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“ It’s time to wake up, dear scarlet knight .”
The garden is overgrown with bush and bramble, knotted weeds and prickly vines sinking its claws into the foundations of the castle’s stone. There is a statue collapsed in the middle of the courtyard—
No, it is not a statue.
Stirred by the gentle voice, it sits up first, hinged at the waist, straight-backed and not yet human. The vines that pinned it down now fall apart with the slightest effort. One by one her limbs awaken, moving here and there, armor clinking ominously in the silence.
Fingers dig into the loose soil beneath and, with a grunt, she gets to her feet. Already she feels more alive. Less like she has spent a hundred years asleep. But something is still very, very wrong.
Where is she?
“ Over here .”
Her vision is limited by the slits of her helmet, but she sees well enough. There is a cairn not too far away from where she laid, spotlighted by a leak of moonlight breaking through the thick cover of leaves overhead.
Against it leans a large sword, reaching up to her chest in height and nearly as wide as her shoulders.
Drawn by the voice she steps forward. Then, more instinct than thought, she hefts the blade before her, giving it a few experimental swings. Rust flakes away from the crevices in her armor and she finds that she moves easier.
Then the memories strike through her. The blade—Thorn, she remembers—clatters to the ground. She crumples over with her head in her hands. A scream tears through the garden.
There is no response or reaction.
A hand brushes across her shoulder and she flinches away. There is no one there, but she swears she sees a flash of yellow in the corner of her eye. Her helmet is—in the way, she has to remove it. It falls to the ground and rolls over to a forgotten corner. The shrubbery will claim it as their own, soon.
“ Liz, dear Liz… ”
Liz. That is her name, is it not? The full title springs, bidden by the address, to the forefront of her mind.
Queen
Dame Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame. She notices the same flowers blooming in this garden. She wonders if this is mere coincidence.
Without her notice, the flame above her chest sparks to life, a thin sliver of blue permeating the armor plating.
“ Liz… ” the voice speaks again. Light. Feminine. Dangerous .
“Witch!” Liz spits out. “Show yourself!”
The accusation flows easily from her lips, as if she has said it before. And with such brutal conviction. These witches… must be evil beings. This witch is no different, for having her trapped here.
She reaches for Thorn and raises it once more, ready to challenge the witch who dares to provoke her. No one appears, and yet—
“ I need your help ,” the voice continues on, as if she hasn’t heard Liz at all. “She needs your help .”
—that voice is closer than ever.
A hand appears over her shoulder and points to the direction of a large doorway. How hasn’t she noticed that before? It looms over the gardens, the entrance to the castle this desolate garden belongs to.
Most notably, it is open, and it is dark. It reeks of danger, the kind of danger that attracts knights like Liz as if they are moths to a flame.
“ You need my help, too. I will help. I will be here with you .”
Liz growls and cuts the air. “I do not need the help of a witch .”
Her statement is punctuated by a streak of fire that erupts from the tip of her blade. Another tidbit of information slips past the wall in her mind: the gods’ blessing. Pure magic. Her natural advantage against any foes who dare to stand against her and a witch’s best deterrent.
But when she looks down at Thorn, she sees a blinking yellow eye over the hilt.
“...Witch?”
“ Ah, so you finally noticed me .”
Liz frowns.
“ Don’t give me that look. Help me help her, and I’ll be on my way. There is a damsel in distress for you in there, dear knight. Don’t you want to save her ?”
It is an inclination rooted deep in her bones to protect the weak and helpless. This witch is simply striking at her weak spots. For all Liz knows, this damsel was taken by the witch to lure the knight to some kind of trap. But she cannot walk away when a civilian is in danger.
She looks up at the castle. It is a normal castle, if a bit larger than most, made of stone bricks eroded by weather and time. Tattered banners hang limply overhead, the colour that of dried blood and the insignia illegible. It feels familiar.
Liz shakes her head to clear that disturbing thought and resigns herself to her duty. First the damsel; then the witch.
The darkness swallows her whole into its maw.
A long hallway welcomes her, though it is anything but welcoming. Alcoves line the walls with suits of armour positioned within, and instead of swords they hold candelabras the same way. The unsteady glow of orange flame throws sharp glints off Liz’s armour, which she realizes resembles those in the alcoves a little too much, right down to the coating of rust they have accumulated.
A common design, surely, she tries to convince herself, but doubt starts creeping in her mind.
Her grip on Thorn tightens as she steps closer to an alcove. Then, she raises it above her head and brings it down in a mighty slash. The dimly-lit space is momentarily illuminated by her own brighter blue flame, and a suit of armor shatters into pieces. The candelabra falls into a puddle and is instantly snuffed out.
“ What a quick and devastating attack. A sure sign of power, don’t you think ?”
Liz doesn’t say anything; she simply stares at the scattered pieces of metal on the ground.
“ What, is your temper not sated by your petty act of destruction? Move , woman .”
Not wanting to be subject to more of her unwanted narrator’s quips, Liz does as she says. She kicks aside the pieces of metal, purposely avoids the rest of the suits of armor, and trudges down the hallway.
It opens up into a large hall, one even darker than the hallway she just left, lit only by the glow of Liz’s god-given flame and the light shining off the polished blade of her sword. But in those shadows she sees shambling figures that—do not look friendly.
They stand in between her and the damsel she must rescue. They must be enemies.
One of them senses her and awkwardly stumbles over. Closer, in the light, she sees why they struggle so much with movement: they are little more than rotted husks made to carry the weight of armour, and thick brambles dig into their flesh.
Still, they are determined. If one comes, so do the others, and soon a horde descends upon Liz.
She grips Thorn tight with both hands and feels years and years of muscle memory flowing through her. She is patient and strategic; she waits for the zombie-knights to make their move, or use them against each other.
With rampage the only thing on their minds, most of them don’t even fathom the wounds that are inflicted upon them until they collapse into a pile of dust, the strain of time taking its toll on them and the magic keeping them alive wearing away at last.
No matter what kind of unnatural magic, Liz knew, surer than anything, that her blessed flame could purge it. Nothing stood a chance against it except a direct challenge from other god-given powers.
At the same time, there is a deep sense of wrongness that rattles Liz to her core. As if these monsters aren’t meant to be monsters, aren’t meant to be her enemies. But she can’t remember. No matter how much she tries it is like swimming through a sea of fog with no land in sight.
Her training kicks in. Compartmentalize. Stop thinking. Let your body take over. These words were once taught to her, and she taught them in turn. A shame she cannot remember them now.
After cleaving through a final wave of zombie-knights, she lets Thorn rest on the ground, the point scraping moss off stone.
Her breaths come in short, white bursts, and sweat makes whatever she is wearing beneath layers of armour stick close to her skin. It is suffocating. This castle, for all its grandeur, feels as small and claustrophobic as a mud shack.
“Tell me about the damsel I must rescue.”
“ Will it affect your purpose ?”
“I do not want to free a great evil.”
The voice sighs. She sounds as if she has been asked this question many times before. “ She is… my raven. My sweet, beautiful raven. We—I used to spend many hours listening to her sing, but alas, it all stopped when she was captured .”
“Why?”
There is a pause, before the voice, quieter and shaky, replies, “ Jealousy. Greed. Who knows? She has a voice able to drive many to madness .”
“Why this castle?”
“ Do you never run out of breath? Rest, knight, before you face more trials ahead .”
The witch stops replying to any of her questions, so she lets her gaze wander. Her curiosity gets the better of her. She can’t help it. What is this place, and why is she here? If the witch won’t tell her, she’ll need to ascertain her own answers.
It is obviously a castle belonging to someone of immense wealth and power—at least, they used to. Yet the state it has fallen into suggests a long period of neglect. Converted to a cage for a supposedly innocent damsel. And the monsters guarding it…
The zombie-knights wear armour even more familiar than the suits back in the hallway. For one, these bear blood-red insignias long-faded, but something about their vague shape stirs familiarity in Liz.
“Were these… were these once my comrades, witch?” She is surprised to find herself asking this question out loud.
Silence, more prominent after someone speaks. Only the gurgle of undead can be heard. Then—
“ Will you attempt to save them, noble as you are, instead of cutting them down as you did before? ”
The yellow eye blinks. Once. Twice. Liz wonders if a real human is behind that eye, or if all witches are just demons in disguise. She sounds practiced. Like she has guided many knights to this castle, and answered the same questions.
“Tell me what I want to know.”
“ Well, who knows. All sorts of nasty creatures crawl into uninhabited spaces. They’re kind of like insects like that .”
It is a non-answer, one that means the witch is deflecting Liz’s questions, but the eye has closed and the yellow light dimmed.
Tall, sturdy pillars hold the ceiling up. They are adorned with curtains of moss and deep gashes caused by a weapon—or perhaps claws. Shadows cling to them. Perhaps more undead will appear from those hiding spots.
And yet, a rudimentary observation tells Liz that it is the only way to go. Further into the darkness. Further into the unknown. Moth into fire.
A glint catches her eye. It’s not so far into the darkness. A few steps and she reaches it. A thick nest of brambles bursts through the stone where the wall and floor meet, and assured by the protection of her gauntlets she reaches in.
With a hard yank she tugs away the shrubbery and reveals a plain gold ring. With gentle reverence she scoops it up, cradling it in both hands like the most precious thing in the world. It weighs with emotion, sentiment—none that belong to her.
Oddly enough, the witch makes no remark on this. Liz is fine with this; the silence is a comfort, and allows her time to think. All she has to do is focus on her mission, and that is satisfaction enough.
Move —
Her instincts yell, but it is too late.
A large hammer is brought down over Liz’s head.
She rolls over in time to avoid direct impact, the ring falling from her hands. Her legs do not survive the attack; they are crushed and mangled and if she looks away she will never need to know how it looks.
It is a huge disadvantage. The first strike failed, but the zombie-knight—this one, she notes with a hazy, blood-loss-addled mind, is much larger than the rest—rears back for a second. This time, it doesn’t miss.
Its fist is brought down. With a sickening crunch Liz feels her ribs split and heart torn. The room brightens, and right before dying she realizes fire—blue fire—has spread along her chest to her right hand, now too weak to grasp properly at Thorn.
There is a distant voice urging her to reach for Thorn.
What’s the point? I’m going to die anyway. Even if I manage to defeat this giant, I won’t survive .
And yet she listens, because a good knight listens to orders. Her pale hands close around the hilt. Irritated by her movement, the giant swings its arm back and strikes once more.
Liz shuts her eyes.
“No rest for the wicked here, dear knight. We have a raven to save.”
A bright light forces her eyes open. Thorn is in her hands again, properly this time, and she is on her feet. She wobbles from the shock, but at a cursory glance none of the wounds she sustained earlier have remained. It’s just her and the giant.
If monsters had feelings, this one would be bewildered. It stumbles back hesitantly, in a nearly comical manner, as if expecting Liz to collapse into dust like its comrades.
Liz takes advantage of this and presses forward. She charges up her attack like the giant did, imbuing it with the gods’ blessing, and brings it forward in a wide arc. Suddenly she thinks of her musings earlier; that this could be a comrade.
The witch neither confirmed nor denied this statement. The worry cripples her.
In the end her cut is clean and fast. A one-shot kill. Mercifully painless, at least. Comrade or not, when the monster is dead, they will no longer have to bear the burdens of an ill-fitting insignia. Whoever they used to fight for, no longer exists.
The building shudders as the last of the giant crumbles away.
Liz glances up from the corpse in time to see three stone walls rise from the foundations, opening up three new paths to walk. Three choices. Liz walks to the center of the room and stops, unsure of where to go. Left, right or forward. Classic crossroads dilemma.
She takes a deep breath and takes a step—
“ Wait .”
Liz groans. She flips Thorn upwards so she can meet the witch’s yellow eye. “What now , witch ?”
“ There are still enemies around here somewhere. Clear them out, or they may ambush you later on .”
“How do you know that?”
“ You would too, if you just listened .”
Listen? Liz stills at the command, out of instinct more than anything, and closes her eyes. The world falls away into darkness, and the loss of sense throws her off. But slowly, slowly, everything comes back into focus. Not in sight.
But she can smell the rot from the zombie-knights, lingering after their permanent deaths. She can smell the mould, and the plants.
She can hear the drip of water, the whistling of wind, the creak of her armor as she shifts, restlessly, in her stance. That’s no good. Patience is a virtue of a good knight. She forces herself to remain as still as a statue, and continues listening.
There!
Her ears perk up. It’s not the groan of undead, but something else. Sharp yowls, something scratching on stone, the ominous creak of gears, and muffled yet persistent thumps. The sounds are near.
“I see.”
“ You hear ,” the voice corrects, in a tone that suggests she is purposely messing with Liz. She ignores it.
“So left or right?”
“ Up to you .”
Liz readjusts her grip on Thorn and lets her feet lead her to the left first. Since both are the same, and the witch doesn’t offer any opinion either way, it’s better to get it over with as quickly as possible.
It branches off into another hallway. This one is shorter and plain. But at the end Liz can see shapes shuffling about aimlessly. She learns fast—she takes the first strike and swings Thorn forward.
Without any sort of armor, they fall easier than the zombie-knights. They’re also pudgy and bruise-coloured, and don’t feel threatening apart from the ugly expressions their faces(?) have been twisted in. They might be familiar, but Liz can’t associate them with any kind of creature in her head.
Liz lets down her guard. There’s a soft hiss, then a growl, then Liz barely stumbles back in a whorl of flame before the corpses of the monsters combust before her eyes.
“ Did I mention they’re self-destructive ?”
“I can see that, thank you very much.”
“ Alright, alright. See if I offer you any help next time .”
Liz wipes a piece of monster viscera off her face and wishes she kept her helmet. “A warning in advance would be nice.”
“ Aw, but that’s no fun .”
Liz gets up off the ground to inspect the crates the monsters had been guarding. They’re mostly empty. She doesn’t even know what she is looking for in the first place, but she realizes from this a distinct lack of hunger or thirst, and she is about to ask the witch about it when she sees something nestled at the very bottom of one of the crates.
It is purposely buried beneath some sacks and dirt, so the original owner likely had intentions of hiding it. Liz lifts it out of the box and closer to the light, and is mildly disappointed to see a plain box.
This box…
“Gi—” she cuts herself off and drops the box.
Thud ! It echoes in the empty hall. Nothing spills out of the loosened cover. And yet Liz feels something inside her unravel, bit by bit, with every inch of this castle she explores.
“ Hm ?”
“My memories…”
“ Are they… returning to you ?”
Liz detects a tinge of hope colouring the voice’s words, or perhaps it is this aimless sentiment suddenly surging through her.
“My memories… they feel like a ball of yarn, wound tightly around something. But the more I see this place… the more it unravels. Does that make sense?”
“... Yes, yes it does. Keep it up, and you might remember everything without my help .”
Liz registers her words, then latches on her first understanding of them. “You mean to say you can return my memories?”
“ It’s not easy. I can in theory… but… Liz, I promise you, if I could return your memories I would have done so by now .”
“I’ll hold you to that, witch. Now, though, I'm surer than ever that I have been here before. I know—knew—the people who once lived here. We were… friends.”
“ Just the friends… I see .”
This time Liz knows she isn’t imagining it. The slightest hint of emotion from the teasing, seemingly omniscient witch. This time, it is sadness.
She debates internally on whether or not to bring it up, but even with amnesia she knows subtlety is not her forte.
As she continues along the hallway, she sees the end of it—it opens up to a large, possibly empty room, this one well-lit and bright. Almost blinding, after her eyes have adjusted well to the initial darkness.
Well, for all that she expected, she didn’t expect this .
Running around the room like hyperactive children are tiny round robots painted a vibrant green hue. There is a clockwork key spinning over their heads, their faces painted to eternal smiles, and the pitter-patter of their feet create a miniature percussion performance on the relatively well-cared for stone floor.
The robots look like toys, not monsters.
Struck by a sudden sense of nostalgia, she crouches down to receive one of these clockwork toys in her free hand. A faint tick-tick-tick comes from their internal structure.
“ By the way… ”
Liz glances towards the eye, whose line of sight is directed towards the toy. It blinks once, then turns towards Liz. The ticking noise grows louder.
“... those things are rigged to explode too .”
With a shout, Liz flings the robot across the room and leaps back simultaneously. It explodes into a mini shower of metal parts just as it strikes the wall. The commotion attracts the attention of the once-listless robots, and they react to the hostility by swarming Liz from all directions.
“What the frigg? You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier ?”
The witch doesn’t reply. Liz brings Thorn forward in a low, sweeping arc, hoping to disarm the robots before they trigger more explosions. Some are knocked off their tiny, waddling feet, some fly even further and crash against stone.
Some simply pick themselves back up again, and in a suicidal desperation fling themselves at Liz. She feels the heat swell against her skin before a blast nearly knocks her off her feet.
Stumbling back, she keeps picking off the robots. They feel endless, but little by little—whether disarmed or blown up—their numbers dwindle.
Crunch .
Her boot crushes the last of them. There is a heap of metal on the ground and scorch marks scattered throughout the room. Liz stands, frozen, in the middle of this metallic carnage.
Luckily, most of the damage sustained from the explosions were absorbed by the armor, and although shrapnel struck her face a few times, she finds the pain bearable. The drip of blood down her neck is concerning, so she reaches up to pat the wound.
There is… nothing?
Her hand comes away stained not red with blood, but black with something like ink. She runs her hand over her cheek, her forehead, where she swears she felt the cuts dig deep, but she only finds smooth skin. Even smoother than before.
Magic .
“Witch! How dare you use your blasphemous powers against me!”
There’s an echo of a scoff, then—
“ I’m doing you a favor. I’ve revived you once and I’ll do it again, but I’d rather you don’t lose more of your brain than you already have .”
“Then why don’t you let me die? Unless all the knights in the world have perished in your cruel trap?”
“ I don’t want you to die any more than I want my raven to remain here. ”
Liz paces the room. There are signs of destruction older than her presence here. Long, shallow scratches on the ground, or giant fist-shaped dents in the walls. A fight of some kind? A previous scuttle between explorers? Or the previous inhabitants?
She spots two pallets on the ground, stained and mouldy, pushed to a corner. Tables are arranged on the opposite side, covered in bits and bobs that look like the makings of the exploding toy she encountered earlier. She pokes them. Nothing happens.
There are lovingly handwritten notes scattered about. Some are irreparable, illegible, but the rest can be discerned with a careful eye. Whoever wrote them must have loved tinkering with these… toys. A shame they turned out so destructive.
She picks a wind up key up and turns it in between her fingers. How curious.
“ Knight ?”
“I’m simply reminiscing.”
“ I’m sure the damsel will wait. She has a comfortable cage to sit in, after all .”
Liz snarls and drops the wind-up key. The witch is right. There is no time to dally. But the more she sees of this castle the more she longs to keep exploring, to dig memories out of the stone and fix herself.
Warped monsters—except they are not destructive or undead or misshapen—they are just there. And people. A home. Laughter echoing down hallways. Chatter loud enough to fill the cafeteria.
At the same time, the thought is jarring. Aside from the occasional back-and-forth with the witch, Liz has spent much of her new life so deeply enmeshed in the eerie silence that the idea of other voices sounds jarring to her.
She picks Thorn up and walks out of the room, leaving another memory behind. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have anything to do with her, it doesn’t serve the mission’s purpose.
Next, the room on the right. Another hallway, wider this time, and bearing deep claw marks. But this room is just as bright as the other, and blue monsters inhabit it. This time Liz will not be fooled by their feline appearance, and she leaps forward to strike first and strike hard.
Before their bodies are charred by flame, she catches sight of their features. Disgust overwhelms her, so much so that she staggers back, and she is glad that she didn’t hesitate this time.
There is something wrong with them. They are not cats, though they appear so at first glance. More like a chimera of a cat and something monstrous.
Again, Liz takes her time exploring the room.
This room’s owner lived alone, judging by the lone bed pushed against one side. There are desks, not covered in trinkets or machinery, but papers and pencils and paint. Shelves line one wall, stocked with books that have either fallen apart or been torn in half—presumably by those cat-like creatures.
She picks up a sketchbook flung towards the floor. Like everything else in this castle it has been ruined beyond recognition, but on one page, she sees a depiction of those feline monsters she had just slain. They are cuter here, even with the colours muddied and faded.
At the very last page are the initials R.P.
The artist’s name? A friend? Liz is tempted to ask the witch, who has once again fallen silent, but she knows she won’t get a real answer out of her.
She slips the sketchbook back into a shelf, where she spots several… romance novels?
She picks one out on a whim and immediately regrets it: on the cover is a shirtless knight bridal carrying a swooning maiden. The knight himself is impractically bare; if he is on a battlefield as the background suggests, shouldn’t he at least have chainmail? And what is this maiden doing on a battlefield, swooning over her supposed lover?
“ Ohoho, what a questionable collection of stories. I wonder if any of them belonged to you .”
Liz elects to ignore the first half of the statement, and zeroes in on the second. “So you admit I have been here before?”
“ Well, you can own the same books without having ever been in the same place ,” the voice deflects half-heartedly.
But the undeniable phrasing of her earlier statement suggests that these books specifically might have belonged to her. This room might not have, but these books could. Perhaps it is only teasing, but she feels a ring of truth in her words.
She entertains the possibility and flips the first few pages open. The book itself has been largely untouched, and she can read the words printed on it with little effort. She skims paragraphs in hopes of inciting some kind of sentiment, but nothing appears.
Sighing, she returns the book to its shelf and leaves.
In the main hall she stops and listens once more. The drip of water. The stink of mold. The creak of her armour—she stills herself.
No more monsters. Not anywhere near, at least.
“Forward?”
“ Forward. The raven awaits .”
Liz glances back one last time. Then, knowing with an odd sense of surety that leaving is not an option, she strides deeper into the shadows. The darkness embraces her like one of their own.
She sees the chains first.
They are fastened tightly around four large pillars and disappear into the high ceiling. In between them is a cage, made of thick, crude metal. Thorny brambles infest the room and wrap the cage so tightly Liz can hardly see the figure inside the cage, but she sees a spill of long black hair and thinks, Raven ?
This close to her goal, she is more energized than ever.
Here, the monsters come in hordes. Exploding clockwork toys and misshapen bruises and undead knights and giants and blue feline monsters.
Blue flame wreaths her blade, and she feels herself become alive. A stranger’s memories surge through her. She picks one and shouts—
“DIVINE—JUDGMENT!”
The fire burns her inside and out. She nearly forgets the pity she felt for the undead, the cuteness of the bots. They fall beneath her blade, reduced to ash by her fire, all the same.
With Thorn still blazing blue, she approaches the brambles and burns them away.
Nothing can stand in the way of the gods.
The cage, triggered by the ebb of magic, falls apart. Inside, Liz finally gets a good look at the damsel.
Her hair is black, but the underside has been dyed a bright shade of blue. A pair of horns, though one broken, sit atop her head. She is bowed over, in pain or exhaustion, and wear little more than scraps.
Surprisingly, the witch hasn’t said anything. The silence feels like anticipation.
Liz clears her throat. “Um, miss damsel…”
She finally looks up. Liz’s breath is taken away. A pair of wine red eyes stare at her, wet with brimming tears and filled with age-old sadness. And, she realizes belatedly, the only living being apart from the witch’s disembodied voice she has encountered.
“At the request of—” Liz realizes she doesn’t know the witch’s name. “I am here to rescue you.”
“Truly?”
Oh—her voice is beautiful. Hoarse from thirst and disuse, but beneath it is a sweet melody Liz finds nostalgic. Another figure from her past? Or simply an effect of the voice that can ‘drive many to madness’?
Golden afternoons in a courtyard, around a fountain as songs flow freely from soft lips. Nights spent falling asleep to a gentle lullaby. Rowdy markets with crowds clamoring for a second of the performer’s time and attention.
“What is your name?”
Confusion flits across her face. The first time she opens her mouth no sound comes out. Then she tries again. “Nerissa. Nerissa… Ravencroft.”
“Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame. But please, call me Liz.”
“Liz…”
“Come, I will lead us out.”
At least, the witch will. She seems to know this place well enough, and will surely expend that information to save the raven she is so desperate to help, right?
Liz sets Thorn down carefully and meets the yellow eye’s gaze. “I realize… I have not asked your name.”
“Huh?”
“ You seem perfectly content to call me ‘witch’, so I saw no point in introductions .”
Nerissa, still curled in her cage, straightens up at the sound of that voice. “Shiori? Is that you?”
The witch doesn’t speak anymore, which Liz takes as agreement. Shiori, is it? “She is inside the hilt of my blade. She is the one who told me to rescue you.”
“Is she?” Nerissa says bitterly, a choked out laughter trailing after her words. “She doesn’t show herself these days.”
Liz blinks in confusion. “Does she… visit you often in your cage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s get you out first. It mustn’t be very comfortable there.”
There’s that look in Nerissa’s eyes. It’s bordering on despondent, and yet with the way her gaze jumps between Liz and her proffered hand, there is still hope in there somewhere. No matter how long she has been trapped in this cage, surely this time she can be free…
Nerissa reaches forward.
Thwack!
A bramble springs from the ground and slaps Nerissa’s hand away.
“No!”
“ No !”
“Nerissa, wait!” Liz leaps forward, but brambles have gathered the cage pieces up and trapped Nerissa once more.
She picks Thorn up and summons more flame, but none come her way. A bright yellow light draws her attention away from the rapidly retreating cage. More vines come to drag Liz back.
She glares at the eye.
“What are you doing? Will you let Nerissa be taken away just like that?”
“ It is futile .”
“No, I can—”
“ You can’t ,” Shiori says miserably. “ The cost of your flame is your mind. Your memories are eaten away by the very thing that keeps you alive. I cannot —”
For the first time Liz hears the witch sob. It is uncontrolled and terribly human.
“ I cannot risk it again. Do not ever activate your flames of Judgment, Liz .”
“The gods—”
“The gods are using you! They have been using your entire bloodline, and now they are using you, and—”
Darkness overtakes Liz. Her consciousness fades in and out, but Shiori’s voice grows closer and closer. Clearer. Real.
Not one but two yellow eyes find her own.
She sees a slice of moonlight breaking through leaves, and smells the thick, cloying fragrance of roses.
“I don’t know how long we can keep doing this.”