Authors: P. Clinen
"Where has she gone?"
Crow took a moment to register the question. "The girl? You're asking me?"
"I can't help but think it," replied Edweena. "You mortals. Can it be that you really just disintegrate to dust?"
"It would seem that way to me as man... Surely your years as a vampire have unearthed some truth about this supposed afterlife."
Edweena's sapphire eyes swam with sorrow as the rain tore down her face. "This, I do not consider an afterlife. I am just like you, only with more years at my back. The idea that Madlyn has ascended to some eternal paradise is as much a flight of fancy to me as I'm sure it is to you."
"I'm afraid I cannot offer much in way of consolation," said Crow. "For I am certain that I will die. You, however..."
"I know."
The seconds poured onwards. Edweena spoke again. "Where will you go?"
Crow thought a moment, as though such an idea had never arisen in his mind. "I do not know. I am content to find that out when it comes."
Inside the coach, where the mood was just as heavy with sorrow, Arpage gazed out the window. Having been further crammed against the wall by Libra's impressive rump, he sat hypnotised by the downpour.
"That was well played, Arpage," said Sinders. "Given the circumstances."
Arpage twitched from his trance, "Circumstance? Oh my, by nature of the event and nature of my now stunted instrument, I say yes."
He looked at his broken bowstring, then at Libra as though imploring for an apology but she did not respond. Attempting to adjust the ruff about his neck, he discerned a sudden thud and the coach came to a shuddering halt.
"Are we there?" asked Comets.
The jester looked out the window, the great frontage of Tenebrae Manor looming before him confirmed his suspicions. "We are!"
Though the coach had stopped, the thud came again. It was as though something was beating on the roof above them, something heavier than rain and those inside became uneasy.
"Something isn't right," hissed Libra. "Usher you twit, what is going on out there?"
Her response came in the form of the carriage roof bursting open; the clawed arm of a wood golem came whistling through. Arpage squealed like a child and threw the door open and, stopping not to observe the fate of his companions, ran, arms flailing, into the house.
The golem stared down at them from the hole in the roof, wasting no time in taking another swipe at the helpless passengers below. The rain poured into the coach as the rest scrambled to exit.
Crow had dismounted his horse and was fighting off an entourage of beasts with his sword.
"Get inside!" he cried.
Pertaining to the state they were left in by the cowardly composer, the mighty doors of the manor stood wide open. The golems pursued with an unusual speed and the Lady Libra, being of hefty proportion and lagging fitness, struggled to reach the entrance. Accompanying this was the rain soaked swathes of her heavy dress and she was soon forced to feebly beat away her attackers with her umbrella. This she performed admirably, until a wayward golem escaped her notice and hooked its arm around her neck in a stranglehold. She tried to scream; breath cut frantically short, she attempted to free herself from the monster's grasp. The beast was wickedly strong and just as Libra began to fail, she felt the air rush back into her lungs. Edweena had leapt at the wood golem and clawed the thing to submission with fang and nail. Libra sat stunned at the gesture of selflessness displayed by her old friend.
"Go!" cried Edweena.
Lost for words, Libra rose to her feet and delved into the safety of the mansion's walls; Crow and Edweena following in tow. Usher locked the doors fast.
"So aggressive," gasped Sinders.
"And faster..." replied Edweena.
24: Aubade
A rush of panic enveloped Bordeaux as he crashed into the drowning wake, an adrenalin that cloaked him in a salty embrace. Twirling about an ever-shifting axis, he fought for his bearings against the violent current. The initial shock had erred him into a stuttered inhale that filled his lungs with a stinging pain. Such sharp daggers of pulpy water filled him with the sensation of a long lost memory - the sea.
The waves tossed his exhausted body like a rag doll; he felt the incredible weight of fatigue hauling him into the depths. Once or twice when his head broke the surface, he tried to open his eyes but his flaming hair lay matted across his face and extinguished his vision. Hoping to jettison excess weight, Bordeaux tried desperately to remove his maroon coat. The ocean had soaked it to his skin and he was unable to tear it from his arms.
Consigning himself to fate, his energy failed him, though it seemed that the sea had grown tired of the taste of his struggles. Tumbling from the reflective crest; a white cap bloated with waxing gibbous, the gorged moon hurled him from the tide.
Like a weaning babe, he gaped at the air and gripped his fingers into the sands to ensure their existence. The murky film of the monumental sea slid up to caress him again, as the waves crashed onto the shoreline. Around his sunken head they crawled, the waves stretching for him, trying to haul him back into oblivion.
Bordeaux lay motionless, still of limb - his heavy breathing the only trace of life. Although he felt the nagging threat of high tide swell dragging him away, he was too exhausted to move.
His sufferance had been of a potent poison; never had he felt so drained. A small influx of energy mustered within brought Bordeaux to his hands and knees before he clambered to his feet to survey his environment.
The beach spread either side of him and coiled into toothy cliffs at his lateral horizons, opening wide to engulf the moonlit bay. The light of the moon teased with the shadows, an accentuating sharpness that distinguished even the smallest grain of sand, the smallest seashell.
The crimson demon stood bewildered. What had happened? Where was he? He trudged forward as a somnambulant, kicking the dunes beneath his weary steps and disturbing the bustle of tiny blue crabs that scuttled in their traffic on the sands.
Libra; yes, he remembered Libra, a face of bridled fury boring into him. And then...
The dune grew sharper in its incline and soon Bordeaux was once again on hand and knee, crawling to the summit of sand to get a better vantage point of his locale. The grass grew long like reeds about him, their celadon stalks rustling softly in the ocean breeze.
Bordeaux thought he could hear wind chimes - their resplendent carol drifting through the tide in glorious percussion. The music seemed the perfect partner to the gnarled trees that stood bare and stooped; beaten by sea, glass whistles in a sculptured Thule.
Bordeaux sank to his haunches, soothed immeasurably by the seaside lull; it was not long before he drifted to sleep.
Sleep came to him in drifts. The cold gusts of the dream toyed at him, pulling his mind this way and that, as though he were merely a puppet in a carnival show. All colour fled from his thoughts, all save that grey and green of the beach. The celadon washed over him like the notes of a piano and filled his dreams with recollection. Lady Libra and her magical prowess; Bordeaux had not realised the extent of it. She had banished him, somewhere far from Tenebrae Manor. He dreamt of her hands waving before him hypnotically and for a moment, recalled the pain he had felt tearing at him. It had been an unbearable affliction and, on remembering it, he kicked fitfully in his sleep. How could it have been that Libra had such ability - ability that could throw him from dimensions and maroon him at any impossible distance from home?
His mind went black again as he plunged in a deeper period of slumber. Bordeaux felt his ears fill with the distant cry of the savage. The tribe beat at war drums and the light of a fire pierced apart the darkness. Though wood or flint did not kindle this fire. Its core was aglow with that beautiful heart-shaped talisman Bordeaux had found in Libra's secret room. The flames burned with shades of red, amber and green. And around the great fire, he could discern the twisted shapes of terrifying monsters.
The wood golems danced an ancient ritual about the flaming heart, which lit up the ghastly deadpan of their faces. Those expressionless eyes bulged with blind malice and, from their heads, they tore at the branches that sprouted. The wooden bodies ripped the sticks and roots off their bodies and beat them together as they shuffled a slow dance around the wood heart. The sinuous shape of claws faded into existence about the heart, though they were, in fact, the branches of a mighty tree. As the golems danced, the tree grew until it towered over them, the wooden heart ablaze in its trunk. Roses blossomed along the branches and from various points, vines dropped to the ground below. These tendrils slithered about the roots - the dreaming Bordeaux watched as one constricted itself around a nearby tree stump and hauled it from the ground. A stump revealed itself to be the head of a new golem, the body of which was wrenched above ground by the noose about its neck.
The wind had increased when Bordeaux awoke at length. A certain freshness in the air revived him as such as he was able to stand up again. It was then that he saw that the portion of beach on which he stood was in fact a sandbar, a sort of natural barrier dividing the tumult of the sea from a still inland lagoon. Though their similarities were obvious to the naked eye, Bordeaux felt strangely unsettled from his vantage point. To his left, the sea roared restlessly and shifted evermore in its being. The lagoon on his right, filled with the very same salty water, lay in pristine tranquility reflecting the sky like a mirror. The mangroves cut inverted patterns on the surface of the pool, while the clouds whispered across a canvas of stars.
Overwhelmed as he was, a realisation had dawned on him; the threat to his home, the onslaught of beasts that had placed the livelihood of Tenebrae Manor in doubt - it was internal. The great gem that he had found in Libra's possession; he had read of it in Rune's book. It was the heart of that ancient magic, the black rose tree. The wood golems were merely trying to retrieve that which belonged to their creator and it was Lady Libra who withheld it from them.
Across his tired face Bordeaux fashioned a grin and cursed his ignorance. The strange happenings in the forest, the numeral increase of monsters,
the ascension of Lady Libra to the apex of Tenebrae's hierarchy
- they all coincided perfectly. Libra has not overtaken him on her own merit - that powerful talisman had endowed higher magic prowess onto her! Bordeaux clasped at his skull in anger; it had been Libra who had brought peril to Tenebrae Manor. She had thieved that treasure and hoarded its powers for herself alone.
The wind paid no mind to his revelation; the demon stood at a loss. The answers were his but how helpless he was in this exile! How futile the knowledge that revealed itself to him! Would that he could beat upon the dunes with his fists, although his attention was presently arrested. The sea breeze had ushered in a change felt not by Bordeaux for ages.
He looked to the lagoon that stood bruised in the purple twilight of the setting moon. The leaves of the mangroves shone with a fiery brilliance, the twisted ruggedness of their muddy branches accentuated by the reflection of a light long foreign to him. Bordeaux turned to the sea and was awestruck.
Teasing the waves with golden highlights, the dawn poured onto the beach and it was not unlike the coveted painting that hung in his chambers back at the manor. But this was reality observed; Bordeaux squinted his crimson eyes and saw the sun rise for the first time in centuries.
25: Edweena & Crow Quarrel With Libra
For Edweena, it was the opportunity wasted that frustrated her most. So much as it seemed to linger about her stormy person with the loveless impressions of rain unrelenting. An opportunity that, had she indulged upon it, would have seen her any amount of leagues away from the disintegration of the mansion that confined her. Dragging her down with it toward crumbling foundation, Edweena felt more than ever before, a predetermined binding to this place - this place called 'home' through gritted teeth. Were she to pursue the harvest of her dream, she must surely now wait for a timelier hour. It had been Bordeaux that she had called upon through the sufferance of such internal anguish but pertaining to his costly vanishing, she had only herself with which to wallow in her brooding; and it was the challenge of channeling her anger towards a more fruitful solution that Edweena found most difficult.
She had been thankful for Crow, the one who had provided her with some consolation in wake of such mounting melancholia. Yet it was obvious to her that he lacked the wisdom of years. In Bordeaux, she had another eternal refuge from death with which to transpire the similar struggles of a life forever locked in its twilight. Edweena considered Libra; her oldest friend with whom the early years of her damnation had been received with some joy. The vampiress observed the way Libra coped - through means of suppressed denial and lust for dominion over what was still obtainable to one of her stature. But Edweena could not be pushed into these realms of the oblivious; a heightened sense of being had her constantly questioning her existence, a trait that she cursed.
Yes, the bats had flown and she was not amongst their black leather flight; Edweena felt now that responsibility beckoned her. Although she wanted to turn her dusky head to see where the bats had flown, she was instead called to protect those few who were her friends and the many whom she considered weaker than her. She had resisted the calling, ignoring the outstretched arm that would pull her from the quicksand. But the consideration of her decision had been made more difficult by the ruining of her favourite drawing room on the third floor. It had become so overrun with vines that she was now unable to gain entry.
This occurrence had driven her to the armoury of the household, a rusted hovel wrapped in stone and buried deep in the maze like topography of the manor. It was here amongst the disorderly regime of rusted swords and time eaten shields that she mused upon her sufferance. It was a cold and indifferent cave, not unlike those other moth-riddled rooms that populated the manor. When Edweena had properly lit the room, she had been as a child gazing at presents. Each weapon personified the sharpness of her angst and it was the deliverance of the sword strokes she proceeded to swing that brought release to her anger. She had chosen a sword less brittle in its archaism and, observed only by the faces of shields hanging on the walls, she was applauded as her stealthy arm threw the blade into a deadly rhythm. The silver sliver of the rapier cut the air and flowed like ribbons and, being so deeply entranced by her imaginary fight, Edweena was startled to see Libra standing at the doorway.
“Oh, my lady. I did not think anyone else…”
“Let us just forget the formalities, Edweena,” said Libra in a surprisingly soft tone.
“Indeed, Libra.”
“What were you doing with that old sword?”
“I supposed it might be beneficial,” Edweena replied. “To fight away any threats. Those monsters seem more aggressive…”
Libra nodded empathetically. “That is a good idea.”
They stood silent a moment, their eyes darting about in avoidance of eye contact.
“I, uh, I wanted to ask – why did to rescue me from that beast before?” queried Libra.
The vampiress shrugged. “I would not abandon a friend.”
Edweena resumed her air swings, the blade whistling an echoing song.
Libra felt a compassionate throb in her chest, one she was not used to acknowledging; the idea that someone would put themself ahead of another. The fact that she had been spared by what was a strained friendship softened her heart further.
“Thank you, Edweena.”
The vampiress did not turn to face Libra for fear of revealing a smile, yet she shrugged again in response and grunted with each sword swing. Presently she spun about, half expecting the Lady to have departed from her presence but still she stood there. The corner of Edweena’s mouth upturned as she proceeded to the pile of rusted swords and threw another at Libra’s feet.
“I don’t suppose you would honour me? They are dull, I assure you,” she said.
Libra slowly stooped to retrieve the sword in her hand and she appeared instantly ill at ease with the weapon. She observed Edweena’s lithe body with a jealous pang of her former years. There had been a time when they were both of equal stature.
“I, I couldn’t. Not anymore.”
Edweena rushed towards her with a belligerent swing that Libra had no choice but to block. The swords rang with a piercing pitch that echoed for some time as Edweena smirked venomously at her stunned opponent.
Libra felt her blood boil with a zeal for dominance. She could not be beaten now, not in any faculty. She returned with her own smirk and laborious swing of the sword. A stealthy block from the vampiress absorbed the blow and she leapt back swiftly and eyed down Libra.
“Do you remember when Malistorm taught us to fight?” said Edweena.
“He told us ladies should not be so helpless,” laughed Libra.
They flew at one another again and the swords, in spite of their dilapidation, rang through the armoury with the shrewdness of newly tempered blades. The friendly battle was grossly one sided, pertaining in part to the restriction belayed by Libra’s charcoal dress standard and physical sluggishness. The ability of the gorgon was desperately subpar, having rusted away with inactivity in similar fashion to the weapons the pair held. Libra could do little but block Edweena’s swift cuts, whilst her own attacks were predictable and laboured.
The vampiress progressively forced Libra backwards, until only a few feet stood between them and the stonewall.
“I had forgotten,” said Edweena between swings, “That you are left handed!”
“What of it?” Libra grunted and absorbed another volley.
“They say a left handed swordsman is doomed to fall – for they cannot guard their heart!”
With intention of sealing victory, Edweena took a further swing, one more violent than before. Though no sooner had she let fall her blow did she feel some strange resistance.
Her sword remained upheld in mid-slice, Libra’s hand held aloft with quivering fingers shielding her with an invisible magic.
“Well, may I beat you to the punch, that the heartless need not worry about a heart,” said Libra. “I find that sorcery serves me now.”
Libra could see her opponent sweated with frustration. Edweena exhaled her vexation as the sword she held turned suddenly to ice and shattered to pieces on the floor.
The women backed away from one another. Flushed a perspiring crimson, Libra gasped for air as she adjusted the disheveled curls of her dark hair. Edweena gritted her teeth from her thwarted attempt of relegating Libra back to her former echelon. Her blue eyes turned to a certain wall adorned with axes and mail and she retrieved a weighty axe for herself.
“Axes?” said Libra. “Surely one scuffle is enough… I am exhausted.”
“Not for you,” replied Edweena. “As much as I’d enjoy it… This is for another purpose. My favourite room is choked with that obnoxious overgrowth. I’m sure you’ve noticed it smothering our home, though I’m not too sure what the view is like from way up in your fancy chambers.”
From another shelf she grasped a more estimable rapier embedded with brilliant onyxes and, leaving Libra in her wake, made for the door.
“Well, then I bid my luck to you,
break a leg
,” muttered Libra.
The vampiress allowed Libra to have the last word, for she knew
that
was a match she could not hope to win.
The Lady gorgon huffed to herself and stamped her foot to hear its sound reverberate about the room. The lower of her cherry lips thrust forward in a pout and, removing herself from an akimbo stance, took for herself her own axe. Though lighter than the one Edweena had taken, she found the thing manageable for her own strengths and left the armoury in the darkness left behind by the snuffed candles.
Libra’s tread became an aimless shuffling between rooms. That she intended to return to her quarters was known, yet it was the journey manifested before this destination that inhibited her progress. And, coupling the apathy towards walking this considerable distance was her crestfallen disposition; so that, when she may have previously crept like a cat or sauntered like a proud pelican, she instead trudged with a jaded gait.
The passage that stretched from the armoury to the stairs unfolded in the darkness and appeared more like a tunnel than a hall. It was lit only at its ends by two candles weakening in their sconces. Like black satin, she drifted through the requiem of the halls and it seemed her melancholic sighs were the very energy that propelled her dreary body forward. The axe swung lazily by her side, occasionally snatching a reflection of light on its sickly sharp face from whatever change came in the intensity of the shadows. Minutes continued to tick by and Libra felt that the grip of her dictatorship over the residents of the manor weaken with the passing time.
She had reached the end of the armoury tunnel and bemoaned the sight of the stairs she now had to climb. Previously, she had been able to call on Madlyn to undertake such mundane errands. It was true that the girl's death had had a sobering effect on Lady Libra, although many would say that it was her losing a tool of servitude rather than the loss of a personal friend that grieved her.
The summit of the stairs gave way to the more elegant ground floor of Tenebrae Manor; Libra stopped for a moment to absorb the magnificence of the foyer around her. She leant upon the handle of the axe, brushed dust from her thigh and drank in the wondrous decor of her ruinous home. The cobwebs that hung from the chandeliers muted the baroque colours with a dusty veil that soothed the restless Libra. This was what she had wanted, the ruling of this mansion, to be queen of her own castle. Regardless of the dismal isolation that came with it, she had wanted it. And she had grasped it for her own - could it be that she was to lose what she fought for?
The restless frustration of her musings was joined by the shadow of company that appeared suddenly in the room. The apparition had been gliding swiftly towards an opposite door until, on observing Libra, checked its path and strode towards her.
The arrival of Crow brought the paramount of her bitterness to the front of her mind, something in the green of his tunic made Libra sick with repugnance. A mutual disdain for one another had kept previous engagements between the pair at a low, for both considered the other pretentious, with such insults being shared verbatim.
"My Lady, I was on my way to see you," said Crow, tipping himself into a bow that had to be forced from his mannered being.
"Can I not buy a moment of respite, Crow?"
"Such pleasure cannot be afforded at present, I am afraid."
"Then carry on and be swift about it," Libra drawled.
Crow had appeared hasty hitherto but Libra's uncouth belittling of him brought a vengeful sluggishness to his actions. He sauntered towards a rather ugly chair, leant upon its side and folded his arms.
"I had wanted to collaborate a plan of action, miss. With regards to the dire circumstances befalling us," said Crow, scratching at his chestnut curls.
Libra chose to stare absently about him, her bloated apathy taking on the form of disinterest.
"And why do you care so much? You don't live here."
Crow looked bemused. "I live in the same forest. Under the same trees, the same night. Please Libra; let us work together to bring order to this place. Let us make a plan!"
"For?"
"You cannot be serious!"
Libra smirked; childish as she knew her actions to be, the chance to fluster the wood hermit amused her. She tilted her head in mock pity and gave a pout that sparked anger in Crow.
"This house is disintegrating, the forest is overrun with violent monsters - you have already lost young Madlyn to this plague. Not to mention that other human that escaped from Sinders' grasp."
"One more human to go, I suppose," replied Libra.
Crow sighed. "I am ready to ignore that remark; I implore you, Libra. Take a stand. You want to be the leader over us all? Then deliver us from this!"
"You're the echo of a cymbal, Crow. Do you not think I know of all this? What would you have me do?"
"I have tried to like you, Libra. Respecting your rank is hard enough. I do not know what Malistorm saw in you; surely it is obvious that Bordeaux would have handled leadership better. Why he has not, can not, challenge your post baffles me - but that is now a futile matter."
Libra felt her hand tighten around the axe handle.