Nine Ashen Hearts

"– 947, PC. 2X, Harvest Month. She is not herself; her name is unknown to me. She continues to remain silent. The mirrors are broken; I covered the rest. I will have to craft the alchemy of letters to reshape the truth. The second (or the first, the real) is gone. The queen is gone. Will everything disappear too… I can't see, I don't see… Dark! It's too dark…"

Then the neat handwriting turned into illegible scrawls: ink swirls danced before Cates, forming letters resembling grids that held some meaning. He tried to comprehend them and piece together words until the letters began to tremble. Was this really what he was searching for? Such answers were preparing to turn him into a statue. His fingers tensed. To avoid creasing the paper, Cates put the sheets back and left the office, feeling slightly dizzy. The days of Decay had touched him too, but he didn't want to return to them, even though all his barriers were failing. He recalled a moment from his childhood when he tried to dig a well on the sandy beach to have his own bit of water. But the sand crumbled, losing its shape, and the waves washed away all his efforts. He felt like that sand, as if everything he had done in his life was about to collapse, the tide would erase him from history, and nothing would remain.

Cates knew for certain that the inhabitants of the fortress had other answers, the ones he needed. They knew the stories. He couldn't simply approach them and ask. Before any other silly ideas wormed into his brain, he needed to continue searching for the hall with obelisks, but the corridors twisted and confused him with their symmetry. Cates abandoned the notion of checking every room and instead followed the moonlight until he noticed a door unlike the others, covered in inky symbols mixed with blots. Running his finger along the curved lines of ink, Cates recognized the mad handwriting from earlier notes and struggled to open the heavy door.

Massive cabinets and shelves loomed inside a spacious room, resembling an archive or library. Piles of books patiently stood on the floor, waiting to find their rightful places. Dust, so prevalent in other rooms, was rare here. Cates guessed that the lady took care of the books as his hand instinctively grabbed the nearest one—a hefty volume in a leather cover bound with red thread. Opening it, he saw blank, thick pages with faint traces of something he couldn't decipher. Putting the book down and picking up another, he was disheartened by the same blank pages. One after another, they mocked him by hiding secrets not meant for his eyes. Those wanted words were blending into the paper so close he could touch them. Cates grabbed another book from the stack, but carelessly this time, and the paper in it was lost among the pages just the same. He shouldn't be here. His search was futile. He would learn nothing. He would find his end in the endless corridors of the cold fortress and never return to the abandoned comfort of his tower… Strangely, he didn't want to return.

Cates slammed the book shut and threw it back in place. He should've contained his anger. The other books wobbled and, one by one, collapsed in a cacophony of rustling paper and drumming spines on the stone floor. The crash pierced the walls, and the echo mercilessly carried it through the corridors. Cates was almost certain that his carelessness could be heard on the other side of the Emir. But in the fortress itself, in its distant depths, something large and likely malevolent awoke. Like an engine touched by a quiln, this entity created palpable vibrations and approached with determined purpose. In the next moment, the fortress became like an anvil, receiving the blows of a hammer, and Cates found himself on the other side of the door that was about to come off its hinges…

The way back from the archives was cut off, the path forward simply wasn't there, but Cates knew one more way: up. He jumped onto a cabinet, and the shelves with tricky tomes served as a ladder up to the ceiling. Such height was far from the etheric reflections of the moon, and Cates became a shadow.

The door burst open with a crack, toppling more stacks of books, and a dreadful smell flooded the archive—acrid, viscous, like something dredged up from the bottom of the sea. Someone tall and cumbersome followed it inside. Cates couldn't get a good look from his position, but he saw that the giant bent with difficulty to avoid hitting the doorway with his helmet. A dark cloak of metal scales covered his body, and three hiltless swords on his back twitched like chained wolves ready to pounce. Despite this, he held himself upright, and his steps were smooth and measured, though loud. An invisible force, seemingly emanating from the sharp steps, cleared the fallen books before him as he walked through the room in search of the intruder.

The giant's search was short: a nimble rat rustled among the piles of books that served as its home. Cates' ears caught an unusual buzzing that pierced the tension in the air, and a second later it struck the fleeing rodent. Only a red stain remained—not even a squeak was heard from the rat. Not wanting to become a stain on the wall, the shadow remained motionless. When the giant could not find anything moving (or squeaking) among the shelves, he left the archive. Still, the sharp clatter of his steps echoed through the corridors for a while…

When it became completely quiet, Cates climbed down from the top of the cabinet and glanced at the pile of papers in the settling dust—he couldn't afford such mistakes anymore. The rat's blood had stained one page, and a secret code emerged, but it was still unreadable. Before stepping into the night-enshrouded corridors, Cates took a sip from his flask, and the sweet comfort returned him to the center. He wasn't going to sacrifice his blood to read the secrets of the books… Just in case, he needed to plan his exits better.

Scanning for convenient windows and open doors, Cates returned to an unfamiliar path until he found himself on the desired level. The hall with the obelisks should have been here. Somewhere in the distance, heavy footsteps were heard again, and the wandering echo quivered with a woman's voice. Cates recalled the lady. Was she somehow connected to this giant? The answer was somewhere near. He followed the enticing echo and found himself in unfinished halls with cracked walls and abandoned materials. Dormant columns in stone debris on mirrored marble awaited the return of the builders. The voice was very close…

Cates' pace changed; every step became a challenge. Questions endlessly buzzed in his head. Wait… Let the echo die down and disperse. We are not alone. Come closer, but don't reveal yourself.

Was he dreaming, or had he seen this before?

Following the mosaic beneath his feet, composed of motifs of rising suns and harvests, he controlled every movement and breath until a blue flame ignited in a brazier at the end of the corridor. A familiar, uneasy premonition he had tried so hard to escape manifested with a lone figure before the warming fire.

The lady's voice pierced the darkness with clarity, but Cates couldn't make out the words. The geometry of the walls shattered them, blending and separating them again and again until they sounded like a chorus of tiny echoes. Perhaps the time had come. Cates crept among the lying columns close enough to see the lady. The light grew brighter, the voices louder, and even the walls began to reveal their hidden writings.

An ancient dance of runes appeared on the dormant walls. Each took on distinctive shapes, mesmerizing with their simple elegance and obscure meanings. Marks and guides glowed with a light bluish hue and dimmed from the touch of shadows. They reminded Cates of long-gone times, of the long journey that had led him to this very moment…

A dream visited him while he was wide awake, unfolding exactly as he remembered it, only now he could see everything down to the smallest detail: the lady in the blue fire, wrapped in a magnificent dress resembling a vortex. Black velvet waves cascaded down her body, breaking into conical layered forms, while a cloak with a purple lining covered her shoulders. A veil hid her face under a high hood. The fabric of her garments made the lady almost invisible, and only the fire separated her silhouette from the phantom darkness… Cates pricked up his ears under the hood, and the lady's voice became audible:

"Do not be angry, my guardian… An assumption! Pull yourself together… No, excuse my rudeness! I hope my arrival did not keep you waiting?"

Behind her stood, like a mountain, the guardian. Cates almost mistook him for an obelisk—a towering mass covered with a heavy cloak of dark-scaled metal. Other features were hard to discern. The guardian nodded and answered the lady silently, while she continued to soothe him:

"Allow me! You are way too agitated by an ordinary rat. Not everything signals a threat, you know. Perhaps our old spider simply decided to stretch his legs?"

Cates thought he heard a growl from the guardian; he used gestures and guttural sounds to communicate. Such a trick could be useful for shadows…

"Besides, he has resumed working on his dolls lately. And yes, I heard music in the former dining hall. But if it was neither his doing nor mine, then whose? Still, I wouldn't worry as long as we are together."

The guardian made a questioning sound when the lady explained:

"That box is mine; he borrowed it. I know you are worried about such attachments, but I assure you, I wouldn't have given the box if I found value in it. As for the rats, don't worry, the old man is preparing something new for them… You don't think it's an intruder, do you? Did you check the shore and the entrances? Everything is clear, no traces? Assumption is the worst sin."

Judging by the low guttural sound, the guardian hadn't found anything yet.

"That's it. Seekers or fanatics—it doesn't matter. They will leave exactly the way they came. Don't you forget? By choice or by chance, our lord needs us as much as we need him. The sun for us is not yet lost, I assure you. All we can do is wait. Well, enough! The sleeping one will not touch you, I promise… Do you believe me?"

The guardian bowed his head. Cates' eyes sparkled when they caught the lady's gaze through the blue fire. Fear jerked him from the tension and forced him to retreat. The column met the back of Cates' head with a blow, and the needles supporting the hood clanked, catching a purple flash from the lady's veil—she instantly turned her head towards Cates. The light revealed a small part of her face: small cuts covered her cheeks and led to a strange scar. Her full lips whispered in a trembling voice:

"Guardian?"

Now she fully turned, and the chilling sound of her heels summoned a rising echo, resembling Cates' heartbeat…

"Is there someone there? Guardian!"

These words struck Cates' head with full force. Leaning against the cold, indifferent column, he was stunned, for his dream had warned him of this, and it had turned out exactly as it did. An uneven buzzing, like a large bee, appeared in the air. Fragments of a sword flew in circles above the guardian's helmet, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. An invisible hand directed them exactly where the lady pointed. Thoughts raced with incredible speed in Cates' skull, and among them waved a bony ghostly hand, and the question: what on earth could he do?

Would this encounter be his last? Was this lady the reason for no return? Was it all over? Cates didn't know whether he should do something or stay calm in place. He felt paralyzed, but not by fear, rather by choice. He simply didn't know what to do…

Cates exhaled and paused for a second. He began to notice differences: the lady's hand wasn't dead, just a bit pale. A ring with a large black sapphire gleamed on her finger and pointed at the column with the intruder. Cates couldn't delay, but haste was equally dangerous. He tried to pull himself together so he could retreat with minimal risk. Every muscle in his body, down to his fingertips, tensed with cold readiness to flee. Back, away from here, where there were fewer willing to break the most terrible taboo.

A sudden crack stopped the lady's steps. Something round and white fell from a window under the arch and bounced off the wall—not a rat and not thrown by a rat. The guardian turned, and a blade flew from the halo like an arrow, shattering the uninvited object into dozens of fragments. Pieces of bone rattled on the mirrored marble of the corridor in blue fire tones. The lady stepped back behind her defender, but her voice was no longer frightened:

"Ah-ha! Since when do skulls fall from the sky? Well, the alchemist is definitely having fun! Is he so tired of the cursed transmitter? Or is this a message? Calm down, my guardian!"

The scales clattered like rain until the lady placed a hand on him with a whisper:

"The first look reveals not everything. Sometimes it's worth returning… Let's go now!"

Making a sound like an abrupt wish, the guardian bowed, the blades calmed and returned to his back. The lady bowed in response:

"Nei-tha. Accompany me, and I will remind you of what we all forget. When I close the altar, we will go up and find the alchemist—he, as usual, will see and explain everything. Let's also ask him about the rats since they bother you so much…"

With these words, the lady waved her hand over the blue flame, and it began to fade.

The steps of the dark duo faded away, and Cates began to recover. He wanted a drink. He wanted fresh air. And most of all, he wanted to leave these narrow corridors… The nightmare vision still stood before him, but reality separated lies from the truth…

In his mind, Cates assembled the skull fragments on the floor: its sides were adorned with carved lines and even recesses. In the same mind, he thanked the skull for saving him, and seeing this as another chance, he tried to catch his breath. His intent stare watched the tall door closing behind the lady and her guardian.

"Psst! Scaredy-cat! Aren't you a delight!"

Cates lifted his frightened eyes from the jawbone and looked up. It reminded him of his awakening. Vish stood high in the window, framed dramatically by the moon.

"Did you miss me?" she winked, deftly clung to the masonry with her claws, and climbed down with little noise. Cates was surprised by her appearance but pleasantly so. He certainly didn't want to end up like the unfortunate skull. The lady's hands didn't seem welcoming, even if they weren't made of bones. He pulled Vish by the hand into an alcove where the echo wouldn't give away their conversation:

"Vish, don't think I'm not glad to see you, but what on earth are you doing here?! You yourself said this is the worst place with no return."

"Yes, it is—for desperate and stubborn loners like you. I hope you understand I didn't let your trembling shadow be exposed?"

"Of course, and just in time!"

Cates tried to stop shaking… Random questions should pull him out of the moment:

"So, you can't sleep either, Vish? Or did you get bored?"

"Exactly! It's too cramped and dusty in your tower. I decided to take a walk and suddenly stumbled upon this remarkable piece of architecture from the Precata times."

"You're always stumbling upon something…"

"Hey, hush! Now repeat after me: thank you, my savior, there's no better shadow than you!"

"Thank you, savior of shadows Vish! And then what, remind me?"

"Ugh, let's say that skull smashed against your empty head."

"Hah. Thanks."

Vish nodded, and the scarf covered her face.

"You know… In the tower, before waking you up, I saw your tossing in your sleep. It seemed like you were again on the threshold of something unknown…"

"On the threshold of utter idiocy."

She didn't raise her eyes:

"True. Changing your mind is harder than satisfying hunger with ashes. But then, when you left, I couldn't find a place for myself. How do you endure that tower of yours… I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want you to be alone in such a place…"

A sad laugh made her lift the edge of the scarf.

"And here I am. And I even did something useful."

"Clever girl. But you took a long time getting here; everything valuable has long been taken."

"Heh! Sorry, the walls were a bit brittle and salty, had to be careful, which means slow. But I hope you're joking about the valuables…"

"Did you sail on the skiff?"

"No, on a shark."

"Smart. Good that you didn't swim. Too bad, sharks are harder to hide, and they always try to swim away when you're not looking…"

"Oh, I hid my rusty vessel so well that even I won't find it. I confess, when I didn't see your skiff on the shore, it scared me a little."

"Did you want to turn back?"

"No, I wanted to find you… And soon I did."

"What gave away my skiff then?"

"The sound. The waves sounded different near it, gnarly. Damn, I forgot to remove the quiln from the engine. Ah, whatever, it was almost dried…"

Vish noticed Cates had calmed down and decided to return to more pressing matters:

"Alright. What do you think, who are those two? Definitely not shadows."

"They are somehow connected to the days of Decay. The veiled lady is the lord's priestess, judging by the strange notes. She also has the notion of disappearing through doors…"

"Yes, I noticed unusual mists. Are they traps for curious little shadows like us?"

"Maybe. Then the priestess' guardian is a trapper…"

"Hmm, he wore old city defender armor, didn't you notice? Inquisitors are trying to be like that. He's like a walking relic! I thought they were all dismantled during Decay."

"Well, he makes a lot of noise, at least when he's not standing still. We should get moving."

Vish checked her claws and nodded:

"Got it. Breathing air for nothing. I'll find a way up with my claws and keep an eye on you. Maybe I'll see what's ahead. Don't get exposed, hear?"

"Don't get caught yourself. Those two aren't the only dangers here. The priestess seems important, I'll follow her."

"Understood. Something is wrong with this place. It's good I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

"I really hope those tricks won't break your neck."

Vish smiled and tightened the straps on her claws, then disappeared in the next second by jumping into the shadow on the stone wall. Cates sighed, and for a moment, he thought Vish had vanished from the window, but after taking two steps, he heard her clear voice:

"I changed my mind. We're going together."

Episode III – The Falls

Passing by the fading blue sparks of the brazier, the shadows agreed it was best to observe the guardian and the priestess to get ideas for further actions. Feeling light after leaving his worries behind, Cates remembered the whisper before his descent into the city:

"Wait, Vish… When I was about to leave the tower, you said something. I couldn't hear…"

"Yes. You looked like a storm cloud back then. Strange that I let you go so easily…"

"And now, what do I look like?"

Vish winked:

"Like a shadow. It suits you better."

"Thank you… But what did you say back then?"

"I said: don't be afraid to return if something is unclear…"

"Oh. I hope it won't be too late."

"Me too."

The shadows clung to the priestess' path and communicated in short phrases as stealth required. Cates mentioned the curiosities of the fortress, as well as the notes and letters, but they didn't mean much to Vish. She cared even less about the fragmented aftermath of the days of Decay and preferred to explore the forbidden ruins.

The inner structure of the fortress had a complex layout of numerous corridors, balconies, and portals leading to high halls, which turned out to be more spacious, beautiful, and darker than the rooms along the perimeter of the lower levels. The halls boasted their elegance before the shadows: furniture made of dark glass and carved wood, bas-reliefs instead of frescoes, and marble and alabaster instead of rough stones.

On the mirrored surfaces, salt mixed with the stars that peeked in through the windows. In the corners of the halls, silvery staircases spiraled upwards like snakes. Ether was rare here, but it still captured some moonlight reflections, so it was enough to simply slow down a little for the eyes to adjust. Vish became quieter than a mouse and followed Cates step by step until she jumped in place like a frightened cat (luckily, she didn't hiss)—that is how the eerie grotesque faces of the statues greeted the new shadow. Cates dissolved that fear by understanding that their stone gaze was still, and Vish teased their resolve with her tongue out.

Dozens of these statues stood along the hall, merged with the semi-darkness. Sharp blades glittered in their hands, covered in stray ash. It's amusing that the threat of death is such an unaffordable luxury. How far could they run on their stone legs if the inquisitors accused them of breaking the taboo? Despite fear, Vish had no intention of ratting on them, so the statues need not worry. In return, they certainly wouldn't mind if the new shadow checked the forgotten halls for valuables.

However, all the inner rooms had nothing of value except old items of the faceless under layers of dust and piles of salt mixed with black sand. One look at them was enough to read their entire history. Still, the storms somehow spared the fortress. Was it because of its location, or just a matter of time? Vish complained in a whisper:

"I just don't get it. Where are the treasures, relics, and all that? I never thought shadows lied to other shadows… There's only dust here!"

"There is also salt. And quilns, but empty ones…"

"Quilns! So why are we following the monster and its mistress? Let's look for emeralds!"

Cates felt a small disappointment because he was looking for something more interesting than (even empty) quilns:

"No, we won't abandon our plan. Those two will lead us to important things, won't they?"

"The priestess said she was supposed to close the altar, right? Do you think there are relics there?"

"Exactly! If they got so alarmed by the noise, the altar must be valuable to them. Only this guardian could be a problem."

"Dangers cast no shadows on the curious. The halls are well visible from the upper balconies. We should go higher. But let's stick to the staircases for now…"