The newly-crowned Queen Dinan was dressed in robes similar to the ones she typically wore, only these were nice, royal purple. Her father's kingly cloak rested around her shoulders, his crown weighing heavily on her head.
She stood on a balcony of the palace facing the town square, used by the royal family to address their subjects, with the Savior lurking in the shadows behind her. Currently, she was using the balcony for its intended purpose.
"By the Will of the Ancestor," she decreed, speaking into an enchanted metal cube held in her hand that broadcasted her voice to every city in Venlanz,
"I, Dinan Venlanz, have been selected to succeed my father, King Rathna Venlanz. It is also our Divine Ancestor's Will that I inform you of my intentions to broker peace, true peace, between the Emotional Embodiments and Venlanz. At noon three days from now, I and the Savior will hold a conference with the leader of the Fractured, Lord Bosina.
"Regardless of the outcomes of this meeting, from now on the Fractured have the same rights under our laws as the rest of you. Any murders and theft against them shall warrant the same punishment as if you had stolen from your neighbors. We have been separated for too long, and now we must be made whole once more."
Queen Dinan cast her eyes over the crowd in the square, gauging their reactions. Many were angry, many more confused, but she found a few people that were crying. Judging by the smiles on their faces, they were tears of joy. Among them, Dinan recognized a particular family, hugging each other tight, their noble clothes dripping with snot and tears.
They were the Handel family. Every generation, they would always unfortunately produce at least one Emotional Embodiment. They were perhaps the family that suffered the most under the separation. At times, they had to give up an entire generation of children born with an Emotional Manifestation, only to be forced to pretend those children never existed. The sight gave Queen Dinan hope.
She placed the metal cube on the stand set into the balcony railing, entering the palace with a crowd shocked into silence at her back. The Savior followed her in, then through the many hallways until they reached the throne room. She climbed the dais and slumped into her throne, the Savior waiting at the dais' base.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, Dinan burying her face in her hand, leaning on the arm of the throne. After a while, she broke the silence.
"It occurs to me that you've never told me your name," she told the Savior, removing her palm from her face and sitting straight on her throne, as a true queen should.
"It's Fate, Your Majesty," said the Savior.
"Fate? An ironic name." After looking around the room they were in, where Fate had slaughtered her father and men she had known her entire life, she continued bitterly, "Perhaps my father was right, after all. You are a Destroyer."
"I did what I thought was necessary, Your Majesty," Fate replied calmly.
"Well, you should have thought longer," Dinan snapped. "I didn't know that this entire time I was speaking to a cold-blooded fiend like he was a friend. You could've locked my father up, forced him into retirement, anything other than *this*," she hissed, gesturing wildly around the room.
Tears threatened to spill from her eyes, but she refused to let this heartless monster see her vulnerable, lest he decide to become regicidal again.
"We both know that would not have worked. Rathna was too prideful a man; he would've torn himself apart mentally and physically just for a chance to reclaim his crown."
Dinan could find no argument to that, her mouth working up and down as she tried to come up with a scathing comeback. She forced it shut, slumping into her throne.
Suddenly, she was no longer the queen of a kingdom that encompassed two-thirds of the world, she was only Dinan, a woman barely having entered adulthood, someone who had watched the only family she had left be murdered in front of her by the man who stood before her now.
"When this is over," she said in a low voice, glaring at Fate with all the hatred she felt for him, "you will take your payment and leave. I never want to see you again after this."
If her words had wounded him, he did not show it. He merely nodded, saying "as you wish," and then left.
When the Destroyer was gone, she released the emotions she had been hiding, wailing and screaming as tears ran down her cheeks and gale-force winds tore apart the banners and paintings in the room, smashing the statues and ripping the carpet. She let everything out, without fear of guards intruding, as the room was entirely soundproof.
When she calmed down, she looked at the destruction she had wrought. The statues of her ancestors were reduced to rubble, nothing but barely recognizable chunks here and there.
The paintings and tapestries she used to spend hours wondering at were now naught but ribbons, decimated by her own hands. She could not find it within herself to care. All these objects would have done is make her remember her father.
She wiped the tears off of her face with a sleeve, reaching down the side of her throne and pressing a button. In seconds, a sharply-dressed butler entered the room, head held high and right arm resting above his belly with a towel over it.
"Clean this up," she told him.
The butler nodded, instantly getting to work. He waved his arms, the pieces of the statues raising off of the ground and smashing into each other until four vaguely humanoid constructs were formed, who then went about the room, picking up scraps from 'The Battle of Grignan' and strips of cloth from her family tree tapestry.
Queen Dinan watched this all in silence, not moving an inch. Other than her occasional breath and the way her eyes darted from construct to construct, one would think her a sculpture that had survived the carnage.