The Winter Solstice. The darkest day of the year. A day to celebrate our great ruler of the dark. And I was invited to the biggest party in the country.

So far, the celebration in Os Alta had been very different in comparison to the celebration in the slums of some no where town on the border of the country. There, the rich dressed in the latest fashion, new from traders in Kerch. Yet it was mixed with the fashion of dramatic retelling of the Darkling's victory in The Purge of White. Where people would dress in elaborate sarafan dresses, mock Kefta's and fight with sticks at the earliest moments of day into the late of night.

Over and over again you would see a rebellious woman dressed in a golden kefta be stabbed as everyone in the battle stopped, their light, their hope, crushed. And then everyone would kneel to the Darkling.

Only once had I seen a different version. The at the end, once everyone had kneeled, the Darkling went around, one by one, and killed every other person who had given up the fight. Thoroughly crushing any one who had been resistant, seen resistance, or even fought that resistance.

No one knew the real end to the story, no one had lived to tell it.

Except Him.

Because even the people who fight rebellion are witnesses and then partial to a different opinion. You can't control that.

Was that me or you?

Why not both.

I was awoken at mid-day to get ready for the evening party. Of which it was 'necessary you be present at' as He kept saying for the past week.

So it was my first public appearance. And my role was to be a 'god among men'. Again a repeated phrase from Him, and one that made me slightly nervous. For all I knew these people where the reason I was where I am, instead of some nobody who was found to have something of value.

I realized soon that whenever I was complemented, it was the power, my scientific ability, and not me who was being complemented. For being 'beautiful', for being 'useful', for being important. People would still look at me and see a girl, who wasn't part of this court.

God that's depressing.

I was sitting in a chair in front of a mirror as another person in a red dress, made of the same material that most of the people who weren't servants wore. It was a finely woven cotton material. The same material my dress was made of.

I felt almost like a ghost in the dress, the light matirial easy to move in, yet my breathing and everything else stopped by the damned corset.

They've gotten rid of all our original culture, replaced it with that of a trading country. Influences of Kerch and Novyi zem everywhere.

The guns are new too.

You haven't been here for centuries, of course things are different.

I watched as the girl ran her fingers over my face, freckles and redness seemed to dissapear as I fought the urge to scratch it. It was better than when she plucked my eyebrows though. I had started crying until she yelled at me for being such a wimp.

Once she was don't making my face hurt like a bitch, she told me to close my eyes. I felt a wetness on my eyelid as item after item seemed to be applied.

"That should do a little more for you. You can open your eyes." I opened my eyes, ear to see my reflection in the mirror but instead the girl held up something golden and shimmery.

"Just one more thing, to make our sun queen glow."

She brushed it over my cheek bones and on my lips and nose. I don't know why you would need anything golden there.

The girl stepped aside and I stared at the strange thing looking back at me.

It looked like a sprite from a fairy tale. The skin had a unnatural shine to it, it's eyes lined in black and gold.