Upon the moonlit flagstones of the highest tower crowning Calbridge Castle, there swirled shadows. Like kites severed from lines, the shapes darted across the floor, some colliding into others and plummeting below, as they did every night for the past few years.
Avalyn Loneblight, the Royal Sorceress of Drisia, swung open the tall stained-glass windows and gazed across the castle grounds toward the cliff off to one side, hair flying in the wind that swept across the precipice.
A sun-cracked, rain-bitten statue of Draedona stood alone on the crest, surrounded by gravestones on all sides. Scores of ravens circled above the statue in a grotesque whirlwind.
A smile curved her wine-red lips. "Searching for souls of the dead, O harbingers of death?" whispered the sorceress. "Alas, there is none left."
The only answers were their harsh cries, half-drowned by the howling wind. The birds circled there aimlessly for days. They neither hunted, nor slept, but only searched around, for here the very air blew heavy with the dark sorcery. King Krugmann's spies had brought news to her that no other cemetery in the land was in such macabre chaos as this one, and the cause would simply be its proximity to the castle.
The ravens knocked into each other when their bodies grew weary and eventually plummeted to their deaths. Shrivelled up corpses, heaps of dark feathers and light-boned avian skeletons had piled over that of humans.
And when a full moon such as tonight cast its silver rays through the windows at a certain angle, their silhouettes would reenact the same tragic tale of pointless death across the floor of Avalyn's tower, reminiscent of a show of shadow-puppeteers Emric had once taken her to in Glasswolf city.
Every dawn, soldiers and slaves from the castle would march out, faces masked against the stench and cleared out the dead birds, but more would be added before nightfall. Naught of the carcasses would go to waste, though. Bones and organs would find their place amidst the grim merchandise of practitioners of dark arts in distant cities, or some gloomy soul might one day write with a quill fashioned from those feathers. At least the poor servants were making some coin. Avalyn had given them free reign to do so, despite the king's protests.
On her order, one of them had brought her a raven skull. It now adorned her neck, its eyes studded with obsidian and fitted to a thick silver chain. Neither was it a sorcerous charm, nor did she wear it for its morbid beauty, but as a reminder of a victory well-earned.
A cluster of birds, tangled together with their wings, joined the pile of the dead. The invisible chains she grasped shook and grew stronger with each of Draedona's messengers dying.
Is this what victory feels like?
From being chased down by hired killers and spending nights in a shack with a leaking roof, she'd gone to be the one holding the reins of all sorcerous matters of a kingdom, reversed death itself and raised an army only ancient Drisian tyrants could hold a candle to.
Not yet. The wizened face of the High Sorcerer from the academy flashed in her vision. That man still occupied the highest chair amongst the sorcerers, taking credit for her hard work, printing his name in gold letters where it should have been her name upon her papers.
'Centre of academic research in magic, sorcery and arcane arts,' they called the academy. Her fingers clenched around the balcony railings.
Her victory would be complete the day she would level the academy of Byton to the ground. Burn it down to ashes and choke the High Sorcerer with it.
"Sorceress." A single knock fell on the tower door and snapped her back to reality.
Despite the voice coming muffled from over the heavy-panelled doors, the noiseless movement of the figure outside, Avalyn knew who it was without having to turn, for who else would have the courage to show up at the dead of the night to meet someone who reanimated corpses for a living?
With a smirk, she strode across her study. Perfectly organised bookshelves lined the circular walls of the tower, a neatly arranged desk stood facing the cemetery down below.
She seized a silver letter-opener from her desk on the way, the ends of her dress trailing across the floor, and swung the doors open.
And there stood the honored general of Drisia, like a pale ghost in the moonlight. Emric.
His silver blond hair glimmered almost white, his skin an eerie alabaster glow in the dead light. The sharp edge of the letter-opener found its place at the crook of his neck before he could speak. His pulse throbbed against the cold blade.
"Must you always greet me with such hostility, O great sorceress?" he asked at last, struggling to take his gaze off her.
"I find it nostalgic." She made a grand show of trailing the blade slowly down his neck, watching the goosebumps erupt on his skin and hearing his breath catch. "So General Reylan barely has time to spare nowadays, eh?"
A serious look crossed his face. "...Murdering royalty is a delicate game to play, as I'm sure you'll understand."
"Don't believe I do." The sharp point poked just below his chin, forcing him to take his eyes off her and stand with his back erect. "I'd had little trouble burying bodies by the lake-- or better even, toss them into the water."
Murder was easy in Midaelia. Loads of carriages crashed into the lake near Kinallen during snowstorms, when the surface would be frozen solid and some unfortunate coachman would mistake it for the road. Beneath the ice, the lake was brimming with corpses. A few more would make little difference.
Emric gave her a wry smile. "It would've been simpler if I'd only wanted to finish off our benevolent king."
"You wish for him a fate worse than death," finished Avalyn for him. "But why?"
A dark smile stretched his lips into a grin. "I want him to rule forever. An undead, invincible ruler is a gift I wish to bestow all Drisia, as a token of gratitude."
He avoided her question. He always did whenever this matter arose.
And it irked her. She knew of his every hidden motive, every sordid deed he'd committed to get to where he was now. Yet the one thing he hadn't ever disclosed was the reason behind his seething grudge against the Drisian ruler. It could not be something so petty as jealousy over her.
When Avalyn looked up, he gave her a beatific smile, as though he hadn't a clue.
Very well. Tonight, I will make you talk.
"You must be exhausted," she told him, knowing quite well that an exhausted man would hardly do the labor of climbing all the way up here-- only to say a few words and go back to his bed. "Best you get some sleep, General."
She removed the letter-opener from his neck, a thin red imprint left by its fine edge, relishing the look of longing on his face the moment the blade left his skin.
Avalyn began closing the door, but he stopped it with his arms on either side. "Aren't you missing something?"
She raised a brow. "And that is...?"
"An antidote." He leaned close with a sly smile, a hand reaching out to grasp her chin. He raised her face to his. "Why, you have poisoned me again, my Sorceress."
And to think, half the folk of King Krugmann's court were yearning for this cheesy a man; innocent souls who knew naught of what went down in the dungeons, nor what he truly was behind his charming smile. Avalyn tried to shoot him the most unimpressed glare she could muster. "Damn you and your riddles!"
He gave her a prim little bow. Oh, how I long to wipe that smile off your face.
Fingers clasping his collar, she pushed her lips against his still smiling ones. He let out a hum of pleasant surprise before kissing back with twice the enthusiasm, arms snaking around her waist and pulling her closer.
Avalyn knew not what to call this. Her hands slid into his hair of their own accord.
Alone in this foreign kingdom, with no place to truly call home, no one to trust and only afeard slaves to keep her company, he was her anchor to sanity. Surrounded by people who only spoke the harsh, Drisian tongue, his words in the language of her homeland brought her peace.
Even now, as his lips slid off hers to break the kiss, he whispered sweet nothings in her ear, with that mellow, rustic lilt that reminded her of a pleasant little village amidst rolling plains, leaving her homesick for a place where she'd never been.
The next moments passed in a blissful blur; a rustle of her skirts as he hoisted her up in his arms and into another kiss, the doors slamming shut behind him and the cries of the ravens outside swirling higher into the night.
✦✧✦✧
Pertheran wished the Royal Sorceress hadn't been such a perfectionist about her craft of raising the dead.
Had she not been so, he would be but a reanimated corpse without a mind of its own, and thus freed of the torment of having a conscience. But Avalyn was no ordinary necromancer to stop at just that.
He had a heart, be it fuelled by sorcery and pumping corrupt blood through his dead limbs.
And thus he knew whom to choose; the man who once freed him of his misery, or the one who dragged him back into it--into this cursed existence from where there was no escape.
The keys jingled and the cell door squealed open. Commander Karyk merely gazed at him with his dead eyes over a tattered blanket he clutched. He had the look of a man who had given up all will to live, and for good reason.
"On your feet, quick," Pertheran ordered him.
Occupants of the other cells cried out for mercy, emaciated hands reaching out to grasp his feet, pleading. General Reylan loved to stomp upon them with his studded boots. Pertheran moved away from their reach, eyes averted.
"What now?" asked Commander Karyk.
"Obvious, isn't it?" Perthrean gestured to the hatchet at his belt, making sure every other guard in the dungeon heard what he said. "General Reylan gave you two choices. You've refused to become one of us. Therefore, sacrifice it is. New lot of corpses just arrived."
To his horror, the Midaelian smiled. Leaning on the wall for support, the man got up.
"...Thank you," he said. "Praise be to the Unnamed."
With that heart-wrenching smile on his face, he let the private fit the handcuffs around his wrists. "Which God is that?" he asked, trying to sound casual as he led the man by the chains down the hallway.
Commander Karyk chuckled, shaking his head. "Just some local God from the village where my camp used to be. Folk say he never answers any prayers, nor grants any wishes."
"Yet he does now," said Pertheran once they were out of earshot of the other guards.
His head snapped up in surprise, but Pertheran dared not to look him in the eye. His focus was upon making his way through the mind-boggling labyrinth of the hallways of Calbridge castle.
Thankfully, Pertheran knew his way around the place.
Years of running around behind Reylan and enduring his cruel games taught him when the guard duties changed with the toll of the bells, exactly when Reylan, now promoted to the rank of General, would retire to his quarters outside the castle, and the arrival of the wagons of supplies at daybreak.
And it was all going to pay off tonight.
One of the troubles was already out of the way. The general was nowhere to be seen tonight. He must have gone back to the barracks early. As Pertheran emerged into the upper floor hallway, it stood noiseless and deserted, and would remain so for the next few minutes.
He glanced back at a confused Commander Karyk.
"You must have lost your way. We passed the sacrificial altar long ago," he said.
"Then why didn't you remind me, sir?" Pertheran grinned at his puzzled expression, which soon turned to horror as realisation hit the captive Midaelian officer.
"...No." He stepped back with a clatter of chains. "Don't do this. That ...creature will flay you alive."
"Good thing that I'm not alive, eh?" He unlocked the shackles and stowed the chains behind a vase in an alcove. "Move fast if you don't want both of us to end up in that dungeon--on the same side of the bars this time."
After that, there could be no reasoning.
"I'll find you a change of clothes, so they won't recognise you right away," explained Pertheran on the way, as he took turns and sprinted down stairwells, "luck's on your side, sir. General hardly discloses the identity of his prisoners. When peasants from the next village arrive with the supplies, keep close and hop onto one of their wagons. A couple dozen for you to choose. Aye?"
When he looked back, tears were streaming down the sunken cheeks of the commander. "Why do you take such a risk for me? I killed you!" he said, voice breaking with quiet sobs, "with-with my own hands."
The hallway filled with his sobs, despite his best attempts to stifle them. Pertheran had never thought a war-hardened man, who did not give in to threats, starvation or torture would break down with guilt over killing someone so insignificant as he. Yet here he was, crying like a child.
"No." Pertheran gave him a bitter smile. "You didn't kill me, nor did that poison-tipped arrow. This I've realised from my time here. My fate was sealed from the day I was made to enlist and prove my loyalty to the Crown."
He gently took the old man's calloused hands into his. Numerous scars lined his skin, wrists bruised from the chaffing of cruel chains and ropes.
"Folk like us are born to be tossed into the fray like cannon fodder, sir. But you thought me worth saving. You wished to take me to a healer. You ended my pain when I was beyond divine help." Pertheran sighed. "...For that, I thank you. If the world calls me a traitor, so be it."
Behind him, across the glass window panes of the staircase landing, glittered the first rays of the sun, encasing the young man in a halo.
✦✧✦✧
"When I said go to bed, I didn't mean mine," said Avalyn, grinning as she turned to face him.
Stars glistened in his eyes as Emric gave her a weary smile. "Yet here I am."
Clothes lay sprawled across the polished floor of the bedroom perched on the highest level of the tower, wind whipping at the curtains around the bed and fire crackling in the hearth. Moonlight flooded the bed from the glass dome overhead, the scene of the stars above slowly coming to focus as the sense of euphoria wore off her.
Bare limbs a tangle of sheets, he lay there, fingers gently brushing her raven hair, now come undone into a flowing, dark cascade. His other arm around her back, he held the sorceress close as though his life depended on her.
Folk were more honest in tired, late night conversations, and that required no knowledge in sorcery to utilise.
"Let's leave this place...when this is all over," he said abruptly, severing the chain of her thoughts. "We'll go somewhere across the Drakhall mountains. I'll find us a nice house there."
When this is all over. Avalyn let out a quiet laugh. "Only, this would never be over. Our sins weigh us down to the abyss, love. There aren't any happily ever afters for folk like us."
Emric propped himself up on his elbows to meet her gaze. "One would think the world owes us some peace after all this suffering. We've endured enough, haven't we?"
She didn't answer.
With a rustle of sheets, Avalyn pulled herself to her feet, and parted the translucent curtains around the bed. Looking back, she saw disappointment in his eyes. Hurt, like a victim.
That's what he believed they both were. Avalyn was not so delusional as he, for she knew the blood staining her hands was not easily washed.
A gust of cold wind swept across her bare skin, blowing back her hair. One step away, and she missed his warmth already, be he delusional or a twisted murderer, or simply a victim after all.
Perhaps I'm the one who's poisoned.
"Answer me, Emric," she said, hugging herself. "What's the true reason behind all this? You serving Krugmann for decades, nodding to his every whim despite your hatred, seeking me out and forming this army--it's all part of a bigger plan. What do you seek? Power? You wish to rule an empire?"
"I care nothing for power." Emric looked at her for a long moment, the giddiness of before vanished. "Same as you, Sorceress. I seek vengeance."
"Too vague an answer. And too common. Every other street thug wants that."
His eyes glinted dangerously in the starlight, almost making her take a step back.
"Is this why you invite me so generously to your bed? So I spill my secrets?" he laughed pleasantly. "Oh, then I should keep things secret more often."
She bit back a chuckle with a stern look. "Using a spell would've been easier, really. But I suppose I needed some entertainment."
"This is all I'm worth, my lady?" He swayed, hands on his chest in mock hurt. Kicking off the covers, he strode up to where she stood at the window, and placed his chin on her shoulder. From the windows, they had a clear view of the carts of supplies which had begun to roll in.
"You probably believe I do this all simply because I hate Midaelians, don't you?" he said.
"They burned your father at a stake before King Krugmann took you in. That's reason enough to hate."
"Yet not enough to slaughter everyone with Midaelian blood in their veins. I am not that blinded by rage, dearest."
Avalyn gave him a questioning look.
"That night, all the folk of Larton did was set the fire and finish the game. I hardly blame those foolish peasants." he said.
"King Krugman killed my father."