Season 1
Episode 4 Outline
Silver Dust
Royal Optics
Layla’s survival is no longer quiet. Whispers move faster than guards. Servants speak in whispers. Castle residents lower their voices when she moves about in her mild restraints and guard detail. Zaramoko now watches it play out like an ongoing entertainment act as rumors spread fast. Not with sympathy. With anticipation of failure, danger, drama. Layla, feeling the pressure, is motivated to succeed in her now public mission to assassinate the king and avenge her beloved father, brothers, and sister.
Princess Adeola Visits Layla
Impressed by the legend and wanting to be a warrior herself , Adeola sneaks passed the guards and into Layla’s chambers. Layla scolds her actions, knowing it could make things worse for herself if it is discovered that the young princess is conversing with the enemy.
“My father said you’re not an enemy.”
“That’s declaration is not what you think it is.”
After they get passed the principles surrounding the visit, Layla realizes how smart and how innocent Adeola is, reminding her of her little sister she lost to war. Layla pushes Adeola away emotionally, knowing if she drops her guard, Adeola will steal her desperate heart that longs to refill the space Layla’s baby sister once had. Layla pushes Adeola sees through her defenses and makes up her mind to keep visiting.
“You don’t have to talk to me. You can ignore me, but I’m going to visit you because you are everything I want to be.”
“You don’t know me. You’ve read stories about me. I’ve taken sons from their mothers, fathers from their children. The honor in what I do cannot be understood in the heroic deeds people write about me. It comes with darkness, a darkness that stains my hands with blood forever and the cries of their children in the night. That’s the reality I sleep with and wake to. You’re a princess. Be a princess and be thankful you’ll never see what I’ve seen and have to do what I did to get this so-called honor you covet.”
“If it’s so bad, why did you do it?”
“Because someone must, but life and conscious are not merciful even for the best of warriors. It’s a brutal existence, and I wish it on no one who is not called to it.”
Imara’s Warning
Imara visits Layla alone. She does not soften her tone.
“I don’t know what my father sees in you,” Imara says, steady and clear, “but if he is wrong and it costs this kingdom anything, I will end you myself.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Layla replies.
There is no hostility between them. Only honesty.
The Training Grounds
Layla begins frequenting the training grounds of Chesslords.
She does not participate, but sits at the edges with her guards, watching.
The fighting system is refined. Efficient. Deceptively simple. Movements flow without excess. Violence stripped of ego. Layla recognizes fragments. Foundations. Something familiar, but evolved.
She listens. She observes. She learns.
Others notice her attention. Assumptions form quickly, thinking she wants to learn how to kill the king.
More rumors.
Nassori at Odds
Nassori’s closest guards and Imari oppose him openly for the first time. Visiting Layla alone is unnecessary risk, they argue. Foolish.
Nassori listens but dismisses the concern.
“She is not a danger,” he says.
The words disturb them more than reassurance would have.
A Night Visit
Layla is summoned by Nassori again.
“What is my purpose? You have no strategic use for the Princess of a fallen kingdom.”
Nassori identifies her fighting form as a rare system he had seen only once before, used by his own instructor, General Adebayo, a master exiled by Nassori’s father, King Sunjata, when Nassori was still in training at 19 years old.
Layla understands instantly. He was trained by her teacher, whom they both loved dearly. He saw her as a sister, as all General Adebayo students were commanded and trained to do. This bond superseded kingdom, race, gender and all other human boundaries. They lived by code and there were very few of them in the world.
This is why he spared her.
This is why he tested her with an unarmed challenge in his court.
This is why she refused to fight him without his sword despite her hatred for him. She was true to the code before she knew he was her student brother.
This is why he refuses to let her go into the world alone unprotected.
Now her struggle deepens. The rage is harder to indulge. She still tries, creating a conflict deep within her soul that she has no idea how to grapple with.
Onírun Prime
Already foreseeing the council’s move to override his declaration under the law of royal endangerment, Nassori secretly seeks out Onírun-Prime (oh-NEE-roon), elder of ritual authority, to enact The Covenant of Thread, a doctrine older than kings, colder than mercy, heavier than law. The journey to visit him is not easy.
Within this covenant exists a specific application: the Silver Dust Rite.
If performed, the rite places Layla beyond all valid legal judgment while the king’s claim on her stands, not a claim upon her person, but upon her legal position of redemption.
The rite requires the interlacing of silver dust into the hair of the subject being redeemed. Once complete, it leaves Layla’s hair marked with subtle silver streaks, a visible, enduring sign of standing.
Layla does not yet understand the gravity of what Nassori has done.
She will.