Facing the gate carved in the bone of the millennium-old creature, we were checked by astonishment even before Rosa Alba’s call to avast. Of the three alae present, only Vernal had witnessed the thing during the battle with naked eyes, but all were fully aware of the darkness that had lurked therein, and might still somewhere beneath, for we had been in its consuming vastness, imprisoned in time and space infinite, and known well the terror. What foul thing had spewed forth the ink, what ancient hand carved the gate to its monstrous core, sealing away the secret our captain coveted, none could guess, yet all feared what the man-made structure augured.
Still they were alares of the Anemone Order. And if their fear could measure to mine, then they did not let it show. When the moment for caution had passed, Rosa Alba gave the order to advance, and not one of the skyborne warriors faltered.
Our commandant and her pledge-sister were first to pass into the darkness. After a brief second, the tip of her staff shone, and we saw the two on their feet within, soaked in bounce light from all directions.
“Come in. But traverse on foot,” she shouted.
Her ala and then mine followed. Ala Hiemal as always guarded the captain’s vicinity. When Litzia touched the ground, I leaped off her back. The echo of our footfall on the bony surface carried into darkness. In a moment, we stood in arranged order, even as our formation in the sky, waiting for further instruction.
The captain and the first mate came last. Even in the aura of Rosa Alba’s conjured light, the two beings radiated an otherworldly glow, seeming but disconnected from the colorless surroundings.
The captain passed a look about the place, then said simply, “Let us go.”
The vertebrae’s interior was tunnel-like, wide enough to admit a wyvern’s wing span, and just as high. We walked within the leviathan’s hollow bones, twisting and winding from the torso's topside. At times a thin wall of marrow would block our path, then a strong alaris of Ala Vernal or Gladiola herself would bring down by the might of their runic weapons. We moved slowly and with care. Evidently the bone structure of this beast was unlike any living animals I have seen. Maze-like it was, but Rosa Elfa marched with intents on a deliberate course, seeming to know with surety where her destination lay. And when we came to the zenith of a large arc, she halted. “Avast,” she uttered in a hushed tone. A dark patch barely perceptible on the bone tunnel’s base.
She listened. Then, “Prepare!” She struck the blackened spot with her staff and the flimsy layer fell off, revealing a hole to a lightless space. We never heard what became of the broken marrow. Beyond, deep, deep below, distinct sounds surged to life, echoing though immensely distant. Flaps of wings.
In an instance’s flash, our commandant mounted. The bulk of her transformed pledge-sister carried her plunging into darkness. With Rosa Alba’s light vanished, we could not see. But a hand, ever-present by my side, snatched mine. Warmly it transmitted Litzia’s hasty thoughts. Presently, the bone’s narrow interior was made blinding with the pledges meant for the open sky. Echoing shrieks of ours dwarfed whatever force in ambush below.
After Rosa Alba we poured in force through the hole. Here, her brilliance was our only light, yet its periphery scarce reached the enormous cavern’s walls. She led us unto a boundless sea of moonless night. What few reflections our eyes could discern were silvery and colorless upon grotesque and grimy surfaces, and on the shapeless things that rose to meet us. Winged and hungry, they bare their fangs – sharps teeth lined in layered rows within long snouts. Their size almost a match for our wyvernesses, but so numerous and thickly packed they seemed a nauseous wave of flesh, roaring hideously to match their revolting features.
A deckhand, even a bond slave, is no stranger to winged beasts, but to be at the heart of the vanguards is a different story. Here is the story of the frontline, where one stares into the visage of death itself, and strike - strike with all one could, with one’s desperate last might. Singular in method and purpose, diving in one straight line into a starving horde without the booming and inspiring support of a vessel and cannons at hand. We had but what arms we carried, what pledge that bore us to hold onto life.
And yet that alone sufficed.
The terror was hardly one-sided. If I could far from comprehend the terror of my situation, beyond me was our foe’s in the face of a charging cohort of trained Anemones, alares fully armed, fairest and mightiest in the sky, battle shrieks and cries to unnerve even the devil. Those alares were the steel and runes that had come in force - come to humble even the greatest imperial entourages ever mustered.
But perhaps beasts like these had no mind, and they met their end at runic blasts without fear. With deadly precision, each of our discharges tore through a throat or wing. Before first contact, Gladiola gained on Rosa Alba and came to lead the charge, flanked by Valerian’s and Snowflake’s rain of fire. And I, well, I prevailed. My shots, more often than not, went awry from my mark. Yet too densely packed were they that I would strike something even so, with the devastating power of a pledge made. Whatever was directly ahead of us could only gain as close at the extremities of Gladiola’s blades. Many rounded to starboard also, eventually forcing my desperate aim to solely turn to self-preservation, splattering myself with the victims’ gory bits. Litzia did her savage part: throats snapped in her jaws, grimy flesh rent under claws. But not once, not even once, did our shared senses render me a hint of pain, or fear.
Whatever bypassed us were met with Rosa Alba’s ala-sisters. I could not have a mind for their doings. Only that no beasts ever turned upon our rear.
It was a prolonged skirmish only because as their ranks inevitably thinned, the beasts scattered, and we must give chase after each, picking them off from every nook and cranny. The walls of the cavern were flesh, whose many soft gaps allowed for hiding places. Those beasts were parasites. They dwelled, incredible as it was, within the gigantic beast’s once throbbing belly, living on the host’s meat and digested prey from within.
And that was still the least of the cavern’s wonders. For during our chase, we discovered what ought to be the captain’s real objective.
The belly itself was an immense space of flesh and supported by gnarly rib bones. Something I could only afford to mind by the combat’s end was the smell – it stunk so bad that my eyes began to water. Even so, those eyes made no mistake, however bizarre it was, that there, at the bottom of the beast’s belly, half buried in the devouring, spreading flesh, lay the wreckage of an airship.
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Like one persistent bone that poked out of the beast’s inner walls, yet the way it reflected Rosa Alba’s radiance made clear that it was more than a trick of the light. A three-mast ship without sails or an envelope, scarce larger than the little ship we had arrived in.
When at last the chase was declared done, we landed on deck and felt for ourselves the true peculiar nature of the vessel. It was white, from the mastheads to the kelson, from the bowsprit to the taffrail. For it was ivory, not planks and iron made. The same material of the tunnel through which we had trodden: bones.
This time, the captain led the party, the alares of Ala Hiemal flanking her still.
She halted before the door to the captain’s quarter, chief mate Justitia and Rosa Alba flanked her.
For a moment, I had thought that only the three would be permitted entry inside this bizarre ship, and was glad. For the existence of the ship was uncanny as it was evil. Even then some severed pieces of the winged beasts splattered on deck was evidence of our exhausting battle and chase. Or so it was for me, for the others did not seem in the slightest winded.
In time, she turned to us, looking at each ala, and mysteriously said with her own eager, ever-bright eyes, “Brave warriors of mine, ‘tis here where the hunt in earnest ends. Within this foul confine you will bear witness of a creature out of memory, whose kind in this age persists only in myths and the indecipherable nightmares oracles still untimely dream. Take pride, for you are living conquerors of that which had swallowed this miserable creature.”
And I thought my eyes deceived me, for in one instant, her gaze swept by Litiza and me, and stayed, full of intents.
That done, the captain turned about and suddenly drew to great height, though her outwardness had not changed.
So wontedly hidden was she among the handsome Anemone, it is easy to mistake her for a mere powerful human. But what the comfort of her home and servants hide, the eerie stage within the beast and a battle’s bloody aftermath now revealed: a divine aura that threatened back the gloom and doom of the cavern and of the Underland itself. She alone dwarfed the ancient terror of ivory, washed away the foul stench, while darkness gave in to her presence. High and terrible, yet existed also as a source of infinite beauty: that lone star in a world of darkness. We took heart, as commanded she, and felt no fear, for we were her warriors.
The Last of the Dragons entered the quarter. We thus followed, and found the interior to be as large as a small temple, and were built as such, without augh usual accommodations one might expect in an open sky vessel’s quarterdeck. It was mostly empty, save for caskets lining up against the wall and, of course, all bony-made. But at the far side of the cabin sat a tall throne, as high as two grown men, and even taller was the statue sitting upon it.
Humanoid it was, and clothed in robes and jewels just like one, but like the rest of the ship, everything was alabaster white. It sat like a sorrowful king in its deserted throne room, head hung loud, both hands placed on the armrest on either side. One bore an orb only as large as the tips of its digits.
Still, we could perceive that it was a living thing once, for an evilness almost perceptible was harbored within and a deep hatred radiated. Long dead it might be, a claw from beyond the grave spiritually tightened around us.
She was right, no mortal in living memories has seen in person the remains of such a thing. But heard, most have, as I came to learn of its true nature at a much later time.
Captain Aurora halted at the centre of the cabin and gazed upon the statue, unfazed. She let out a dry laugh that echoed.
“Alba,” said she, “find an unobstructed space in the marble, and inscribe as I now say.”
So Rosa Elfa steered to the side of the cabin, found one clear portion on a wall behind the caskets and affirmed her readiness.
Aurora declared.
“Here lies he who fled to Sheol the Beast’s belly. Betrayer of his peoples, forsaken by all masters; Marcher of jeering parades, departee of shameful processions. Not for three days, three nights, but three millennia exiled. Hated and sought, yet doomed to wander, until I come and lay at rest.
So beholder of this grave mark: spit and curse. Heed your lesson, and heed it well. Cross not your Gods, your Natural Dictates, lest he earn a fate alike.
For he who forsook his name, now I name his final tomb: Coward Retreat.
Anemones of mine to bear witness. So may the creature be known and so derided, for-ever ridiculed, a lost thing without a name!”
That done, Rosa Alba stepped away from the wall; freshly inscribed letters glowed the words of the naming.
As soon as the last word fell, the air shuddered and the ivory floor quaked. And then with a last whistling sigh, the evil aura within the cabin dissipated without a trace, as if whatever force lingered had been entirely banished by the glowing speech. My shoulders at once lightened, and I felt no longer the desire to maintain a perfect silence.
Presently Captain Aurora bade the chief mate forth. “Fetch me that orb yonder.”
The compliant Justitia went to the statue, whose hands were at the height of her shoulder. But though she took hold of it and exerted a force, the thing budged not. On the second attempt, her feet ground on the bone floor, quaking the air with the exertion of her preternatural might. And still it did not give.
“Stand back,” said the captain, “Wretched thing! To even in death value the foul treasure more than life! But such is the wont of creatures who scorn life!”
This time she herself went up, without even an attempt to measure the firmness that even her chief mate had failed to challenge, she seized the orb from the statue in one swift move, dismembering it in the process. The stony hand she plucked from the treasure, and let fall on the floor. We saw that it was solid, no bone or flesh was hidden within, but solid ivory it now was. The white veneer on the orb however peeled off at the captain’s touch, revealing a shining iridescent shade, even as that of the gem I have seen offered by the Absalomese.
Heartily she laughed, “Mine at last!”
For a deadly silent while, she admired her new treasure. Then she gave her next command, “Justitia, lead a chosen crew from the ship and plunder this place; I care not if the interior is thus damaged, so long as all its wealth is taken. Lex, take as long as you can to extracted the hide and parts from the beast, but bother not with the bones: they will remain in this place for-ever.”
Presently she turned to us alares, gracing a shining smile.
“As for the rest of you girls and those that would come after. Choose at your fancy a booty among the treasure here, and another for a fallen pledge-sister. Forevermore may this tomb be the cairn to our lost lives.”
And after the parting gift, the captain went aloft with her officers and Ala Hiemal in tow, in a hurry to add a new treasure to her hoard. With Ala Vernal remaining in the cabin, we lifted the caskets’ lids, and found a wealth beyond measure: golden jewelry, heirlooms, strange sorts of devices, mysterious relics of old. In the hurry to his unwitting death, the Coward had brought with him the wealth to shame that of princes. But among them, the ones that most drew the alares’ attention were a store of precious, shining gemstones. Each bent low over and peered at them with wonder.
It was then that I faced another significant dilemma, if of little import, that in my previous life, I should never have expected to face.