Rosalynde had never been one believing in destiny, nor had she ever sustained the need to seek out the astrologers claiming that all the answers of the unknown doubts had been hidden in the stars.
No, that was for those who couldn't face reality, for those that hid in the presence of veracity.
And yet words failed to form on the tip of her tongue, rolling back down her neck, dying between a barely suppressed chuck of humorous laughter and an insidious remark.
For all she knew he'd been lying to her from the moment they'd entered the Expectancy Chamber - and yet something told her that he hadn't. That he had no reason to fool her - but she wasn't one that could be fooled with tempting words.
His mask betrayed nothing. An insurmountable wall that would have not fallen down even against her modern antics.
No. She wasn't in the condition to push it any longer. The edge had already been touched, and there was no reason for her to sacrifice her life like this - the occasion to serve the Crown in its final form would have arrived.
But the day hadn't still dawned on her.
She broke her stance, eyes pointing towards the pavement while the cold crept under her skin like a serpent. The words spoken from the Black Judge like a rainfall of needles piercing her mind and tearing apart her memories.
Her father had died nineteen years ago. She'd seen his body, mauled by the blades of the Detrian Republic decay by her mother's side in their home. He hadn't replied to her calls as she shook him, hoping to wake him up from the eternal slumber he'd fallen into.
The memory of his eyelids gradually freezing while his flesh turned black still vivid in her mind. She could have painted it like a master craftsman working on its craft, recalling each detail, each shadow the furniture cast inside those walls as the few rays of sun penetrated the barricaded windows while searching for a way to escape from that hell.
Funnily enough, the memories related to her mother were nothing more than a series of empty remembrances flashing inside her head. No emotions, no heart wrenching agony at the sight of her mother's gutted stomach.
The empty bowls of the kitchen rocking on the table as they got pushed by the gusts of the winter winds felt as nothing but a mere eloquent memory, so were the howling of the winds, like hounds unleashed all over her house. They seemed to bite each stone, spitting it out with unprecedented violence.
But all that combined hadn't stopped her from mourning the dead.
She'd learned to distance her mind, to halt the emotions from haltering her future actions - but the fury inside her heart wasn't of the same opinion.
And now it raged, like a caged wolf who'd just been sold to the highest bidder, destined to be kept captive inside golden cage for the rest of its life.
"Why tell me all this? What are you to gain from this?" A simple question, announcing what she knew would have been all but a simple answer at the end of the day.
The Black Judge laughed at that, a cruel timber a knife fending the air made Rosalynde unwarily straighten her back.
"Everything has a price. Every unaware gesture, every spoken word. I gave you something to work on, and now you have all you need to start digging out a past that this world has long buried in a sea of blood," his words weighed more than a thousand of corpses on her back, more than all the kills she'd accumulated thus far.
But there was something hidden behind it, something that he was waiting for her to grasp, something he'd laid in between the revelation.
A Seeker never offered a deal without pondering on the outcome, nor did the gesture ever come out of a pure heart, young and ready to be crushed like a bloom in its prime.
An eye for an eye, a son for a son, a price for the truth.
She was in debt now.
"What do you want me to do?" She asked cautiously, rubbing her thumbs across the rest of her fingers to fight off the growing cold.
The Black Judge got up from his throne, his height forcing into submission all other shadows, Rosalynde's included – her head dropping low, a few rebel locks of hair falling to the side. He slowly made his way done the pedestal, a light dragging on weight could be heard as he moved. He walked with a slight limp but did not use the crane to support himself; surely to not look weak in front of the three other Seekers.
She kept her head down, and felt Cleia mimic her gesture, but she couldn't say the same thing for the man on the other side.
An inquisitive gaze appeared on her face as she studied Grey. His broad shoulders hidden by the coat seemed calm, even if deep down she just knew that out of all the emotions he was feeling at the moment – there was not a single serene one present in his soul.
He was maybe growing more restless than her, and the confirmation arrived after Black Judge briefly halted in front of her, his heavy breath fanning from afar her exposed neck. She saw a wrinkled but yet well-kept finger appear from under his black mantle, a golden band glimmering in the dark before it disappeared once more from her view.
A gelid sensation pressing on her neck froze her on spot.
"At the moment you mean? Oh, just you to listen to the phantoms of the dead," she regained her breathing after the ring grazing her neck vanished, leaving a chilling sensation making its way down her spine.
"You know that's not what she asked." Grey tucked his left arm under the right one.
"You seemed displeased, Hector? Didn't you appreciate the gift we sent you?" That made Rosalynde turn her head to try and meet his gaze.
The Black Judge snickered, overly amused by the situation that he'd created all by himself.
"Quite the opposite," the somewhat unpleasant grunt that escaped the Seeker's lips felt familiar to the ears, just a ripple breaking through an ancient rock, shaking the earth to the core.
She was certain she'd heard that baronial timbre somewhere before.
"How cruel of you – if I recall correctly hadn't you two a deep bond both in and outside the magistral home?" A tingling sensation started tickling Rosalynde's palms, that subtle feeling she had from the start when she'd met them both hadn't been a mere fragment of imagination.
"If it'd been an object I would have asked your son to send it back still wrapped," he replied with a daunting cheerfulness.
"My son will be ruled over when the right time comes, for now I'll let him wonder free," Black Judge ended that conversation with a snap of fingers, recalling everything to its primordial, imposed order.
Everything turned black once more, and the room plumbed once more in into the antechamber before hell's gate.
"Before we let you go. Wouldn't you like to know what happened to your real father?"
A loud clutter suddenly came from under their feet, the sound of gears turning mechanically and the one of the gears fitting perfectly together made her loose her foothold, the strength in her legs failing her at last.
Rosalynde dropped on her sane thigh, clutching her contused one with a brutal force, as afraid that a mastiff sent from hell would have emerged from the depts of the earth to rip her leg off and take it to hell with him.
The pavement under her started moving forward, a hidden mechanism distancing her from her party at the centre of the room and closer to the where the remaining Seekers sat.
"Your answer?" The voice of the Azure Admiral emerged as a breath of fresh air into that sea of darkness.
"My father was a hunter that got killed in a repercussion of the Detrian Republic against the Rowlian Empire," the more she forced out those words, the more her mind started confabulating more and more doubts, each one bearing their claws.
"Your father was – and still is an attentive man. If only he had not ruined himself after associating with her, he would have been the author of many revolutionary ideals," words like those meant nothing to someone like her. She cared not for him, she held no desire over that speck of dust that he liked to weigh enough to be called a bargain chip of information.
"Veritas?" It sounded more like a question rather than an answer, and the uncertainty laced in her words nothing more than a boulder barely sliding down her throat. She'd connect the basic academic A fine laughter broke the air above, a single flame broke free behind her back, her shadow coming forward in a weak ancestral dance.
"The one who started it all – the original mastermind behind the origins of the first Verity," Grey's voice hit her soft, like a breeze soaring above the sea waves blessed by the summer sun.
He appeared beside her, the bright edges of his coat glimmering against the far way flame. She made her gaze follow the golden buttons till the collar hiding his neck came into view. He was looking at her, without any form of contempt, without any disdain.
He was looking at her. Not past her, nor beside her, right inside – all while offering her a help hand. He'd found a key, and without forcing his pulse he'd insert it in the middle of her chest and where her heart laid.
Once more her gaze travelled down, contemplating the gesture he'd offered her, making seconds turn into evanescing minutes as she kept on looking at his extended hand.
Why help her? Why risk angering the Seeker in front of them both? And yet her thoughts melted under his unmoving, strangely caring gaze.
Stern, but through her twisted eyes. She felt her soul soar back atop of the river, her chest a musical symphony with her heartbeats as main solos and her breath as helping hands. Lost at words, lost in a world that was dangerously close to explode like a mine on a battlefield.
Then, after what seemed to be hours lost inside his eyes, she made her gloved hand fall in between his fingers. His, which without thinking twice locked around hers gently, pulling her towards him and back on her feet.
He was there, he was still there trying to do something to help her.
"You said my father got entangles with a woman," She uttered under her breath, now rough and daring.
"I know, what you're going to ask me, daughter of the Southern Shield, raised in imposed segregation in the rough and unkind Northern Lands," she took her time studying him, somewhat believing is mask would have fallen off.
"I do not go by those names, Seeker," however she knew deep down why he'd called her that.
Her heritage, her blood seemed to boil at the mere mention of that name. An unspoken rule awakening what had always been there, always with an ear pending forward, always there to spur her forward in that endless cycle of overruled authority.
He was pulling strings lost in time – strings she had no intention to find nor to pull.
She would have burned them all as soon as that veiled truth, one of many, would have resurfaced back to the world they'll had been born it.
"You will find out when the time comes." Black Judge raised his hand, telling her to come for one last time.
She obliged, Grey's lingering touch a sweet yet dangerous memory left behind. She approached him with a stance fit for a monarch of battles and in reply he forcefully grabbed her chin, gripping it as he studied her for a closer angle.
"Remember my words you foolish child. Attention to her who bares she blood of the original founder, for her destiny is far greater than mine, or yours." He jerked her face backwards, but she did not move from where she'd chained herself.
She felt naked in his presence, a small pebble ready to be picked up by the river bent, smoothened, maybe even loved before being used as a skipping stone to pass time.
She was a chess piece, a simple pawn since birth, but there one thing she'd learned to manipulated. And that had been the red strings of fate themselves. She would have made them slip in between her fingers before capturing them all, and knotting every single one until her desire would have been suffocated.
She would have become the rightful hand aiding the one and true power.
The Black Judge retreated in the comfort of the shadows his protectors, his obsidian robs untraceable any longer after the flame behind her back died once more. She barely heard her breathing, and yet the two heartbeats behind her seemed to grow louder than the bells of Daunting Cathedral on Haywire's parting attendance.
She shouldn't have brought her informant, but that had been the will of the Seekers, And who was she to deny the will of such devils?
Making both hands disappear behind her back, she clenched them until the color of death seemed to ashen in front of her ethereal, feline, smile. She would have act like always, she would have faltered no more.
"What do you want in exchange of all you've given us up until now?" She tilted her head in the alluring darkness, tapping three times her left foot, trying to mimic a sort of induced boredom.
Laying the base would have given her some advantage in rearranging the new chess board. By the silence that soon followed her statement the three guests knew that the Seekers were seriously taking into consideration her words.
"We know what we want," the red flame of the Crimson Marionette seemed to blind her in the sea of darkness.
"Will I need to plead for the price? Or will I have to rip your tongue out to make you talk?" Rosalynde threatened without hesitation.
"A favour. That's what we'll require from you. When the time comes we'll call for you. And only then we'll decide what to do with you," Rosalynde felt like a golden fool's chain wrapping around her neck with each spoken word.
The Crimson Marionette had achieved in what Rosalynde knew had been the real objective of the talk. She'd evocate a feeling she'd buried under her flesh, a meek bundle of emotions.
Fear, the most primal emotion that all humans had since birth.
Fear, yes. But even a silver of undeniable admiration.
She couldn't see her red robes, nor her bloody mask in that eternal penumbra– and yet that how her mind seemed to see her. Ever burning, like the fire of vengeance the Seeker had become famous for.
"You took way less time than you usually do. This does make me wonder if this is all but a scene – you had in mind the price to pay from the start. Did you not? You didn't call here just to give us answers. You called us here because you want something from us," what seemed to be a half sneer loaded with a good amount of humourless laughter.
He sounded different from usual. Bolder than ever, all knowing like a sage of the highest academical societies the empire had a knack for promoting far and wide. And fearless like a starved lion unmuzzled and free from his unjustly forced iron cage – ready to rip apart his what had once been his former cagers.
He was the lion, and the Seekers his enslavers.
Rosalynde tried to find him in the darkness beyond, warning him to stop, but it wasn't her that found him first. He'd gotten there before her.
"Silver." His hands found the end of her back, delicately telling her to step backwards as he gently yet forcefully took the reins of the game out of her hands .
But that was the only gentle thing present in that moment in his body. His breath once laboured now sounded calm, but not the calm she was used in him using; it was hazardous, borderline between sanity and the chasm of insanity she too had gotten used while swingling her mind on both sides of the face reality seemed to possess.
She wasn't using his usual tone of voice of his, the tone Rosalynde couldn't stand coming from anyone – especially from him. It was like he'd been tasked with explaining the rules ant kind of game to a child. Praising left and right everything that seemed to give him a decent answer.
His slick, polished new expensive shoes like a pendulum, perfectly even, always on time slid against the pavement. His covered shoulder, broad and daring enough to hide Rosalynde's figure from the four devils in front of them.
"Let's play some more," Grey whispered in the darkness. His tone crude, uncaring and yet still ready to play.
The Seekers went quiet once more, before a new flame decided to appear behind their thrones. They were all standing now. Briefly alarming his partner as he opened his arms. Rosalynde could only interpret that gesture as an invitation to continue whatever was soon going to hit.
They then moved, lowering themselves from their thrones, just like a celestial entity descending to earth for the final blessing to the land. Without speaking they circled both Apostles, caging them with the sound of dragged robes sliding across the floor.
"What is it that you want from us?" The Azure Admiral tried not to giggle between her breath intervals, but that resulted extremely difficult for her to do.
"You still haven't given us the most crucial answer. I wonder if it's on purpose – or if you simply are ignorant about the truth." He taunted them all, pushing their buttons to the limit, right before they popped of the vest.
A chill crept down Rosalynde's smile. She didn't know why – but it felt as if all had started smiling at his words.
An eery smile. Like hers, like the one of a grown predator who'd already set its eyes on its prey.
"Why is Verity doing all this? Why are they trying to take out of the scene every single drop of Imperial living blood? Is this what you meant to ask us, Hector?" She didn't know who'd uttered those words. The incense around them had gotten to her mind. Rattling it like a log thrown into the rapids of a river.
"You know the reason," it wasn't a question, he'd answered for them.
"We do indeed, and deep down you know too."
"This Empire was founded on main things. Many pillars that have never in time vaccinated before the seekers of truth, that, until twenty years ago with the rise of the original Verity. The antics and morality have changed, but the final objective never did. Verity will try and achieve what the original one tried to."
"And what was the original plan?" Rosalynde found the words to speak under that oppressive atmosphere. And in all realty she wasn't even sure of she'd actually spoke those words out loud.
"This Empire can only have one ruler, and Verity was well aware of that. They objective was to grab control of power by installing a puppet. You get what we're saying aren't you?"
It then dawned on them, it'd been so clear from the start.
By acting behind the curtains they would have manipulated their puppet, a living doll for them to use till its inevitable end. But not everyone could ascent the throne. That had been the testament law issued by the first emperor. Only the blood descendants could claim the Rowlian throne for themselves. And in order to steal it there could only be one way out.
A civil war, with Verity acting as saviours carrying the spark of hope that would have made the uprise detonate.
They were preparing for a war of secession.
"You know what's the only ingredient to start for a conflict like this?" A flame, a bright white flame bearing their same blood.
The pretext could only be one – and so the object they were searching for. Except it wasn't an object, but a living being.
An heir born from the Emperor, but not necessary bore from his counterpart.
A bastard heir.
"I suggest moving faster than you are now. Otherwise we can assure you, that the prize will ever not fall into your possession. Time too, is running out," those where the last words proclaimed before the flames died for the last time.
When Madame Hellenia opened the chambers doors, only three remained. The Seekers had disappeared aided by the darkness of their words. But they'd left a gift with their departure, and that was the unmistakable realization settling deep into their bones.
Manslaughter would have hit, soon to be followed by the devastation of the land, by the time crimson bathed under a pale fair moonlight.
They were running out of time.