Waking up to the sound of laughter. Where is she? In the King’s Citadel jails. Who is laughing? The prison guards. Why? They are watching someone eat a rat. How does she know that?
She just knows.
Just like she knows what the King himself had for breakfast.
He did not think there was rat in his sausage, but there was.
The butcher has a rebellious helper, sneaking in rats under cover of the night. Adding droppings too for extra spice.
The King is fine, though. He’s spent enough time in the trenches as a boy to have grown resistant to all sorts of things.
His father was wise to have sent him there.
Cruel.
But wise.
How does Storm know this?!
She sees it all as clear as daylight before her eyes in an instant. It’s as if her ability to see a thing once and remember it always now no longer needs even looking at a thing for that one, short glimpse in the first place.
Anything she turns her attention to she knows. It’s already in her mind, as if she’d been there as witness when it took place.
It is all too much!
The guards are still laughing as Storm struggles with her mind to find a way to switch it all off, and then it’s gone. A silence in her mind, even as the guards fall silent outside her cell.
After an hour or so of blessed silence, Storm makes the mistake of asking herself “What was that?” The Trident flashes before her eyes, and fills her once again.
This time the laughter is the laughter of all who have ever touched the Trident in the past and in the times to come. This time the laughter is her own.
Outside her cell, the guards shiver when they hear the sound.
gyllenbogel 