Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 5 +

"The stones in the mantle were crafted over a thousand years ago. They're the only ones left from the original castle."

Moira carefully thumbed the bricks of the fireplace, ones I had run my fingers across just moments before. The stones were still warm from the hearth burning wildly beneath it. 

My eyes wandered through the kitchen, past the swarm of servants baking away for lunch. I was famished. We'd spent the entirety of the morning roaming the halls, learning the history.

I had gotten lost among the monstrosity of it all. The castle was four levels tall, but the highest tower reached an additional two stories into the sky. Moira walked me through all of them, and I found that the main hall, traditionally a grand ballroom, wasn't the only space that was large beyond belief. 

The two bottom floors were mainly guest rooms and studies to entertain parties. On the third floor, there was a library that was two levels in itself, and it was filled with books that were likely centuries old. 

Each room had a story. A past. A reason for being there. 

Moira explained them all. Some rooms were that of Ceth's past ancestors. 

A mother, a sister, an uncle, a grandmother. All gone- All elsewhere. 

Thresholds were worn with age, others had never seen more than the light of day. Moira told me the stories as we passed them as we made our way to the end of the third floor hallway. 

To say the castle was beautiful was an understatement. Even in the dead of winter, fragrant blush summer roses sprinkled credence tables along the hallway. The smell died as soon as we past into another corridor and were met with a wooden door.

It was the only room on the floor that wasn't a bedroom.

Inside, a large desk sat in the middle of the massive room, lined with lanterns and large silver candelabrums, quills and inkwells, and thick stacks of stained parchment papers. Disorganized half-empty book shelves sat against the walls, but my focus found the French double-doors on the furthest side of the wall. I could see from here the doors led to a balcony. 

A balcony, fresh air, something other than these empty halls.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" Moira asked, and I snapped back to reality. I hadn't heard what she said.

"Yes." I nodded absently. I took my eyes off the terrace for a moment, but she only smiled and continued on about the epic battles the pictures above the bookshelves depicted. I tried to listen, I really did, but my eyes drifted toward terrace again.

Moira stepped in front of me. "Do you... want to see the garden outside?" she walked over to it, pulled back the lace curtains, and opened one of the doors for me. 

 It was like a bubble of warmth and sunlight had settled on the side of the castle. Inside it, there was no snow, no frosted wind. Ivy vines with blooming yellow flowers crawled across the terrace and a willow tree with thick roots dangled over one edge of the balcony. Stepping stones covered the grass in checkered patterns and an arch of more ivy vines sat above a stone seat nearest the wall. The garden was beautiful, and beyond the divergence of warmth and frost, a winter storm was raging. 

"This has always been my favorite part of the castle." 

A jay bird sat perched on the branch of the willow tree, and Moira longed after the sight. For a moment, the dark-haired woman looked so... Alone. Like that lone bird trapped within the confines of whatever magical barrier stood between sunlight and snow. I could only imagine how she felt in a place this big. 

"This place was built over three hundred years ago. Long after War of the Risen Realms. But, Ceth built this when he took power."

Strange how something so warm, so safe could be built by such a person. 

The memory of blood spilling across the stone floors flashed in my memory. My head felt faint. I strolled toward the arch of ivy vines overlooking the snow-clad landscape below, and I inhaled deeply.

I sat on the ledge, peering down at the drop. 

That was a lot farther down than three stories. 

It might have been as much as a two mile drop until the bottom. A cavernous divide lay between the castle and the forest of evergreens on the other side of the bridge we'd crossed to get here. It was as I was peering out over the frozen wood that I noticed the ridges carved into the stone walls of the estate. Simple mantles, maybe originally a path for builders as they stacked brick upon brick upon brick. The ridges formed a ladder from the very top of the structure down into the snowy depths far below. My heart leaped at the sight of them. 

If I were to just crawl over the side of the balcony and follow them down... 

"When did Ceth take power?" I feigned interest. 

And, what war? I wanted to ask. But, she had likely already gone over the history. I just hadn't been listening. 

"His father, Nicholas, before him passed some... six decades ago. Ceth hasn't ruled nearly as long as the other High Lords, but..."

I turned toward her then. "The other alphas? I know there are six realms. Vervale..." I glanced at her to finish for me, but her stare was blank. 

Up until a few days ago, I had no idea anything existed beyond the world I'd grown up in. I'd learned so much in such little time, but somehow, I felt that I knew nothing at all. Moira's dark eyes shifted toward a map that scaled the wall between the two shelves across the room inside. "Nexus, Osthen, Lushwind. Ireodran... and Glalas."

I'd never seen the map before. At the two polar sides of the map were the human realms, and the mass in the middle, surrounded wholly by cerulean blue ocean, was Crescent.

"H-How...?" I wondered aloud. "How did the human realms never know of... all this?"

Moira shrugged but her arms wound themselves around herself. "Magic. Probably. It's... strange." She looked at me. "You really never knew about this place growing up?"

"Never."

"Well," she started. "If it helps....  I never knew of your world growing up."

I guess we both had things that were kept from us. 

"Where exactly on the map is Vervale?"

She eyed me and squared her shoulders abruptly as if maybe, she had given too much away. "I... I really think we should head inside now. We still have lunch, and I have my duties to attend to."

She strolled back through the French doors, and I knew she would be expecting me to follow. With one last glance at the glimmer of hope carved into the castle walls, I went after her. But, not without wondering how one might scale castle walls in the dead of night.

Maybe that would be my way out.