They Were Sent to Hel on Feathered Wings

[Quatral]

No preamble.
   
No brave speeches.
  
No defiance, not in the end...
  
Just the cries of tired, helpless children.
  
On a frigid morning is the Queen seen escorting young prisoners to the fractured ledge of the Baleford Bridge. With retinue of young nobles and their retainers alike in tow, she sets to make an example of those youthful scions of the Dreadwood's demonic Tyrant.
  

"This is not for you. This is not for me... nor your father."

    

...

   

                                                       "We don't have to suffer any longer, Kanyzo."

   
On that blistering morn splashes are heard upon the icy banks of the river, shapes trailed in thin red spools flow into the unknown of the river's eventual mouth, out to sea.
  
Some stories end sooner than others.
  
Some deserving.
  
Some not so.
  
... Yet all under the cold, inhuman auspices of Osrona's Ironclad Queen.
  


   
No letters arrive in the Dreadwoods, there will be no diplomacy.
  
This is the last message the Shimmering City sends to its repulsive foe within that dark forest.

[CurledSpiral]

It took time.

Time to raise them.

Time to train them.

Time for word to reach him.

It was hot, muggy, within the Dreadwood that day. The buzzing of insects were pervasive as the swamps poured into the old wood. Words reached a monster at the banks of an old river.

"Some of them will die... It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

Time.

He'd all the time in the world to catch more.

What was another decade or two, to replace the spares?

After all, he'd heard recently the Queen's own children showed promise.