A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Ch.2) by GrandSACHI, literature
Literature
A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Ch.2)
A First Lady-in-Waiting for Elisabeth of Austria Jeanne arrived in front of a double door made of solid ash wood. The door was adorned with the coat of arms of Queen Elisabeth, displaying both the fleur-de-lis of France and the silver lion with forked tails from the escutcheon of Maximilian II of Austria. The countess paused for a moment to compose herself. Her conversation with the Duke of Guise had deeply unsettled her. True, the duke regarded her almost as an enemy, which she was well aware of. However, there was more to the threat he had uttered than just the pleasure of unsettling a rival. No, something was brewing at the Louvre, and neither the Countess of Mourniac nor the Count of Oustremont were invited. Jeanne gently knocked on the door, which immediately opened to reveal a woman in her forties. She was dressed in a long black surcoat concealed under a warm and lengthy ermine pelisse – rather surprising for such a warm day – which she wore like a cape with the sleeves
A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Ch.1) by GrandSACHI, literature
Literature
A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Ch.1)
Jeanne of Mourniac The small coach jolted along the dirty cobblestones of the glassworks path, struggling to navigate through the bustling crowd on this hot day of August 23rd, 1572. Seated on the rear seat of the carriage, Jeanne, Countess of Mourniac, faced the Count and Countess of Oustremont. However, the attention of the young Countess of Mourniac was not directed towards her uncle William or her aunt Justine. She rather had her eyes fixed on the handheld mirror she had just purchased on the Saint-Michel Bridge, gazing at her reflection for quite some time. Jeanne was a rather tall and attractive young woman – though rather slender by the standards of the time. She was dressed in a long scarlet silk houppelande with white sleeves and fringes adorned with speckled white and tawny stoat fur. The houppelande was adorned on the front with a long pearl necklace that accentuated the shape of her chest otherwise discreetly concealed by the rigid corset she wore beneath her gown. Her
A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Prologue) by GrandSACHI, literature
Literature
A Celestial Heirloom: The Princess (Prologue)
The man leaned against the crenellated parapet of the small turret of the staircase. This narrow turret rose more than two fathoms above the large tower of Nesle to which it gave access, and which itself overlooked the Seine with its fourteen fathoms in height. Thus, at over sixteen fathoms above the ground, the man had an unobstructed view of Paris and the Louvre that stood proudly on the other bank of the Seine. However, his gaze was not directed towards the royal palace; instead, he was watching a young woman dressed in red and white who had just come out of the grand hotel of Nesle. After a brief hesitation during which she glanced at the roof of the hotel, the young woman entered a small mahogany carriage to which were harnessed two chestnut mares who pawed the ground in anticipation of departure. A few moments earlier, two other figures, a man and a woman of a certain age dressed in the rich attire of nobles, had taken their places in the coach. But it was not these two that
The Crypt of Malec Nac by HorizonPointShawn, literature
Literature
The Crypt of Malec Nac
Costel peered into the gloom before him, the flickering light of his torch seeming all too scant in the stale and noisome air of the space in space in which he now found himself. Having lowered himself through the black aperture in the hilltop that had appeared, seemingly while he and his fellow cutthroats had slept, it was soon all too apparent that this was no hastily dug hiding place or simple sinkhole, but a well made space of astounding skill and craftsmanship. This was clear to Costel, despite being able to make out little in the way of detail, as the walls seemed square and clean, except for what seemed to be complex carvings of some sort at first glance, and the space seemed completely dry. In fact, it seemed too dry for any subterranean structure within the eternal damp of Morgulia and Costel licked lips suddenly grown chapped as much from the seemingly unnatural dryness as from the nervousness that caused his heart to pound in his chest and ears with alarming