Gus and Verune rushed into the dining room, each shoving against the other to try and get in first. At the same time, the doors at the other end of the room burst open, flying off their hinges as the crab-legged fox-heads swarmed in from the foyer.
Empress Phila panicked. Screaming in terror, she ran without looking and smashed face-first into the dining room wall like a cannonball crashing into the ground. The Empress fell backward, hitting a hexagon of black opal. Her head cracked open, spilling blood on the white marble floor.
The fox-heads ran down the dining room, fleeing in terror. Choice bits of the Empress’ clothes and perfumed face got caught on their fur. Verune leapt onto the table, as did the Emperor and Prince Gus, clambering up the chairs.
Somewhere from the hallway behind him, Verune heard Madeleine scream.
“Mordwell,” Eustin shouted. “Look!”
Verune whipped his head in response to the Emperor’s words. A final crab-legged fox-head staggered into the room, lagging behind the rest. It teetered about unsteadily, as if drunk. In seconds, its freakish body began to deform. Its jaws, ears, eyes and crab legs softened, melting like wax in the sun. Its fur dripped onto the marble floor. Then the creature swooned and its whole body lifted off the ground, twisting like putty as it spiraled through the air toward the Sword.
The Emperor shoved the Crown Prince in the way of the fluid missile.
Madeleine rushed into the room, screaming in horror. Verune watched along with Madeleine and the Emperor as Gus’ body began to float midair. It swelled and shuddered, and then suddenly exploded, filling the room with the stink of burning flesh and splashing it in blood.
Verune and Emperor Eustin ran for the foyer. Madeleine chased after them in rage. The Emperor skirted around the frozen, twisted fox-head floating in the air.
Suddenly, the great fox’s tail phased through the dining room’s walls in a broad horizontal sweep. The beast’s tail hit Emperor Eustin in the chest, splattering him to pieces, pelting Verune and the hummingbird robe with his blood.
Verune felt his thoughts separate from his body as he ran through the remains of the ruler of the largest empire the world had ever known. He dove to the floor as the beast’s tail came sweeping back the other way.
Verune was acting on primal instinct. For once, his thoughts were empty. He didn’t consider the Angel at all. Only survival.
The former Lassedite crawled along the floor, avoiding dead heads and their jointed legs. He scraped the Sword of the Angel on the marble, forgetting that it was a thing of God. Verune shook uncontrollably as he rose to his knees and surveyed the carnage all around him.
He was back in the foyer. The rift was idle. It floated mid-air. The sparking light on its circumference had faded into a rapid flicker. The twin anti-suns disappeared behind the floating mountains. Unimaginable brightness filled the portal, as if Night had been transfigured into the essence of daylight.
And the great beast was nowhere in sight.
Verune stood still in a moment of shock, wondering if he’d be doomed to run in circles for the rest of eternity.
Is this my punishment for having failed the Church? Is this… Hell?
Then a screaming body rammed him.
“It’s all your fault!”
Madeleine.
Verune fell to the ground, tumbling along with the maid. The Sword slipped from the Lassedite’s grip as he wrestled with her. The blade clattered onto the marble floor.
Madeleine elbowed Verune in the face. “You killed Orrey!”
Howling in pain, Verune covered his nose with his hands. He felt the trickle of fresh blood.
Madeleine grunted, and the next thing Verune saw was the old handmaid hurling the Sword at the rift—and his heart leapt with it.
“No!”
Verune’s heart leapt with the Sword.
The Sword landed on the floor, right in front of the rift. It quivered.
His heart skipping a beat, Verune clawed the woman in the face and kicked her, knocking her to the side as he scrambled toward the Sword. Madeleine collapsed to all fours, coughing—her strength spent.
The Sword quivered.
Verune pushed off the floor with all fours, dashing toward the Sword like an animal.
The holy blade scraped along the marble as an unseen force sucked it in.
Verune dove forward, sliding across the floor, straining to reach—
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“—NO!”
The Sword passed through the rift, and disappeared. The hole’s surface rippled like water disturbed.
Verune’s jaw hung slack. Trembling, insensate—lost in fear and rage and rage and fear—he turned himself and his damned soul to face the old hag.
And, of course, he was damned. He was going to freeze in Hell for all eternity. He had become Sin itself.
Verune fell to his knees, weeping uncontrollably.
The deposit of faith was supposed to be the promise of salvation. Peace. Understanding. A taste of the transcendent. The truest love.
But now, God was gone. The Angel’s presence was no more. The name of Mordwell Verune would be writ upon eternity as the man who’d lost mankind’s one and only chance at salvation.
He had become the doom he’d so desperately sought to avert. Now, darkness would come.
Verune lifted his head to gaze at the Sun’s holy light for one last time.
The three-headed beast careened into the room, phasing through the walls. Its claws sparked furrows in the marble floor. But then a convulsion rippled through the beast, rolling onto its side, sending it crashing onto the floor. The beast’s feathered wings collapsed upon it like a funeral shroud.
Madeleine was crushed into a pulp.
The creature dissolved and liquified. Heads and fur and fibrous feathers flowed off its body in a many-colored ooze. The fluid alighted, spiraling through the air and then plunging into the rift. It moved more swiftly than any of their predecessors, grazing Verune’s arms and shoulders even as he skidded out of the way. The contact sent tingling sensations up his arm. For an instant, Verune heard something like a whisper, only a thousand-fold softer, but it was drowned out just as quickly by the eruption of a sound like shattered thunder.
All around, everything flickered and twitched. Walls. Floor. Ceiling. Even the light of the mid-morning sun. The great beast’s corpse—now a puddle—rippled and roiled. Irregular bubbles rose from the fluid. Some of the bubbles disappeared through the ceiling. Others dissolved into nothingness somewhere in between.
The shattered thunder rang once more.
Verune turned.
The rift shuddered. The swirling halted as the boundary ceased to glow. Cracks spread from the rim, moving inward. The disk fractured again, and again, and again, the portal contracting with every thunderous crunch. Each new fragment on the portal’s surface presented a new image. The images changed as the cracks spread.
Mordwell Verune leapt into the collapsing portal without a second thought.
Wherever the Sword went, he, too, would go. If he could recover the Sword, perhaps the Angel might forgive mankind this transgression.
He could not let God’s promise become lost to the world.
For a long, filamentous moment, Mordwell Verune was anywhere but somewhere, in a corridor that stretched out in every direction. Its walls were the portal, continued and extended, fracturing anew again and again. And through it, he fell. The scenery was a kaleidoscope of tunnels, ever-multiplying.
In the distance, he saw the Sword. He reached for it, but could not bridge the gap. It fell down one tunnel; he fell down another.
With every fracture, Verune’s surroundings grew brighter and brighter until his every thought was flooded and he no longer knew what it meant to see.
Suddenly, Verune felt solid ground underneath him. He found himself on his hands and knees, staring down at—
—Marble?
The cold marble floor beneath him was startlingly familiar.
Verune looked up.
“Wh-what?”
He was back where he started, in the main room. It was… pristine. No trace of blood or gore. The shimmering, multicolor puddles were gone, as was the head of the dead Templar.
Verune rose to his feet, trembling in terror. He looked left and right.
“Y-Your Majesty?” His voice echoed lonesomely. “Emperor Eustin? Duke Quinis? Staples?”
Not a single response.
The more the Lassedite looked about, the more differences he noticed. Some of the furniture was gone: the statuette of the T’zaban sphinx, some of the smaller tables, the fine Tchwangan ceramics. The orchids were in perfect health—blooming, even. Had fresh replacements somehow arrived?
The differences seemed minor at first, but, when added together, they struck fear in his gut.
The paintings were different: landscapes, instead of portraits. And, outside, it was night, yet the room was brightly lit, far brighter than gas lamps allowed—and without the slightest trace of a smell.
“What is this? Where am I?”
Verune’s pulse raced as he looked around. Foreboding drew its claws across the back of the Lassedite’s head.
His eyes locked onto the door—the double doors, where the guards had been. Without a second thought, he walked over and tried to turn the knob.
It wasn’t locked.
Verune opened the door and stuck out his head. He saw no guards, no monsters, nor any sign of the Imperial family.
He walked, shoes brushing against the long carpet. He walked slowly at first, then faster and faster, down the hallways, then down the grand staircase, into the great hall.
Everything was empty. The hustle and bustle of the imperial household was nowhere in sight. The servants were gone. Even the revolutionaries had vanished. There was a speaker’s platform in the reception hall, with a mahogany lectern on top. A golden curtain ran behind it, while strange, naked-looking blue chairs were scattered before the platform.
Crossing the majestic expanse, Verune lifted the latch for the lock on the wicket gate in the grand doors and stepped out into the gelid night. There was a gentle breeze, and it carried a sweet scent with it.
Verune looked up.
The sky was still the sky—a pitch-black Night—but… everything else had changed. Visionary structures stood all around him, lit up like giant Shrovestide standing stones, but sleek and slender, seeming to scrape the sky. They formed a towering corridor on either side of the long boulevard that led out from the Imperial Palace’s grounds. Images and ghosts moved on dazzling surfaces. Unknown sounds bombarded his ears. Shrill horns; strange, howling whistles. Something rectangular passed overhead, thrumming like a locomotive engine as they swept cones of light between the great spires.
“What is this place?” Verune whispered.
Windows not unlike the portal he’d entered adorned the surfaces of the fantastical city. Text accompanied the colorful pictures of people, places, and things that they displayed:
See The Morgans LIVE, in Concert in Memorial Stadium in Beautiful Downtown Elpeck! Five Performances Only! Order Your Tickets TODAY!
Elpeck…?
Gazing down the corridor of buildings, at first, Verune couldn’t understand what he saw. Through the narrow strip of sky, he saw Lights floating on a Moonlit darkness, like fireflies.
The Bay?
It was Elpeck Bay. Bright settlements illuminated the surrounding land, tracing the contours of a strange new world; impossible structures spanned the waters, like bridges of glass and crystal palaces—but the Bay was the same. The land and the sea were as they had always been.
And so it came to pass that Mordwell Verune, the 250th Lassedite—lost for centuries—was lost no more. He knelt down on the pavement of present-day Elpeck, finally found.
And he prayed.