“Ok I am no longer back physically or mentally”
You know, I was going to write a few posts up for the rest of the summer going over the places I went to Minnesota, the trip that I took over Route 66 with my dad and my brother, and a review of Resident Evil: Village, but I realized that, huh, I still don’t have the time or energy to devote to this right now. Because I am actively packing my life into boxes so I can shove it in a car and drive six hundred miles while also saying goodbye (temporarily, I hope) to some of the closest friends I’ve made over the course of my life. It’s a surreal feeling, knowing that I’m going to be leaving the place that I’ve lived in for the last four years, and I’ve been putting off any sort of work for the last two days or so (the only days I’ve been able to work, actually) to procrastinate and ignore the looming threat of renter’s insurance and wifi installation. I am not mentally ready for this right now. But the bus waits for no one, and I don’t have much of a choice. So it’s going to be Spectral Crown for the next few weeks, still, much to my discomfort. Until I have like a day to sit down and write during a time when I’m not supposed to be doing five hundred other things, it’s Spectral Crown all the way down.
What will I be doing for the rest of the summer? I don’t really know, honestly. It’s a lot of back and forth and moving and shuttling and packing and unpacking and probably crying or something, I’m not sure yet. But I am also going to Seattle with my mom and brother, so I’m very excited about that! That means there will be, of course, another blog post where I talk about cities again in the future, which I’m, frankly, excited to write. I haven’t written about cities in a while, and now I’ve even taken a whole class all about cities, so I’ve got some new vocab words to fling around. We’ll see how this all shakes out. But until then, here’s Saelac and his buddies as they get into wacky shenanigans.
Previous chapter here!
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Twenty-Five
Our ascent was slow as we were all exhausted, hungry, and frightened out of our minds. But we kept our heads together and there was no talk of what had happened to Reinhard or those who came before him. Our numbers were thinning at an ever-increasing rate. This was not escape; this was triage.
There was the ever-present gloom that allowed us to see enough ahead of us to not trip and fall and smash our teeth in. This spiral staircase that we ascended lacked any torches, so this dim brightness was fortunate for us.
There was something else odd about the passage, too. It was cobwebbed and shadowy, forgotten and abandoned much like the spaces in the walls. Yet the liquid in the vats below us had looked fresh, bubbling, alive, like it was still being used by someone. Or something, perhaps.
We reached the top of the steps after the climb to find a trapdoor set in the ceiling. I pushed against it experimentally and found that I lacked the leverage to force it open from the ground, since it was a foot or two over my head. Franz lumbered over and lifted me up onto his shoulders, where I got a better position to push against the door in the ceiling. And I gave it a mighty heave, where it spilled open and rained down some dusty plant fiber.
The detritus that fell through the trap door momentarily obscured my view, and made us all cough and sneeze heavily, but I soon realized that is was not just any plant fiber; it was straw, the kind that littered the floors of horse stalls and barns. Poking my head up through the trap door, I found that we were in the Blestemat stables, peering up through a far-back corner out of sight of anything, protected from view by a wall of hay bales. I climbed up through the hole in the floor and carefully stuck my head back down into the darkness below.
“It’s the stables,” I said. “We may have a chance to escape after all.”
“Assuming we can get through this door,” Franz said. “I don’t expect I know how I’ll get up there.”
I looked around, hoping to find a ladder, but there was none. The trap door had been covered up by horse droppings and straw so long ago that any manner of transportation between levels had been lost to time. So I improvised and handed down some crates and boxes that lay near me, and hoped they weren’t too rotted.
“These may help,” I said, and stood back as my fellow servants began to climb out of the wound in the ground. Franz came first, and then Freda, and the two of them helped to lift the weaker individuals out. My mother was fine on her own, but Franz grabbed Simon by the neck to get him up.
Once we were all in the dust-spattered light of the stable, I quietly closed the trap door and hoped that there was no one around to see or hear us. I noted the lack of ravens in the rafters but was not so naïve as to think we were off the hook yet.
“Alright,” I said. “We need to get out quickly and quietly. Beyond these stables is that deserted town we saw when entering the castle. Once we’re out of the castle, we must move with all haste to the gates. We should be free once we’re beyond the outer wall.”
“I wouldn’t go out there if I were you,” someone behind me said. I whirled around, but could find no source of the voice I had heard. I stole around the wall of old hay that hid us from the rest of the stables and saw the stable master leaning against a wooden post, smoking his pipe. His beard obscured most of his face, but he was still younger now than he had been when I first met him.
“And why is that?” I said. The jig was up, after all we had done. But I had to try anyway. I motioned for the others to stay behind the protective barrier.
“You don’t want to know why, lad,” he said, puffing carelessly. He fell silent.
“What happens if I try to leave now?” I said.
“What happens? Nothing. You’ll be on your way, that’s what happens,” he said. He met my eyes for the first time in our conversation. “Do you think I’m going to stop you?”
“Quite frankly, yes,” I said. “No one has yet tried to help us.”
“I won’t be the one who starts that,” he said. “But I won’t hurt you, neither. What’s the good in wasting the energy?” He smiled. “It won’t make a difference anyway.”
“What if we get away?” I prodded, testing my luck as I drew closer to the stable master.
“You won’t,” he said simply.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Iacob told me,” he said. I crouched down right next to the man and stared into his face. He looked back at me, unblinking. His eyes, unlike the inviting eyes of Iacob or the other Blestemats, were icy and unreadable, but with a touch of ironic humor, and something ancient.
“Alright,” I said. “I believe you.” I once again motioned around the wall to draw the attention of my fellow escapees. They came out into the stables proper from their hiding place behind the wall.
“You’re quite fewer in number now than you were, aren’t you?” the stable master chuckled. “But no matter. Morituri te salutamus, ay?” I did not speak Latin, but Simon’s face appeared suddenly pained.
“Saelac,” he whispered to me, “are there any other ways we can get out besides through the village?”
“No, unless you plan to reenter the castle,” I said. Simon gulped and fell back.
I lead my troop towards the outer doors of the stable in silence, and once they were there I fell once again to the back, where I could watch the stable master more carefully.
“Good luck,” he said to me. Unsure of how to respond, I bowed.
“Thank you. It’s appreciated,” I said.
The ironic half-smile still played at the edges of the stable master’s face as I turned away from him to find that Franz has already opened the door leading out of the stable, and we were off on our way. The door shut behind us on its own. Turning around to get a better look at the stable as a whole, I saw nothing but blank stone wall.
“Mother of Mary,” someone muttered. “Where do all the doors go in this place?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Franz said. “No turning back now.”
Looking around, I realized we were in the middle of an empty green field right next to the castle wall, in plain sight of anyone who might have been searching for us.
“Quickly, we must start moving,” my mother said, and immediately headed towards the first dilapidated house between us and the outer castle walls. “Stay to the alleys between the houses. Stay in the shadows. Try not to make too much noise. We must move.” We began stealing our way over to the side of a decrepit house.
There was a certain uniformity to these ramshackle huts that I had not noticed on the way into the castle. They were all equally dark, equally ruined, and equally unsettling. They had the initial appearance of any standard tavern or home that I might have found back in Stalpert valley, but they had been built to fall apart. Walls were not properly aligned, roofs extended farther than needed or did not extend far enough, the windows were built in shapes and designs that were uneven and no respectable carpenter would ever allow. The dyes and paints that marked signs or wealthier abodes was peeling at the edges, edges which must have been receding for unnumbered years. Perhaps this was the natural wear and tear of a kingdom in disarray, or perhaps it was something more sinister.
We saw no one as we took back alleys and side streets through this bizarre and winding town. There were occasional movements in the shadows, things at the edge of my perception that I could not necessarily prove existed. But no creature that I could identify as human or animal, presented itself before us. Just ruts in the road filled with mud that slurped beneath our stumbling boots and our own reflections in the broken glass as we went by.
We had reached a number of crossroads in our traveling and it did not really matter which way we went for we had no way of knowing how close we were to the wall or any of the doors situated in it. Wind blew between the houses and ruffled our jackets as we went on.
Eventually we reached what seemed like a small village commons or a disheveled marketplace, and saw a church at the far end. It was made of a stone like the construction of Castle Blestem, but on a much smaller scale. Its bell tower extended itself above the roofs of the adjacent houses and would afford us a better view of our surroundings.
“I say we climb the tower,” I said, “and try to figure out the best way to a castle gate.”
“Who will do it?” Simon said. “I have no desires to enter that place.” The church apparently held no attraction for Simon in its rundown state.
“I will, of course,” I said.
“Be careful, Saelac,” my mother said. “And tell us what you see.”
“I will, mother,” I said, and made my way across the village square from the dirt-stained alley we had been collected in.
“See if some monk is around while you’re at it,” Franz joked. “I’d like to ask him to pray for me.” The sound of their voices faded away as I crossed the exposed center of the plot of land and made my way for the door of the church.
The church itself stood out due to its building materials; it looked nothing like the plank houses on either side of it, nor did it resemble the castle, save for its stone. The single spire was tall, pointed, and lacked any decoration. When it was still in use, its singular purpose was to call the faithful. Now it had no faithful left to call.
The bells tolled silently as I entered into that tiny cathedral, drawing me upward. The room was sparse, with rotted pews and chairs that looked as if they had been ancient before Simon was even born. A stained-glass window, now shattered and broken by wind and debris, decorated the back of the church behind the stone altar. The faint smell of incense hung in the air.
I walked to the back of the room, hoping to find a way up into the rafters above and to reach the bell tower. A door, barred and blocked off by planks of wood, sat in a far corner. Across from it were the stairs upwards, behind the altar. I crept over and began to work my way up, stones creaking under my weight as I moved closer towards the grey clouds above. Pale strands of light drifted in through cracks in the walls.
The stairs were maybe only three flights up to the bell tower. Once I got to the top I looked around for a moment to get my bearings. This was a prime location to view the rest of the land inside of the walls. Off back from where we had come was Castle Blestem and spread out below me was the ruined village square, with my people crouched in a back alley. I waved to them briefly in acknowledgement and turned around to face the rest of the world.
The bell hung behind me, a huge, unwieldly metal shape hung from the ceiling by rusted chains and rope. There was some language inscribed on it that I did not recognize, and it showed images of those men and women of famous spirituality.
I moved around the bell to the other side of the tower and gazed out over the mangled roofs of the houses. They spread far and wide, making a singular village that was far larger than I initially anticipated. Tens of thousands and people must have lived here at one point. But where had they gone, and why? Only the royals could tell me.
I tried to find an exit. Almost due east, there was one of the huge barricaded gates through which we had first entered this ringed city. Between us and the gate lay about a kilometer’s worth of houses. Maybe less. It was impossible to tell in this place, but I was satisfied that we could eventually find a path out of this madness if we continued to travel east. Now that I knew we were heading in the right direction, we could travel with much more confidence.
As I stepped back around the bell to make my way down the stairs, I felt a shift in the air, as if something invisible had breezed past me. I stopped and peered around the massive bell.
Standing at the top of the stairs, facing away from me, was a small raven, a single white feather stuck in its tail. I sighed, disappointed that we had been found so easily. Thinking that maybe killing the bird would help hide us, I crouched and began moving towards it, holding my hands invitingly.
“Here, birdy birdy,” I said. The thing hopped around and stared at me with black, inquisitive eyes. It shrieked and lunged at my face.
I had been expected a retaliation from the bird, but not something so quick. The thing latched itself to my head and began biting at my ears, drawing the warm scent of blood into the air. I stumbled backward, raven still gripping my forehead, and cracked my skull against the base of the bell. The bell was much lighter than I expected, for the force of me running into it was enough to send the thing reeling back and to cause the clapper inside to vibrate forcefully and the bell began to ring out.
The raven stopped pecking me as it heard the bell and disappeared into the air with another caw. I was worried that the bell would give our place away to the Blestemats, but it wasn’t until I had hurriedly descended the stairs and found myself in the church’s main hall did I realize we had more immediate problems.
I heard a muted growling, like that of a caged animal, and turned to the barricaded door across from me, below the stained-glass windows. It was shuttering back and forth, something on the other side slamming against it. With a violent thud, the door exploded outward as something leapt through it, splintering the wood to nothing.
The thing continued to growl and hiss as it stumbled around on the floor behind the altar, and then it stood up, and I could properly see what it was. The thing took the shape of a man, a Blestemat man, with pale white skin and dark black hair. But his face was not beautiful. Rather, it was horrifically ugly, wrinkled and crushed by age and an endless hunger. Sharp, deformed teeth poked out of its face. It’s nose and mouth had drawn together like a beak, and ranges of shaggy black feathers coated its exposed skin, poking through holes in a purple robe. Shattered pieces of glass clung about its eyes, the remnants of spectacles. The eyes themselves revealed nothing but animalistic need.
The transformed man roared and leapt towards me, trying to take to the air like a bird, but hit the floor and ran on all four appendages. Its head twisted from side to side constantly, eyes gleaming a better view of its surroundings, and its teeth snapped menacingly. I turned and ran.
I slammed the broken church door behind me, hoping to stall the thing awakened by the bell for just a few moments. I ran into the center of the common space and motioned for my fellows to run out and greet me. But they were already on their way.
“What have you done, Saelac?” Simon yelled.
“You better have found us a way out,” Franz said, hustling over to me. I turned and began to point down an alleyway to the east.
“There’s a gate that way. It’s the closest one to us. We only need to get there and get out,” I said. And I began to run, hurrying down the alley ahead of me, not stopping to wait for the rest of my group. They soon caught up, and I heard the splintering sound of wood as the thing burst out of the church.
The church beast was not the only thing trailing us. Glancing up at the overhanging roofs and glancing into the darkened windows of the houses we passed in our desperate flight from the castle, I saw shapes stirring more clearly than before. They were no longer just at the edge of my perception; I could see human figures, pale-skinned and raven-haired, thrashing about in the dismayed homes we ran past. The sound of thudding feet overhead reached me, and I saw a herd of things cross the gap of the alleyway that we were in. A hunt was on. Now I understood why we were required to stay in our carriages on the way in.
There was a sound that mixed a scream and an eagle’s cry that came from behind us, in the direction of the church. It was soon repeated from all around us, in all directions, before us, next to us, and above us. It was followed with a cackling sound from the deformed village dwellers, the sound of something that knows it is about to receive its next meal.
“What the hell are those things?” my mother asked as we continued running, trying to outpace the pursuit over the roofs.
“I think they’re villagers,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter what they are,” Greta said, keeping easy pace with me. “They want us dead. Keep running.”
“No better,” huff, “way to,” huff, “say it,” Simon said.
“No slackers! Let’s go!” Franz said, booming to the stragglers who had been falling behind.
“The gate is just this way! Move!” Freda encouraged. I turned around just briefly enough to see the next casualty of that mad dash.
One of the older servants was trailing behind, limping on a bad leg. As he passed the door of an old cobbler’s shop, the wall seemed to explode outward at him, engulfing him in a sea of chipped wood, ruined paint, rusted metal, and seething flesh of whatever had been residing in the building. It only took a moment for the thing to pin him down and rip out his throat, but it was enough for me to see, and I turned away and ran harder. The sound of cawing echoed behind us, and heavy objects fell from the rooftops to partake in their share of the new body.
I noticed just in time that something was coming through the window next to me, and tucked myself into a roll as the glass shattered around me. I got back up and kept running, but the thing, having missed its target, crashed into the wall of the house on the other side of the road and yelped in pain.
The cacophony of our path through the town, both our pounding feet and the incessant calls of the things that hunted us from rooftops and from windows stirred my blood in an unfamiliar way. There was something grotesquely enjoyable about it.
Freda screamed as one of the hissing villagers clambered down from a perch above and attached itself to her meaty back. “Sons of bitches, all of you!” she cried, and rent the thing from her skin, flinging it into a nearby building.
Without warning, we came upon another village square at the end of the road, and I would have thought nothing of it except that the center was filled with meatless skeletons, human and horse. Stalling only long enough to register what I was seeing, I skirted around the grave heap and continued east.
“This can’t be!” Simon said, stopping to examine the bones. But there was no denying it. The pile of bones was devoid of all flesh but bore the rags of clothes and saddles they had been wearing, bearing the Uradel crest. The pile of bodies was what remained of Uradel’s soldier escort and steeds.
Someone wailed as they passed the armor-clad bones, realizing what it meant. We had been lied to and the soldiers were dead from the very start. But there was no time to ruminate on that, and to my horror Greta had strayed too close to the pile of bones.
“Greta, be careful!” I shouted, but it was too late. Hidden from view by the masses of bodies, one of the bird-things lunged out of its hiding place and grabbed Greta by the leg. She cried out and fell, in pain. I considered turning around to help her, but realized it would have been no use. The desiccated feathered hand of the thing that gripped her was already pulling her away.
Freda tried to help her, grabbing her arms and pulling, but it was to no use.
“Leave me!” Greta said. “Keep going!”
“This is no place for heroics, sister,” Franz said, and tugged at Freda’s arm with insistence.
“We cannot let her die!” Freda said, Franz pulling her away.
“We’re all dead already, anyway,” Greta reminded her. “Keep going.” There was a hiss and a rumbling cough, and Greta was pulled into the pile of bones by whatever had gripped her. The sound of ripping flesh told me that her death was quick.
“We can’t think about it,” I said, as my mother slowed, turning to see if the group was still with us as we reached the next easterly road. I pulled her along. No one had to convince Simon to keep moving.
We ran, as fast as we could. As we ran, windows would explode outward, or fleshy heaps would fall from the roofs, but these we either avoided, or in Franz and Freda’s case, assaulted. A few others were taken I didn’t have time to worry, though.
After what felt like far too long, and my legs were about to give out from overuse and hunger, I finally saw the stone wall looming up before us. We ran to it, hitting the edge of that damned village and looking both left and right to try and find the gate.
“Which way do we go?” someone asked.
“I don’t remember,” I said. Turning around, some of the things in the houses we had passed were rousing themselves, sniffing us out and preparing for a hunt. “We’ll go right,” I decided. We turned and began to run along the wall, hoping we were going the right way. The wall curved around, an enormous circle. It was as if the thing had been laid by giants and then left to smaller men.
There was a hiss from somewhere directly in front of me, and I looked up to see a human figure crouched at the edge of a house’s spire. It was white and wore ragged clothes, fine fabrics ripped to shreds by age. Its black hair took on an oily, hooked nature, and it stamped about from its position above us before leaping down. I expected to meet my death, but it wasn’t until the beast hit the ground in front of me, lifeless and with a crossbow bolt sticking out of it, that I realized there were people on the wall above us.
A sudden volley of metal projectiles sailed from the parapet above, hitting targets both seen and unseen. Cries of pain filled the air, and the things fell from rooftops all around us or crumpled to the floor inside of houses. I slowed running and looked up to the wall.
It was impossible to make any details out, but a number of figures were assembled at various intervals along the gunneries. A small cluster of them were positioned directly above and seemed to be watching us intently. We all slowed and huddled together, trying to see some sort of escape.
“Thank god, we are saved!” Simon said.
“Don’t go thanking anyone yet,” I said. “The castle isn’t finished with us.”
Ladders lowered down from the top of the wall, and from them descended serpentine pale soldiers in Blestemat armor, carrying their vicious spears. “Greetings, Uradel servants,” one of the soldiers said upon touching the ground in front of me.
“Do you intend to kill us?” I asked.
“Saelac!” my mother hissed.
The guard just smiled, a sharpened, hungry smile with glinting yellow eyes. “Under normal conditions, you would already be dead. But by order of our glorious leader, you are to be spared. For now.” I knew exactly which leader he was referring to.
One of these days I want to do a statistical analysis of Spectral Crown, looking at things like length of chapter and word frequency and such. I think it would be kind of fun! But that day isn’t today.
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