88. Rejection (Patreon)

Amadea climbed atop of the table. 

Her hands gripped at and started to pull the metal frame that bound my ossified body to the wall. The metal groaned, warped under her fingers, twisted away. The awful construct that had constrained, bound me for so long finally came apart, broke as if it was made from butter!

When she was done, Amadea wrapped my body in a dirty, rotting table cloth, cradled me and carried me through the murky darkness out of the ruined laboratory. I didn’t feel her touch, but I felt very thankful to be finally released from my terrible prison.

I stared at the pulsing gemstone on her chest, losing myself in its endless edges that folded in on themselves. Its infinite, orderly reflections were perfect in every possible way.

Where was she taking me? What happened to the damned, German doctor?

Amadea climbed over piles of rubble and debris moving through numerous underground halls. Silence reigned in the underground. My companion did not speak.

After about thirty minutes of walking, the darkness parted and the hallway became lit with bright light. For the first time in an insanely long time I felt excited, elated that I would see the light of day.

My hopes were torn asunder as soon as my eyes adjusted the the britness of the outside.

Amadea carried me out into the city. It was not the city that I had once remembered. Illatius had… changed.

The beautiful, magitek, Art Nouveau cafes were empty husks now, long dead shells of their former selves. Broken glass littered rubble-filled streets, sprinkled with a thick layer of ice and snow. Buildings stood empty, unkempt and damaged. A massive hex beacon tower laid across the street, having pulverized several buildings as it fell long ago.

“Funny isn’t it?” Amadea commented. “Look at me, the Queen of nothing and no-one. All my life I wanted to achieve perfection and order… and this is what I got. Order. Peace. Silence.”

I looked at her face lit by rays of light passing through broiling clouds above us. Her lip was trembling. Her skin sparkled in the light. I noted that it was crystalline in many parts. Blackened, dead flesh was intermixed with gemstone formations. Like me, she was just a husk of her former self, a ghoulish body kept alive, animated by the Eurekan tool hanging on her neck.

She looked down at me.

“You’ve looked a lot nicer last time I saw you,” she commented on my appearance. “But then so have I…”

I didn't reply, unable to speak.

In the light of day, I could see that Amadea was a practically a corpse herself. A beautiful, perfectly preserved, partially crystallized, cracking… walking corpse. 

Gloomy clouds rolled over the ruins of our city. Something that looked like ashes fluttered from the sky. I looked at the reflection of myself in one of the broken windows. Had I not been long dead, I would have despaired at the sight. My face was a sunken skull, the lower jaw twisted sideways and rotting.

Ember eyes stared out of dark eye-holes surrounded by dead flesh. Dark hair hung in uneven strands. My body was deprived of muscles, mummified, shrunken. Amadea cradled me to her chest like a child.

Backlit by violet-tinted rays of light we looked like a twisted depiction of Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.

I looked up at Amadea, wanting an answer, an explanation.

“I was free of Eunice’s chains, but the others were not,” she said. “As time went by… they realized this, figured me out. Georgia had deduced that I had no soul, wasn’t bound to Eunice anymore, not affected by magic. Your Inarian knife broke something in me, changed me.

When I met with the others to discuss the future, I stood for order, for my order, not for the order of Eunice’s design. This had greatly displeased my Master and the other Six. My vote was overruled and I was banned from further meetings of the Prism Order.

When I returned to my Estate, things started to go badly for me. One by one, my own maids... tried to kill me. Over and over and over. Again and again. They tried poison, blades, magic, traps. It didn’t work. The diamond heart kept me alive. I killed them all. I had to. I loved them. I really did… loved them so much... as I broke their necks and crushed their little, beating hearts. It was… awful.”

Amadea's face twitched. I squinted up at her, not believing her words of regret.

“After I finished off my maids, I gathered up my Vow-free allies in Palais De La Solstice, and tried to rebuild… but the others… the others took Illatius from me. I stayed in my Estate, tried to find happiness, but it did not last long. Eunice and her six could not kill me, could not put me down with magic and so they sealed my Barony off, declared me off limits.”

She sighed as broken glass crunched under her feet.

“Agatha and Emerald were... assassinated and a daughter of Baroness Lerozia married the crown prince. In time, she took the throne of the Empire,” Amadea continued. “Upon her orders the magitek revolution was put down by magisteel and spell-fire. Much of Illatius burned and was rebuilt. Vows to Eunisii became mandatory. The Basq Empire armed and readied itself for war, sent warships through the gates to Novazem.”

As Amadea spoke, I stared out onto the city, failing to recognize it due to the new, terrifying additions. Many parts of it looked like they were in process of being reinforced with metal beams. A railway track carved its way through one of the streets. A rail cart stood on one of the tracks filled with something that looked like... a massive pile of snow-covered, dead bodies.

Amadea paused her walk at a somewhat intact shop. A fading, old poster was hanging on a brick wall.

“Victory!” It declared. “Novazem crushed!”

The poster depicted an enormous mushroom cloud rising into the sky above a city street and a skyship broken in half.

“The Empress basked in her victory, had a parade of a million men. It was a preemptive celebration," Amadea said. "The destruction of their citadel-cities didn't not stop the Novazem Necromages. Their fleet was not destroyed… it simply took its sweet time getting to Illatius. Necromag agents disabled the hex-beacons of our capital, sacrificed their own lives by turning themselves into walking bombs. Enemy warships reached our capital and dropped an Astral-disrupting bomb on the city that ripped magic nearly from everyone that was near the detonation. The bomb stirred the Still Forest, unleashed a million Astral Phantoms onto the helpless citizens of my city.”

The ex-Baroness gritted her teeth.

“Those that survived the initial flash that melted flesh from bone and the Phantom attacks...” she spoke, her voice icy. “Did not know that they would envy the dead. Necromag ships landed all around Illatius... releasing thousands of soul-powered golems. They attacked everything living indiscriminately, sprayed fleeing people with some kind of a vile concoction.”

Amadea waved a hand to a massive, rusting skyship that laid across the streets, halfway buried in various buildings. Exposed parts of it looked like the ribs of a gargantuan whale skeleton. The warship was long inactive, but it still looked very imposing, dangerous. A spider-like, rusted tank made from stone and metal covered in strange, rune-like hexagrams silently stood next to the ship, its front legs twisted up and broken.

“The Basq fleet was able to put down the Novazem constructs, but what they didn’t know was that the thing they sprayed was a final solution for us all… a plague. It spread rapidly, mutated, infected everything living. The Empire did not survive it. People, animalia, dungeon monsters, dragons… everything was infected in time. Even the Folding Forest succumbed, could not escape it."

I looked at Amadea, my eyes wide.

“I’m not alive,” she answered my silent question. “I haven’t been alive since you pulled out my soul. The pestilence did not take hold in my reanimated flesh. It infected everything living. It was a cleverly-designed, magical, self-improving disease that we could not stop in time.

Amadea stopped at a desolate square. A once ostentatious fountain was now dead, the water basin overgrown with black mold. I saw that the ground around it was littered with human skeletons and ossified corpses covered in the same creepy, black overgrowth.

“I loved this city. Long ago, I adored sitting here and being lavished in the compliments of my partners,” my companion said. “And it was all... taken, ripped away from me. I’ve been alone for nearly a century, trying to find another living soul to speak to. I’m so very…. very tired.”

I tried to say something, to move, but my muscles would not respond. My body was a grey corpse, a broken, ancient husk. The accursed doctor made sure that I was useless and helpless. Only the muscles in my eyes worked.

“You know, you’re a very poor conversation companion,” Amadea commented.

I blinked angrily at her.

“One blink for yes, two for no?” she asked.

I blinked once.

“Oh good,” she smiled. “Do you like me?”

I blinked twice.

Amadea frowned.

“Do you hate me?”

I blinked once.

“Figures,” she sighed, rubbing her face and looking tormented.

I silently glared at her as the Baroness of nothing started walking once again.

She carried me to the edge of the city. The once green, beautiful chasm ring was now gray, devoid of life.

“I thought that some things like the Infinite Dungeon were absolute, immutable, unchangeable and yet… those Novazem bastards managed to kill it too, managed to silence everything inside it,” she uttered.

I blinked at her.

“Do you hate me… a lot?” Amadea asked. 

I blinked once in affirmation.

“Do you think that we could be... friends?” She asked.

I blinked twice, denying her my friendship. The century-long imprisonment had broken, reshaped me, made me bitter, killed the once kind, all-accepting, friendly Juni. 

“I see,” she said, her words tense. “I hate myself too. I wouldn't be friends with me either. My lovers, maids and… my precious daughters died because of my naivety. I thought that I could collaborate with Eunice… thought that I could bring order to the city through her. It was a mistake… and all of this has been reminding me of my terrible failure.”

The ex-Baroness’ hands wrapped around me. She closed her eyes. Tiniest sparks of something akin to tears glittered at the edges of her eyelids.

“If it’s worth anything, I would do anything to take it back,” Amadea said. “Anything. But… I cannot. What’s done is done.”

She shuddered and started to silently sob into me.

“Forgive me,” she said, wiping her face after a few minutes. “I… don’t think that I can go on like this. It was a foolish hope that there was something in your heart that would cause you to like me. I… I can’t face another day knowing that there is no future, no hope, not even someone who doesn't hate me... to talk to.”

She dug in her dirty shawl and pulled out a black, hexagonal textured knife.

“Baroness Georgia had it in her safe,” Amadea said. “Here. I return your tool to you.”

She placed the knife on my chest. I squinted at her.

“What am I supposed to do with this? My arms don’t bloody work,” I thought.

“I…” Amadea whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m going to give... my heart to you… maybe it will work on you. Maybe you’ll be able to use it in a way that I cannot… maybe you'll find a way to go on.”

The ancient chimera grabbed at the chain around her neck and pulled. The Diamond Heart did not want to let go, was fused into her cracked, crystallized flesh. She pulled harder with a growl and the necklace finally let go of her, broke away from her flesh.

She placed me down onto an old stone bench and gently put the Diamond Heart around my neck.

“Goodbye Juni,” she said as her pale skin began to flake off her body. “I hope that you can forgive me someday for the evil that I have done.”

I watched as Amadea’s body slowly stilled, fully crystallized and continued to flake apart like autumn leaves flying off a dead tree. In a few moments the chain reaction of accelerated. A gust of wind struck against her and her body shattered, broke into a million sparkling shards that flew off into the silent chasm.

The Diamond Heart on my neck pulsed. Some mechanical process within it activated, connected to me. It magnified my vitality tenfold, then a hundred, then a thousand times.

Something clicked within me. I felt… alive. Not as alive as I was once as a human, but alive like a city, like a process, like an idea that could not perish, that could go on and on and on, no matter what.

I stood up. Dust and dead flesh rained off me. I raised my hand up to my eyes. It was somehow reforged, remade, restored, made from something… else. What I had assume was Amadea’s blackened flesh were in fact strange, hexagonal-textured... micro-structures.

“How... interesting,” I said. "Endy can take things away but you can bring things back, rebuild them."

I did not recognize my voice. It was cold, perfect, like that of a machine, a rough, extremely approximate copy of what I once were as a human girl named Grogtilda.

I looked onto the desolate chasm. Gray, glowing clouds spiraled into its depths endlessly. I was no longer afraid of it. 

I was the purity, perfection of Order. I was the city.

Huh?

I looked down at the pulsating gemstone heart on my black chest.

“You do not speak for me, whatever the frig you are,” I growled. “If Amadea was able to let go of you, then so can I. Pipe down! Don’t think I won’t throw you into the Infinite Dungeon!"

The pressure in my thoughts that demanded structural order lessened, became reduced.

I smirked. 

I had won… a single round, but I knew that I would lose this mental tug of war. Given enough time, my sense of self would drown in the living concept that now hung on my neck. It was a lot more dominating, more rule-bound, more powerful than the knife. The Diamond Heart would change what I was, turn me into Amadea junior if I kept on wearing it.

There was only one path, only one… person that I could talk to. Someone that Amadea could never reach.

I turned away from the Infinite Chasm, making my way back through the silent, snow-covered ruins of Illatius.