Extra Chapter 3 - White Rose (Patreon)

Rose ran through the idyllic meadow alongside her sisters. They were ecstatic – a new shipment from another world was supposed to arrive. And they always brought new, wonderful foods, drinks, clothes, and toys.

“Come on!” Rose shouted – the eldest of the three. She led the path down the well-trodden dirt road and towards the great city in Lestosk. A titanic, singular metallic construction – imported by their Arch God, Caelum, from another world.

“Wait up!” Her sisters said in unison. They were twins – considered to be especially blessed by Caelum’s will. Their hair was starkly different from hers. She had dark, lustrous blue hair like the ocean at the farthest depths, whilst theirs were white and black respectively.

And, unlike her dear siblings, only Rose’s eyes were flecked with the mage-spark. The glimmering sparkles that marked her as a user of her Quintessence to perform spellcraft and magical feats.

Rose complied and slowed down slightly, pulling out a canteen and handing them both the water to drink as they made their way into the city.

All three craned their eyes overhead as something that they were forbidden to enter flew above. An enormous, triangular boat that sailed the sky and the stars. The underside was covered in glimmering lights and squinted as the blast of warm air washed over them as it passed by.

“Oh! It’s from Haven!” Rose’s dark-haired sister, Dahlia said excitedly.

“Oooh! That means candy!” Cryssy, her other sister, followed up. Her full name was Chrysanthemum, but that was annoyingly long.

Rose was visiting for a season before she would return to Mage College. A summer break of sorts in between her classes. The twins were nine, and she cared very much for them, taking many breaks from her learning to visit them and her parents. Both were well-off merchants who always let Rose treat her sisters when she visited. And a treat from another world was a delicacy indeed.

The three arrived at the town center alongside all the other youths. Packages were being unloaded, and an enormous man was carrying armloads of the crates. He was just like them – Prime Humans – but he came from a technology focused world, not a magic focused one like Heimfold. His skin was embedded with metal, wires, and small lights.

He turned to see the trio staring at him and smirked, “Well now, you three waiting on some of the new treats?”

The three nodded and the twins bobbed excitedly. Rose fumbled through her hip pouch and pulled out a few silver coins. “This is all we have.”

The man smiled, “You know the rules. You have to buy stuff through Caelum’s temple. All trade must go through him and his attendants.” He walked over and knelt to their level, and Rose was taken aback as his iris seemed to telescope in and out towards her face. “I suppose a little bit won’t hurt,” he whispered as he slid three pieces of weird, thin, crinkly substance into Rose’s hand.

She smirked, “Thank you.”

The mover chuckled and went back to his work. Rose dashed off towards the temple, handing the sweet, cellophane wrapped treats to her sisters. They each savored the delicious tartness that made them pucker their lips.

The temple was packed as usual. Everyone on Heimfold worshipped Caelum, and his priests ensured that other worlds only brought trade goods that were not usable for violence – so no weapons, armor, or other devices of that nature. But food and drink were traded aplenty, and the girls waited in line. Rose handed her siblings their silver coins and they waited in line for their chance to buy some wonderful food.

A few minutes later, the building rumbled and shook. Rose stood – stock still – as the priests began to panic and direct everyone to a doorway leading underground. The merchants left their wares and ran for their vessel.

“What’s happening?” Rose asked as one of Caelum’s clerics – an armored man surrounded by starlight.

“Get underground! Now!” He yelled at them as he went to the entrance of the temple.

Rose was taken aback, and her sisters began to cry. They had never been yelled at before by one of his clerics or priests.

It must be something serious.

She grabbed Cryssy and Dahlia’s hands, leading them into the illuminated tunnel along with the others.

For years they remained underground. Kept safe by the power of Caelum’s clerics and priests. They had dug deeper and deeper, carving out a miniature city in the depths.

No one told them what was happening up on the surface of Heimfold. But the shrieks of horror, the chaotic ripping and tearing, the screams – they were enough to convince Rose that being trapped down here was a better fate.

The survivors formed a miniature society underground. And Rose, being one of the few mages, was looked to for guidance. She was well learned despite her age – a prodigy who had garnered much respect due to her accomplishments at Heimfold’s only Mage College.

Rose was not expecting to be thrust into a position of leadership, but she handled the role with grace and dignity.

“Rose!” She was brought out of a trance as one of the younger guards ran into her small abode. “We’ve got a problem!”

“What would that be?” She asked coolly.

“The clerics! They need help!”

Rose immediately sprinted after him.

The entrance was blocked by a shimmering screen of starlight. Two clerics and one priest – the ones that escaped down here with the survivors – held horror back. Beyond the starlight barrier was a horrific aberration.

“The Void,” Rose muttered. She had learned little about what happened on the surface in the years since they fled underground. Something that corrupted all it touched, a purple-black miasma that spread across Heimfold. Some said it was brought by the otherworld traders, others speculated that it was the wrath of a hostile Arch God.

Rose thought they were full of shit. She raised her stone scepter, a crude implement carved from the marble they had dug into, and channeled her Quintessence. The air around her exploded in a flurry of frost and ice as she sealed the tunnel, the intense cold freezing the aberration solid.

The clerics collapsed from exhaustion, and the priest leaned against the wall. “Caelum’s power is gone. We’ve used all of his Heat.” He looked to her with fear in his eyes. “He’s not answering our prayers. That means-”

“He’s gone,” Rose said. She had figured that Caelum had fled. Why would you stay on a doomed world when you were a powerful Arch God? She smirked, “I have an idea. It’s crazy, but it could allow us to survive up there once more.”

The priest’s eyes went wide. “That’s…blasphemous!”

She shook her head, “You don’t have trust in me?” Rose walked to the ice wall and bored a hole through it, just large enough that a small trickle of the purple energy could leak out into the cavernous space. She raised another ice wall behind her.

She was trapped – between the slow trickle of The Void, and the ice wall behind her.

Let’s see if my theory is right. This is all or nothing.

She knew that if she felt ill effects, she could seal the hole again and retreat.

But she couldn’t stay trapped forever. She was already starting to go mad. She heard voices in her sleep, her sisters giggling despite them being long dead – lost to a cave in during one of the expansions.

She dipped her finger into the black mist and ichor. It crawled up her skin and slowly turned it to rot.

She screamed, trying to channel her Quintessence to collapse the wall behind her – but it didn’t work.

Oh, Caelum! I’m sorry! Save me!

Her prayers went unanswered as the tomb of her own making slowly filled with the ichor.

Time passed. Rose had no clue how long.

But eventually, the ice melted.

She gasped and opened her eyes as a rush of air broke past her. Her lungs felt crackly, crisp, rotten. Her lips were parched and she reached up, feeling the wan skin.

“What-” she stopped as her voice, her wonderful voice, sounded ancient.

Glancing around she saw that the cavernous space behind her was sealed.

They must have collapsed the tunnel and trapped themselves behind my ice wall.

With no other choice, she walked through the darkness and purplish black clouds.

Out onto Heimfold once more.

She saw horrors beyond description. Aberrations – altered and distorted versions of the creatures and Prime Humans that were living here – and over the course of four-thousand years, found others who had survived The Void.

Some were only half afflicted and made their way to the high deserts of Lestosk. They called themselves the Stossan. The others, like Rose, were coined as undead. Those who had passed beyond the realms of life, and unlike the Stossan, did not teeter on the edge of life and death. They had truly died, but with their souls trapped for some reason, returned to their bodies.

As the ten-thousandth year of the Universe Era ended, Caelum broke from his hidden stronghold in Heimfold with six powerful, Artificial Gods. They pushed The Void back and established heavenly bodies – Afterlives – to hold it back.

And then they returned. They wanted to destroy the undead outright – seeing them as pure Void corrupted creatures. But Caelum convinced them otherwise. They would tolerate the Stossan, but the undead they sent away.

Rose led the exodus and took her people to their promised land, a desolate wasteland scarred by The Void. It was there, in the Dead Scar, that the intelligent undead gathered. Under her guidance, they built the great ziggurat, and underneath, Kaad.

It was then that Rose adopted her title. White Rose, the Lich Queen of that city of the undead.

A title she held until just a few days ago.

Who would want to remain undead when they could go on to judgement? Have another chance at life?

But for her, she wanted to know everything.

And…get revenge.

Those Artificial Gods kicked her out of her homeland. She predated them. She deserved her spot on Heimfold. 

And that Tiberius, who dared slight her. He would pay, too.

And these two monsters were her best chance to accomplish that.

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