#castlemaid

[sleepingwoolf]

The Ghost Party

Commission for PitifulServant ! Hope you like it :> had a lot of fun working on it! COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN (if you don't have KOFI feel free to send me a note here) Follow me here: PILLOWFORT INSTAGRAM FURAFFINITY TOYHOUSE ARTSTATION KOFI ARTFIGHT DEVIANTART TWITTER INKBUNNY INKBLOT ART ITAKU TUMBLR BLUESKY LINKTREE

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[rednarokavatar]

"You come at awfully awkward time, Ashen One. The princes are resting. I'd prefer you don't disturb them."

I made a Dark Souls OC. His name is Cilius. He's a Castlemaid for Lothric and Lorian. He's also insanely loyal to them, like...

"If Lothric ordered you to jump off a bridge would you?!"

"Absolutely."

He dresses in female clothes because he says that female garments looks more elegant than male ones, and he doesn't wear shoes BC, if his prince doesn't, then why would he - a simple servant be wearing shoes.

[lovedbyspark]

          Queen Eira Hywel (Teague now, legally of five years, but she would forever consider herself a Hywel first) had been in her chambers with her most trusted handmaid when it happened. Shouts arose outside and in minutes the night sky burned with the glow of fire and the screams of knight, horse, and servant alike. The castle was under siege, and its own people were heading the attack.

          There had been no time to think, barely any time to act, before the walls that protected the Teague's castle gave and the uprising poured through with anger and a taste for royal blood. Rachell, the handmaid, wasted no time in swirling a thick cloak around Eira's shoulders and rushing her through the servants' passage with nary but a hastily gathered satchel of clothes. They fled out with a small knot of castlemaids, a stable boy, and five of Bremorr's swiftest knights trained just for such calamity. All mounted on their horses, they fled southward from Bremorr under the cover of night with little supplies and only the prayer that they might escape.

          Eira was promised that her son, still a babe of five, and her husband would join them with a caravan of their own before dawn, but the morning sun came and there was never sight nor word of either. The caravan waited for as long as they could before they were forced to move again. Eira wept in fear for her child and could not be consoled.

          Snowy mountains and grey rock slowly bled into plains and grassland as the caravan moved from Bremorr toward what they hoped would be security in Adrevale. They had months of travel ahead and their supplies were dwindling, so the stable boy named Ozwin was sent ahead on a fast horse to the next village to ask for news of the uprising, and pass a message to be sent to King Hywel in Adrevale Keep. Eira prayed he would return with good word... but what he returned with were grinning Dothraki riders. The caravan fell all at once from the pot into the fire.

           Her knights were slaughtered, maidens and horses captured, and Eira had not seen the boy Ozwin since he returned with the Dothraki men who had intercepted him. She had tried first to plead with them, speaking what little she could remember of their tongue, but it did no good. They stripped her of her jewellry, humiliated and assaulted her, and bound her like a common slave with the rest of her party. In but one evening, she felt the last of herself had been torn from her. The comforting walls of Adrevale could not have felt farther away.

          x x x

          It was dark when the Dothraki men brought their spoils back to camp. The royal horses were gathered together and left to be freed of their tack by the Dothraki women while the castlemaids and their queen were brought as slaves to the khal's tent. It seemed too much to take in at once--the candles and the flickering shadows they cast, the shifting clusters of strange, Dothraki faces, the muffled sobbing of her ladies and the frightened push of their battered bodies as they all were made to stand in the centre of the tent, it all spun in her vision which was growing poorer by the minute. A Dothraki rider had struck her hard once across the face when she resisted him and the spot where the blow met the high point of her cheek felt thick and tight with swelling. Still, she held her head high, gaze listing, unfocused, toward the khal. Even sitting, he looked more mountain than man.

          And then all at once he was at her, and through the haze of shock and exhaustion, all she could wonder was... Why? Her answer came quickly enough in the form of too-gentle hands and a voice she had not heard in so long.

          "My daisy."

          Eira's breath stuttered at the sound. She had not recognised him in his adornments and braids, but now he was all she could see. Dry lips parted, dumbfounded, but before she could speak, Khal Drogo stood and knocked the rider at her side with such force that he fell onto his knee on the packed earth. A confused murmur lifted among the crowd as tension rippled through the tent. None seemed to know how to answer their khal, or else they did not want to.

          "They were traveling from the north, My Khal," one of the braver of the riders spoke up. "From Bremorr. There was a boy among them, he said their kingdom has fallen. Their own people betrayed them." He did not grin, but Eira swore she could hear the pleasure in his voice. "This is their queen and her women. They came with eleven good horses."

@lovedbyspark | for Eira

Drogo gazed at the wall of the tent, not seeing the silk there. In his mind's eye, he saw the gardens of Adrevale Keep, heard and smelled the ruckus of the markets. Dirty children, laughing, chased cats, and beside him... He tore himself from the memory as the flap of the tent was drawn aside. Word had come that a band of riders had run down some travelers and they should be arriving with their spoils to present them to their Khal. He took a disinterested pull from his drinking horn as Dothraki men shoved dirty figures inside, and slaves carried looted goods behind them. Drogo looked over them with disinterest. Their clothes were in disarray from their flight and the following fight. Splashes of red dashed across them and... He stopped, eyes flicking back to the golden-haired woman knelt in the middle of the new slaves. Blood splattered across her face and her dress... It was Adrevalen in make, he had no doubt. The shoulder and and skirt were torn, and she held the bodice of the dress to her chest. The drinking horn slipped from his hand and, trembling, he stood. He took one step, breathed, "My daisy," and rushed forward, crouching before her and taking her face gently in his hands. His eyes, wide, searched her face, took in the bruising around her eye, horrified and amazed all at once. Then, his face turned into a mask of fury and he straightened, slugging the face of the rider who held her shoulder. "Who touched her?!" he demanded, his voice ringing like a hammer on an anvil.

[lovedbyspark]

The women all followed obediently but looked questioningly again as Drogo gestured for them to eat. It has been a confusing, frightening day for all of them; she'll need to speak to them later after they've been fed.

"Go on," she told them. "Khal Drogo can be trusted. He's an old friend." Then, grateful, she took her place by the fire, swiftly aware of how sore her legs and feet were. Still, nothing hurt quite a badly as her heart for her son.

"I have to have faith that Sedgeric will be alive," she said, quietly so only Drogo could hear. The castlemaids were busy accepting food from Cohollo and murmuring bewilderedly to each other. "If he falls, Drogo... Our son is too young, and misfortune has made the Teague line too short. Everything will crumble."

Eira could feel her women staring. Were she not so weary, she might have resisted Drogo for the sake of keeping appearances, but the moment his arms folded around her, she sank into him and his warm, familiar scent. He might notice that she has changed in the five years they have been apart; the soft curves of her body are subtler now, replaced by a thinner frame, small and bird-fragile.

At mention of her husband, Sedgeric, and her son, Philip, her throat tightened and something rended sharply in her chest.

"I don't know," she confessed. "They were meant to follow but never came."