🎶 click to play scene track

aterina collapsed against the bed in exhaustion, a sheen of sweat clinging to her skin. She looked like a sea creature swept ashore of the ocean, her dark hair plastered down like seaweed. “Mm, I needed that.”

Darius rose up from between the shore of her thighs with a shark-toothed grin. “Happy to be of service.” He licked his lips, savouring the faint traces of her salt as he kissed a trail along her jaw. “Now how about we get to the part where you tell me why you’re really here?”

“I would’ve thought the past hour would’ve informed you of that, Dara,” Katerina replied through lips swollen and red, trailing wicked black claws along his sculptural back. “And here I thought you were a learned occasso.”

Darius caught her wrist in his grip and brought it to rest softly against his lips. “As much as I’d love to flatter myself that you’re merely here for the pleasure of my company alone, you forget I know you better than that by now.” He reached over to help himself to the decanter of Mort whiskey on the bedside table and poured two glasses. “So come on, out with it.”

Katerina sighed heavily with an insouciant roll of her eyes. Then she pivoted so she was on her side, her nude silhouette coyly obscured by the seafoam of sheets. “You’ll never guess who recently came knocking on the outskirts of the Widowlands.”

“Enlighten me.”

Katerina snatched her glass from him with a smirk before taking a lengthy sip. She ran her tongue over her lips as she held the glass, expectant.

Darius released a soft exhale of laughter before he shook his head. “Does his name start with an A?”

“You’re close.” Katerina’s eyes were alight with mirth that he’d conceded to play her game, amber as her whiskey. “It was none other than your dear lost brother, Dominus.”

Darius halted stiffly before his glass could reach his lips. It wasn’t often someone shocked him and he was eager not to display it. He lowered his glass with another smile. “That’s very amusing, Katya. But come now, who was it really?”

“Oh, I’m quite serious.” Katerina bit her lip, ever the brazen minx, but her eyes betrayed no sign of falsity.

“Katya, you can’t honestly be implying—” Darius trailed off, struggling to infuse the same careless flirtation in his voice to dull the edge of panic. “I mean my brother, he’s—”

“Clearly no longer missing.” Katerina clinked her glass with his. “And what splendid news indeed. I’m sure your father will be thrilled.”

Darius forced a swallow through a throat tightly clenched. “Well, now. Isn’t that something? Unfortunately, I’m afraid this means I will have to bring this rendezvous to a premature end.”

“I’ve upset you.” Katerina pouted, head tilted to one side. And part of him had to wonder if that hadn’t indeed been her intent.

“Not at all,” Darius said as he shrugged on his shirt.

“Dara.” Katerina sighed, draping her hands along his chest to undo the buttons he’d fastened. “Come now, I hadn’t meant to ruin the mood. Let me take your mind off of it.”

“Katya,” Darius’ reply was terse as he detached her arms from him. “You’ve been lovely, but it’s time for you to go.”

Katerina extended her bottom lip in displeasure once more but the message was received. She began rummaging for her undergarments on the bedroom floor. Then she sought the glint of the golden talisman that decorated her sorceress frock and slipped it on with ease, reaching to clasp the belt.

She felt Darius’ hands on hers before she could do so and let him fasten her frock just as deftly as he’d originally discarded it. Then she pivoted round to peck Darius on the lips. “You know where to find me.” She stepped past him towards the door before she stopped, remembering something. “Your mother sends her regards.”

And with the flicker of a feline smile she vanished out the door.

🎶 click to play scene track

Darius took off from the room shortly after her once he’d dressed, an unyielding linearity in his trek towards the Observatory. Once past the hidden doorway, he conquered the steps three at a time until he reached the centre of the room and the obsidian ball that lay within.

It had been five years since he’d seen hide nor hair of Dominus. A mere blink of an eye in his centuries long lifetime, to be certain, but significant enough to infer this wasn’t just another in a long line of his spontaneous woodland recesses before he came slinking back to court.

The last Darius had seen of him he’d been high on hubris in the dining hall, belting out how he would be the first to capture the elusive ice whale. It had been a fool’s errand and Darius had told him as much, but there was no dissuading Dominus once he’d gained a craving for a kill. And so with deep disapproval, Darius had seen him off at the gates and that had been the last of that.

His last knowledge of his brother’s whereabouts had been taken from his obsidian ball where he saw Dominus as a block of ice lost at sea, his prediction confirmed. Though rather than gloat about his foresight, Darius had instead quietly concealed the intelligence from all interested parties. Not that there were many.

To say Darius hadn’t been spending the last lustrum in a tumult of neverending guilt and despair would, therefore, be quite the understatement. In truth, Dominus rearing his head couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time for his plans. His arrival threatened to ruin all the meticulous schemes he’d carefully drafted in his absence, leading him upwards from the doldrums of the castle basement to a much more elevated seat.

What was he to do?

Darius tented his fingers and pressed them to his lips, stepping forward to loom over the obsidian ball with his request. “All-seeing eye, I command you to show me where my brother now resides.”

The orb glowed and projected above it a sight Darius had sorely come to recognise as the rugged outskirts of a coastal village.

There he saw Dominus exiting from the doors of an inn where he tossed a silver coin towards the driver of a hippogriff carriage and climbed inside. It’d be impossible to mistake his monumental build for another and yet, there was something about seeing him so definitively that took Darius aback.

“Already homeward bound are you, brother dear?” Darius asked, stroking his chin between his thumb and fingers.

He was not alone, it appeared. Others Darius didn’t recognise were coming along with him. Two fair-haired individuals of near identical builds were climbing into the carriage too. They weren’t like anything Darius had ever seen before, gallant and pale as a pearlescent pillar in the daylight. They could almost be twins, with their translucent hair and delicate features.

But the first of his brother’s companions were only half the spectacle of what awaited him. He saw the glow of her first, spilling her soft candlelit residue onto the threshold of the inn. The golden girl appeared next, a halo of curls teasing against her shoulders.

Darius stopped to wonder if she was some form of vision but he soon found his throat sapped of air and moisture when he motioned to speak, as though he’d been exposed to the naked heat of the desert. He could even feel, with some confusion, the cool pinprick of a sweat forming.

“Get ahold of yourself, Darius,” he scolded, shaking himself free of his stupor. Still he felt his gaze snap, like a metal to her magnet, to the curvaceous figure as she embraced Dominus outside the carriage doors.

🎶 click to play scene track

Laila stared out the window of her carriage, clearing the fog from the glass so she might look firmer upon this haunted city. The buildings leered at her as she passed, sharp-edged towers carved with dour faces—a dead echo of activity.

Gravissia was a labyrinth—all spindly structures and constricting venous walls that bled a fiendish orange glow, needle-pointed roofs sharp against the molten red skyline. The occassi seemed to build their cities as though they were aiming for the heavens, seeking to pluck the stars free and grind them to dust beneath their heels.

Laila could barely comprehend this hybrid of ancient and alien. Everything was suffocated beneath a blanket of snow, even the gargoyles. The flakes were clogging the streets and the gutters, deteriorating into liquefying slush befouled by filth.

Even with her window cleared the atmosphere was curtained by a dank fog. It seemed in Mortos, even the very air could be toxic—it wouldn’t harm her, but it made the place no more pleasant.

She observed several Mortesians lumbering through the cobbled streets. They wore their stoicism like an enamel coating to their already chiselled visages. A few stared at her as she passed, an amalgam of wary hostility in their eyes. Laila wasn’t certain if their ire was directed more towards herself or her carriage; either way, it made her feel as frail as brittle porcelain.

“Are you alright?” Léandre asked as he took her trembling hand. He was the anchor that kept her moored from the asphyxiating ocean of her neurosis. Lyra seemed far more concerned with polishing her rifle.

“Yes, I can do this,” Laila replied, fighting to keep her breaths from shallowing. She would not be conquered. She would not be overcome. She would face down her fears with the same unflinching valour she always had.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was Dominus who quite embraced his surroundings with a quiet sense of nostalgia. Part of him wished he could’ve postponed this a little longer, staying lost in the depths of the wilderness with Laila in a world of their own design. Such things were children’s fantasies, of course. He knew the call to duty would inevitably come knocking and he wouldn’t be able to resist when it came. He could only hope, when he stood before the rex once more, that it would be the relief of a father he would be met with rather than the wrath of a monarch.

The silhouette of Malborg Citadel loomed through the pea-soup fog, a foreboding emblem. Its structure seemed to melt down the slope like wax from a spilt candle.

When they reached the tall bronze gates and saw the figures writhing within the lacquered metal in spiritual anguish, Laila’s breaths had grown painful. The tide had risen, evicting the air from her lungs with prejudice, keeping her limbs submerged.

The gates opened into the courtyard where an entourage of servants awaited to greet them. They were all animated flesh, walking expiry, and they moved with startling dexterity to open the doors; their putrid visages near nightmare-inducing with rotting flaps of flesh and stark white antlers jutting from their heads.

“We’ve been expected,” Dominus observed, one brow arched. Of course, he anticipated Darius would’ve foreseen him coming long before he arrived. He’d never been one to miss a mark.

“Laila?” Léandre was looking at her calmly.

“I can’t move,” she said, for her limbs had calcified to the spot. Her eyes widened in panic, moving frantically. “Help me.”

Léandre took out an amethyst amulet and fastened it around her neck. He pressed the gemstone to the pulse point between her breasts and allowed it to infuse her with its calming essence.

“You’re okay, princess,” he assured her, his hand soft on her curls. “You’re okay.” Léandre soothed her with gossamer strokes, murmuring sweet words in her ear until her rigid limbs had softened and the rising tidal wave of nerves subsided.

Lyra couldn’t help but sigh. It vexed her sometimes, how coddled Laila was. She’d faced worse horrors alone since she’d taken her oaths.

Dominus was the first to exit the carriage, stepping out into the open air with a deep breath.

“Welcome home, Your Mightiness.” A ghoul stepped forward to greet him with worn and weathered vocals. “His Majesty awaits you.”

Laila wondered who he was before he came to this fate, what his soul might think of his current state. Necromancy had always been a forbidden art in Vysteria, and gruesome besides.

“Igor.” Dominus returned the greeting with a nod. “My father has been expecting me already?”

“Oh yes,” the ghoul confirmed. “And Her Highness has been especially eager.”

Dominus couldn’t help the shift in his chest at the mention of his mother. It would be good to see her again. “Well, then. Lead the way.”

The ghoul folded his hands behind his back and turned in the direction of the Citadel. His dead coevals soon joined him.

“I don’t like this country,” Lyra said in a whispered undertone of Soltongue. “The land is strange and unnatural; the earth is dead, but the buildings roar with life.”

Laila couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“Corpses,” Lyra sighed in disgust, “they use corpses as their serving force. We all know the rightful place for a cadaver is in the soil. To see one before me now, talking, walking, or at least making a good show of it—”

“Lyra,” Laila interrupted, “I understand this world is foreign to you, but I must strongly advise you to disguise your attitude from here on. Let us not forget we are guests here.”

At that moment, Dominus turned back towards the carriage and gestured for them to follow.

Laila took Dominus’ hand as he helped her down to the splintered ground. It felt warm beneath her feet, even through her boots; perhaps one of the most disorienting parts of Mortos. The land beneath them was a dormant inferno, a thousand dozing volcanoes poised to erupt.

The hall felt like the entrance of a gaping maw, spanned with a tongue of red velvet. Laila nestled close to Dominus as waves of moist, sweltering air rattled over them at regular intervals. Laila took in the skeletal beams of vaulted ceiling suspended from above, stretched taut like the spine of some prehistoric beast. The mere sight of it had dread inflaming the back of her throat like the afterburn of whiskey.

The audience room was lacquered in ivory, walls of tusks and teeth so white they nearly induced a chill at the sight of them. Alabaster pillars shouldered the pearl vault ceiling, glittering chunks of black diamond running through their veins.

Lanius Rex was waiting on a dais of preserved skulls, onyx and garnets gleaming in their eye sockets. His throne was just as macabre, and yet he reclined upon it comfortably as though the seat were made of silk or velvet, and not the skeletal remains of past adversaries.

It was an image fit to fill the contents of nightmares, to jumpstart a heart to acceleration. Dominus could indeed feel his heart peak with alarm when met with the sheer majesty of his father’s presence. Yet only reverence, rather than fear, could be seen in his eyes as he stood before the rex and knelt.

“Hello, Papa.” He bent the knee as low as his station required him. He was a wolf tamed, a humbleness compressing his giant shoulders into something more tractable.

“You may rise, my son,” Lanius granted. Then slowly he stood up from his throne and descended down the few steps with his arms outstretched. “Ah, let me look at you.” He took Dominus’ face within his hands with a chuckle. “My boy.” At his height, Lanius somewhat had to stretch to reach his son but he still laid claim upon him with an overbearing possession. “Never a day has passed where I hadn’t prayed Calante would return you to my side.”

“It’s good to see you too, Papochka,” Dominus replied with a warmth of good humour in his voice, “it’s been a moment.”

“Indeed it has.” Lanius stepped back to observe the others who stood behind him with an imperious stare. “And who might be the individuals you present before me?”

“These are my saviours as well as my favoured guests.” Dominus beckoned Laila near. “If I might introduce to you Laila Rose, Crown Princess of Soleterea and Espriterre.”

Laila kept her curtsey light.

“Well, well,” Lanius said, his eyes growing so ferocious in response that Laila immediately stepped back. A prey instinct. “My boy disappears for a lustrum and brings himself home a foreign princess, does he? Well then. Any saviour of yours is a welcome guest here. I shall have the ghouls arrange rooms for this Princess Laila and then you can explain to me more of your adventures in the drawing room.”

Lanius snapped his fingers to beckon a ghoul to action. “Ravenna, please escort our newest guest to the Regina’s Wing.” He stopped to glance over Laila’s garb. “And find her a suitable gown so she may join us for dinner tonight.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The ghoul bobbed her head in deference and turned to Laila’s entourage. “Follow me, princess.”

Laila dithered at the ghoul’s words, playing the fool at comprehension. Her knowledge of Mortesian was still intermediate at best but she decided to conceal such a thing for now.

“It’s alright,” Dominus said in a clumsy attempt at mimicking her Soltongue. He made a gesture towards the rooms upstairs as well as towards Laila’s clothes.

“Alright.” Laila nodded in understanding. It would be good to see herself out of these winter garbs and into a hot bath. And a room would provide her just the privacy she needed. She hoped the amenities here would be adequate. “I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon,” Dominus replied.

She held his gaze as the ghoul led her away.