Featuring Donnaghán:

Spring, Year 764 of the New Age

Glenmore, The New Oak’s Glade

A year had passed since his sentencing.  An entire year…  And what did he have to show for it?

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

It burned the very fibers of his being, left to rot in a position such as this.  He had been groomed to head the pinnacle, to lead and supplement growth…  Instead, he had been sentenced to fester and spoil amongst the ranks of those who thought they knew who he was.  Murderer, they called him.  It was a wound that had scabbed far too thickly for them to inflict pain.

They knew nothing about him.

His sons were growing, a year now under their belts.  He had wanted to train them sooner but their mothers had begged him to wait.  ‘They are too young’, they had pleaded to him, ‘they need to learn to enjoy life before they can begin to fathom responsibility’, they had said.  It did not register with him but, to keep them quiet; his father had not given him a reprieve.  Ragnar had not allowed his only son to entertain the trivial fancies of a fawn.  

No, Donnaghán had not had a childhood and, before his the event that had led to his undoing, he had been on the path to becoming something great, someone more powerful and renowned that his father...  So why should his sons waste time in beginning down the path to something better?

Their mothers had insisted, so he had acquiesced.  Lumiya, Magpie, and Dáiríne…  They were all he had left.  The does that had remained loyal to him…  Surely Oganach had something better planned for them in the next life, for their loyalty to the true line of the crown.  They heeded his words and his whims and, in return, he provided them all the spoils that he could afford.  As of late it hadn’t been much but they seemed content enough.  He was a father to the sons that he had sired and they had stayed in the meager glade that he had been relegated to.  Their presence softened reality just enough to make it bearable.

They made the pain of losing Nuala, of her betrayal, a little bit easier.

He had heard of her rebetrothal to that sorry excuse of a stag Lord Carnarion.  He had scoffed at the news but his does had been smart enough to give him his space that evening.  Donnaghán had spent the night alone, a sleepless and endless passing of seconds that seemed to last an eternity until the sun rose and he was fetched like a pet to go on yet another patrol.

At the end of it all, it was just another day in an endless sequence of days that meant absolutely nothing.  Until the sun rose and its blazing eye captured the happening of something that was nothing in the least.

Captain Fitzwilliam had been quiet, his presence no longer felt in the guard.

He felt the loss of a leader like a stake driven into his heart just as much as he felt the pull toward a position of leadership in the very strings of which he had been spun.  It was trivial hope, one he knew he could not dare to entertain…  But he did.  How could he not?  He knew more about about Glenmore, the true Glenmore, with it’s fault and cracks, than any stag alive could dare to tell.  He had lived for years in those cracks, carved himself a living amongst the lands that no one dared travel to…  

He had knowledge.  And his will bayed for its use.  He fought to hold the beast within him every day and, with each passing hour, it got easier.  

But… to be Captain…  To lead…  To do what he was destined to do…  Would that not quench the thirst for which his soul ached?

Donnaghán went straight from his scheduled patrol to the New Oak, to the presence of the stag that had bested him in the competition for king.  The guards assigned to keep an eye on him had tailed him with haste, their words of warning falling on deaf ears.

He would not be swayed.  Not now, when power was within his reach.

Time seemed to slow as he approached the king…  The scarlet stag bowed his head in respect, as he had forcibly trained himself to do.

“King Rafe,” he began, his voice firm and calm despite the fire of desire that boiled in his heart, “I do not wish to waste your time.  So I shall cut to the heart of my visit to you today.”

“Captain Fitzwilliam is not performing to the standards with which I hold the guard.  You of all stags, the stag who sentenced me to serve the guard till the end of my days, knows what I have to offer to this guard.”

“I bid you to consider the offering of my services to replace those of Captain Fitzwilliam.  Do not let the black mark of my past marr that which might benefit the herd as a whole.  I have years upon the oldest of your candidates, years spent defending and battling those that would hurt me in the very edges of our land that even you wouldn’t dare to trek.  I was raised the son of a king, taken on patrols intended to defend our proud borders from the darkness that threatens to leak from the black woods across the mountains.  I was raised to stand beside the Captain, to join forces with him that our like minds might provide safety and sanctity to our people.”

Donnaghán, his heart filling with emotion as he spoke, shook his head that his voice might remain clear.

“Allow me this chance, Rafe,” he continued, his voice bordering on the beginnings of a whisper as his eyes begged for what his pride would not allow his body to show, “Allow me to show that what I am now can be something of worth to the herd to which I belong.”

“I have served you faithfully and loyally, I have not questioned a command given to me by either a fellow guardsman or yourself.  I pray that you might repay my loyalty with the opportunity to turn the guard into the formidable beast that my father meant it to be.”

Donnaghán stood proudly, his coat - still slicked with the sweat of the patrol - glimmered in the springtime sunlight.  In his chest his heart began to beat wildly, so much so that his stern countenance threatened to quiver.  His imagination flared.  He dared to dream…