Talk to the Northman
From Create Your Own Story
Going to the gallows is never a pleasant experience, but you’re familiar with the space. As Queen, your mother ensured you knew details about the kingdom intimately. That said, you are still accompanied by one of the prison guards for safety, and to be shown where this rabble-rouser is being kept. You find him in the cell conscious but still, and thankfully silent, both his wrists and ankles are shackled to the wall. A glare of pure hatred is upon his face; you wonder if this wasn’t a huge waste of time.
“Well, if it isn’t she who can’t fight her own battles. I should have suspected you would come here to gloat over your false victory.”
You see that he can quickly get under your skin, and while no one would fault you for some retaliation, you won’t get the answer you seek that way
“You attacked members of the royal family Northman. As their blood, and their Queen, I’m well within my rights to protect them. I am here for an explanation. Provided that, you will be allowed to leave”
The Northman spits at your feet, the only amount of protest he can muster at the moment “You are the queen of whores, nothing more, and your kin are weaklings, useless in a fight.”
“Well Northman” You start, but are quickly interrupted
“You may call me Yuliy”
“Yuliy, we don’t have to use violence to get things done in this part of the world. Talking and trade work much better, and you still haven’t answered my question. If they were so weak, why attack them?”
“I was doing just as you claim you were doing Whore-Queen, defending my kin” He must have been speaking about the woman who was there. Partly undressed, what he is saying might be true, but the triplets have never pushed themselves onto someone like that. “Defending whom? It hardly appeared that anyone was in need of defending.”
Yuliy growled “My sister, Anastasia. She was being accosted by your siblings, being led into depravity. I was defending her Honor as a woman of the North.”
“You attacked my brothers because they were flirting with your sister? And that’s somehow dishonorable to her?”
“It is highly dishonorable for Northern women to associate with outsiders. Weak fathers create weak children.”
That is disgusting, you think. There’s only one way it could possibly be worse, and you have to ask, to see if it is. “And what of the other way? Is it against the honor of a Northman to associate with women from beyond the North?”
Yuliy sees where this is headed, and spits again, this time on your face “You are not one to judge our ways Whore-Queen! A man has the right to anything he has the strength and will to claim as his own!”
As you feared, not only bigoted, but barbarous. A small part of you thinks to kill him, though that would hardly be much mercy to the world to remove one more rapist from the earth. There’s still the story from the others to get before you make any really rash decisions.
