[ IP ] Coronation

The bells sounded, solemn and unforgiving. They rang over crooked, empty cobblestone streets. Closer to the crowded marble steps, the people clustered anxiously. No cheer went up as Princess Nora stepped from the black carriage. She paused, gathering her skirts and courage as she moved between the parted crowds. She ascended the palace steps for the last time. 
 
 Behind her trailed the twin coffins. One draped with the heraldry of her father, the other with her mother's. Behind them came more hearses, their grieving pallbearers trailing behind the fallen king and queen, hundreds flooding the path to the palace. No fae could celebrate the slaughter that had brought them to the coronation. The mass funeral took precedence over the new crown. For a fae, burial rites were the most sacred as the fae did not die often and death was a great cause for sadness. 
 
 She paused and blessed the newly placed crypt symbols, praying for the dead to find peace. 
 
 A hum began. An old song, in an old tongue long forgotten by their ancestors, the meaning lost to more than mourning. Nora paused before the priest, kneeling as he silently presented her with her crown. 
 
 This was n't right, she thought. Her parents should have been there, splitting their crowns and joining them on her head, as every queen and king before her. Instead, they would be buried with generations of golden legacies. She stayed kneeling longer than she needed to when she heard her grandmother's voice rise louder than the rest. She would give them no tears. 
 
 Nora turned to face her people, the rows of coffins scattered throughout the crowds. `` My people,'' she called, magically amplifying her voice, `` we have no reason to weep. Before me lies the past and stands the future. Our ancestors' sins have been accounted for. We will move forward, beyond this, to a greater purpose.'' 
 
 The human to her left smiled approvingly. She did not allow the repulsion to show even as she could practically see her parents' blood painted across the man. `` I will join with King Marcus and we will make a new chapter for the fae.'' Nora took the human's hand and raised it high. She could see the human armies relaxing at the motion. 
 
 King Marcus smiled, letting go of Nora's hand and stepping down to the coffins of her parents. `` These two were vile creatures. They lie dead so that you may have peace!'' She swallowed back her protest. `` All bodies will be burned after the ceremony, as a gesture of what is to come.'' He flicked a match onto each of the two pyres, to begin the blaze. He gazed onto the crowd, as if waiting for a response. When he had nothing but the flat looks of the fae, he returned to Nora's side, seeming disappointed. Nora had been expecting something like this, he had sealed his fate. 
 
 `` We will build upon our traditions,'' the priest presented her with the traditional sword. The hum became louder, blocking the sound of the palace gates closing tightly. The soldiers towards the front noticed, looking at each other with confusion. 
 
 `` We have never bowed to another nation,'' the man next to her looked at her with warning, `` That is why this is a funeral and not a celebration. I know many of you are angry. We must mourn our old ways, we must give up our justice for something greater, we must yield to survival.'' He smiled and relaxed once again. 
 
 She raised her hand in a gesture and the humming immediately stopped. `` Fae, I ask you,'' she cried, `` would we be here if we had only ever done what we must?'' 
 
 The battle cry rang out, `` We will not submit!'' Guards and soldiers were grabbed, human blood spilling over the pristine marble. 
 
 The chaos was immediate, the king drawing his own sword. He snarled, `` You will die here, princess.'' 
 
 She parried his first blow, tearing at the skirts and revealing the much more easily movable leggings underneath, hopping out of the ring of them. `` You know, I think I just may,'' she replied, `` and that's why I might just make it out.'' The priest blasted a guard sneaking up behind her with a fireball, jumping back as the body tumbled down the steps. 
 
 The next blow broke the flimsy traditional sword, so she drew the one strapped to her thigh, flinging the broken hilt at his face. She pressed the brief advantage and he knocked her back with his greater strength. 
 
 The priest squared his shoulders and sent a flame directly in the king's face, singing his beard as he tried to move out of the way. She shot a vine from her hand at the overhanging roof, grabbing onto it. She gave the king a mock salute, grabbed the priest around the waist, and swung down to a lower part behind the wall of winning fae. They collapsed in a heap. 
 
 `` Princess Nora,'' the priest chastised. She waved off his disappointed tone, straightening and making her way to the front lines. It would be easier to press from down here than moral crumbling because the princess was cut down because she was surrounded. 
 
 The humans in their heavy armor were falling easily, lacking the fae's speed or agility on their home turf. Even if most had only been training for a few days. Priests and priestesses were pulling great magical feats from the palace's holy stonework, not tiring as easily as they normally would have. 
 
 The humans took refuge near the coffins of the dead, knowing the fae would not do anything to damage them. The priests and priestesses hesitated, pulling back from their fireballs. 
 
 The king stood on the steps and glared down at Nora from her place weaving through the crowds. `` You do n't have the numbers!'' His voice just barely carried over the sounds of the battle. He stood between her parents' coffins, thinking himself safe. 
 
 Nora felt bad for this, but all the families had already agreed. She raised her hands and muttered the spell, sealing the palace as a crypt. The coffins cracked open, their lids being pushed aside by the undead to devour the frightened humans who frantically tried to get away. The fae's numbers had been decimated during the ambush, but the warriors now served as a solid wall of meat pressing forward, hungry. The fae who had fallen in the palace's battle rose with them, taking vengeance on the invaders. 
 
 She smiled up at him, her eyes glowing red with the magic as she began a slow approach. `` This is -- this is blasphemy,'' his voice was shaking. 
 
 `` No. I'm flattered you think I have the power to raise this many,'' she smiled, `` This is merely the dead rising to defend their final place of rest. Did you think we treated our dead respectively just because it was tradition?'' She laughed, cruelly. `` No, it's because we know better.'' 
 
 The human king's face only had a second for horror to cross it as the burning coffins cracked open. The fallen king and queen lunged forward, dragging King Marcus to their graves.
