They emerged upon the narrow causeway that hung between Ymmngorad’s twin spires, the slender bridge of metal and living cartilage swaying in the high currents of the City’s breath. Far below, Cruiros sprawled in disarray, its once-labyrinthine gullies and vaults thrown into ruin by the Immortal’s brief show of command. From this dizzying height, Vashante could see countless freakish forms combing the carnage of upturned ground, hauling away rubble, and searching for those trapped beneath collapsed shells. Others, no doubt, scavenged whatever valuables the quake had uncovered. Their faint cries carried up to the travellers, fragile echoes drifting amid the whistling air, lost in the mute gulf of altitude. It was awful what the games of the powerful few did to those crushed beneath their will, suffering in reckless disregard for the working of foul intrigues.
Standing near the bridge’s edge, where once she fell, Vashante cast her twelve unblinking eyes upon the scene below. She watched the shifting lines of Jhedothar’s soldiery, the pale and scaled abominations moving in half-disciplined ranks, converging upon ruined bastions with all the tense vigilance one might expect after a near-apocalypse. Even from so far above, the Eidolon sensed their frenetic energies, each group struggling to maintain order in the quake’s aftermath.
Bee, stepping lightly forward despite her fatigue, did not look down. She pressed on, crossing the middle of the bridge where the supports grew precarious, where no rail would save her should her weak legs give way. Jhedothar followed, his hoofbeats striking the platform with dull thuds, spear carefully angled so as not to disturb the woman in front. Yonmar Free lingered at the Lady’s side, offering a guiding hand whenever Bee’s steps faltered. Slashex was nowhere to be seen.
Ahead, the approach to a crystalline spire yawned open, its shattered gateway a grand arch of splintered glass and old stone. The Rose of Thorns’ domain lay within that pinnacle of architecture—flooded with unearthly light, a place once revered, now a tomb for its mistress. Bee seemed driven by a silent desperation, her face drawn with resolve or perhaps illness. Vashante found herself glancing with concern at Bee’s pallor and the raw tension in the line of her shoulders. Was her sickness worsening even now?
They arrived at the archway. With measured caution, Bee led them into the cathedral-like interior. Sunbeams from the day star—pale, piercing, hated—splashed through the high windows, illuminating swirling motes of dust and streaming over ancient masonry flecked with glimmering bits of calcified growth and twisted, thorny vines. Vashante felt her skin prickle where that hateful light kissed her exposed plating and withdrew, pulling her cloak tighter to shield herself. She hated that star with a strange, inherited dread. It was rarely seen in the City’s gloom, but here on the tower’s heights, day poured in with unkind honesty.
At once, a motion behind them made Vashante pivot. Slashex appeared from some hidden alcove in the corridor, mismatched steel limbs clicking lightly against the glass-strewn floor. Jhedothar and Yonmar Free both seemed oblivious to the fact that he had only just returned from absence—but Vashante knew. The words shared in the scoured laboratory still rang in her mind. He had disappeared before the daemon wearing the Immortal’s face had manifested, only to return precisely once it had gone. Vashante’s gaze held with suspicion, but Slashex merely offered a hollow tilt of his head and fixed his blind, plated face on Bee.
“You handled that well,” Slashex told Bee, as though praising her for scolding some unruly child. His tone was subdued, perhaps designed not to carry far. Bee, however, did not respond. Her eyes were glassy from fear, infestation, or some deeper trepidation. Vashante’s concerns spiked anew; she recalled how Bee’s breath had grown laboured earlier in the climb and how her shoulders now trembled in short, nearly imperceptible bursts.
Yet the Lady pressed onward, leading them across the cathedral’s broad nave, a place once shaped for reverence or worship. The floor underfoot was stone—a rare natural rock that the City’s biogrowths had not entirely consumed—and overhead, old vaults of antique design arched, half swallowed by creeping vines. High above, windows of transparent glass soared, each stained with scenes of a naked woman lying in restful or exultant poses. Their brown pigments and shimmering silver highlights reminded Vashante of the Immortal’s visage inescapably. The all-too-recent memory made her recoil, unconsciously drawing her hood low to avoid the sting of that day star’s merciless rays. This was a place of her worship in bygone days. Or the worship of her daemons if not the woman herself, Vashante mutely considered, given Bee’s dismissal of the holographic thing.
Jhedothar drew up behind Bee, his spear’s butt tapping softly against the hard floor. If he sensed Bee’s unease, he kept silent, though Vashante did not miss the anxious flick of his tail nor the heavy tension in his posture. She wondered when—if ever—he had dared face the Rose of Thorns he was so willing to inherit from. Yonmar Free stooped and limped after them. His mask turned upward as if transfixed by the swirling motes and the spectral windows overhead, but no word escaped his aged lips.
Slashex strayed off to the side, metal joints glinting in the day star’s intrusion, though his steel veneer did not smoke or burn from the sun’s infiltration, what flesh he possessed did. He kept well clear of Bee but near enough to watch her every move with his clicking, audible gaze.
At the cathedral’s far end rose a weathered mausoleum jutting from the spire’s inner wall. Its stone was blotched with old weathering from the acidic conditions of the City and overlaid with spidery cracks. A quiet air hung about it, even greater than the half-ruined temple. This was no minor crypt but the heart of a forbidden shrine. The last threshold before the Lady Rose of Thorns and her entombed shape. A precursor and noble who once ruled over greater Acetyn, or something like it, much the same as the Pilgrim and the Immortal might have before her ruination and imprisonment. Perhaps in a time when Cruiros was a true seat of power before Enelastoia and the Pate Gardens, but that was only speculation on Vashante’s part as she regarded the precipice.
Vashante paused, letting Bee and Slashex overtake her for a moment as she cast her gaze back, ensuring no threat followed behind them. But only the broken grandeur of the cathedral greeted her, filled with creeping vines and the hush of ancient dust. Returning her focus, she watched Bee press her single hand to the mausoleum’s doorway. A bare crumble of sandy stone spilt at her touch.
Vashante’s unease did not abate. She saw Slashex step near Bee, leaning in to murmur something. The girl nodded, though her expression remained distant, as if her mind were half elsewhere. The Eidolon wanted to step forward and guide her Lady, but each time she twitched to do so, she hesitated, uncertain, and not sure why. She was indeed no mentor or caretaker, but she was powerful and—usually—bold. There should be no cause for this meekness, she thought. Even when facing the most terrible entities, she was strong now. She was proud. Perhaps it was that guilt again. Who might be caught in the crossfire this time? What would the Lady think?
Stolen story; please report.
In the end, she swallowed her misgivings and moved to Bee’s side, brushing a hand near Bee’s elbow in wordless acknowledgement. Bee met her gaze briefly, a ghost of gratitude in her eyes before she returned her focus to the vaulted entryway. Jhedothar looked on with that guarded contempt, but even he seemed faintly subdued by the solemn airs that clung to the mausoleum. Yonmar Free lingered behind, possibly in silent prayer or out of raw fatigue.
Bee said nothing. She only pressed forward into the hush and gloom, heralding the next steps upon their dark path, to awaken the Rose of Thorns or be judged by her. The Eidolon tried to steel herself, uncertain whether they approached salvation or further damnation.
And so, Vashante walked beside Bee into the mausoleum’s gloom, her silent footfalls echoing against the slick stone underfoot. Despite the wicked day star’s blaze in the cathedral hall outside, here the air hung stagnant and chill, all illumination swallowed by the tomb’s oppressive darkness. Only a few stray glimmers of faint light crept along the crevices of the walls and lent a dim glow to the corridors.
Jhedothar followed. Gone was his usual brash confidence; he walked as though the tomb’s rancid breath gnawed at his composure. Yonmar Free’s mask rattled softly as he peered in solemn fascination.
Vashante recognized this old crypt with a chilling clarity, having come here in her rampage. Yet her stay here was short and only in passing. She tore back the creeping vines that had already begun to choke the passageway, having long ago overtaken every inch of these walls in order to grant Bee passage. Thorn-studded growths coiled and knotted overhead, protruding from cracks in the stone and weaving across the floor. Bee grimaced, stepping carefully to avoid brushing against their razor barbs where her skin was unplated and exposed.
Overhead, the dome of the mausoleum rose in an irregular arch that had been partially collapsed from the City’s constant shifting and expansions. At last, they entered the innermost chamber—dark as a tomb should be, stinking of rot and old blood. Vashante’s ring of glimmering eyes swept across the gloom and fixed upon the occupant at its heart.
There, perched upon a throne that was half bone and half ancient oak, was the Rose of Thorns.
What once had likely been a resplendent figure—tall, graceful, adorned in regal human flesh—now lay ensnared beneath a writhing mass of thorn-laced vines erupting from her very body. They wrapped her ankles, her arms, her torso. Many had pieced themselves into her tissues, pulling taut enough to break the skin and draw fresh blood. Jagged thorns bit into her shoulders and neck, scarring her pale-pinkish hide. Her lower face, torn away long ago, had left her jaw a permanent, gruesome display of fleshless bone and sinew. Desiccated vines slithered around that eternal wound, gagging any breath of speech.
That ruinous visage would have driven lesser watchers to recoil. Still, Vashante only stared, transfixed by equal parts horror and sorrow. In the flickering gloom, she caught the glisten of fresh blood where the thorns chewed upon the Rose’s hide, eternally cutting, eternally fed. The captive’s eyes, however, were alive—desperate, intense, unbroken. They locked onto Bee and the group with a haunting clarity that defied her torturous bondage.
Jhedothar lumbered to a halt, knuckles whitening on his ruby spear. For a rare moment, the centaurian warrior seemed uncertain. He gazed upon the Rose of Thorns as though beholding the oldest, darkest tapestry of witchery in the City’s lore.
Vashante sensed his fear, a ripple of tension vibrating through his augmented limbs. She suspected he had never dared come here after all.
Yonmar Free, meanwhile, edged to one side with near-reverent awe. Vashante glanced at him in time to see the old monk quietly trace a small sigil on parchment taken from the inside of his robe, presumably to mark this moment in the annals of his order. His masked face turned from the vines to the broken throne, taking in every detail with scholarly fixation.
Bee advanced to the centre of the chamber, breathing more heavily than before. Vashante followed, close at her flank, prepared in case the vines lashed out or some hidden trap stirred. But no movement came beyond the slow, unnatural trembling of the Rose’s living chains.
The gagged woman struggled, muscles tensing beneath layers of binding. She managed a slight jerk of her arms, which only served to embed the thorns deeper. A hiss of wet pain escaped from the tattered remains of her mouth. Vashante’s artificial heart clenched at the hideousness of it.
Bee lowered her head, lips pressed tight, then spoke clearly:
“Rose of Thorns,” she said. “I’m here to free you.”
The captive woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed. Vashante watched the flicker of renewed hope there—tempered by disbelief. This was a creature who had lived centuries or more, each day a new agony, forced upon her by the cruelty of ancient witches.
“I want to make this right,” Bee continued softly. The exhaustion in her tone was palpable, the sickness that gnawed at her seeming to weigh on each breath. “My name’s Bee—Lady Bhaeryn, I guess—and I’m the Immortal’s granddaughter. But listen, please. I need your help to end the Immortal’s hold over us. We want to free this world from her… I can’t help who I am. But I need your help.”
A small whimper came from the gagged ruin of the Rose’s mouth, more breath than voice. Her lashes fluttered in reaction, and she stopped thrashing in her vines. Her entire posture stilled as if something of her spirit awakened from the old haze of suffering. The brambles that bound her like a living harness continued to drip with her blood, but for that instant, she ceased to struggle.
Vashante had seen many devotions—freaks kneeling in prayer, knights sworn to their masters—but never had she witnessed such a battered show of resolution as the Rose’s eyes displayed now. They spoke clearly where her voice could not: I will fight. I will do what is needed. I will end this once and for all.
Bee looked aside, sharing Vashante’s unwavering gaze. The Eidolon gave a faint nod, an unspoken vow of support. She had aided in so much violence, so many betrayals… If Bee believed setting the Rose of Thorns free would help dethrone the Immortal, then so be it. She would stand behind her Lady’s will until body and soul gave out.
Bolstered by that silent exchange, Bee inhaled, turning back to the wretched figure on the throne. She lifted her remaining hand with slow care—as though about to reach for the vines and lay her hand upon them—but stayed her gesture. Some unspoken plan or reckless optimism glimmered in Bee’s eyes. Vashante swallowed, both uneasy and resolved.
The small chamber, choked with damp air and the stench of old blood, held only these few souls: a captive noble, a wounded heir, a brood of conspirators, and centuries of sorrow embedded in every clawing root. It was one of the few rights of this late age that the dynasty of Cruiros and its seat of Ymmngorad ended this way, once and for all.
To the next chapter then, they said. Their words. Their actions.
Tear it all down.