Valthor: Dispersal, Disposal (3/?)

My father was never much in the habit of explaining himself. He simply summoned us, all of his children, to attend him upon his throne on the night of the full moon. None of us knew why, and no matter how well or poorly we concealed it all of us were unsettled. For myself, I wondered if he had intended to rebuke my sister Magda for whatever she had done to our brother Vildern, or Vildern for mauling her in return; I even worried that he might intend to rebuke me for the way I had cast Magda out of my room, though surely I'd been well within my rights in that. 

I was among the youngest of my siblings, being -- as Vildern had once sneeringly observed -- "natural-born." I was not quite the youngest; that honor -- or burden -- fell to Lynna, a gnomish peasant girl whom my father had turned from light and life almost exactly one year before. She had been, perhaps, seventeen at the time -- barely out of childhood, for a gnome. 

Our father was already seated on his throne, nine steps above us, as we assembled. I was neither the first nor the last to enter, but I saw him glance at me despite my best efforts to be unobtrusive. He seemed to be numbering us in his head, weighing and measuring; but perhaps that impression was merely my worries at work. Father could be absolutely expressionless when he wanted to be, an affectation that the rest of strove to imitate at need. 

When all of us were present and attentive, he straightened. "My children," he began, and I wish I could remember the precise words that he spoke. He told us of our value as heirs to the kingdom of the dark, of his hopes for us and for a worthy successor. The word abdication passed his lips, though whether or not that was in mockery I am genuinely unsure. What was clear to all of us was that he expected us -- one of us -- to claim the Shadow Crown by proving ourselves worthy to succeed him. 

And he did not mean worthy within the court. Whether he planned to select a successor based on our deeds, or whether he expected one of us to take the Crown from him by force, he intended for us to manage on our own. Any allies we found would not be found here; any forces we raised would not be raised within the kingdom of the dark. We would take the basic equipment we needed to survive, and some small money; but that was all.

Come the dark of the moon, he would send us out into the world, to make our way by our wits and skills alone. 

On one level -- as all of us realized but none of us bothered to say -- it was horrifyingly unfair. Our father counted as children both vampire spawn and full vampires, undead he had raised to this purpose, half-mortal progeny, and even a sister that I was quite certain was a construct. On another, it was absolutely, mercilessly fair: exactly the sort of ruthless fairness of predator and prey that the kingdom of the dark could not fail to respect. Regardless of our personal resources, we were all being given exactly the same chance. 

I do not know where the others were sent. I do not know if anyone was truly given a choice. I know that when I came into the small receiving room with the portal like a pool of black oil rippling at the back wall, my father turned to me and said, "I had thought to send you to a city."

I nodded back to him and said, "A place of many races, if you will it, where elves and their kin are not unknown." 

I thought I saw a hint of a smile quirk his lips, and then he nodded and gestured for me to step through the portal. 

Thus did I find myself in the port city of Merilos, on the shore of the Inland Sea. And that was where I would make -- or break -- my fortune.