In the cold dark, she had naught but the lullaby on her lips to keep her safe, more than torchlight, more than its flimsy blaze. Ayarann hummed it to herself, a simple enough song, but with a certain beauty to it, as did all songs that bloomed from a mother’s tongue. That childhood home no longer stood, and the years in that seaside town were the lesser part of her life, now. But somehow, the more that faded in reality, the more time eroded all proof of the past, the memory grew in fortitude in equal measure. When she looked back, Ayarann saw her mother’s aged face instead, and she was no longer the child she had been, and the home she imagined was plain empty space. But the song…
The sun had not risen with her, and already she was on the move again. Here in the bowels, she thought, the sun was but a conjurer’s trick. Impressed as she had been when she had first seen the skies beneath the earth itself, the Nightshades thought little of this miracle. Simulacra merit no praise. Aya saw fit to praise it nevertheless. Down here, the stars, projections that they might be, seemed to shine brighter than they did in the welkin true.
How fortunate that she had not been disturbed the last night. The ruined watchtower had proved adequate shelter, but that was the exception. Just outside the tower she saw the old stone roads, once the pride of the Kingdom of Coloratus, now cracked and overrun with weeds between the faded stones. There was a time when these roads were a joyous sight for a weary traveler, a promise of safety from brigands and beasts, but now the armies of Coloratus were all stationed at its borders, and no longer protected the common folk.
Not that Ayarann had ever known Coloratus before its fall. None who lived there had, either. Neither was their place found above the graven earth, the poor souls spat out of the World-Wound that swallowed Coloratus who knows how long ago and saw it buried in Mahenvort, displaced in time, in position, in anima. But in her time here, Ayarann had learned to imagine beauty, for she would find little in this hellish abyss, this husk world which reflected the ruins of lands long-gone.
Aya avoided the roads when she could, now. She looked down at her own feet, and saw that the green on the stones was not only grass but moss as well, and by her boots vermin scurried without pause. She stepped past them gingerly, making her way towards the fields of overgrown grass, always cautious to avoid any poison ivy; travel, even through the less dangerous regions of the Deadlands, demanded a careful eye, lest one fall prey to the horrors beyond counting that haunted all the lands. Just last night Aya heard shrieks from afar, ones she could not identify.
But this morning she saw no sign of life but for the insects scuttling all around. They never did so without purpose: it was carrion they sought, and of that there was always plenty. When Ayarann saw them, she knew that something was dead nearby. She hoped it was something rather than someone, at least. The vermin grew fat as they gorged themselves on the carcass of this world, as did the crows, buzzards and skullheads that flew high above. More than once Ayarann had seen vultures who were too heavy to fly, and no doubt would soon feed their own kin. Why is it that no matter how long Mahenvort withers, there always is yet more meat and death to feed new life? Was it the Nightshades alone who managed to prolong the death throes of Mahenvort, Seat of Wailing Quietus?
“Are you soft in the head?” Carissa of the Fourth-Synclite had told her when she asked her just that, close to a year ago, having just arrived in the chthonic sphere. “If an Amaranth got off her fat fucking arse and flew down to your Stonetree and named you poor mundane wretches beneath the bliss of Firmamenta, do you think you’d put your head down and say yes m’lady, of course m’lady before you started lapping up her balls? Wailing Quietus, did a lackwit come up with that? We’re very much alive, and this is living, troubled as it is.”
Aya tried to believe that, and at times she did. In the grand temples of the Nightshades, in the cities where law reigned, in the realms rebuilt from ruins, Mahenvort did not seem like hell, or an underworld, or the abode of demons. But the Deadlands…
She followed the road south, deeper into this land of death. When she first arrived, Ayarann couldn’t imagine there being a difference between the rest of Mahenvort and these so-called Deadlands, for all of it, all was dead and grey. But having witnessed villages full of life eaten by the blight that bled from the World-Wound, she understood the difference. Ayarann looked up, to see at last a pale sun, reluctant to shine, and thick dark clouds. She prayed it might rain soon, thinking of the nameless village she left behind. There the crops thrived because of the magic of her Voice, but she could not stay there forever. She had a Melody to find, and could not abandon this duty, even if Carissa’s pleas for her to stay touched her heart. I will return, she promised, forcing herself to smile as she was taught a Blossom should.
She had come this far already. Her bag remained heavy with supplies, and her blade and Voice kept her safe from any monsters that barred her way now. As safe as I’m like to get. She was so close now: just past the withered forest by the side of the road, only some miles away, Ayarann saw the shattered towers of Caerulium. There, she knew, she would find what she was looking for: magic whose complex components and intricacies manifested not by the resonance between spellweaver and fundamental forces, nor represented by glyphics and runes of indecipherable intricacy, but by another form of the language of creation, as song. A testament to the truth that Mahenvort could be different. That it could be more than hell.
For months she had sought it, following whispers in the wind, hints of song that from afar yet reverberated when the world was at its most silent. If she focused, she could hear the sweet flute of a distant aria, a vivid contradiction of a song that was sung in silence, a song beautiful even as lacked a voice to sing it, begged for it, called the daring and the reckless alike to intrude deeper into the devouring darkness. This call a songstress could not reject. It is as if the Melody needs my Voice even more than I need this Melody. Bereft of the Voice, the song would forever be incomplete, lost with no one to hear it. And something so forgotten, so abandoned, so isolated, might as well not exist at all. And the world did not suffer calmly when its most fundamental and everlasting ousia ceased to be, fading and withering. Neither would Ayarann accept that.
She stepped into the forest, and there she was greeted by skeletal trees and briar patches wherein the bones of small animals lie. She unsheathed the sword, and opened her mouth. She sang the lullaby she knew and loved, the one that in her mind was always her mother’s voice before it became her own. Magic was too complex an art to be fully grasped, but there were ways that men could learn to wield it, and for Blossoms those ways were purer, stronger. The same way a child could learn their alphabets through ditties, so could harmonies command the primordial forces of being, even if their understanding could only ever be incomplete.
Magic formed a light upon Ayarann’s hand, flickering in harmony with her lullaby, glimmers of pink that, servants to her Voice, danced around her slender fingers, as wreaths of light. Shadows shied away and gathered at her sides. Aya did not look anywhere but forward: there was much that lurked in the darkness, beasts and horrors, but she was stranger to neither, nor was she helpless. The monsters to fear, Aya had learned, were the ones that preyed in broad daylight, the ones who had no cause to cloak themselves underneath the dark, killing freely, as they wished. So she moved onward, singing softly to herself, that magic shielding her from the grasp of the Deadlands with a mother’s love and warmth. She was not afraid. A Blossom must not fear.
A Blossom must not fear… The thought lingered in her mind as she neared the edge of the forest and could once again see the pale light of the false sun. It was colder underneath its unholy glow than it had been under the shadows. A tree branch raked at her arm, when she was distracted. Had she walked into it, or had it moved to claw at her? Even the trees could not be trusted in lands so blighted. Though here they were lifeless husks, their leaves long gone and their bark the color of bone, they continued to grow to the sides, and towards the grey of what passed for sky. In Fusarishuisen, which Aya knew only from tales, such forests were simply called Ossuaries. She did not fault their reasoning.
Her blood was a brighter red against the weak grey of the tangle. Careless. She was years too old to make such mistakes, too old for the privilege of being naive and stupid. She was all alone here, now, and could not forget that. Now Caerulium loomed ahead. A castle of the old world, though not a world Ayarann had ever known or lived in. Despoiled by the World-Wound’s hunger, brought into Mahenvort, then victim to a second calamity, now swallowed into the Deadlands. Hell has its own hell, she thought, trying to find amusement in that, but failed. Unsure of what to find, she trod across the broken land, and saw the castle’s crumbling stones grow larger before her eyes. Here and there were traces of what had once been a road, but the ruin here was harsher than on the other side of the forest. Outside of the Deadlands, life could almost thrive, safeguarded by the Nightshades. Here, the very notion seemed like an awful joke. Even though Aya knew that this region had once been like any other place in the world, these roads traversed by caravans and travelers, she struggled to imagine this past. This place was cursed from the birth of the world, a gaping wound in the earth.
She passed by bones, felt them crack beneath her feet, and watched deathsmaiden skitter out of the bones. Though small and harmless insects – if grotesque for their numerous legs and bulbous bodies – they disturbed Ayarann greatly. Once they had not existed in Mahenvort at all, not until calamity birthed them some time ago, just as the Deadlands began to spread. They were vermin that fed on death. Not corpses, as carrion beasts, but death itself. The Deadlands were the charnel houses of the world, all worlds: so many had perished here, whether above the earth before the World-Wound ripped them from their lands underneath the true sun, or within demon-scarred Mahenvort, that it was said there no longer was a boundary between life and death. Here the air was thick with ghosts. Aya felt their breath in the chill of wind and heard their whispers in the ashes blown from nowhere, flying through the air towards nowhere. She felt death in her bones, and when she breathed she felt a little less alive than before. She could not linger here long. She was far from the first to brave the Deadlands in search of lost knowledge, lost arts and treasures, something lost – they never know what – that will redeem all this horror. Most found only that they were not so strong as to overcome the death that surrounded them.
She stood before Caerulium’s gates. One half had fallen, while the other remained as if to make a mockery of these defenses. Black and white they were, horn and ivory, adorned by jewels that gleamed the few colors in the Deadlands. Some were scattered along the cracked ground, where the gate had crumbled, rubies making a line like a streak of blood and the sapphires a stagnant pool. Mounts of rubble from the walls piled where there once would be a moat, now dried. Ayarann looked up, melancholy, at the words written in gold on the upper portions of the gate. These wonders by grace of song and light. Whatever else was written there, the words were gone. The grandeur here was now that of a mausoleum. The heart refused to imagine what Caerulium might have looked like, once. To fill it with life and noise would only serve to make the silence more absolute.
Aya stepped past the gate to find a ruined courtyard, pillars bearded by moss, supporting nothing. Nothing remained in completeness, remnants everywhere, doors and gates an absurdity. It was not wholly silent here, monstrosity shuddering somewhere in the dark, but Aya heard the Melody’s call most clearly. Past a pile of rubble, worn-out stone stairs led her towards the song, most of the steps now faded, giving the stairs a uniform, sloped appearance, leading to wooden doors that connected to some part of the castle that should not be. This upper floor should not stand, with no stony support underneath, either pillar or the lower level, but nevertheless they didn’t crumble. The harmony of architecture was easy prey for the Deadlands’ corruption.
She opened the heavy doors, slowly. Though glad not to find them barred, it took all of her strength to move them, and she had to sheathe her sword to free both her hands. She misliked letting go of her weapon, no matter the reason, and her worries were compounded by the realization that if the castle had been evacuated, why would its occupants bother closing the door on their way out, as they fled? Either something now lived here, or the death that befell Caerulium was too fast for reaction. And which of those would be more frightening…? She was relieved when she managed to squeeze past the gap she opened, and could feel her sword’s hilt again.
A relief greater still was the light she saw, when she expected to dive into darkness as she walked inside. Much of the ceiling had collapsed, and the cracked colonnades and walls did little to reassure Ayarann that this place was not about to fall apart, but the weak light of the sun shone through the countless openings, a mercy much welcomed.
Her steps were soft, cautious. Forbidding herself from making a sound, she moved slowly, breathed languidly, felt the cold air nestling deep into her body. And she heard a sound besides the Melody. It was hard to tell from which direction, but it was not her imagination. She stood perfectly still, and the sound persisted, clearer now. Footsteps. How many feet? That much she couldn’t tell. More than two, but that meant very little. Not all that walked on two legs was human, and the beasts of the Deadlands were such disfigured anomalies that they could be just about anything. Aya had seen two-headed hounds secrete blood from their ulcerated skins, groaning as they shambled on three legs that could not sustain their bodies. Others who shared with her tales of the Deadlands spoke of even more gruesome fiends, stories that barred her from sleep.
Ayarann walked towards the source of the sound. More than the whispers of the Melodies themselves, the cries of the beasts were the clearest indication of their whereabouts: the desperate yearning for warmth and traces of humanity drove all manner of monsters to gather around Melodies. Aya had never seen it with her own eyes, but heard tales from adventurers who indulged her curiosity. Few of them still had all of their limbs, but all things considered they were blessed with great luck. Ayarann was like to find the remains of the unfortunate here in Caerulium; resolved not to join them, she kept careful watch over her surroundings. Spiral staircases led her up and up and up, until she neared the top of one of the castle’s many towers.
From its height she could see into the distance, take in the horror of the desolation that claimed the lands. The fate of everything, she reminded herself, should I fall. That thought urged her forward when her courage left her and she felt this was a fool’s errand. It might be one, but she was a fool, Constanze had told her that much when they parted ways with bitterness and bile.
A stone bridge connected this tower with another further ahead, taller and wider. Portions of the bridge had crumbled into the courtyard far below, the sight of which made Ayarann regret looking down. She hesitated before making the crossing. The sounds from before were louder now, but she had ascended the entire tower without finding any life. The noises had come from above, she was reasonably certain, and now a pained growl had joined the footsteps she heard. Where? She would not be careless enough to cross without a clear idea of her surroundings, and all the threats there. But, then again, what choice did she have? She took her first step onto the bridge, feeling the brittle stone beneath her boots. Not an encouraging sensation. The path ahead was not so narrow, thankfully, but the railings that once were there had deteriorated, so only portions remained, and Aya was not wont to trust old, rusted iron.
Something stirred above. Atop the tower she had just climbed, something nested, drew closer. Aya turned back to face it, and saw a huge beak peering out, slowly, but with no head behind it, only a long and slippery tendril. The beak opened in three parts, hissed out a grotesque sound, but it was not a threatening cry; instead it sounded like choking. The creature did not reveal itself, and made no aggressive moves, but Aya did not turn her back. She watched it slither towards the edge, dragging itself with its many long arms that ended in fingerless hands. That was what she had heard, Ayarann understood. The creature walked aimlessly, its steps reverberating across the tower. Though it appeared to have no head, Aya saw slits in the middle of its body, opening and closing. They did so in tune with Aya’s own breathing: could this be how the creature heard? It looked pained, despite having no expression. From the way it moved, its body bloated and leaking a yellow ooze down the walls, it seemed to be close to dying, if this could at all be called a life to begin with.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and the slits opened for a longer time, now. It pulled itself back, away from the edge, with some difficulty. “I would sing for you, but…”
But that would bring every creature here to me. The Voice was a great gift, one she was thankful for, but it was not a reliable sort of magic, certainly not fit for battle. Until she came to Mahenvort, the Voice was little more than a novelty, but here its power could soothe the beings twisted by this corruption, and Aya deeply wished she could share this peace with all, with this beast that agonized before her. But that serenity would be only a brief respite, not salvation. Only a power like that of the Melodies could mend the Deadlands, infested scars that they were on the fabric of Mahenvort, fraying it until it threatened to rip, and what then would happen to this realm, to the surface…?
At times like this she wished she could hide deep inside herself, as she often tried. To silence the agonized sounds directed at her was beyond her ability. When the world pleaded for succour, she wished to grant it. And, though she could almost accept that Mahenvort was alive, the creatures in the Deadlands were from another time, beyond the reckoning of years. They had forgotten color, they had forgotten light, they had forgotten language, they had forgotten music. They had even forgotten themselves and their own forms. Some of them have forgotten that they once were men.
Breathing a gentle light into life, she saw a long shadow cast on a staircase leading down. Light did not reach the bottom; braving the unknown, she made her way down. Her surroundings were less ruined here than near the entrance. The ceilings remained, and the only illumination came by way of discreet arrow slits. But even then, shadow prevailed. Webs abounded on the corners, and more than once Ayarann had to cut through them to get past. She found bones caught in the webs, and skeletons by her feet, all in scattered pieces. A skull there, another tangled in silken strands, but the remnants of their bodies were harder to identify. Mayhaps they died ten years ago, or a hundred. If they were self-styled explorers, their boldness was unrewarded, as the riches of Caerulium had not been plundered. Only a fool would have risked braving this ruin for mere gold and gems, but even in Mahenvort there were always fools. The Blossoms might have made efforts to stop those attempts, but the Nightshades were of a pitiless disposition. They were not guardians of the people of Mahenvort but wardens of their Cathedral of Dread.
The stairs led her to an intact treasury, just past a barred iron door, its lock easily shattered by magic, small shavings of metal falling onto the floor. The dust had robbed the gold of its glitter; it lay in bars atop a long table, in coins inside cabinets, sharing space with elegant jewelry. Diadems and rings and necklaces, now bereft of color. Ayarann walked past them, and followed the Melody. It was louder now, louder than ever before; her heart beat fast, and she had to remind herself not to run. But how could she not? She had stood before a Melody before, and alongside the Nightshades that graciously hosted her she had even recovered a Melody from ruin. But she was alone now, and the memory made her all too aware of her vulnerability. She felt brittle like the rusted iron in her way. Not content with devouring the world, Mahenvort’s blights made ruins of the survivors, too, scattered their pieces with indifference. Small wonder Carissa had grown half-mad and craven.
The corridors ahead widened and narrowed and branched off into paths that circled around themselves; Ayarann was left wondering if the curse that befell Caerulium had twisted its very walls, or if the emptiness and devastation simply robbed the castle of any sense it once made. If there were people, if there was life, perhaps Ayarann might have been able to identify the purpose of each chamber she passed by, what it was that the corridors led to. But now it was a corpse, and how easy it was to forget that the dead had once lived. Here we abide thee, who art as once were we. Such words were inscribed on the front gate of the great mausoleum of Cartasinde, where the bones of emperors were cast into a pit along with the bones of paupers and whores. But who halted their day to reflect upon it…? Corpses had no meaning and no reason. They simply rotted.
She found a light when she reached a dining hall; huge portions of the walls had collapsed, and on their stone Aya found marks of claws and scorch. They were not faded as the damage she saw elsewhere: even now ashes remained on the floor, in the middle of huge splinters of wood. Aya inspected her surroundings with caution, and found traces of footsteps on the dust. Many, in fact. She followed them to a ravaged, broken door, and just past it she saw the remains of a monster; a reptilian body left by a flight of stairs, its head some meters away. Worms ate at the beast, burrowing holes into its skin, and a corpsescarab made its nest in an empty eye socket. Aya shoved her sword through the insect, leaving a purple liquid on the edge of her blade.
One last time she ascended a flight of stairs, no longer able to track where she was within the castle. She found another slain beast lain along the stairs, half covered in flies. Serpentine like the other, but Ayarann counted two dozen small limbs along its misshapen body. She stepped past it gingerly, and again delved into the dark. She no longer had to focus on the Melody anymore. It resounded loud and clear, harmonious and pleasant. And as she drew closer, she felt the stench of death and rot.
A large, ill-lit hall awaited at the end of the darkness. She cast a faint pink light, and flinched when she saw the immense figure of a snake, fangs bared. But it did not strike her. It lay completely still, and only upon a closer inspection did Ayarann confirm that it was dead, the source of the nauseous malodor, a pungent smell that gladdened her for her light breakfast. She stepped back, wondering how such a huge creature could have been killed. The corpse was decayed enough that there was no telling the wounds and the putrescence apart. One of its fangs was missing.
Seats were scattered all over the hall, most of them crushed under the serpent’s immense body. Aya’s light sought the Melody in the dark, and when it shone upon a wooden dais, something gleamed in response, and the song grew louder. She had found it. A red crystal rested upon an altar of scraped stone, and there a smaller monster rested, its body coiled around the gem. It looked like the dead creature not far from there, but far smaller, with no eyes upon its face, only a huge maw. It growled when Aya approached, lifting its head, but it stood guard, and did not attack. She approached the stage, and standing before it she understood that this had been a ballroom, once. A place where once there was music, even now the memory lingered, with no one there to hear it.
She tripped on something; leaning against the altar, a body. On the torso, a massive fang was lodged deep into the rib cage. A man, Aya guessed, but there was no telling for sure. A sword had fallen next to his right hand, the steel painted with the crimson of dry blood. A mutual kill, though this explorer had cut down more monsters along the way. Ayarann reached down, and took his bag, light and almost empty. The smaller serpent had shied away from her, and when it opened its mouth to growl, there were almost no fangs there, and the ones that remained were shattered. Next to the altar, scattered teeth, each no larger than Aya’s fingernails. A child? Calamity spared none and knew no decency. Blind, what could it do but hear its kin die? It did not latch onto the Melody greedily, but instead looked to desperately extract some comfort from it.
Ayarann reached for the Melody, and in response the fiend lashed at her, but its movements were slow, weak. More than anything it merited pity. But what good was pity now…?
She sang. The song was once in her mother’s voice, and Ayarann absurdly found herself wishing she could be home again, but the home she knew as a child had long since ceased to be. She repeated the few notes of the lullaby, a simple tune, but soothing. When she sang it to Carissa, the girl would close her eyes and hold back a soft cry; the serpent could not shed tears, but in response to the song its body relaxed, and it loosened its grip on the Melody until it finally let go. It lifted its head, mouth open close to Aya’s face, but she did not feel afraid. She knew it would not harm her. When the song ended, it slithered away, headed towards the opposite side of the hall, slowly, painfully.
I wish I could do more. I wish this meant more than a moment’s respite.
She reached for the Melody. On the crystal, runes shone in gold. Those who knew how to read those runes knew how to bring to life any song, and with it, magic. Magical, musical, though they were now beyond her comprehension, Aya couldn’t help but smile, staring at the gilded runes. They were proof that even the Deadlands had not always been this silent, broken grey, but a land of colors and music.
I did it. It should have made her feel proud. Instead, after moments of satisfaction, she felt hollow and alone, for she was not meant to do this by herself. Sighing, she steeled herself for the long way back. It was the first time she made the journey with no one by her side, and she realized, when she looked at her side, smiling before remembering she had no one to share this triumph with, that all she felt was cold, even as she tried to lull herself into peace, as only her mother could.
The Rose's Torn Petals 