Wowie wow, how exciting. An artificial colossus, reincarnated from another reality. A brash, shining knight in their fighting prime. A clash of swords within twisting bowels of subterranean stone. Sure, sure. Rhode sure had found himself in a perilous circumstance of physical trial. Very climactic. That’s all well and good. We'll get back to that.
But ah… here’s a question: where exactly was he? Rhode’s life experience hadn’t exactly been a whirlwind sightseeing experience so far. The primary variety in the “landscape” he’d yet seen was: what type of rock is this wall made from? It would take some unusual passion for mineralogy for a person to be satisfied with that.
But surely it wasn’t like the whole of the Ring could be made of tunnel. Somewhere out there above, one would assume there had to be a surface; atmosphere had to have a source, after all. Wouldn’t sensible folk be safe to assume that a living world ought to have a sky?
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Approximately seventeen meters upwards.
Four Ring Hill Palace was about as far opposite from Little Raptor Crest as can be. The ancestral home of the Earl of Malachite, Four Ring Hill had been built at the height of their familial power. Perhaps old Earl Malachite should have been humbler for the sake of his descendants, but for worse or better, the founding Grandmaster of the Illuminance of Bronze had opted to leave his mark on the world with extravagance instead.
On first glance, one could see the once-sumptuous compound was not the type that loomed, but of the sort which sprawled. It was enclosed by a low, narrow wall of imported white stone, and a hedge which was perpetually dying as it was poorly suited to the heat and wet of the clime. The bright bronze gate which would have greeted guests and supplicants had been auctioned off long ago, and been replaced with a wrought iron fence: yet still despite the savings, the metal’s winding, simple runes were expired as often as they glittered. Stepping within the wall, the curve of the palace hinted at the shape of four great interlocking rings, and they hid a number of irregularly shaped courtyards within them. The strange floorplan was no accident, but had been designed as a secret nod to the rituals of the Earl’s knightly order, a bold (some might say foolhardy) symbolism in the days before they had been officially sanctioned by the crown.
Perhaps none of that would have been particularly bad, except the lands all around the palace were thick with encroaching jungle that were nourished by the rains that were trapped further east by the towering heights of The Split. All around for miles, monsters roamed and ravaged the mines and farmsteads of the land: put another way the beasts rampaged unchecked through the territories (to borrow an expression) like gangbusters. But rather than rely on permanent fortifications, like sensible lords of wild fiefdoms, Malachite and his descendants held the grounds of their home with constant patrols and armed vigilance for the hundreds of years it took for their fortune to wither.
So, in a way, one might say that Four Ring was built by an egotistical, insecure man, who had been disgustingly rich, and paranoid to boot. But, gods be good, once one took the time to drink in the elegant windows and the gentle, barrel-tile terracotta roof of his legacy, it was impossible in the end to deny that the pompous son-of-a-cur had had fine taste in the grace of architecture.
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That didn’t change the fact that the upkeep of the property was ruining House Tintalline as the last remaining descendants of Malachite. Nor was the décor the feature of the palace which had brought Four Ring to relevance here.
Instead, the Kingdom of Sacred’s army Office of Special Projects had selected the regional capitol of Malachite to be the operational center for its hero summon initiative for the twin reasons of the compound’s relative isolation – and for the network of illegal tunnels which riddled the foundations beneath it. So, under the guise of the Second Prince’s signature, the army had quietly approached the Tintallines with a generous offer and they had done what any sensible landowner would have done in their place.
They had rented the whole thing out, said to hell with it, and taken their whole extended family on vacation abroad.
In the months that followed, the ancestral common-staff of Four Ring had slowly been replaced. Their naive expectation of a royal hideaway (for it was not so strange for lords to make a private refuge for their worldly pleasures) did not last. One by one, they were encouraged to transfer into the employ of nearby houses; or even in a few notable cases, scandalously let go. New, unfamiliar faces began appearing on the premise as a year turned, and the secrets within the walls grew deeper and darker. The whispers between cooks and laundresses became more urgent as the last remaining servants who wore the green and bronze livery of Malachite would no longer risk speculating in the open about whatever horror was happening below their feet.
And so, on the very evening that Rhode had risen and taken the tunnel to face the blade-mistress Lady Ser Hakkat-Yune, the long suffering baker of the east wing kitchen reached the breaking point of her nerves.
“Babe, I love you, I do, but you must go!”
The woman wept thick tears as she pressed her face into her daughter’s dress, and held the child helplessly in her arms. She thought of the three generations of her foremothers that had served the Tintallines until now. She regarded her husband with regret. He had been a footman of good standing, until the day he’d been relieved of his duty by a scarred man in orange and black. The grim stranger bore the spectre of war in his eyes, and one too few fingers, and so it had been many weeks since her own gentle man had seen paying work. Still, while it would break her heart to send her family away, that ache was nothing to the dire auguries which had come to haunt the walls of her home.
The shuddering inhalation of the beast rattled the delicate cabinets and glassware of the palace. You almost didn’t notice it up here, on the first floor. But if you sat alone, and very still – if you closed your eyes and listened – you knew that there was something alive and terrible which had settled into the roots of this place and claimed it.
“Please! Child, you must! You are my all, my everything! Gob of my heart, sweet chicken-eater. Dearest. I cannot have you here for what is coming.”
Then, at that moment, a screeching clang resounded from the deep. The stone of the earth felt as if it shuddered, and the fine porcelain which proudly displayed within the halls of the palace chimed ever so quietly as the wind-bells of graves.
“Do not stay, I will come to you when I can,” the baker vowed. She rose to her feet and wiped her eyes dry. Then she collected a tray of citrus cream tarts from the table and turned towards the gaping maw of the lower clock-lounge cellar stairwell and steeled her courage. “I fear the Prince’s men yet bear arms against the devil now.” Resolutely, her slippered feet carried her towards her doom. “Gods, keep me! Oh my mothers, watch over me! Wretched are we gobs who cower at the whims of elves! For though I fear not death itself –“
The soldier at the stair took a tart and munched on it idly, waving the woman to proceed on downstairs.
He ignored her last whisper as it faded to a plea. “Nor dares my heart to hope that we shall win.”