Queen Marika: Splintered Throne by Jade Gretz

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Queen Marika: Splintered Throne ANIMATION

The Gilded Prisoner

The silence in Leyndell was a living thing, a golden serpent coiled in the streets. It had been so for an age, ever since the Shattering, ever since the throne became a memory and the Erdtree’s roots grew thick with the bones of the faithful. But today, the silence had a witness.

Queen Marika the Eternal walked the empty thoroughfare, her bare feet silent on the ancient cobbles. She was radiant, a vision of numinous beauty, her form perfect and her braids the color of polished amber. Yet, a deep and ancient weariness pulled at the corners of her eyes, a weight the radiance could not hide. She moved with purpose, a golden needle in her hand, not to mend, but to unravel.

Before her, the path to the Erdtree’s base was barred. Not by a door, not by a shattered wall, but by a single, colossal Tree Sentinel. He sat astride a horned horse of living bronze, its flanks rising and falling with a breath that was not air, but the slow, rhythmic pulse of the Erdtree itself. The Sentinel was a monument of gold and poise, his greatshield planted before him like a second wall, his halberd resting across his lap, its blade gleaming with a soft, internal light. He did not move. He did not breathe. He simply was.

Marika stopped a stone’s throw from him. The air between them thickened, charged with the weight of ages.

“Sentinel,” she said, and her voice was the chime of a golden bell, beautiful and utterly commanding. “You know me.”

For a long moment, nothing. Then, with a groan of ancient metal, the Sentinel’s helmet turned. The slit visor regarded her. There was no face within, only a deep, impenetrable darkness, colder than the void between stars.

“I know the form,” the Sentinel spoke, and his voice was the grinding of tectonic plates, a sound of the world’s deep bones. “I know the light. I know the scent of grace.”

“Then you know your duty is fulfilled. The path must be clear.”

“My duty is to the Queen,” the Sentinel rumbled. “And the Queen commanded me to stand. I stand.”

“And the Queen now commands you to move,” Marika said, a flicker of impatience crossing her perfect features. It was like a crack in a flawless pane of glass.

The Sentinel did not stir. “The Queen who commanded me is the one who made me. She put the thought in my core, the memory of her voice in my metal. She gave me a purpose, and that purpose was sealed with her own hands. It is the most sacred thing I possess.”

Marika took a step closer. The air grew colder. “I am she. The same hands. The same voice. I am here, now, unmaking what was. The purpose is complete. You are released.”

“Released?” The word was alien, a concept with no meaning in his lexicon. “I am not a thing to be released. I am a purpose made manifest. And the purpose was not to stand for a time. It was to stand until the Queen returned.”

“I have returned.”

“Have you?” The Sentinel leaned forward slightly, the darkness within his helm seeming to deepen, to focus. “My memory is not a simple thing. It is an engraving, deep and true. The Queen who made me… she did not walk. She strode. Her eyes held the fire of a thousand suns, the ambition to order all things. She was not weary. She was not carrying a needle. She was a hammer.”

Marika’s hand tightened on the golden implement. “Things change, Sentinel. Even gods.”

“Things break,” the Sentinel corrected, his voice flat. “They do not change. They shatter. And then they are remade into something else. The question is, who remade you? And to what purpose?”

A thrill of unease, something Marika had not felt in eons, traced a cold finger down her spine. This was not a machine. This was a keeper of a forgotten truth.

“You speak of things beyond your ken,” she said, her voice hardening. “I am your creator. Your master. You will obey.”

“I will obey the Queen,” the Sentinel stated, unperturbed. “The Queen who set me here. Tell me, Maker, what was the last thing you said to me? The final command, as you sealed my post?”

Marika’s mind, vast and ancient, was a library of moments. But this one… this one was a blank page. A deliberate erasure. She had woven and un-woven so much of her own history, pruned the timelines of her being like the branches of a tree. This minor detail, the final words to a single guard, had been lost in the great work of godhood. The silence stretched, pregnant and accusatory.

“I… commanded you
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