Mortiferum
The castle had been shut for days.
The vastness was suffocating, despite the openness of space. The ceiling arched high into shadow, braziers burned low, their embers coughing thin coils of smoke that mingled with the cold. The Throne room was nothing but fabulous.
Seven statues stood grounded against the curved marble walls. Each bore a sword, but none held it the same.
The first statue was grotesquely swollen, folds of carved flesh spilling over a feast table cradled in one arm. Its sword, thick and crude, was stabbed into a roasted boar at its feet.
The second hunched forward, muscles coiled like a beast moment from springing. Its mouth was twisted in a furious snarl, teeth bared as if mid-roar. Its sword was jagged and cracked, lifted high overhead, ready to come down in blind wrath.
The third reclined lazily against its pedestal, its pose loose, almost boneless. Vines and cobwebs clung to it more than the others, as though even dust had grown tired of trying. Its sword was left leaning idly against the plinth.
The fourth was lean and wolfish, shoulders hunched and fingers curved like claws over a hoard of shimmering stone and coin. Its eyes were narrow slits of suspicion; its sword held behind its back.
The fifth was statuesque, draped in stone silks that clung to its flawless form. It gazed lovingly into a mirror, unaware that the reflection showed only a skull grinning back. The sixth was emaciated, with limbs like withered branches and a face half-buried in the hollow of its collarbone. It cradled its sword like a dying man clutches a staff.
And the seventh stood tall its form armoured and perfect, a cold monument of dominance. Its sword was immaculate, held in a rigid salute to no one but itself. Its gaze passed over the others with utter disdain, as if to say none were worthy of even being carved in the same room.
At the centre stood a different group of sculptures. Three young girls carved from a single large jade. Each held a lily: one blossom drooped; petals soaked with the illusion of tears. The girl who held it had crying eyes trailing. The second held a flower pressed gently to her lips, eyes closed. She might have been sleeping… or pretending to. The third gripped her stem tightly, fingers too tense for a child. Her face was turned slightly toward the Queen's throne, and her sockets, empty, cavernous, staring blindly with no resolve.
Before the throne stood two knights, clad in full black Armor. Their crests were dulled, their cloaks cut short for war. High King Knight Algrin Rozenhal and King Knight Serros Vaelthorn.
"She shouldn't be the one," he growled, gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the throne.
Queen Aria sat cloaked in lion-shaped Armor, its golden mane cascading from her pauldrons. Her helm rested atop her throne's arm. Her eyes were narrowed in thought, weighing a burden no soldier should carry.
"It's not her place," Serros said quietly. "The law—"
"The laws never bled for it," Serros snapped, but his voice faltered. "If it hadn't been done… once… No faithful would wish on the grail"
The Queen exhaled softly, slowly. She rose from her throne. The braziers seemed to flare with her movement, casting long shadows behind the statues. The three girls of the central sculpture seemed to look up.
"My words," she said in velvet, "are final, the overdrive shall be given to the late Aris."
She turned to face the statues, then the knights.
It began with the faintest sob, no louder than a breeze and yet it pierced through the chamber. The three stone girls behind the throne had begun to weep. Tears, once silent carvings now flowed warm and real. The girl with crying eyes trembled first, shoulders quivering as her stone form pulsed with unnatural life. The one with shut eyes followed, a single drop
sliding down her cheek before her lips parted in a wordless moan. The eyeless girl—the one with the sockets—lifted her head.
Her mouth opened.
A soundless wail escaped her, and with it, the walls began to hum.
Across the throne room, the seven statues stirred. One by one, they reached for one another.
Gluttony's swollen hand clasped Wrath's cracked knuckles. Sloth's limp fingers brushed the talons of Greed. Pride and Lust, once aloof and turned inward, turned now outward touched one another. Envy, shaking, reached up to the one who stood tallest.
Then, all seven began to cry.
Their stone eyes popped from their sockets, one by one, with a sickening wet crack. Blood, too bright, too thick, gushed from the hollow gaps, pouring in thin rivers down their faces, staining their swords, seeping into the obsidian floor. The eyeballs, glistening like pearls slicked in rot, rolled across the polished black stone.
Then each one burst.
Pluck.
Crack.
Pop.
With every rupture, thick, decaying humus erupted in sprays, wet earth mixed with blood, crawling with unseen things that twitched and wriggled before dissolving back into rot.
Then, the dais at the centre of the room shook. With a thunderous slap the stone grinding against corner stone rosed with a massive pike that tore up the centre. It reached for the ceiling, splitting the spear into two, then to four.
The Queen stepped forward.
"Marev'tel—sahn doru vath…" she whispered.
Arguius. The tongue of the first covenant.
The floor beneath their feet shuddered. The braziers flickered wildly as gears deep came to life, with a mighty lurch, the entire throne room began to descend slowly.
The throne continued its slow descent, grinding downward through layers of bedrock. The great pike at the centre withdrew into the floor with a final hiss. Then, with a low groan, the floor gave way to open air.
The throne room emerged into a vast subterranean clearing. No ceiling. No torches. Only the pale light of luminous moss and mana veins of glowing crystal threaded through the cavern walls.
Before them stretched a lake of perfect stillness.
Its surface was glass, black as night. Even without measuring, one could feel the depth. It drew the eye and the soul downward with silence.
The throne ground halted at the bank, its lion-shaped base pressing gently into the gravel shore.
Algrin stepped forward first, his boots crunching faintly. He did not look at the Queen, nor at Serros. "This part," he said quietly, "I'll never get used to."
Serros gave a scoff. He, too, stood staring at the lake, his sword tucked beneath one arm, eyes shaded beneath a furrowed brow. "Every time," he muttered, "It feels wrong."
The Queen did not speak. She simply watched them.
Then, together, the two knights let out. They lifted their swords, and splashed them in the void.
The splash was strangely muted. The ripples died before they could reach the shore.
From the bank, just beyond where the gravel met the wet earth, the ground started to shift. Shapes pushed free of the soil, stone figures, humanoid and broken. These were statues of the dead, bodies preserved from the ages of goblet rise.
The Queen stepped down from the throne, her lion-shaped greaves sinking slightly into the damp gravel. The knights remained behind. The Queen's Armor caught the sickly lake-glow. She walked slowly.
It held her weight. When she reached the exact centre, the water was bubbled, she stopped and drew her sword.
The lake answered.
Twelve titanic pillars exploded beneath the surface, geysers of black water cascading as they surged upward. They encircled the lake's banks in a perfect ring. They rose until they vanished into the darkness above, vanishing into a ceiling unseen.
"Water burns the truth, et in cinerem dissolvere Terra."
From the tips of the pillars, beams of crimson light shot inward, converging at the point beneath the Queen's feet. Where the beams met, the lake darkened and then it reddened. It bubbled thickly with the viscosity of slime.
A single bone rose from the bubbling centre. a vertebra, then more. In seconds, a full spine curled up, followed by a ribcage. Limbs grew next—femurs, humerus, fingers that twitched as they took form.
Then muscle wrapped it all fibres growing, threading across bone. Nerves crawled into place. Organs came into existence heart first, pulsing in the open cavity. And then, skin crawled over the body like a shroud.
The body floated for a moment, suspended in blood and silence.
It was a man. Young. Wiry. Black Hair plastered to his scalp, lips just parting with the hint of a breath. He hung there, newly made, as if the lake itself had crafted him from memory alone.
And he looked, undeniably, impossibly like Aris or should I say,
'Yuushin Roku'
"Rise 'O' son of the Grail,"
"Cardinal of Frost. Deus, Ignosce mihi pro Peccato Meo"