“Crime in New Jade City has tripled in the last winter. Drug and gang-related violence have spread from the Shards and into every borough. If it was not such perilous and inappropriate times to do so, then I would compare it to a plague. One has to question the integrity of the City Watch and maybe even where their loyalties lie; With the people of this city that they are sworn to protect or with the criminal overlords who pull their strings like dancing puppets.”
Jacklyn Jacobs. The Jade City Herald. 1311.
It was an eerie and disquieting midnight when she heard the footsteps pattering past her door. Rosamund Greenfire could not sleep anywhere, that was not her own bedroom. She could never feel safe outside the impenetrable walls of the Jade Palace. It mattered not how well-guarded the place was claimed to be. As far as her feelings of safety were concerned, she might as well have been spending the night in the southern jungles.
The Duke’s royal manner left much to be desired in terms of security. Rosamund had taken note of the minimal guardsmen, the hastily chained iron gates that one could merely climb over, and the stained-glass windows of forgotten deities that had all been so carelessly left opened.
“The guards patrol the downstairs halls and gardens like the spirits that watch from above, Sweet Princess,” were the words the Duke had told her so boastfully. For a time, his reassurance had calmed her somewhat but as the sunlight through her small window shaded into darkness and silence settled the manor, the trepidation began to take her once more.
Her first night’s sleep was long and restless. The next morning, she begrudgingly attended the Duke’s breakfast where he discussed banal matters with the local lords of Stone Sparkles. Higher taxes on nobles, and crown-provided refuge for beggars and drifters. All topics were scoffed at and met with derision from all his guests. She hated all of it. Being forced to leave the Jade Palace, these strange old men she was dining with, her cold and unwelcome bedchamber. It turned her forlorn. When Anastasia, the council’s Arch-Alchemist who agreed to act as her carer had noticed her detachment from the affairs, she took the Princess away from the dining hall and unleashed her fury. When Rosamund protested and requested to be taken back to the palace Anastasia had her thoroughly canned and confined to her bedchamber where she wept into her bedsheets with bloody knuckles until second moonlight greeted her again. That was when she heard the swift and faint footsteps creak outside her bedchamber doors.
She leapt from her bed and pressed her ear against the thick oak. All that could be heard was the sombre calling of a draft. She had never felt so alone. There was no one to guide her. Her Kingly Father was not there to advise her. Sir Dorian was not by her side to protect her. Something moved past her door, and it did not have the clangs of chain mail or the gravelly grunts that the Duke’s guardsmen possessed. The anxiety grasped her tighter as she recalled the Duke’s mention of how the guards were specifically ordered to patrol the ground floor and no higher. She began to frantically fret as she twisted the rusted handle.
The dimming flames of sconces lined the narrow corridor. The walls were painted a scarlet red and paintings of brutal and bloody battles long forgotten hung against each wall. Rosamund recognised one oil painting depicting the bloodiest battle of the Second Jade Rebellion that took place on Sona’s Stand just a hundred miles from New Jade’s walls. Deep within the canvas, she saw her grandfather, Galahad Greenfire firing forth a vanguard with the tip of his jade lance. The green-armoured knights of his army clashed against the scarlet hordes of the Crimsonarion Empire’s invaders. A brown mist erupted above, and death and decay lay underneath. So much bloodshed. So many bodies piled on top of each other, jade, and crimson alike. She felt sorrowful at the sight of it and the silence of the night added another layer of unease. Her reverie was cut short as she heard hushed voices from around the corridor.
Rosamund flexed her pained and stiff fingers. Her knuckles had turned a burning and swollen red. Ana had made it explicitly clear that she was to stay in her guest chambers and not go wondering. But the sounds of ghostly whispers drew her forward. I could leap over the gate and flee back to the palace, she thought with fleeting longing. She knew that strategy would not end well for her. Anastasia would only catch up with her and inform her kingly father of her disobedience. It was her father’s decision to send her to this awful manor in the first place, to learn how dukes control their duchy in alignment with kings. Rosamund had protested and wailed but when she had finally lost her voice to overuse, she was already in the carriage riding through Stone Sparkles.
She paced down the halls on silent footsteps and peaked around the corner of a corridor where most of the hanging flames had withered into the darkness. Ana stood outside the Duke’s bedchambers holding a small and timid candle. Her blue robes were creased and dangling. Her stringy russet hair tumbled freely. Despite only being in her fourth decade, her face was lined and haggard from the stresses of her position. The Arch-Alchemist had many duties, one of which was to mitigate the spread of disease in New Jade City. Whilst drunk one-night Ana had told Rosamund of how she thought herself to be failing in that regard. The things she had told Rosamund of plagues that had terrorised the city long before she was born had caused the Princess nightmares for months after. “You lose your nose first,” she had told her in slurred words about the Red Plague. “Then your skin falls off piece by piece as if you’re being flayed.”
At the end of the long maroon hallway, Rosamund paled at the sight of the figure Anastasia spoke with. He wore a stitched and stained bird mask and was dressed fully in black. “He’s not dying. Not today at least,” said the bird-headed man indifferently. ‘He has run a fever. I have treated many residents in White Raven and Stone Sparkles who have caught this fever. It’s relatively new and true. It is spreading, but it is not the plague and not lethal at that.” He shrugged in cold indifference a second time. “Not yet, anyway.”
“But he is old and weak,” Ana protested in a whisper.
“And so is everyone else who had it,” the Plague Doctor answered with a dismissive gesture with his dark-gloved hand. “It can’t be helped if they are too weak to fight some common cough. Keep him on the medicine overnight and if whomever spirit you worship is kind then he should begin to feel better in a couple of days.” His beaked plague-mask tilted, and the dusty lenses gazed at the Arch-Alchemist. “I believe there was talk of a free escort home.”
Ana sighed in solemn resignation and led the Plague Doctor away, to Rosamund’s relief, in the opposite direction of where she was eavesdropping. During the breakfast, the Duke had been sneezing and spewing his green and gangling snot all over his burnt bacon and buttered parsnips. Rosamund had nearly choked on her own food at the sight of it but after realising how severe his state was, she began to feel immensely guilty. She had been petulant and brash with both the Duke and Duchess, the latter of which had since left to return to the Jade Palace. Now Rosamund knew why she was left alone. The Duke was ill and quite possibly dying of something contagious. Rosamund drifted down the maroon hallway in her gold dress like some small glowing spectre. She was young and healthy, and owed him an apology if this was to be his last night.
She faintly pushed the door ajar. Inside was the Duke, snoring like a boar under a scarlet canopy bed. The bedchamber was dimly lit with one candle beside the Duke’s bedside table illuminating. The window at the far end of the bedchamber was open, letting the sound of ghoulish gales waft in.
The rain was heavy tonight and Rosamund could hear the droplets slamming against the stained-glass windows like tiny hammers. She promptly closed it as another thunderclap erupted outside. She went to leave the Duke’s chambers before she heard a voice; “Cynthia,” the Duke wheezed from his bed. His greying beard wet with sweat. His eyes began to flicker open. “Cynthia, forgive me,” he suddenly wheezed to himself as he tossed his head from side to side.
Who’s Cynthia? He had never mentioned that name in the council meetings she was forced to attend. The Duke became silent, his head slinking to one side of the pillow, going into what Rosamund hoped was a deep sleep. With her fears mildly at rest, Rosamund turned to leave. She stopped again.
Something was poking out of the shadows that made her stand there, too afraid to move. She glanced back to look at it again. It was still there. Unmoving. A metal mask poked out of the darkness. It was too dark to see if it was hanging up on the wall or probed up in some way. She had not noticed the ornament before. The face looked ghastly, with a row of razor teeth, a pointed nose that could belong to a doll and empty, ghoulish eye sockets. Why would the Duke want such a horrible thing looking at him whilst he was sleeping? She did not like it watching her with its metal smile. She decided it was best to leave the old man be, regretting ever coming here but the moment she took another unbalanced step forward she heard the noise of metal sheathing, birthing itself from the scabbard. She turned to see the face moving forward from the darkness. The mask was not an ornament.
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The figure emerged in shadowed black clothing and rusty armour. He walked towards the Duke’s bed without making any noise. No footsteps, no breathing. He moved as silently as a spectre, his empty eyes still aimed at Rosamund, his razor-toothed smile gurning at her. He raised a hand donned in an iron gauntlet, which held a curved blade with some unreadable inscription patterned down the sides. Rosamund paled at the sight of the monster approaching her, unsure if she was having some horrible hallucination. Is he a demon? She managed to break free from herself and scream. She screamed as hard as she ever could, harder than she had ever screamed in her nightmares. Yet no one came. Not even the Duke’s guards were meant to watch her like the angels that watched from above.
The Duke awakened in a coughing fit, eyes widening, trying to scream through his choking. The Demon’s empty eyes remained fixed on Rosamund. Within moments she felt cold iron fingers grasp her shoulder. The Demon threw her into a desk, banging her head against the corner of the table. He approached her, his figure looming over her like an inhuman shadow, his curved blade still grasped tightly in his spiked hand, the nearby candlelight reflecting off it, making the unrecognisable inscriptions across the blade glow a luminous orange.
Behind the Demon, the Duke fled his bed, tripped, and fell to the floor. He was still desperately choking, and tears were running down his cheeks and through his grey beard. Rosamund could feel the blood trickle down the back of her neck. When she moved her feet, her ankle roared in pain. The Demon grabbed her by the hair, dragging her by it. Rosamund could feel the cold curved edge press against her neck. She wished she were back in her room. She missed the monsters in her nightmares, the ones that could not really hurt her. Then all she saw was dust. Dark blue dust.
It was as if it was raining sapphires, a heavy, distorted rain. The grip on her hair loosened and the cold blade drew back like a retracting python. When the dust cleared, she saw another masked man fighting the Demon. Rosamund could only see the back of the intruder, but she did see markings resembling scattered lightning coming down from his right shoulder and across his back, the blue bolts sprawling, illuminating in the darkness. She gazed into the dark thundering night sky until the Demon kicked the figure back, forcing him to turn and face her. That was when Rosamund got a good look at the second intruder and when she saw him, she believed Ana’s bedtime stories had come to life. A Ninja…
Only his lightning-blue eyes were visible from behind his mask, except this Ninja looked different from the ones in Ana’s stories. Half his shrouded head was black as night, yet when he turned the other side of his mask was made of the darkest of crystallised sapphires. The front of his torso was armoured, crystallised sapphire down one half, metallic and pitch black down the other. The silver face of a snarling tiger with short, curved, and protruding horns was engraved into the Ninja’s armoured chest.
The Ninja slammed the Demon against the wall with his dark blue gauntleted arm, but the Demon kicked him away and drew a longer blade. He started taking swings at the Blue Ninja but every one of the Demon’s slashes was met with a swift dodge. The Ninja spun and kicked him in the wrist with his zaffre boot. The blade dropped to the ground and just like that; they were exchanging fists and kicks with a ferocious, inhuman speed that Rosamund was unable to comprehend.
The Blue Ninja grabbed the would-be assassin and spun him around so that they were facing the other way. The Ninja delivered a kick that smacked the Demon against the window, but the demonic shadow kept his balance. The Blue Ninja ran at the Demon and tackled, launching into his upper body. Rosamund watched them as they both crashed and tumbled out of the window, glass scattering across the floor along with the blue dust that still partially floated in the air like zaffre flakes. The sounds of the harsh rain hammthe ered, and it made Rosamund feel safer, reassured that there was an outside of this dark room away from monsters.
She grabbed onto the desk and used it to pull herself up to her feet. Every step sent unpleasant pain throbbing across her ankle. The Duke was on the floor, silent. She knelt to hear if he was even breathing and, to her relief, she could see his plump chest slowly rising and falling... In a hurry, she put a blanket over the old man and ran out into the corridor.
She screamed when she reached the bottom of the stairs; the two guards that the Duke spoke so highly of were lying in a pool of their own blood, a deep red gash opened across both of their throats. An open-mouthed and surprised look was adorned across both of their faces. Whether this was done by the Ninja or the Demon, she did not know.
She ran out into the back garden where the Ninja and the Demon had crashed into. They were still fighting in the thundering downpour. The statues of hooded monks at the nearby garden fountain were watching them, judging with grey eyes. She stood in the rain and watched as the two masked men continued punching, kicking, and grappling with each other.
The Demon was gaining the upper hand. He had hit the Ninja in his armoured stomach and seemed to have winded him with the sheer force and impact of the strike. The Blue Ninja landed on his hands. The Demon pulled another hidden blade from some metal-padded armour around his lower leg. It was circular, with four separate blades curled around the circumference, a metallic star. As the Demon manoeuvred the blade around his fingertips, the Ninja had already stood back to his feet and lunged with his fists. Rosamund could have sworn that when the Ninja hit the Demon, a spark of lightning appeared from his fingers. I cannot be dreaming, Rosamund questioned herself. This feels real. The rain feels real….
Perhaps the two men fighting were all part of her imagination too, but the thought quickly escaped her as she saw the Demon slash through the rain with the blade, the Ninja narrowly avoiding. The Demon then kicked him in the leg and the Ninja dropped to his knees. The Demon put the Ninja in a headlock with just one of his spiked arms as he raised the metal star in the other. Panic immediately struck her again as Rosamund realised the dark truth. I will be next….
Just as the Demon was about to deliver the killing slash, the Ninja released his grip from the Demon’s tightly locked arm. He was looking calm, his eyes closed. He clenched his left fist as small blue sparks started appearing around his pale fingertips and when he opened his hand, the blue sparks became bigger, aggressive, his hand glowing blue. Unnatural shrieks echoed across the garden and broke through the rain. It was as if a storm were swarming around the Ninja’s hand. Then the tiger on his chest and the lightning patterns around his torso began to flash a glowing blue. He reached up with his hand from which blue sparks and streaks erupted from and grabbed the Demon by his metal mask and within seconds, sparks were flying from the Demon’s mask. The Duke’s would-be assassin screamed in just as she had helplessly screamed in that dark room.
The Demon fell to his knees as the Ninja got to his feet, the blue sparks around his hand fading away. He punched the Demon, and the metal mask went flying, splashing through the rain as it hit the ground and just like that, the Demon was no longer a Demon but a man. A man whose face had been freshly burnt down the side from eye to chin. He had dark stubble around his face, short black hair, and a hateful scowl. The Blue Ninja then put the burnt man in an armlock and drew a dagger of his own, one with blue markings that illuminated in the dark rain. The Ninja lightly pressed the blade against the man’s neck. The Ninja’s blue eyes then turned their gaze to Rosamund. They appeared sorrowful. She began to realise that they knew she was there…
“Go back inside!” When the Ninja shouted, his voice sounded inhuman, demonic. Rosamund simply stood there in the rain, staring at him. Unsure what to do.
“You don’t want to see this,” his otherworldly voice persisted.
Aside from the trickling of heavy rain, silence had returned to the garden. She stood her ground, unsure of what was making her stay. The burnt man was grinning to himself, finding amusement in the situation. It chilled her to the bone.
“Please…” The voice was still inhuman, but Rosamund started to realise that the Ninja was pleading with her. She was about to speak, to ask him who he was and if he was saving the Duke or trying to kill him like the Demon, but she could not open her mouth. She was paralyzed. Maybe it was because of the frozen rain or her frozen fear, but she could not break away.
The once-demon thrust his elbow into the Ninja’s stomach and hit him on the side of the head with his spiked hand. The demonic assassin retreated while the Ninja fell into the hard ground. The Demon was now a burnt man ran up the garden wall and leapt over it with grace and disappeared into the night. The Ninja was laying in the soaked grass hugging his stomach, the lightning markings down his back glowing in the hard rain. He pushed himself back to his feet, one arm still clinging around his torso under the snarling silver tiger. He looked back at her, defeat in his eyes and unhooked a small blue bag around his dark blue belt and reached into it, pulling out a handful of strange dark sand. He threw the sand into the ground and an explosion of sapphire dust clouded her vision. When the dust had cleared, she was alone in the rain, the stone monks watching her. She sat by the fountain. They were her guardians now.