The Weight of the Crownless Lord

The morning mist hung low across the valley, veiling the lands of Emberhelm in silver. From the high balcony of his hall, Lord Drax Stormborne watched the world stir awake.

Smoke from hearths curling above thatched roofs. The faint clang of the smithy below, and the distant echo of a horn calling men to the fields.

The realm had been quiet these past weeks, though quiet was not peace. Rome’s presence had spread like frost silent, glittering, and deadly to touch. Their banners were seen on the roads again, their soldiers marching east toward the fort that caged his brother.

Drax’s hands rested on the stone rail. Scarred knuckles gripping the cold edge as if the granite itself were his only anchor.

“Uncle Taranis forgives us all, father.”

The small voice broke the silence. His son stood behind him Caelum, barely thirteen summers. But already bearing the solemn eyes of a man twice his age. The boy held out a folded parchment, its wax seal cracked, its edges smudged with soot.

Drax took it carefully. The writing inside was firm but uneven, written in haste.
Forgive nothing. Remember everything.
Below, a single mark a lightning bolt drawn in charcoal.

Drax’s chest tightened. His brother’s hand. His brother’s defiance.

“Who gave you this?”

“One of the Roman guards, father,” Caelum replied. “He said… he said Uncle still lives. He fights every day.”

Before Drax answered, boots echoed behind them. Roberto stepped into the chamber, his armour dull and unpolished, the scent of road dust still clinging to him.

“My lord,” he began, voice low, “I spoke with one of the centurions. They see him as a danger now too much influence, even in chains. They’ve moved him deeper into the fort. Isolation. Only the soldiers see him.”

“Do they mistreat him?” Drax asked, though he already knew the answer.

Roberto hesitated. “They tried to crucify him last week. He survived. Yesterday, they threw him to the lions chained, unarmed. He walked out again.”

The hall fell silent. The fire popped in the hearth, throwing orange light across the stone floor. Drax turned back toward the window. his reflection caught in the misted glass grey at the temples, lines of command etched deep across his brow.

“They can’t kill him,” Roberto said quietly. “So they make him suffer.”

Drax exhaled slowly, the weight of his station pressing like iron against his ribs. “Then we’ll keep him alive in every way they can’t stop. Food, silver, messages whatever can reach him, it will.”

He turned to his son. “Caelum, you will remember this. A lord’s duty is not to speak loudest, but to act where no one sees.”

The boy nodded, solemn and still.

That afternoon, Drax rode out beyond the keep. The fields of Emberhelm stretched before him. The broad plains that once echoed with the clash of blades when the Stormborne banners flew proud.

The Farmers bowed as he passed, and he nodded in turn. To them, he was not just a lord. He was the last shield between their freedom and Roman law.

At the river’s edge, he dismounted, crouching where the waters ran dark and cold. He saw his reflection distorted in the ripples older, heavier, but not yet broken.

He remembered when Taranis had knelt in that same river,7 years ago. Swearing an oath to the gods of wind and storm. “We are not born to yield,” he had said, the water lapping at his wrists. “Even if Rome takes the land, they’ll never take the sky.”

Drax closed his eyes. The oath still lived within him, though it had been buried under the weight of command.

When he returned to the hall, he found Aislin. Stood waiting by the hearth his wife, wrapped in a shawl of woven wool. Her hair touched by the faintest trace of silver.

“You’ve heard the news,” she said softly.

He nodded.

“Will you go to him?”

Drax’s jaw tightened. “Not yet. The fort is surrounded. My every step is watched. To move too soon would doom us all.”

“And if you wait too long?”

He met her gaze, steady and unflinching. “Then he dies a legend. And legends, my love, outlast empires.”

She said nothing more. She simply placed her hand over his, and for a moment, the storm in his chest calmed.

That night, the wind rose.

From the balcony, Drax watched lightning fork across the distant hills. He thought of his brother, chained and bloodied, standing alone beneath the roar of lions and the jeers of men. And he swore, silently and fiercely, that this would not be the end.

The Romans thought they had captured a man. They had not realised they had locked away a tempest.

And storms… always find their way home.

The council chamber was dim, lit only by the flicker of oil lamps. Shadows stretched long across the stone floor, dancing like restless spirits.

“Are priests allowed to see Taranis?” Lore asked the centurion, his tone calm but deliberate.

The Roman officer hesitated, eyes flicking between Drax’s advisor and the lord himself. “Only those sanctioned by command, sir. The prisoner is considered… volatile. Dangerous to morale.”

“Dangerous,” Drax repeated quietly . His gaze fixed on the parchment that still bore his brother’s mark a black streak of charcoal shaped like lightning. “That is one word for faith unbroken.”

The centurion shifted, uneasy beneath the weight of the lord’s tone. He had served Rome for years. But there was something about the Stormborne that unnerved him men who spoke softly yet carried storms behind their eyes.

“Tell your commander,” Drax said at last, his voice cool as the mist outside. “that Emberhelm’s temple will pray for Rome’s victory. And for the salvation of the condemned. It would honour the gods to have a priest available for confession before transport.”

The officer nodded stiffly. “I will… relay the demand, my lord.”

When the door closed, Lore exhaled, rubbing his temples. “You plan to send one of ours.”

“Of course.” Drax turned toward the hearth, watching the flames burn low. “If Rome bars us with iron, we’ll walk through with words. Find one of the druids who wears a Roman mask one who can keep silent under pain.”

Lore bowed his head slightly. “A dangerous game.”

“All games are,” Drax murmured, eyes still on the fire, “when the stakes are blood.”

Two days later, beneath a grey dawn, a solitary figure rode from Emberhelm. He wore the plain robes of a Roman cleric, his face shadowed beneath a hood. No weapon hung at his side, no coin jingled in his pouch.

With only a small satchel of herbs, a ring wrapped in cloth, and a wax-sealed blessing marked his purpose.

His name was Maeron. Once a druid of the old faith now known to Rome as Marcus. A man who had survived the purges by trading his oak staff for a prayer scroll.

The road to Viroconium wound through dead forests. The mist-shrouded valleys, the silence broken only by the clatter of hooves and the distant calls of crows.

When he reached the Roman fort, guards searched him roughly, tearing through his satchel and stripping him of his cloak. Finding nothing amiss, they granted him ten minutes with the prisoner.

The cell smelled of iron, straw, and old blood. Chains hung from the walls like spiderwebs.

Taranis sat in the corner, wrists bound, his head bowed. A thin cut traced his cheek, half-healed, crusted with dust. He did not look up when the door opened.

“You come to pray?” His voice was low, worn smooth like riverstone.

“I come to remind you,” Maeron whispered.

Taranis lifted his head slowly, and for a moment the fire in his eyes banished the gloom. Maeron knelt before him and drew from his sleeve a small gold ring. its inner band engraved with the sigil of storm and flame.

Drax’s mark.

“Drax?”

“He watches,” Maeron said softly. “He waits. He sends this so you’ll know you are not forgotten. Food and coin move under Rome’s banners carried by men who owe him debts. You will have what you need to endure.”

Taranis reached for the ring. The chains clinked, faint as falling rain. “Tell him I am no longer enduring. I am learning.” His voice strengthened, each word edged with iron. “They think they cage me. But they are teaching me their weaknesses.”

He leaned closer, his gaze sharp, unyielding. “Tell Lore, Drax, and Draven I shall endure so they are safe. Tell them… the storm remembers.”

Maeron bowed deeply. “The gods still listen, even in Rome’s shadow.”

Taranis’s lips curled faintly. “Then let them listen to thunder.”

Outside, as Maeron was escorted back through the gates, lightning cracked across the horizon.
The guards muttered that the storm came early that season.

Drax, miles away, looked up from his balcony at the same flash of light. whispered beneath his breath
“Brother… I hear you.”

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