“The ultimate penultimate chapter. Is there a word for that?
Ah, here we are, at the third-to-last chapter of Spectral Crown. I never thought I would post the whole thing on here, I’d only post the first half of it, be overwhelmed by the support and desire for the rest of it, and then post the whole thing in a frenzy. That didn’t happen, clearly, especially as I still haven’t been approached by a major publishing house for a deal yet. Ah, well. I never actually expected any of that to happen, so I’ll go about it the old-fashioned way. Do another round of serious edits to the text and start submitting it to agents. Yes, indeed, if you ever see this book on shelves, the final product will be much better than whatever’s here.
But in other words, happy holidays (again)! It’s almost the new year, at least according to the Gregorian calendar or whatever one it is what we in the west use. I hope your winter holidays continue to be pleasant, and if they haven’t been so far, I’m sorry. And if you don’t celebrate holidays around this time, I still hope your winter is a good one. Yeah, I did celebrate Christmas this year, and it was really nice! I love Christmas. I love getting to see my family. (Or, I’m assuming it was nice, as I’m writing this from the week before Christmas in preparation for being on vacation during the actual holidays. So, it could suck, but I really doubt it.). It’s been a good set of holidays! But now I’m back in Minneapolis, after my break in Illinois, and it’s back to the grind. I’m working overnight for work again tomorrow! It should be a fun time, too. I’ll see you next week with an actual new post.
You know the drill. Here’s the previous chapter. Or, at least, it should be. If not, you can always click on the “From the Vault – Spectral Crown” menu at the top for more!
Spectral Crown, By Andy Sima: Chapter Thirty-Five
I sloshed through the disgusting muck, doing my best not to fall over and become more coated in filth than I already was. Behind me, whatever Reinhard had become continued to slice away at the bodies of Franz and Freda with his razor-sharp appendages. And he laughed with each strike, filling the cavern with terrible echoes.
I hustled through the goop around me and tried to find some sort of exit out of this place. I couldn’t even find a wall. I followed the bridge structure over my head for a decent amount of time, but after a while it seemed to disappear into the shadows above, and I could no longer discern its position. Perhaps the bridge connected two overhangs rather than two walls, and the cave simply extended onward forever.
The space was far larger than I expected and gloomy enough that I couldn’t quite see where the edges began and the open air ended. After quite a while of creeping around, I came upon a strange lump in the rancid flow.
At first I thought it was a boulder or a hunk of stone, but as I got closer, close enough to touch it, I realized that it was fleshy and soft, and rather like a massive body. Startled and unable to make out its entire form, I circled around it.
The mass was ripped in two, ragged strips of flesh down the middle of it, showing where the two sides once connected. I could see ribs poking out, and a spinal column and the spill of intestines. And hooved feet and a bristled snout. Though it had begun to decay while sitting in the pit, the body retained a definite porcine shape. Testing my luck, I stepped closer, into the space between the two severed halves of its body.
Crawling around inside the ruptured cavity I saw a large number of severed hands, pale white and seemingly gloved, as they rooted around inside the massive pig’s body and pulled off bits of meat and stored them in unfathomable spaces. Sometimes, some of the hands would look over at me, if look is a word that could be used for such an action, but paid me no mind.
The destroyed body was the thing I had heard roaring in the sewers on the very first day here, and the one I had thought I saw on the second expedition. It was dead. Reinhard had killed it.
And he would try to kill me, too, if I didn’t find a way out.
I began to search with a renewed sense of vigor, as I did not intend to find out what would happen with my immortality curse if I was blended into a sauce by the spider-thing. Nor did I want to trapped down here for all eternity, as now seemed to be my fate.
Eventually I found the edge of the cavern, and having no better idea, I walked along it and hoped to find some exit. The walls were smooth and worn, naturally carved. It was quite unlike most of the rest of the castle. I would not be finding any passages out of here through the bricked walls.
Sometimes as I worked my way around the edges, feeling for any irregular grooves that might be a door, my feet would kick against something embedded in the grime below me. Sometimes they were soft objects, and broke apart as I kicked them, but sometimes they were harder, and probably bones. Sometimes they moaned and made strangled noises. Fellow unfortunate criminals who met their fate in this disgusting tomb. I shuddered. It would not be my fate, too.
Searching, I came across the door and shook with excitement. I could escape. The door was arched at the top and made of a heavy black stone. I thrust for the handle, grabbed it, and pulled with all my might. As expected, it was locked.
I sighed. Of course there was no way that Sorina was just going to leave doors open. This space seemed to be the dungeons of the castle, and if the fall didn’t kill them and they managed to avoid the pig, they still weren’t getting out alive. And if they were immortal Blestemats, they would rot away like Titus and Blestemat. Well, I was going to break that trend, and get out alive. I had to.
So I kept walking. Around and around, walking for what felt like kilometers without end. I came across a few other doors, all identical in style and all identically locked. But the walls of the cave were so smooth and curved so gradually that I couldn’t actually be sure if they were all different doors of if they were all the same door.
I saw hide nor hair of Reinhard, though occasionally I would hear him laughing in the distance. Under the speckled ceiling above it was still too dark to see any real distance but hearing him was too close for me. Sometimes I would hear splashing behind me or to the side of me, and I would whip around only to see nothing, or the retreating form of one of the disembodied hands.
I walked for hours. Perhaps days. The level of light did not change. I grew hungry, and thirsty, and tired, but never to the point of exhaustion. Perhaps due to my curse. But regardless of why I lingered on, I became bored.
Finally, after however long I had been wandering, stranded, I came upon a door that was actually unlocked. My heart skipped, and I thought that maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me, but as I pulled at the barrier, it gave way and swung out towards me. Was it a door I had been to already or a new door entirely? It didn’t matter. I was out. But when I saw the Umbra soldier standing on the other side, I almost wished I was back in.
“Saelac,” the lizard-skinned albino thing said, eyes slotted in my direction. “Your presence is requested.”
“Requested by whom?” I spluttered, not expected that kind of a greeting.
“King Titus and Queen Viorel, true leaders of the Blestemat family and nation of Umbra,” the soldier said, puffing out his chest armor, black plates of metal creaking around him. And then he smiled, a wide, slithering smile. “But not for much longer, anyway.”
“Take me to them,” I said, and the soldier nodded, turned, and walked off down the hall. I followed him, cursing myself and cursing the royals.
We marched down a number of corridors that all looked identical, a series of stone tunnels that slowly transitioned from hewn rock to bricked walls, and after reaching a series of stairs that lead up to more familiar passages, I knew we were close.
“I have a question,” I asked, trying to break myself from the terrible silence I had fallen into.
“I have an answer,” the soldier said.
“What, exactly, was in those vats?” I asked.
“Which vats?” the snakeman replied.
“The ones that Reinhard fell into,” I said.
“Who is Reinhard?” the guard said.
“Never mind that. What’s in the vats that are underneath the stables?” I clarified. Now the snake thing smiled.
“Ah, those,” he said. “Titus told us about them, once. A special birthing medium. An experiment left over from long ago. And a sort of blessing in disguise. Does that answer your question?”
“No, not particularly,” I said.
“No matter,” he said. “That’s all I have to say.” The reptilian soldier did not speak more, but would sometimes snap out its tongue and catch something out of the air. Spiders, maybe. The tunnels were full of cobwebs.
Not long after we came to an arched wall that I recognized well. It was my third time at that wall, and I already knew what to do, though the soldier did it for me. Hefting his spear, he jammed the butt end of it against the wall and the bricks scattered inward with a gasp of dust. I coughed.
“I could have done that more carefully,” I said.
“Why bother?” the soldier said and leered again. I stepped through the ruined wall.
I was immediately greeted by the chattering of bones. “Ah, Saelac, welcome back!” King Titus said.
“You smell terrible,” Queen Viorel added. “Or, at least, I think you do!”
“Indeed,” Titus added. “I guess we just don’t nose.” And then the two skulls shattered into jaw-clapping laughter, a twin set of terrible marionettes.
No, not twins anymore. Thought Viorel still had hers, Titus was missing his crown.
“Ah, notice something different, do you?” Titus said to me from the lap of his skeletal body. “Sorina came down here just a few hours ago to retrieve my crown. Thinks she can survive my curse. And it’s thanks to you! Clever thinking, my boy! I knew you’d come around eventually.”
“I never doubted you for an instant,” Viorel chattered.
“Yes you did, don’t lie to the boy,” Titus chortled. “He might just believe you!” They laughed again. I stared at them, not wanting to instigate any further remarks. Though after they stopped laughing and quieted down, the two skulls just stared at me. Waiting for me to say something.
“Well?” I asked. “What happens now?”
“What happens now, what happens now!” Viorel said. “Now is when the fun begins.”
“Quite. It is a time of great celebration. You’ll bear witness to the funerals of a royal family!” Titus said.
“About damn time, too,” Viorel said.
“You can say it again,” Titus responded. “You’ve freed us and our line, boy. And as a reward, we’d like to let you participate in the ending of a history, a changing of the guard. Wear Viorel’s crown.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want that.”
“Oh? You don’t want to see one of the greatest events in all of the nation of Umbra?” Titus asked.
“No,” I said. “I want my curse broken. I want to be able to die.”
Viorel and Titus laughed. “Oh, it isn’t that easy, Saelac of Uradel,” the king said. “Curses are a convoluted form of magic. You can break them with forgiveness. You can break them with a powerful enough spell. You can break them with another curse. You can outlive them. Well, no, you can’t. But some can. But I simply cannot break one because you asked me. If I could do that, I would have broken my own before I ended up here.”
“And do you not realize the gift you have been given?” Viorel asked. “You are immortal, without the need for consumption! You retain your talisman, and know what its powers can do. The world is yours for the taking. That should be reward enough.”
Titus added, “She is right, you know. You have a very special gift, Mr. Bergmann. Use it wisely.”
My heart was surprisingly calm, though my neck burned. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll leave and take my gift with me. Then, once you’re all gone, I’ll find a way to finish myself off and be done with this.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Titus said, and laughed suspiciously. “You might not want to.” I narrowed my eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Viorel said. “But before you leave, put on my tiara. As a parting gift and show of good faith, we’ll let you be witness to the end of an era.”
“And the beginning of another,” Titus added.
“How are you going to make me wear that crown?” I asked. “You have no hold over me.
“We still do, but it’s beside the point,” Titus said. “Are you not the least bit curious about what’s happening to your dear Iacob?”
My heart stumbled and cried out. In the suddenness of everything that had happened, I had neglected to even consider what Iacob was feeling. I had known what would become of him. I didn’t want to think about it. And yet… and yet, my heart had to see it. I had to know for sure.
“Fine,” I said. “I will wear the tiara.”
“Good!” Titus said. “Wonderful to hear. Now put it on.”
I reached down and plucked the green crystal crown off of the queen’s decrepit skull. It seemed that, as I got closer, I could see something in her eye sockets, and in the eye sockets of Titus. A kind of darkness, a mass of something that seethed and struggled and yearned for freedom. Not for death, but for endless life. But then I blinked, and it was all just shadows again. I shook my head, straightened myself out, and put on the other spectral crown.
My heart lurched and my vision exploded and reformed and thinned and blurred into a tunnel, and suddenly I was flying up through meters upon meters of rock and brick until I shot into the open air, and found myself sitting atop a rafter. Fluttering my feathers, I carefully readjusted myself to the body of a raven.
At the edges of my hearing, I heard Titus and Viorel cackling. “Do you see it, Saelac? Do you see the throne room?”
“Yes,” I said, though in my bird body it sounded as a squawk. I hopped about the rafters and looked down. I was, as they told me, above the throne room, and it was full of people. I was just in time for the wedding.
At the foot of the crystal thrones there were three people that caught my attention. Sorina, wearing a black dress the same color as her hair, Maynard, wearing a white suit with a pale blue tint, and for some odd reason, the stable master, holding a book and speaking loudly.
“Do you, Maynard Uradel, take Sorina Blestemat to be your wife?” the stable master said.
“I do,” the Uradel prince responded.
Off to the left of the throne room there were a few dozen heads of deep black hair and pale skin, all garbed in the same silk of shadows that Sorina wore. It seemed as if every Blestemat royal with any ounce of strength left had crawled out of the castle to attend this event. Iacob was among them, right at the front. He was not smiling, and it seemed as if he had been crying.
And then, on the right, I saw a crowd of thin blue Uradel royals, dressed in their typical silk clothes. Adalbert and Annalise stood at the front, wearing vibrant blue clothes that Simon must have packed for this occasion. Poor Simon. Maybe, by some twist of fate, I was currently inhabiting the bird that had grown inside of Simon.
I noted quietly that there were fewer Uradel royals than I remembered. The Blestemats had been feeding off of them as well, and Adalbert was just too snowed to notice. Maynard sure seemed to drink in every moment of his time there. His statement of “I do” had been spoken with such relish that it was almost unsettling.
“Do you, Sorina Blestemat, take Maynard Uradel to be your husband?” the stable master said, and a smile strained at his lips.
“I do,” she said, and spoke with such depth and desire that I was almost sure she was going to take Maynard right then and there. But the desire was not for the wan prince; as soon as Maynard retrieved a small ring from his pocket, her eyes opened like hungry mouths.
It was the same ring, I noted, that Maynard had presented to Sorina as a gift when we first arrived in Umbra. A simple gold band, with very little to denote it of any worth, that had been picked out specifically by Simon. Simon, who had been guided along by Iacob, who, at the time, had been searching for a curse. I realized now that the ring was the Uradel talisman. Maynard slipped it onto Sorina’s long, thin finger.
“By the power vested in me, by the nation of Umbra and the laws that govern it, I declare you woman and husband,” the stable master said. There were claps from the Blestemat royals, but I heard Adalbert whisper to Annalise.
“He said it wrong,” the Uradel king said.
“He said it perfectly,” Sorina said, turning suddenly to face King Adalbert. Then she turned, and pulled Maynard close. She held him to her face, then, and I realized she was kissing him, with a bizarre sort of hunger. When she released him, he stumbled backwards, dazed, but smiling widely.
“The marriage is consummate,” the stable master said, smiling grimly. “The seal is made.”
“What are you talking about?” Adalbert said, slowly stepping forward.
Sorina held up her hand, the one with the simple gold band on it. “We are one family now. One family, made of two. One blood, made of two. And one curse, made of two. Finally. After all these years. It is done.” She laughed, and spun her fingers into a complex shape. Wind suddenly whipped around the room, nearly knocking me off my perch high above. “It has been so long since I tasted power like this.”
“We are free!” Laurentiu crowed, from somewhere below. A loud cheer went up from the Blestemat royals, and they began to dance about, cawing and crowing.
Maynard sat down, heavily, and began to laugh. He shook his head back and forth. Adalbert and Annalise looked at each other, lost. For the first time, I saw them afraid.
“Now, for my crowning moment!” Sorina said. And, ignoring her new husband, she turned and strode up to the king’s throne. “Balaur,” she snapped at the stable master. “The crown.”
“Yes, my queen,” he said, and, bowing low, retrieved King Titus’s former headgear from somewhere within his cloak. He held it up over his head, and cheer rang out from the Blestemat royals. Well, it was more of a guttural howl of triumph, as one calls from atop a pile of corpses. The only one not cheering was Iacob, though his comrades danced around him. He seemed sick.
Sorina took her seat on the green crystal throne, and surveyed her audience of royals. “This has been a long time coming,” she said. “Now, if my king will join me.” She made a gesture with her ring finger, and Maynard hopped up. Tottering like a drunkard, he stumbled up to the other throne and sat down, heavily. He was smiling loosely. “Now, for the crown,” Sorina finished.
“Your will be done, my queen,” the stable master said, and stepped up before the new queen of Umbra. And very gently, very carefully, the stable master placed the ethereal crown on top of Sorina’s head. It rested there for just a moment, and Sorina crowned herself queen of Umbra. And then came the shattering.
The crown atop Sorina’s head cracked, but did not break. There was a gasp from the crowd, but the new queen smiled. “I assure you, this was expected,” she said. “My father’s curse will try to break us, but it will not succeed. We are immortal twice over, and can survive anything.”
An uproarious laugh, a laugh I knew too well, spouted out from the crown atop Sorina’s head, and more cracks began to appear on the crown. The spiderweb lines spread from the crystal headwear down to the emerald thrones on which Sorina and Maynard sat, and began to extend further, destructive fingers reaching out from the shadows that lay at the heart of all the crystal objects. And, bit by bit, pieces of crystal began to shed from the crown.
Sorina’s smile began to fall, and she jumped up and shouted at Iacob. “Do you feel that?”
Iacob was clutching at his head and fell to his knees. “I feel it,” he said through gritted teeth. And then, all around them, other Blestemat royals began to cry out in pain. The dancing and jumping had ended and had been replaced by shouts of agony and thunders of confusion.
“What’s happening?” Sorina screamed, trying to rip the crown off her head, but it was stuck fast. She turned on Maynard. “What kind of curse did you family have?”
Maynard, thin, pale, and empty, said nothing, simply rolled his head and stared out from his slowly disintegrating chair. Sorina grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up.
“WHAT CURSE DID YOU HAVE?” she screamed at him. But she received no response.
“Drop my son immediately!” Annalise said. I saw her rush forward, but Sorina, in a fit of rage, turned and threw the body of her husband at Queen Annalise. The stringy weight of Maynard hit the Uradel queen with a force like a cannonball, and they both toppled to the floor, dead.
Adalbert, seeming to awake from a trance, stared down at his now broken wife and son. Then he looked up at Sorina. “Wait a minute, you can’t-”
But his words were cut off as the Queen of Umbra lasered through the air in the blink of an eye. She had Adalbert by the throat now, too, and was lifting him off his feet.
“What. Curse. Did. Your. Family. HAVE?” she hissed at the king of Uradel.
Adalbert, in his own turn, could not respond, for his face was turning bluer than it usually was, and his eyes popped from their sockets. Sorina took the king’s throat and sliced a huge gash in it. Blood, thick and slow, oozed out of the hole in the king’s throat, and he sputtered up blood from his mouth, too. Just as I anticipated, the Uradel king’s neck did not repair itself. He died human.
Sorina dropped him to the ground, his final gasps choking through his mouth. She turned towards Iacob, who was still kneeling on the ground. He was staring at his hands, silent and motionless, while the other royals writhed about him in pain.
“What have you done to me?” Sorina said to her brother. As the ground began to shake and the thrones at the back of the room began to fall apart in ever greater pieces, Iacob Blestemat looked up at his sister.
“I’m sorry,” he said. But for a moment he seemed to be looking directly at me.
If this were a video game, now we get the black-out jump-cut back to Saelac, and we begin the self-destruct sequence and final countdown for him to escape, just like at the end of a Metroid game. Trust me, I’d love to make a video game out of Spectral Crown, and a good one, too, true to the story and my original intentions. Maybe it’ll happen in five years, when I finally learn how to code C#. Or it’ll never happen. We’ll just wait and see.
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