Lucius climbed the hill with easy steps, the dense fog of the valley below clinging to his ankles. The Third Ring was a strange place. Horrors lurked in the valleys and rifts below, but the peaks upon which the people here lived were more peaceful than any place in the Rings. With the Republic’s air carriers ferrying citizens between cities, it was almost perfect.
Still, he was not here for peace. He was here for a mission. A purpose. His booted feet carried him through the dense forest that clung to the top of this hill, and he ducked under a hanging vine, his eyes on a small cave eclipsed by a large boulder.
A lantern popped from his storage ring. He lit it with a Qi crystal. Its orange light blew away the shadows, leaving only dust, dirt, and stone in its place.
“Let the place get dirty, haven’t you?” he said to the empty air, trailing a finger along the cave’s smooth wall. He clucked his tongue. Some people were ever so lazy.
Under the clean trail his finger left, lines of red and brown paint were visible. Lucius needed only to close his eyes to see the rest. A woman, dark of skin and fiery in hair. Lips pursed. Eyes piercing the veil of time. Boss was such an ugly name for her, but she didn’t like when he used the title he preferred. Love.
He passed through the tunnel and into a spacious chamber. At the peak of the dome-like ceiling was a circular window that looked up at the sky above. Lucius had fondly dubbed the room the eye because of it.
Cots lined the edges of the room, trunks lying at their end. It seemed like only days had passed since he had procured them for his little order, but he knew that to be a lie. What had it been? Half a year, maybe?
15 years, a voice whispered in his mind.
Lucius chose to hear nothing. He hummed softly as he dusted off his bed, dropping into it with a sigh. It creaked dangerously.
“Really, guys?” he said. “Couldn’t even keep up the damn beds. I leave for a year, and this is what you do?” He clucked his tongue once more.
No response came. He stood. Right. No lollygagging. The oracle needed him.
He exited the Eye and entered another room, one with a stone oven and a box enchanted to cool. He shook his head at the state of things. His brethren were always making messes, the layabouts that they were. They were lucky she needed them.
Past the kitchen were other rooms. A wash closet, a storage room, a practice room. Then her room. He leaned his head against the door. Funny how he lied and wore the faces of others nearly every day, but seeing her still frightened him.
The door opened with a soft click, and he stepped into the room wearing an easy smile. “Miss me, boss?”
She was beautiful. The least he could say was that she was the most beautiful. To him, at any rate. Trying to describe her to others was almost painful.
‘Red hair,’ he’d say, and they would imagine the red-haired women they knew, some of them beautiful.
‘Dark skin,’ he’d say, and their minds would conjure up images of differing skin tones, each falling short of her true beauty.
‘Lovely eyes,’ he’d say, and they would laugh and think of their partners and lovers with eyes like the ocean blue or a green so vibrant it neared emerald.
Which was to say words could not capture such a visage, so he rarely tried. He crossed the distance between them, falling to his knees and pressing his lips to her hand. After a moment, he looked up.
She sat in a high-backed wooden chair. Its arms were polished tigers. Across her frame stretched robes of ruby silk. He thought it complimented her hair quite wonderfully. The room around her seemed almost too dull to contain her, little more than a bed, a chest, and the chair upon which she sat. He asked about his mission.
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She told him of a place. Her words wove together a picture in his mind of a city. Of a new Ring. The Sixth. She spoke of what would happen there, and though it was all things his own intelligence gathering had predicted, he listened diligently.
“And my purpose in this?” he asked after a moment.
She was silent for a moment. He repeated his question. Her answer nearly broke his heart. Fate said he needed to proceed without guidance? That the humans would nearly lose their upcoming struggle, but something- no, someone- would pull them through.
When she was done, he stood and leaned in, brushing her soft, perfect cheek with his lips. She didn’t protest. He whispered his love to her and devotion. She laughed and asked about if the others were watching. He promised her they weren’t.
They talked for nearly an hour. Gods, how he missed having such fun. It was almost like old times. Still, his fun would have to come to an end. Nearly two years after its discovery, the Sixth Ring would open its arms to him. He left the cave with a whistle.
---
A man exited the small cave on the uninhabited peak. Elsa frowned. She had patrolled this place for nearly five years, and she had never seen a soul. When he disappeared into the Under’s fog, she descended, easing the power to her carrier’s enchantments.
The grass flattened under her arrival. She climbed out of the wooden machine and hopped from onto the hill’s top. Silence claimed the abandoned hill, sweeping past scattered trees, high grass, and hanging vines. She couldn’t help compare it to her hometown of Sohto. The small town seemed so full compared to this place in a way beyond the simple population.
She trekked down the hill to the small cave she had seen the blonde man leave. The sun’s light showed only the beginnings of a rough, uneven stone tunnel, and she brought a lantern from her storage.
Inside, a mark on the right wall caught her eye. No, not a mark. A line, one free of the cavern’s dust. A Spell blew more of the dust away. She closed her eyes and activated it again, holding a hand over her mouth.
When the dust cleared, her breath caught in her throat. It was a painting. In a way. It looked not dissimilar from the ones her son painted for her. It showed a woman’s face, its lines uneven and messy. Time had dulled the painting, but even then it seemed something painted by the hand of a child.
She continued. Strange, but nothing amiss. When she had seen the man, her first thought was that she had discovered a bandit hideout or a drug ring. The truth was… different.
The tunnel opened up into a large cavern. A beam of sunlight pierced the room through a hole in the cave’s ceiling. She swung her lantern around, its light landing on patches of straw and dusty bedrolls. A homeless den, perhaps? Maybe it was a peak of hermits. She had seen more than a few monasteries in the Third that were simple and bare, though this was a little much.
After the cavern came other smaller offshoots of the tunnel. She spotted a shattered clay bowl in one. At the end of the main tunnel, however, was a length of wood. It almost resembled a door. She drew the wand at her side and moved the door ever so carefully.
It slipped from her hands, clattering to the floor and kicking up dust. She covered her mouth and coughed, blinking quickly. Then she yelped.
A skeleton sat at the end of the tunnel. Its limbs were propped up by sticks. Scraps of red cloth covered its body, as though someone had tried to protect its chastity in death. Paint covered its skull, reminding her of the times her son had played with her cosmetics. Enchantments ran around the skeleton on the floor. Preservation enchantments, she realized. Her look turned to horror. This corpse might’ve been hundreds of years old.
She was afraid she had walked into a murderer’s trophy room. Why did she feel so afraid? She was a warden, a Classer employed by the Third Republic to guard its peaks. This was her job.
“Hey,” a voice said. She whipped around. It was the man. He was blonde with a handsome face. Blue eyes stared out at her, more glacier than sea. “Why are you here? Why are you looking at her? Away! Away from her!”
“Sir,” she said. “May I ask-”
She blinked, and he was in front of her. His hot breath crawled along her face. “You are not one of us. You do not belong here. Go. You do not deserve to see her.” His words came out in a hiss.
“S-sir, please back away, and we can-”
Pain. She felt something hard against her back. Stone. The wall. She blinked the spots from her eyes. Tried to move her head. It wouldn’t. Tried to move her limbs. They wouldn’t.
The blonde man filled her vision. He dropped to one knee. He leaned close. “You,” he said, his voice a whisper. “You are a trespasser. She will not forgive you. Neither will I.”
Elsa knew only the void.