Carmine

The fire descended around me and cooled my hickory skin into deep cedar, for the one-hundredth time. Once the encircling symbols blinked and the crippling burn in my bones faded, I stepped out of the glittering sheen.

I hated traveling hundreds of miles through spectral gates.

The glow of the moon reflected its glare over the hills it scorned as much as my knees. My slate-colored armor deflected much of its hatred.

Gabby cried out as the heat lifted off her purple coat. She shivered as she sat in the shallow notch of my sword frog that was snuggly connected to the baldric around my bosom. Gabby's humongous eyes brightened me up, for she was such a gentle soul even if most people consider her a pest.

She was a mijaor, a small animal with a dark purple coat of skin with soft spikes curling over her rotund body and those amphibian hind-legs. I didn't consider her a pest, I loved her, especially since I could find a place for her by my side.

That was what I was good at.

My metal boots clanked against dirt and the resounding steps of my guards rolled in behind me with the resolute determination to not see me dead.

Valor handpicked them himself.

Hopefully, they held their own, because if I lift a finger, I am rising them from the dead and killing them myself for being terrible fighting men.

Still, to think I would be looking up at this dusty old keep again, but I had to come back here. I left behind a piece of me in this place. There was a chance to put myself back together and move forward, so I was taking it.

At the foot of the keep, I saw the large door was ripped off its hinges, and slanted to the side. Contrast that with this uneasy emotion traversing through me and I knew something bad happened.

Rionala, Beckburt, and Hangor, where were they?

I walked into the darkened parlor. My boot creaked and snapped into something sharp, yet fragile. They cracked under the weight of my advance.

One guard moved quickly to light their lantern. "My Lady, let me lead the way."

For a brief moment, I missed that Mother title I used to get, for a moment, then I remembered why I did away with it.

Valor never wanted me to come here, worst when I told him I wanted the letters my father sent to me. He hated the idea of me risking my life for letters. I hated a lot more things than that, like my incessant hunger that could not be sated by the food of the earth.

We needed better food in the camp and potatoes too which would be in loving memory of Rionala.

The lantern blazed a bright light and I saw scratches along the wall. Banners were thrown and sliced, then I saw the broken barks of the torch and glass littered on the ground. That was what I stepped in.

One guard said, "This place was attacked."

The others shivered and tried to hide it, but I could read weakness like I saw my face in the mirror.

I light up my lantern. "Be calm. Walk confidently."

They led me through the keep and the destination was my room. The air got suffocating as time dragged on, but worst because I wore this infuriating protection. On the outside, I saw smeared blood on the door, a lot of it. Droplets splattered on the ground.

We stepped inside the room and it was an utter mess. On the floor of it were the decrepit bones of someone, but based on the armor, I guessed it was Hangor.

I looked away, breathed in and out for comfort. They had not left yet, damnation. I waved the lantern around and checked the bookshelves.

The books that kept me company were ripped into shreds, the bed turned over, the cupboards ripped out and the table was in pieces. What kind of violence was this?

I looked in the one place I hid them. They were not there. My father's letters were not there. The one possible source of truth I had was not there. Granted, it seemed unlikely my father knew.

The Erridon coven that served my father in secret and pledged their loyalty to me never told me anything.

Valor said it was possible, but he could not be sure. I always wondered why I was held here for so long. Did it have something to do with this fate I was yet to accomplish?

I motioned at one of the guards and we kept walking around. The other two haven't been found, maybe they escaped. That was what I hoped, but alas, I was disappointed.

In a dark decrepit cellar, large, the walls never seemed to have an end in there, on the brick tile, I found mangled bloodied bodies. One of the guards lit up one of the candles on the wall bringing more prominence to their resting place. That single candle settled within the metal cage, but its fire whipped in the rancid odor.

There was not much in the room other than a few books, a large table on a raised platform, and strange rounded-end pillars behind it.

I shielded my eyes from the sight and my chest shuddered with the danger of bile escaping.

The lead guard passed their bodies with little regard. I tried my best not to inscribe the perceived faces of their skulls in my mind.

The guard looked down at the platform he stepped next to, while I reached under the candle to search the wooden shelf near the desert of a floor.

A bunch of empty metal cups was the only thing and that made me frown.

"A seal was here, it is broken," the guard said.

I turned. "Seal? You found one here?"

A seal was a zone crafted by an Inker. Similar to the spatial bound I was trapped in back in Tiam, but this was less of a room and more of a climate to an area.

A spatial bound afforded special effects to anyone or anything within the space of that seal.

If the seal was made to protect something then the effects would be negative. My guess was it was negative, because this was a room that was probably guarding something that Rionala and the others were determined to protect.

Did they already take everything?

He overlooked the pillars. I came over, avoiding the bodies as much as I could. Passing them slithered fear into my bones and I hated shuddering on the thought of them. Their deaths were not in vain was what I told myself, for I was still living.

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It was a selfish thing to say, but it was what drove me. There were four of them, the design was elaborate. Gems lined it in rows, and the color shifted from top to bottom, with the bottom being a cold black and tapering into a web-like metal fastening.

Glass balls stood on top of them. All those balls were broken or cracked, and what liquid there seeped out from their fissures and dried on their cold surface.

It was a seal. An intricate one at that. It was probably used to lock and enclose places and objects within an aura of protection, most times it was intertwined with the world. If the person was skilled enough, it would be separated from our world, but that was a whole other kettle of fish.

Whoever came here had to have broken it. I said, "With the protection gone, they were not safe here."

My heart raced as much as my thoughts, so I pushed down the evil thoughts and tried to bleed light. The guard looked behind him. "This sister was trying to repair the seal. So it was too late."

"Who?" I asked, turning to follow his eyes to Rionala.

"Her hand."

I fidgeted as my eyes touched her bony hand, but I focused less on the dried blood causing my throat to fill with saliva, and on the instrument in her thin white grasp.

A wooden handle and a metal shaft that bent at a tight angle. The metal shaft was a Lightning rod, and it was used for infusing. She was trying to repair it.

Someone cracked it and probably disrupted the flow of the seal's power.

Rionala was likely responsible for protecting this place. This looked like her private den. A feeling of revulsion came over me. All this time, a witch was protecting me?

Was she an Erridon? I needed to talk to Ariel about this.

"Yes, this whole place was." The guard pulled off his gauntlet and twirled his tattoed hand over the broken seals. "But they were in a hurry, for they did not break all the seals."

Sparks of light fizzled around his hand and pushed into the darkness. His face lit up a frightening still expression until something touched my skin. This armor was either useless or it was a greater power than anything we assumed.

It was greater.

The guard was wrapped in a surging might of white light that crackled at his joints and shook his body with a ferocity that sickened me.

That guard stepped and tumbled back until he slammed into the floor. I froze as the other guards went to his aid, but it was too late.

Gabby whimpered, for she knew an ally died. She could pick up on my anger, but such a thing showing on my face for everyone else was a luxury.

Energy raised from the platform and soon sent out wild arcs of yellow, blue, and orange.

Gabby cried for my attention. Noise raised from the gutless as they ran. A boot came beside me. The hand passed over their chest, stomach, hip, sword handle on the hip, but grasped the strap of the shield on their back.

I blinked and glanced away, but not too far, for It was so beautiful that I forgot how dangerous it would have been if those hit me.

As pretty as they were, they would stike a soul from its husk within a second, and that wonderous sight was blocked by a shield.

A guard took some initiative to shield me and the thought of whether he was stupid or determined to prove his worth was destabilized by the shouts of the other guards that begged me to fall back from this situation.

I did not come here to run away, because a seal leaked the dark energies of the universe hidden behind the night sky sprinkled with a gorgeous brush.

If they left seals unbroken, then whoever killed my three unrequested guardians did not discover everything in this keep.

There had to be something left here, if Rionala had her last stand here, there must have been something.

"He was right about one thing before he died they were definitely in a hurry," I said. "You, move, release him from his plates."

Using the shield as a wall, we shifted over to the other side of the room where the dead guard laid, while the fireworks tried to burn us to black ash.

The guard removed the plate over his chest and I pulled out my glasses with the fractured rainbow shade surface. Slotting it over mine, a glow of blue passed over my sight before everything returned to its original hue.

That's when the whipping flames of each person's soul steamed around each guard's stocky frame to my viewing pleasure. Every person had this flame, even me, but my flame was unlike theirs, and was rife with charges of white light.

Reading those flames was not my specialty, that was more San Rosa's skill, so I only used these glasses to peer through the limitations of the physical world, walls, trees, and even skin.

It gave me a view of his body, and the internal organs were frozen like dead black leaves on a windless hillside. His insides were a mess thanks to the trap he tripped.

No fire burned from him, so he was truly dead.

I couldn't resuscitate him and even if I did, my resources were limited. "What's his name?" My hand motioned at the metal slab across the back of his gauntlet.

The guard ripped it off and gave it to me. Ergo, that's a nice name. He would be remembered. I pointed back at the retreated guards ducking and weaving the sparks of the malignant seal. "You ones stripe and suit him up."

My eyes traveled up the platform to the table and all I could envision was the funes of the seal growing from a hidden spot, yet it was everywhere.

A wild distortion of energy rolled out from the platform. I couldn't identify where the energy was coming from. Which seal was it? The pillars were inactive, so where was the last seal?

"Are you under the ink?" I asked.

"Yes, my Lady," he said.

"Lend me your hand."

The guard crouched beside me and took off his gauntlet. His tattoo glinted in the low radiance of the light, but soon glowed as his fingers touched the fabric of the seal's wall of energy.

"So hot." He pulled his hand back and the light whiskered away when he pushed his hand behind the shield.

"Touch it again," I said.

He glanced in my direction and though I could not see his face thanks to his bevor, I knew the emotion. That emotion was well-known to me.

Anything terrifying was known to me.

"Trust me," was all I said.

He stared ahead and with a lower of his shield, he pushed his hand forward and the light grasped his hand. His hand shivered as my eyes followed the flow of the light, where it intersected and where the flames of power raised off the arcing rage.

That's when I saw the light fluctuating behind a leg of the table with a much more natural glow than its production.

There!

I pulled his arm back and with a swing of my arming gauntlet, that leg was cracked. My arm shuddered from the energy that swept up its bone and froze my shoulder.

The liquid flowed down the cracked leg, but the guard stood up and kicked into it. Shattered, the table slammed into the ground and unsettled the coat of dust.

That was a lot of dust. It was too much dust. My coughs left me strained as I glanced around at the leaked dust from the invisible holes in the wall we didn't witness.

This bevor was going to kill me. I pulled it down and coughed as I stepped back. The guard moved in front of me and grabbed the handle of his sword. I laid my arming gauntlet and smeared the dust on his plate when I pushed him behind me.

My eyes caught sight of the varifying colors of the rising surge breaking into the invisible air, yet fading into mere whispers. Regardless the light dissipated and the darkness held us dearly as if it missed us.

There was no danger, for it was only a reveal. The dust was being held up by the seal and now, the guard lifted the glow of the light in this now refined clean room.

A prettier room was good, but that's not what I came here for. Why was that last seal trying to hide?

The pillars were thinner.

My eyes moved down and noticed the drawn lines in the root of the pillars. Were those openings? I stepped pass the guard and with my knife cracked inside the opening, I snapped and pulled out the block from the pillar.

It was a drawer and within it were papers. "I think this was what I'm looking for."

I took the letters out of the draw. All of them were bunched up together. The guard opened the other drawers, some papers, and a few more books, I even saw sealing instruments. Rionala was definitely a sealing expect, probably in Inkmetry mostly.

What concerned me were the letters, all of them were taken out and laid on the floor. Wrapped with a thick white thread, they had a paper attached indicating the start date and end date.

Yes, they were all arranged and labeled. The ones in my room were taken, but they must have kept those here. These were the ones I rejected for so many years after the first ones.

I narrowed my eyes at them. If I never rejected to read these letters I would not have them now. I grabbed my forehead and swallowed to push down the raging river of emotions that tried to drown me.

I grabbed one pile and made sure to get a good grip. "Help me with this."

"Yes, my Lady," the guard replied.

The guards gathered up the letters and followed me out of the room with the body of the dead guard in tow. We went to the parlor where we set up the spectral gate. The heat raised and swept around us. It consumed us in a flurry of whipping waves that pulled me closer to the center vortex.

In a blink, the pressure hits and broke us into dust. My life was lifted into the ether and deposited into the numerous cracks of the universe, but I was happy to feel the warmth of its tug, for it was time to go home.