The Black Rose

by James Bartholomeusz

  And she realized what she had been dreaming for as long as she could remember was not what had happened. She had not been pulled into Darkness against her will, ripped from her homeland through the shadows and emerging in a distant ocean. It had been her choice. She saw again, now, her younger self reach out and touch the Darkness, willing it to take her. Her instinct of terror had given way to all-consuming despair. Now, as then, she had no purpose, and oblivion was beckoning her into its portal.

  She raised her head, the lights and shadows of the room swimming together in her vision. She could taste the sulfuric Darkness: the contents of every torture cube not a separate entity but a collective force. She knew it was watching her. She sensed the energies seeping away from the prisoners’ broken forms towards the fresh meat. Through the haze, she saw the obsidian congealing before her, slithering down the aisle in an oily pit. Shapes stirred within: coils of serpents, fangs of wolves, wings of bats, demons rising and taking form. A whirlpool of ravenously baying beasts surrounded her.

  Ruth closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. She could never fight off this many demons, let alone in her current state. She tried to focus her mind inwards: the brush of the cloak against her skin, the prickling cold on her exposed hands and cheeks, the slowing thumping of her heart. If this was going to be it, then she would depart life meditating on the good parts. Snapshots rose from her memory. Her parents, before they’d been attacked, kissing her good night. Ishmael, brow crinkled with concern, hauling her atop The Golden Turtle. The meeting where she’d been appointed captain: Sardâr, Adâ, Gaby, Alex, and other Apollonians positioned around a drawing room on Earth. Jack’s apologetic surprise when she’d come across him in the observatory. Jack in front of a fountain in Albion, laughing…

  The baying had receded slightly, the bile sliding back down her throat. She opened her eyes. The demons were still there, but that was it—they were still there. She was seated in a lotus position, and the ground around her legs was humming with ivory light. The writhing wall of Darkness had not advanced beyond the white circle.

  She sat and waited, her friends and family with her, the Darkness pressed against her sanctuary.

  Jack could hear shuffling: thousands of footsteps echoing through the high vaults of a room. There was some pressure on his chest, making his breathing difficult. He eased his eyes open, pain throbbing through his head. He saw stone slabs, as on a cathedral floor, but quite a distance below him. It took a moment to make sense of his position. He was suspended at least twenty feet above the ground, his torso hunched forwards, his wrists, waist, and ankles clamped to some kind of pole. Wherever he was, it was dim. What seemed to be an immense stage curtain blocked his vision in front. By the candlelight from somewhere behind, he could make out several other figures suspended in a similar position on either side.

  “Ruth? Lucy? Sardâr?” His hissing was lost in the brushing of the curtain. None of the figures stirred.

  “So we have our first awakening.” The voice came from behind him, a low and illustrious drawl.

  Jack tried to look over his shoulder but could make nothing out. “Who’s there?”

  “Blind, so blind.”

  There was a grinding noise, and the pole he was linked to rotated. He was turned to face the candles, perhaps hundreds, arrayed in a bank stretching to his right and left. Their flickering glow filtered upwards, casting a cave-like luminosity onto the wall behind. Curves and symbols were carved into the stone, and, as his eyes adjusted, the patterns formed into an immense dragon, wings raised above its head, mouth belching a plume of flame. Its claws were planted on the floor where the bank of candles broke; in between them was a throne.

  It took Jack even longer to make out the figure there, swathed as he was in a black cloak. Yet there was something different about this Cultist. His robes were laced with a silver thread, which glinted in the candlelight. He was slumped, either in relaxation or exhaustion, but the impenetrable void of the hood was fixed upon Jack.

  “You’re—you’re the Emperor of Nexus, aren’t you?”

  The figure crossed one leg over the other and folded his arms. “Indeed. This recognition no doubt arises from a glimpse you attained of one of our recent Council meetings. And you—you are the elusive Mister Jack Lawson.”

  “That’s right.” He assumed, given their captivity, that their cover long since had been blown.

  “I must commend you on the audacity of your attempted rescue mission—although such audacity is rarely unaccompanied by some degree of naïve arrogance. Did you really think that you could penetrate this world’s defenses undetected? Or did you take our lack of security as a spectacular turn of good fortune? Even before your antics in Lord Tantalus’s diocese, the way had been cleared for you to go straight to your friends. Mindless fidelity makes one’s actions oh so predictable.”

  “So kidnapping Lucy and the others—that was just a trap for us?”

  “Yes, and you do continue to run into these traps, don’t you? Mount Fafnir, the Cave of Lights, now here. If I didn’t know better, the ease with which you were captured would make me think you’ve still got a card to play.”

  Jack was about to ask about Ruth but stopped himself. If his surreptitious count of the unconscious figures around him was right—and he wasn’t sure—then they were one short. Ruth might have managed to get away unnoticed.

  “Are we still in the Precinct?”

  “No. This, boy, is the Cathedral—the center of our world.”

  Jack took another glance to his left, towards the figure he was fairly sure was Sardâr. He hadn’t the faintest idea of how to get out of this situation, so he had to continue to buy time until one of the others woke up. “What are we doing here?”

  The Emperor’s laugh echoed upwards and reverberated in the stone. Jack became newly aware of the footsteps, even more tumultuous than before, beyond their current enclosure.

  “Oh, you will come to understand that soon enough. In fact”—he paused, listening to the noises beyond—“very soon indeed. The final preparations must be made.”

  The Emperor didn’t move from his reclined position. Indigo light began pulsating in the back of his palm, coiling into the shape of a rose, and within seconds his body had vanished into a retreating trail of ebony smoke.

  Chapter VI

  the aterosa

  Jack didn’t know how long he was there. He may well have fallen out of consciousness again, such was the entropy in which he found himself. None of the others around him stirred. Once or twice he tried calling out to them but received no response. He wondered if they had been affected by the Darkness that had consumed them in the prison cell.

  He remembered the alchemical constriction that had prevented him from fighting back. The same block was present here. Whatever was binding him to his pole, he couldn’t shift it, alchemically or otherwise.

  It was times like this that he’d become used to Inari bailing him out. Amongst the many anxieties struggling for control inside his head, the nature of the fox’s departure factored highly. He was sure what they were about to encounter was linked to whatever had terrified Inari enough to keep him from accompanying them to Nexus.

  All the while, he was aware of the growing noise beyond the veil. Echoes suggested they were in a huge room—a sanctuary, if the Emperor had been telling the truth. He tried to nudge the veil, to get a glimpse of what was beyond, but he couldn’t reach.

  Then, after what could have been hours, the Emperor’s voice rang out from somewhere nearby. Hush descended instantly from beyond. A few seconds later, the curtain dropped.

  Jack blinked. The chamber was indeed immense: vaults of stone supported by columns and interspersed with stained glass windows. It was crammed to the breaking point with people, well into the thousands, the faces fading into a blur towards the back of the room. The bulk of the congregation were the same dark-skinned denizens as had been in the chapel, but now they were herded in on all sides by Cultists.

 
Jack was indeed suspended high off the floor, clamped in a T shape like a crucifix. Looking to his left and right, he saw the other Apollonians fixed likewise in a line—seven in total, hoisted like war banners in front of the rabble. They were, at last, coming to their senses.

  The Emperor spoke from the steps below, his voice resounding through the assembled crowd.

  “Brothers, sisters, loyal subjects and followers. You are gathered here this night to witness the dawn of a new era. Darkness has fallen, my friends, upon the age that has passed, and Darkness rises to cloak the new one. All our work, all our struggle against our enemies to purify and protect our glorious realm—that struggle comes to a climax tonight.”

  The Emperor raised his head, and thousands more glinting eyes shifted upwards to the seven figures suspended in the air.

  “You see before you the most recent in a line of heretics who have sought to destroy our city. They have infiltrated with the intention of spreading heathenism amongst us, trying to rend apart our Church.”

  A swell of noise began at the back and swept forward. The roar of mob rage broke like a wave upon them. The crowd heaved, and several objects were hurled towards the front of the Cathedral, though they all fell short.

  “Nevertheless,” the Emperor continued, his booming voice prevailing over the riotous wailings of the congregation, “they were unsuccessful. They have been thwarted in their treacherous attempts by the foresight of our mighty Dragon, and they shall be put to use in his service. Subjects and followers, we have never been closer to the presence of the Almighty Dragon than tonight. In his munificence, our great god has shown us the path to him. The Cult of Dionysus has created a medium through which the full force of his power can enter our world. Behold—the Aterosa!”

  Darkness rushed downwards, flowing like windswept fog from the ceiling and walls to collect in the gap between the Emperor and the congregation. Something was bubbling black, writhing out of the floor with the noise of a gale. The rose pattern had come to life, its gigantic petals oozing off the marble surface, its thorns cracking like whips as they broke free. An indigo-black mass hauled itself into the air like a huge eye or some unseen deep-sea monster, tendrils hovering about it.

  Jack lurched forward and retched. He wasn’t the only one to feel the demonic influence. To his right, Sardâr’s jaw was clamped shut: to his left, Dannie had lost control and vomited down the front of her tunic.

  Complete silence had fallen now. Every pair of eyes in the chamber—whether heavily lidded with fatigue or concealed within the shadows of a hood—fixed upon the floating mass.

  “In order to unlock this power,” the Emperor continued, “we must all pray. Pray, subjects and followers, for our salvation! Pray for our communion with the Dragon and his Darkness!”

  Every single head in the congregation bowed. Only the roll of the storm outside interrupted the reverent silence.

  The Emperor lowered his arms and turned to look up at them. With a wave of his hand, he was airborne on a trail of black smoke, hovering at their height. He regarded them each in turn with a malevolent smirk. “Impressed, I assume?”

  None of them replied immediately.

  This close, Jack saw just how decrepit the Emperor was. His skin was pallid blue. His lips and teeth were cracked—for that matter, so was his skin, fissured like dry mud. What was more, with his every breath, a hint of grey smoke escaped and furled into the air. Only the eyes were truly alive, and they burnt with the intensity of a thousand golden suns. It was as if they were anchors, barely holding together a body that would otherwise have crumbled into dust.

  “Well? Are you all speechless? Have you not worked it out yet?”

  Jack didn’t know what he meant. He watched Sardâr, who usually had the answer to these questions. And, sure enough, it took only a moment for the elf’s eyes to close in silent, painful understanding.

  “That’s why our alchemy is so diminished here. This city, this entire island, is built on haruspex, isn’t it?”

  The Emperor cackled. “Not just built on haruspex—it is haruspex. The very buildings are hewn from it—even this Cathedral. It was a gift from the Dragon in all his glory, and with it we have conquered world after world. And now, harnessed into the Aterosa—”

  “But we’ll all be obliterated! The Dark alchemy surging through the city will act like a lightning rod. This can’t be a dawn of your new imperial age if the heart of your empire is ripped apart!”

  The Emperor’s grin widened. “Oh, Apollonian, I pity you. You cannot possibly conceive of life beyond the mortal. We are about to participate in the ultimate act of collective worship. You and your side pride yourselves on your humanitarianism, your altruism—but tell me, elf, which of us is selfless? Which of us, for the greater cause, is willing to sacrifice ourselves absolutely? Behind your façade of charity, your creed is built on self-preservation.”

  “You’re far too precious about your collective Darkness.”

  “And you are far too precious about your individualism. Which will be remembered: the acts of a few freedom fighters, or a perfectly united world-shattering force? The Aterosa will rend a hole in the Light, through which the Darkness and the Dragon himself can enter unrestrained. We will all perish as tributes to usher in a new age.”

  “This is monstrous,” Sardâr said quietly, raising his head to look directly into the Emperor’s eyes. “Do you have any idea how many will die because of this—how many millions of lives will be obliterated by your power games?”

  “Of course I do. And if you think you’re going to appeal to some humanity in me, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m not explaining this to you because you can stop it. I’m explaining it so you know just how much you have failed.”

  “Are you completely insane?”

  The black energy around his feet swirled slightly, and the Emperor propelled forward so that he was only inches from Sardâr.

  The elf didn’t flinch but held the Emperor’s stare.

  “Insanity is highly subjective. My ideology is abhorrent to you, so you brand me insane. Your ideology is entirely foolish, so I brand you a heretic. The difference is that I am winning and you are not. Incidentally,” he added, looking at the other faces, “do these companions of yours fulfill any function, or do they merely hang around in silence to make you feel supported?”

  “Get away from him,” Adâ burst out, throwing herself ineffectually against her restraints. “Don’t you dare—”

  “Calm down, dear.”

  With a flick of the Emperor’s hand, Adâ’s voice was muffled, though she continued mouthing furiously.

  “Stop that! Release—” Vince’s incensed grunts were cut off by the same force.

  “Well, they’re all going off now, aren’t they?” The Emperor swiveled his hand.

  Jack felt a pressure close around his throat. He tried to shout but, like the others, was unable to produce a sound.

  Sardâr didn’t seem to have reacted. He waited, viewing the Emperor’s face at close range. His next words were so soft that Jack had to lean in to hear over the wind and murmurings.

  “A duel. Single combat. You and I.”

  The Emperor’s mouth cracked into a furry-toothed grin. “And what possible incentive is there for me? I’ve won. I’m in control. Why would I accept your challenge?”

  “Because,” Sardâr replied in a barely audible whisper. “I know who the Übermensch is.”

  The Emperor scrutinized the elf’s features. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You’ll have to take that risk. If you don’t, you may never know and your work will be put on precarious footing. What would happen if, after all this effort, the encroaching Darkness were thwarted because you didn’t take the opportunity to deal with the one force which can overcome it? I can’t imagine your Dragon will look on you too well then, will he?”

  The Emperor’s eyes locked with Sardâr’s. “Deal. If I defeat you, I extract the information I need. If you defeat me, t
hen… ?”

  “Then you destroy the Aterosa.”

  “Rest assured, that will never happen.” The Emperor spun and floated downwards from them. His voice boomed again, silencing the murmuring of the congregation. “There has been a change of arrangements. One of the heretics has agreed to duel me. I am to exhibit to him the might of our Lord. No one shall be allowed to intervene. You must all continue praying.”

  The Cultists began applauding, and a ripple stirred in the main congregation as well. The murmuring resumed.

  The bonds clasping Sardâr’s wrists and ankles to the pole unraveled. He fell forwards but slowed his descent and came to stand gracefully at the foot of the altar. He looked haggard but intent, the last rags of the Cultist robes clinging to his tunic. He wiped blood-matted hair out of his face and readied himself.

  The Emperor descended with his back to the congregation, his robes sweeping the flagons. With a crackle of Dark energy the cloth was rent and reshaped, curling into a barbed breastplate and gauntlets. He raised his fist, and an orb of indigo light surrounded it.

  Sardâr took up a sideways stance, and light gleamed around his forearms. The wind howled, the congregation murmured, the Aterosa writhed, the Apollonians hung silently in the air, and the battle began.

  Chapter VII

  sabotage

  Ruth opened her eyes. Something had changed. Her circle of light was still intact, humming with ethereal energy, but it was no longer surrounded by the will-o’-the-wisp eyes. The demons seemed to be melting back into the shadows, dissolving into a single mass of oily blackness on the ground. What was more, the Darkness itself was vanishing, retreating across the floor and up the walls as if into a vacuum.

  She looked around. The stacked clinical cubes were still there, but the wailing was diminishing. The demonic presence was being removed from within the cells, one by one, leaving the people inside alone. As if gravity had been partially reversed, the liquid ebony seeped up and disappeared through the ceiling.