, Geralt and Yennefer had not seen anything that had happened in Novigrad, so seeing her display of magic, simply slaughtering thousands of soldiers within a city in a matter of minutes, must have left them shocked.
In any case, they moved forward. Madara advanced alongside the others as they entered the castle. Conquering Cintra had been so easy that it had amounted to nothing more than blowing up the gate and making their way to the castle, while Ciri did most of the work.
The greater problem would be organizing the entire city and the kingdom now, which was why the addition of four sorceresses and a witcher was more than reasonable at that moment.
There were people cowering on all sides. They were merely the servants who worked in the castle.
"I think it would be better if you two went in ahead of everyone else," Tissaia said to Ciri, making no comment about her earlier display of magic.
Ciri nodded before moving alongside Madara. The two walked through the corridors while people trembled in fear.
It was only after some time that a woman among the maids appeared in their path, staring at them in shock.
"You... Cirilla? The princess?" she asked, trembling, while also looking at Madara, recognizing him.
Madara and Ciri looked at each other, not knowing who she was, and the woman continued: "I... I was one of the castle cooks. I remember you," she said.
She was an older woman, so she was certainly old enough to have known them when they were children, before the fall of Cintra, remaining there until that day, years later.
For that woman and anyone else who had seen them before, it was also easy to recognize them. After all, she had still been young when the two children were constantly talked about within the castle as they went on their many adventures together. Even though the boy was obsessed with training and the girl followed him like a shadow.
Moreover, it was not difficult to recognize them by their appearance. It was not very common to see a boy with spiky black hair and equally black eyes, maintaining a more serious expression than he should have even at that age, unlike the girl who had always been energetic and cheerful, with her green eyes and white hair, always by his side.
Seeing them there years later, now young adults, wearing even more serious expressions, especially Ciri, who had lost all that joy in her eyes, was strange. Not that the woman could blame her for being that way in a situation like this. Even after so many years, however, the two were still easily recognizable.
"The princess... The Princess of Cintra has returned!" the same woman announced to the other servants, who seemed to fear for their lives at that moment. Still cautious, as though expecting to meet death itself, they slowly began to rise and looked at them in surprise. Even Ciri stopped for a moment to observe them.
"Hi," Ciri said, awkward at their unexpected recognition.
Despite not recognizing any of those faces, perhaps because everyone she still remembered was dead, she could not help but look at them with a certain longing as she thought about how there were still people from that time there.
"If you're here..." He looked at Madara. "Are you here to free us? To free Cintra?" an elderly man asked.
"Yes," Madara was the one who answered.
The man nodded, joy appearing in his eyes. "I knew it... I knew this day would come. That as long as the people of Cintra still lived, our kingdom could recover from those damned Nilfgaardians."
"Can you tell us what happened here?" Ciri asked, curious.
They could obtain information in many other ways. Madara could simply speak with his clones, but Ciri wanted to hear it from her own people.
"It all started yesterday. Several hooded men appeared inside the castle and began arresting all the nobles. They sealed the castle and told us that we were forbidden from leaving for the time being, but that our duties inside should continue as normal, feeding the Nilfgaardians imprisoned in the great hall. There were some sorcerers who tried to enter, but they were all killed by those hooded men," he explained.
Obviously, the hooded men were Madara's clones wearing cloaks and performing their security duties while keeping all the nobles imprisoned. The man continued:
"Then we started hearing rumors... Rumors that the King of Nilfgaard... I mean, the Emperor... had been killed and that all the nobles were supposed to leave Cintra immediately. It caught us by surprise, but it also gave us hope. Perhaps we wouldn't have to be abused by them anymore."
"Were they very cruel to you over all these years?" Ciri immediately asked.
"They were, Princess," another woman replied tearfully. "We were forced to serve them throughout all these years. Not to mention the abuse many women suffered at the hands of the soldiers since the day of the invasion."
"They killed our men and our children, then forced us to serve them," another added, crying.
"They treated your grandmother's body as though it were nothing. They took her after finding her fallen beneath one of the towers. I saw the man who invaded Cintra desecrate the Queen's body by kicking her while cursing the deceased Queen."
Immediately, a tremor ran through the entire room, frightening everyone. Ciri closed her eyes and felt Madara's hand touch hers.
"Most of them have already paid for it. They're dead, and we'll deal with all the others," Madara said in the middle of the explanation.
The servants were certainly frightened by that, not knowing whether Ciri was about to lose control in some way upon learning that the body of her beloved grandmother had been desecrated after her death.
"In any case, we'll talk about this another time. We have to deal with the Nilfgaardian nobles who are still filling the main hall," Madara said as he interrupted the conversation.
Everyone nodded.
"Stay here. We'll settle everything first and then we'll call you to talk. We'll take care of everything," Madara said to the countless servants who still wanted to speak. They had hidden in those corridors ever since Ciri began her lightning attack over the city.
They looked at him with admiration and, especially, at Ciri. They had certainly heard about the marriage between the two of them, and that must have given them some hope. But they must also have heard about their disappearance and, after years without any news, could only have grown even more uncertain about the future.
In any case, Madara and Ciri continued advancing through the halls until they finally reached the throne room, where several men in black were overseeing at least fifty people dressed in noble attire, all kneeling on the floor.
Madara even wondered whether they had already received the news of the army's destruction first, and then the death of the emperor they served. In any case, some had still managed to escape, but that would not last much longer. Madara had already sent clones after those men after discovering who they were and obtaining information about their possible locations, as well as their families. He would basically begin destroying everything that belonged to them within the Empire.
The group's arrival quickly made all the nobles stare at them in surprise while they remained on the floor. There were not only men among them, but women and children as well. Some children were immediately embraced by their mothers when they saw that group entering.
Murmurs in Nilfgaardian quickly began to spread as the clones moved out of their way toward the enormous chair on the other side of the room, all of them also making space for Madara and Ciri to pass through the group of people.
Ciri could not help but cast an angry gaze around the room. Her eyes immediately settled on her grandmother's throne, which had never been replaced but had been desecrated with the symbol of the Golden Sun placed upon its backrest, replacing the three golden lions against the blue background that represented Cintra.
Not that she could have expected anything different, but it still filled her with anger. It was her grandmother's throne.
Even so, Ciri said nothing and paid no attention to the gazes around her. She simply continued forward beside Madara until she stopped before the nobles, staring at them in silence.
"The throne is yours, Ciri. Go ahead," Madara said, making Ciri look at him in surprise.
"But you..." she said.
Madara merely shook his head. "We'll make a second throne in the future, but today it's yours. That throne belonged to your family, your blood. You should be the first to sit on it," he said.
Ciri thanked him with a small smile. Not that Madara needed to prove anything. She would no longer be surprised if any other man were fascinated by the idea of trying to claim the throne through marriage to a princess, as was the case with them. Many would try, but her husband had no need for things as futile as a throne and shouting that he was the king.
This was the man who had destroyed the Nilfgaardian Empire before an entire city more than a day ago, and no one had been able to do absolutely anything against him. If he wanted to, he could probably destroy the entire Empire.
That act was more than enough for Ciri to realize that Madara was leaving the throne especially for her because he understood all the emotional weight it carried for her.
It was her grandmother's throne...
Ciri stared at the throne for a few seconds before advancing with cautious steps. She turned toward the stunned crowd, who merely stared at her, unable to do anything but watch. After all, the clones surrounding the hall had already made it quite clear that no one there could attempt anything.
Ciri sat down cautiously. Yennefer, Geralt, Tissaia, Triss, Ida, and the other Nilfgaardians in that room stared at her with a mixture of surprise and a certain fascination as she settled into the same place where her grandmother had once sat.
It was not the first time Ciri had sat on that throne. After all, when she was just a rebellious girl, she used to simply jump onto the chair and pretend to be the Queen of Cintra. Back then, her life had been much more carefree. Sometimes, even Madara had to push her up when she could not climb onto it by herself, or Ciri would simply demand his help.
But now it was different. Now she sat there as the Queen of Cintra, just as her grandmother had once done.
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