The pillowy grass greeted him as it had before, but that was about all that remained familiar. The wind howled in pain, the air was thick with the smell of rot, and the moon struggled to light the purple-tinted world below it. Matthieu watched as grime airships swirled through the sky like locusts, the rotting canvas fighters descending on the underworld in droves and unleashing a hail of bullets and bombs.
Destruction had begun, and Matthieu was out of time.
“Without a Deathseer, the realm won’t hold for long,” a voice called to him.
The puppet sat by the castle tower, gazing at the sky from underneath his iron cast helmet. He stood, bringing the circular shield on his back to bear in his left hand and rousing the two puppet horses at the end of his leashes. “We don’t have much time, but there is a chance to save them.”
The warrior turned to Matthieu, irises fresh and intense as the day he had been reanimated. “Have you found it in you to keep walking, Matthieu?”
Matthieu nodded. “Yes. Yes, I have.”
“Then let’s go.”
Distances were shorter in the underworld, a phenomenon made infinitely clearer as they flew past on horseback. Matthieu followed behind the puppet closely, watching the monstrous zeppelins barge through the rift and blotch out the moon. They travelled along the puppet path, cutting through the valley basin as grime festered closer and closer from the hilltops in a slow torrent.
“You understand what you are capable of, Matthieu!” the warrior called out to him over the sound of bullets and bombs. “You know why it is you can perceive this realm!”
“I know!” Matthieu replied. He had never entertained the thought as there was never a reason to. Not until he recalled Céline hesitating to open the door to the realm. She had asked him specifically if he could see anything at all.
She had known. She had known he had somehow become a Deathseer and had kept it secret.
“I thought the girl was suspicious when I first met her!” the warrior shouted as a fighter dived dangerously close to them, crashing into the nearby hillside. “How little she was letting on!”
“She was trying to protect me! She knew I'd stop her from ascending if I knew I could in her place!”
“And will you?”
The warrior turned to him, their horses side by side. He looked particularly interested in the query, eyes brighter and smile wider than ever. Matthieu returned it. There was no longer a need for deliberation.
“For them? Anything.”
Their horses’ pounding gallops slowed as they reached the bottom of the castle hill. The mountainside was coated with grime as legions of decaying soldiers clambered atop one another and assaulted the walls. Half-destroyed tanks ran bodies under their treads while rusting artillery fired their shells into the castle walls. The pearl white towers were crumbling, already black with soot from the omnidirectional assault.
“We can’t break the siege ourselves, but we can at least get through.” The warrior brought his shield to his front and drew Matthieu’s sword from its scabbard, coming only inches away from his former glory. “Do you remember the Deathseer chants, Matthieu?”
“No. Barely.”
“Then repeat after me. We must not call on the ascended directly, it may hasten the process and render them lost. Focus on the chant, and I will protect you. Immortals of the realm, please awaken from your great slumber.”
Matthieu closed his eyes and prayed to Amadea for one last favour. “Immortals of the realm, please awaken from your great slumber.”
The puppet moved forward and hacked away at the grime, his blade burning bright in the hands of its long-lost master. “Perform your duties and protect the realm of our people’s souls.”
“Perform your duties and protect the realm of our people’s souls,” Matthieu repeated, looking for the warmth in his gut and holding onto it for dear life, kindling the spark and fostering it into a blaze. He could sense a warm embrace from an unrequited love and the guidance from an irreplaceable friend.
“Lend me your blessings, lend me your strength and release the soul of mortal pain and memory,” the puppet shouted gleefully.
“Lend me your blessings, lend me your strength and release the soul of mortal pain and memory,” Matthieu replied, refusing to get outdone in volume and vigour. He could hear their words now.
“Cut these shackles and burn these ropes!”
Matthieu repeated the line, the words so deafening and the light so bright he could barely hear himself shout. The Deathseer light overwhelmed him, his body no longer a large enough vessel to hold its power. It exploded outward, erasing the contempt around them, burning away at the peeling skin and searing the grimy metal. He cleared the path so resolutely that the grass between their feet seemed to once again dance unperturbed.
“Keep going! Immortals of the realm, please awaken from your great slumber!”
“Immortals of the realm!”
They continued carving their path, the warrior calling out the chant like a battle cry until Matthieu retained the words for himself. With their beacon as their shield, they cut through piles of rotting flesh and clothes, tank treads, barbed wire and artillery cannons, following the stone pathway higher and higher.
The zeppelins filled the sky, circling the castle like vultures, waiting for their prey to succumb to exhaustion. The castle was witling away fast, and through the broken walls of the highest tower, Matthieu could see a golden light resonate with his. They were there; they had to be.
The guards were just barely holding off wave after wave of grime when the pair reached the top of the castle hill. They had quadrupled their numbers, culling the hoard while archers rained fire from above. Matthieu crouched behind the warrior’s shield as stray arrows embedded themselves into it and his wooden body.
“Let us pass!” the warrior bellowed, his voice roaring over the chaos of the battlefield.
“Only the king shall pass!” shouted the pair of guards guarding the gates, polearms crossed over each other. The warrior drew nearer, lowering his shield and raising his sword into the air.
“Your king has returned.”
The puppets froze, trying to remember a directive thousands of years old. They searched and searched, but the golden runes were all they needed for their memory to return. They uncrossed their polearms and knelt.
“My king,” they said in unison. The warrior walked forward and past the two souls as Matthieu followed, yet he soon turned instead of continuing, facing the hoard once more as the skies blackened further.
“I wish to make one final stand with them,” he said, facing Matthieu again. He passed the sword back, relinquishing it for the final time. “Follow the light, Matthieu. Never stop chasing it.”
They smiled at one another, men of similar make but woven in two wildly different ages. Nothing ever seemed to change, yet everything did.
Matthieu took off, bolting down the central avenue as grime spilt from the gardens onto the path ahead. He continued his chant, his voice roaring the words as the aura around him continued to grow. He sliced through whatever it could not burn, leaving nothing but ash and carnage in his path. The castle walls crumbled from above, crushing garden and grime alike as Matthieu’s shield narrowly protected him from the aerial assault. He made it to the front entrance, and the guards there dropped to their knees once they laid eyes on the blade.
He pressed on, finding the castle was just as overrun. Guards cut through the grime, but more rose from the ground faster than they could expel it. Matthieu paid it no heed, carving his way through the battle and to the stairs. Once he saved them, one could call on his ascended form to rid the realm of it all.
He climbed the stairs, his feet never slowing as the saliva pooled in his throat and his mouth dried. He kept chanting, repeating the words until he could not possibly get them wrong, even if he tried. With a single-minded obsession, he climbed the stairs and moved through the floors, following the sound of Amadea’s words and the path of Céline's footsteps. Forward, turn, forward, up, up, up.
He rose, passing by the dining halls, great cauldrons, by lavish bedrooms and gold-plated parlours. Higher and higher until the hoard he had waded through was but a sea of deep purple, the path he had taken swallowed by the bodies. The fighters were tearing past the windows as though looking for the small speck of gold amongst the filth.
The connection grew stronger with each step, the two calling him left and right, up staircases and through doorways.
Then, the voices ceased as he came across an arched doorway hewn into a dead end. Its golden braces and handle were barely aged. The footsteps and the voices had done their job, Matthieu was where he needed to be.
He silenced his chanting, and his world returned to the distant cacophony of war. It was familiar but a sound he wanted nothing more than to never endure again. A most likely outcome once he opened the golden door.
He sheathed his sword and pushed it open gently, peering around the corner for any sign of the guardian angel. He was here to end its succession, after all. They were sword enemies.
The small chamber on the other side greeted him only with another winding staircase, one he hoped would be the last, if only to keep his sanity. He stepped inside, taking the first step and then the second, all while keeping his eyes upward, surveying his path in advance.
The connection was powerful to the point it was so loud it sounded silent. An overpowering sensation that choked all else, even when the most destructive discord humanity could muster was just a brick wall away. His footsteps echoed, scampering up the walls like monsters before scurrying back, gleefully weaving and whispering fake dangers that lay ahead, but only once were they genuine.
The golden figure stared at him from their vantage point, now going so far as to steal the eyes of the one he loved. He rounded the final set of stairs and approached them, refusing to avert his eyes or even blink. What had so readily overpowered him before now instead watched him approach in horror.
The ascended blocked his path with their form alone, their dress and hair flowing in the absence of wind. No matter how beautiful the face they borrowed was, the stare Matthieu received unnerved him to no end. He did not know human eyes could peel to be so circular.
“The one you use and the other you keep hostage, I only plan on replacing them,” Matthieu began. “I will be your vessel, and they will be your Deathseers. All will be right.”
Matthieu felt as though he were bargaining with an aggressive stray, speaking more with his gestures and tone of voice than the words themselves. He had no clue what an ascended was or how much they retained of their former selves, but to him, they were nothing more and certainly nothing less than a force of nature.
The figure glared at him, unresponsive to his pleas for parlay. They cared only for his status as a Deathseer, the one person who could completely cleanse the realm with a ritual the puppet had never taught him.
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“I cannot help you,” he said, climbing another step. “Not now, and not how you want me to.”
A hand stopped him from going any further, outstretched in the way it had been when Matthieu had first charged it. They blocked his path, their final plea. Matthieu couldn’t understand what made it so adamant in defying him. But like all things that faked life in the underworld, the ascended's fingers turned on joints.
They were all puppets, every last one bated with an empty promise of forever. The one who tried talking to one was instead the fool.
Matthieu took his sword and cut the strings, continuing as the protector’s marionette fell limp to the floor and down the spiral staircase. He found no interest in looking back.
The steps were numerous, but he continued to gain on the staircase's end. More ascended watched over him, each borrowing a different face from the last. Young men, elderly women, mothers and fathers with children they once cherished, many of whom would have met the same fate.
They all watched him together, blocking his path as he cut their strings one after another. Matthieu paid them no mind, only lamenting what they had sacrificed. They were the brave, the misguided, the coerced. One could only hope their dedication was so fanatical they could go without regret.
He walked through the ages, winding the clock backwards until he arrived at the stronghold’s heart, its chamber of souls. Bookshelves stood instead of walls, coating the room with thousands of colours. Muted dyes of ancient leather, filing within them countless records that spilt from their pages with every rumble. Death certificates and puppet designs fell around him like snow in winter, wafting to the ground and collecting into a paper carpet.
The archway in front of him shone brilliantly as the epicentre of the gold and the warmth.
He searched the room for any sign of the castle’s prisoner, stumbling as it shook violently. Behind him, he found a wooden bed nestled amongst a nook in the bookshelves, generously pillowed and lit by dim lamplight.
“Céline!” Matthieu cried as he waded through the falling pages, swallowing him up to his ankles. He stumbled halfway, the castle rocking once again. “Céline!”
He approached the bed and found the girl soundly unconscious and sinking into the mattress. No visible signs of harm, but that was never a reliable indicator. Time afforded him no subtlety, and so he grabbed her shoulder and shook her.
“Céline? Céline, wake up.”
Matthieu lifted her out of the paralysing sheets and propped her body against his. “Celine?”
The girl’s eyes fluttered open, irises searching for context through a sheen of sleep. She caught onto him, and the wondrously expressive face she gave when she did made everything worth it.
She didn’t even have time to say his name properly, cutting it off halfway as she dived headfirst into his chest, squeezing it until he could barely breathe. With the little ability to hug he had left, he gave it his all, embracing the young girl he had grown so fond of in her absence.
“You’re okay,” she said, breaking into tears.
“Turns out I could last a second without you,” he smiled as she pulled back, looking into his eyes and astounded that they were there and alive, more so than before. He watched her, bleary with sleep and tears, and realised for the first time that she was indeed sixteen. Only sixteen. And that comforted him.
“I’m glad I could see you one more time,” he said as he stood. “Promise me you’ll do your best to live out your life.”
She grasped his hand before he could let her go, holding it tight and bringing it to her face. He could feel the tears as she pressed it to her cheek, refusing to look away from him even as her grief moulded her face into something she would have never shown him otherwise. She cried. She cried and cried, her words barely making it past her sobs.
“I love you!” she shouted. “Why can’t you be with me?”
Matthieu smiled at her as the pages fluttered around them, the layer reaching their shins. “You have a lot of growing to do, Céline,” he said. “And one day, you’ll be old enough to find someone amazing. You’ll be old enough to see me for what I am. I am nothing special.”
“You amazing!” she insisted as she collapsed into him. “You’re the greatest person I’ve ever met, Matthieu.”
“No,” he said. “I’m an ordinary man who gets anxious when I have nothing to do, who stays up too late reading books he doesn’t understand and hasn’t the first idea how to cook.”
“But when I get older!”
“You’ll come to see that I pick my nose and I cough too loudly, and you’ll see me for what I was. You'll come to realise that you barely knew anything about me.”
He brought his hand to her head, patting it with his calloused palm as she cried into his shoulder.
“Thank you, Céline, and I’m happy the parts of me you got to see were that wonderful.”
“What if I still love you? After all of that? What then?” she shouted, her firm grasp making it abundantly clear that he’d never be quite off the hook.
“Then I’m sorry, Céline, but I love someone else.”
He felt her shoulders shaking as he held her head, grateful he could see her act her age, and it only made him admire her more. She held on like her life would end as soon as he walked through the archway. She cried loudly, being sure to make him feel as guilty as possible, and he lent her his shoulder, listening the whole way.
Eventually, she found it in herself to pull away, wiping her tears and doing her best to choke on the ones still to come. Like an adult, she tried her hardest to offer him a smile that still shook around its edges and threatened to disappear with the slightest touch.
“You should have said that from the start,” she muttered.
Another rumble echoed through the castle walls, and a fresh new rain of pages threatened to bury them.
“Go through the castle,” Matthieu said, “go down to the courtyard, find the puppet that helped us before. Your chanting will ward them off. Amadea will soon follow you. Expel the grime only after she does.”
Céline bit her lips, silencing her own objections. Matthieu knew she had a thousand things to say, a million to object to, but she only uttered one.
“Save my cousin, Matthieu.”
Matthieu nodded, and they parted ways—Céline for the door, and Matthieu for the archway. He did his best to resist looking back; he hoped she could do the same.
Wading through the pages now piling to his knees, he trudged for the golden archway as the roof began to cave in on itself, splinters and snapped wood dropping dangerously close to his head.
Another rumble as he reached the archway, his face mere inches from the golden void. Matthieu wondered how he’d be greeted: as her hero or the villain. Either way, it didn’t matter, it would not change his goal.
He stepped through, the warmth enveloping him completely and cocooning him in the bliss he had only ever felt for a few moments at a time. The liquid that housed the soul tempted him to join it, promising him a never-ending sanctuary. It tickled where his arm used to be, whispering sympathy and salvation into his ear.
It must have been hard.
Life has been so cruel to you.
Rest here. You deserve it.
Your reward.
Your right.
Matthieu gripped his sword’s handle. It was of the same magic as the warmth yet served a different master. Carrying the warrior's will, it too had grown bored over thousands of years. It reminded him what eternity meant, how short-lived bliss was, and what even the mere promise of it turned one into. He pressed on forward, disregarding the offer of salvation.
Matthieu soon saw a chair emerge from the monochromatic void; a fool's throne with the Queen of Fools sitting on it. The cuts and bruises on her fingers were gone, and the soles of her feet no longer bore the sores she had always complained about. Her hair no longer frayed at its ends, and her freckled face showed no signs of mud. It was as though Amadea had never worked a day in her life, an insult to all she had done.
“Amadea,” he found himself saying. He could not get much closer, afraid the slightest move would complete her ascension.
She opened her eyes, her irises a heavenly hue, and smiled at him. “How is your arm, Monsieur?” she asked. “Have you been changing the bandages?”
Her words melted him. Her voice soothed his pains.
“Every day,” he replied. “Like a madman.”
“Has the bleeding returned?” she asked.
“Not once,” he replied. “Not a single drop.”
“See?” Amadea teased. “I told you.”
Her voice struck something in him. The smug confidence in her treatment and the gentle way she went about it. He could feel something well up inside him.
“I got your letter.”
“That is good,” she said. “I was afraid you would miss it.”
He chuckled, desperate to hold it in. “How did it get to my house so fast?”
She put a finger over her lips playfully. “A lady never reveals her secrets.”
“I see…,” he said, at a loss for words. She was always better when it came to conversations.
“How did you find it?”
He pursed his lips.
“I hated it.”
Her eyebrows turned upward, and she tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because it sounded like you were saying goodbye forever.”
He found the courage to face her, to look her in the eye and make his objection known. Amadea did not smile in response with the knowing grin she most often gave him. It was all true, after all. It did not take a genius to know that much.
“After you left, Monsieur, the enemy broke the frontline,” she explained, voice turning cold as she started fidgeting with her fingers. “They...they killed many people. I couldn’t save anyone…the nurses and I. I...couldn’t do anything.”
She held her fingers together and met his eyes again.
"I finally understood how you felt, Monsieur. What it felt like to see people slip between your fingers."
“And no matter how hard you prayed, nothing happened.”
Amadea shook her head, no cross necklace adorning her neck. “No. I couldn’t do anything as a nurse. I couldn’t do anything while they lived…and so I thought if I did something for them once they died—”
“For who, Amadea?” Matthieu asked her. “For whom are you doing this for?”
She could not answer. And Matthieu could not blame her.
He took steps closer to her, and she watched him as he did so.
“I don’t know if there is anything after one dies. I don’t know if there’s salvation, immortality or eternity. And frankly, I do not care anymore.”
He knelt in front of her, sword faithfully on his hip. Like a knight in shining armour, he addressed his Queen with the utmost honour. “But I know what there is while someone is alive. Moreover, I know what I can do for someone in need as long as they’re alive. And Signora, you can do more than anyone else.”
He watched her, recognising the expression as one of defeat. Understanding it, yet not accepting it. A vexing, cruel and horrible feeling. He had never been so happy to see it.
Matthieu swallowed his tears one more time.
“Whatever happens once one dies, I will take care of. You’re desperately needed elsewhere.”
He took her hand in his and held it tight, marking the feeling into his memory. “There’s more missing limbs to heal, more…broken people to mend. More people who need to fall in love with you, like I had the honour of doing.”
She chewed on her cheeks as her eyes grew glassy. She covered her mouth, turning away much to Matthieu’s disappointment. He wanted to see her face, as adorable as the gesture was.
“Stay with me,” she said, grasping his hand with both of hers. “Stay here, with me.”
“I can’t do that—”
“Why not?” she asked, refusing to turn back and face him. Her shoulders were shaking. “We could stay here forever, just us.”
“Because,” Matthieu answered, standing and drawing her gaze back to him. “A young girl entertained the ramblings of a broken man. I have to honour her request in return.”
Amadea smiled, the tearful jitter of her mouth the same as her cousin’s. “That girl,” she said.
They fell into silence, engrossed in each other’s eyes and wishing the moment would last forever. But Matthieu knew that such a wish was a fool’s errand.
“I wrote a letter for you, but I’m afraid I left it in the real world,” he admitted.
“What was written on it?”
He kissed her. Tears rolled down his cheek. He was unable to take it much longer. He could barely feel it, barely remember it through the ecstasy of simply finding the courage to do so. His last act.
“The mountaintops are snow-white this year,” he said as he pulled away.
Amadea’s hair frayed at its ends, her fingers were bandaged, her feet had awful sores, and her face was speckled with mud. Tears flowed down her face as she struggled to keep her composure.
He pulled her off her chair and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her around him with the help of his lost arm, now returned coloured gold. One last time, he savoured her face, the one strikingly similar to Céline’s. The shock on it was wondrously expressive, and it pained him to realise so late that he had seen so little of it.
He let go, and she flew through a fold in the void.
Matthieu relaxed, the whispers of the warmth now pounding in his head, praising his choice to stay and guaranteeing him the pleasure he deserved. He let them swirl in his ears, recognising that they had won.
Sitting down on the fool’s throne, Matthieu sighed and relaxed, the return of his lost limb frustratingly putting a grin on his tired face. He moved it in circles and wriggled his fingers, the sublime sensation fading as he realised he'd never use it again.
It was done now, and he let it rest along with his eyes. The pair of cousins, their final faces refused to leave his eyelids. But he found it rather entertaining, remembering how happy they had looked to be with him, how upset they seemed when he had said goodbye. How Amadea had turned away when he flustered her, how Céline had done the same.
And he cried.
Only a little at first, but then a lot.
He felt a few tears roll down his face, but the feeling only made things worse. They escaped him, tears as old as his final day on the frontline, his time in the hospital, his last stand, the death of his comrades, his parting with Lyon and his family.
He wondered where he had begun to regret it, where he had wished to start over.
But he couldn’t find anywhere to begin, so he never started. Things had gone the way they had, and his reward had been the faces of lovely people to lull him to sleep.
The whispers grew louder and the warmth against his skin stronger. Like thick covers on a winter’s morning, he sank into the pleasure.
Or at least he tried to.
Something thin, a stick of some sort poked his side, somehow aiming perfectly between his ribs.
“Ow!”
He jumped, the pain jerking the human back into him.
“You’re thick. You know that?”
The bright void stung his eyes as he opened them.
“I told you to follow the light, didn’t I? Because this isn’t what I meant,” the silhouette said, jabbing him again.
The gold hurt his eyes, and the whispers were no more than distant screeches. He tried to shield his face from the light, but his left arm was missing.
The silhouette circled him like a disciplining teacher, strutting at a mechanically regulated pace. The silhouette paused in front of him, crossing its arms.
“I’m ready to die, Matthieu. Are you ready to live?”
The question clicked with him, and the absence of the sword on his hip told him all he needed to know. They were men of similar make, after all.
“Yes,” Matthieu obliged. “I very much am.”
The silhouette chuckled. “Good. Maybe you’re good at a little more than following orders.”
With the flick of its stick, Matthieu was sent flying.
Through the golden archway as the temptation drained from his body and leaked from his mind.
Through the tower chamber filled to the gills with loose paper and parchment.
Through the many castle’s great halls, torn open like Swiss cheese and swamped with grime.
Down the castle’s central avenue, lost underneath rotted tank treads.
Over the blackened valley, the puppet path now a long, blackened trench of ash and gunpowder.
Past the castle where Melone stood, ruined and still burning.
Down the hill, as the grime watched him go past, their empty eyes meant nothing to him or anyone anymore.
And through the door that slammed shut after him. He would have wondered if there was anything behind it, but he seemed to forget all about it when he realised whose arms he had fallen into.
There was probably nothing beyond it. Nothing at all. And he was okay with that.