The Princess of Wrath

Chapter 14 - Part IV: Maw of the Void

In the depths of the mountain where the Silent Keep was located, there was a deep cave that had been forgotten over the centuries. Originally man-made, that place was to be the epicenter of absolute holiness: in the times after Berelith Ithryl and the discovery of the Old Goddess's corpse on the Black Ice Mountain, religious priests proposed to move the eldritch body to that strategic place at the epicenter of the Empire, but after long and arduous debates, the idea was finally discarded.

This cave was accessible from one of the unused rooms of the southern castle of the fortress and required a relatively short walk through a narrow grotto to reach the main chamber. But current residents of the Silent Keep were unlikely to consider exploring it as only a very limited number of people kept knowledge about the existence of that place.

If they did, they would be met with the unpleasant surprise that the sacred cave had been desecrated in the worst way imaginable: countless bodies of men and women immobilized with iron stakes in the ceiling and the ragged, damp walls.

That macabre configuration had been made in order for the blood in their bodies to flow freely through open wounds and natural orifices, either sliding down the walls or creating a natural crimson precipitation, to form a pool of a very small depth of a few centimeters.

Diana Belmont was lying on that crimson lagoon, naked and exposing the scars on her body that recounted hundreds of battles. She was to blame for having turned that place into a sanctuary of impiety flooded by the blood and tears of those individuals who had been prisoners in the fortress for months and years...only to be used unpredictably by the blonde knightess for her wicked ritual.

She had not only returned to the Silent Keep much earlier than Roland might have speculated, but surrounded herself with the necessary silence so that no one would disturb her. That was the only moment when she could be one with the deepest corner of the Cosmos and look straight into the Void.

She was smiling divinely with her eyes closed, like a child restrained by a mother's embrace... An embrace similar to the one she was giving at that moment to a severed head; the head of a young man who had died with utter terror immortalized on his face, as if his soul had been frozen in time to experience unimaginable horror for all eternity.

"Where are you, my dear Asura?" she asked softly, her voice echoing throughout the poorly illuminated place by the lit candles placed in several holes in the walls. The smile on her face did not match the emptiness she felt in her heart; not even having killed the owner of that head in the vilest and cruel way that she could think of had not been able to console her. "Where...?"

Minutes passed and Diana's sinister meditation was never interrupted; not because of the unbearable ferrous smell and rottenness that abounded in the local atmosphere, nor because of the constant dripping of moisture from the stalactites and the little blood that remained to escape from the corpses through their holes. The loudest sound there was that of the steady and calm beat of the blonde knightess' heart; a heart as black as an unforgivable sin.

Only after the arrival of a strange sound coming from the grotto did Diana open her eyes, knowing perfectly that noise and its source.

A woman entered the main chamber of the cave and made her way by dodging rocks and corpses arbitrarily scattered on the floor. She reached the edge of the bloody pool; her thick boots brushed against the maledict, tainted water, as did the bottom of her pants. The trench coat she was wearing was open and the belt dangling to expose a dark skinned, athletic, half-naked torso, covered by a tactical vest that only partially protected her breasts and the sides of her abdominal regions.