Chapter 163: 163. The Prisoner Beneath The Castle
The gates of wrought iron shuddered under the woman’s fingers, before the ivy that hid the gates began to shrink back.
She drew her cloak tighter over her head, ensuring no one was following, before she ducked beneath the ruins and began her trek through the darkness, shrouded path.
The gates whomped shut behind her and she jumped slightly. It had been months since she made the visit down here. She’d forgotten just how sentient this particular part of the castle was. How the power that leaked from beneath infused every wall, every gate, so much so anyone who walked past tended to steer clear of it, even if they didn’t understand why.
Her fingers trembled as she took the steps up to the old temple, and she halted at the center of it, brushing away months of dust from its surface so she could lean over the trap door hidden under the illusion of a smooth marble surface.
Her fingers dug into the edge of the coronet, spilling blood over the ruby eye at its center and voices, old and new, curled around her in crazed whispers, "False queen." "Kin-killer." "Dark one." "A queen in hiding comes for her rightful place." "Death comes on the heels of a hunter." "Quick. Snap. Snap. Snap. Goes your bones." "Death approaches at the hands of a brown-haired hunter." "She is the fairest of them all."
Her blood dripped from the eye of the ruby and hit the center of the temple.
Purple smoke curved around her ankles and a voice slithered from the smoke, "Who are you?"
She breathed, body shuddering, "The Queen."
The smoke curled tighter around her and though she held her breath, she still inhaled a tendril of it, and felt it circle around her chest, choking her, filling her head, lifting her thoughts from her long, dead heart.
"You lie, wicked child," the ancient voice said.
But the ground underneath her shuddered anyway as the smoke drew away, answering to the power of the ruby in her hands.
And the trap door finally came to view.
She leaned over and pulled without much effort, gagging as the stench of rot wafted high up, teasing her nostrils.
She glanced sharply around her once again before lowering herself onto the steps, one at a time, until she was completely underneath the stairwell, and she let the trap door fall shut.
Old, wild magic thrashed in the air around her, lighting up the torches on the stairwell the deeper she went. She lifted one of them off the scones and threaded on the dusty steps, pushing down the bile rising up her gut as she descended into the very bowels of the dungeons.
The ruby in the coronet flared the nearer she drew to the prison. And when she came to a halt in front of it, she tried not to gag again.
The thing on the other side of the dungeon was no longer a person. Or as it formerly was, a Lycan.
It flinched from the torch, scrambling into the darkness for safety, rattling the chains around its wrists and ankles. "Lysandra," came the dark voice from within. "Have you finally come to give me... rest?"
"Only if you spry for me again," she said coldly.
An animal’s rattle came from within. "The lines have not changed. Your path remains the same. Your actions have only brought you closer to your doom. So long as the girl lives, you will die." A pause. "You will die on the night of Samhain, in one year. And the crown will be broken. And the world with it."
It was the same divination she had received from the demon a year ago. And the year before that. And the year before that. Only then, the demon’s words had been "three Samhains away." And seven years before that, it had been, "ten Samhains away."
Her hands shook, but her expression remained empty. "Can the bond not be broken between the five?"
She refused to look at the demon’s face, knowing there wouldn’t be much of a face left in the rot it had become. "You ask for impossible things, Lysandra. If you must gain the world, you must lose your most treasured possession, as you have stolen mine from me."
The ghostly rattle on the creature’s chest cracked into a familiar voice she sometimes yearned to hear again, had her jealousy not driven her to an unforgivable height. "Won’t you let me see my boy, sister?"
It surged forward, slamming into the bars of the cage, and Lysandra was forced, once more, to look in the face of the abomination she had created.
Half of its face was gone. Where her skin had once been pale as snow, her cheeks rosy and dewy in a way Lysandra had always envied, and her eyes a rare, deep violet that entranced every man Lysandra had fancied, there was only rot now, with maggots slipping in and out of the hole that should have been its mouth. Its eye sockets were hollow and pitch black.
The length of red hair she once shared with Lysandra was gone too, replaced now with balding, decayed patches, and the tatters of the dress she had died in hung from a body that had once been supple and voluptuous, every man’s desire, and was now a limp sack of bones.
The black claws, however, remained at its fingertips, and though most of its teeth was also gone, fangs peeked out of its mouth as it begged, "One time, Lyssssss," it hissed. "Let me hold my boy."
But she knew it was only a ploy to have her come close enough, so she could tear out her throat. Her sister was long gone, and the thing that inhibited her body now didn’t quite belong in this world. It came from the same place the Blood Crown did. The same place all the things that were not of this world came from.
Lysandra stepped away from the bars. "If you have nothing of importance to share, then our business here is done. And who knows, if I die, you might live here yet another century, or millennia, alone, starving, chained, until that body finishes its decay, and even then, you might live for another century, yet."
She turned on her heel and started for the stairs.
"There is something!" the creature shrieked. "There is a way to break the bond!"
Lysandra halted
The creature’s ruined mouth stretched into a grotesque smile. "Ash... in the early centuries, the humans did not use it only to weaken Lycans. They fed it to them in small, careful doses. Day after day. Year after year. Until the beast inside began to wither."
The thing crawled up the bars, chains rattling.
"When the Lycan inside is at its weakest... the bond itself becomes fragile. Vulnerable. On the night of Samhain, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, that fragile link can be cut. One life, severed cleanly. The other four remain untouched."
Lysandra took in her first deep breath in many years.
"Midnight," the demon whispered, drawing its claws up the length of the bars. "It must be exactly at midnight. One clean cut. One life given... so the rest may live."
It let out a wet, rattling laugh that echoed horribly off the walls.
"But be warned, false queen. It is rarely done. Because sometimes... the bond does not wish to let go. And you may lose them all." The creature pressed its decaying face against the bars, black hollows where eyes should be staring straight into her soul. "Tick... tock...Queen Lysandra. Samhain draws near."
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