Chronicles of Death

Determination was nothing without skill- but the final soldier behind the door locked by the fire key had both. With every breath he uttered his allegiance to Veran. They fought. Swords clashed. Blows were dodged and ducked beneath. The flames grew ever closer overhead. Orange and red tongues whipped nearer, longing for one forbidden taste.

Their battle was as furious as the flames.

Katya was knocked against the next door, and she groped behind her for the keyhole. The door was plain, unlike the one before it. She traced the keyhole and recalled the shape of the key that fit it. Cordelia’s key. Water. Appropriate. She studied the soldier’s movements. He slashed but stumbled. The heat was getting to them both. She parried then withdrew the key and slipped it into the lock. Just as the fire door had groaned and shook, so did the water door.

Gears turned beyond sight and the doors slowly creaked open with a gasp of stale air. Katya turned to the soldier barely in time and knocked him back, but his blade crashed uselessly against her armor. She had to be more careful. The heat was making it difficult to focus. All she could think of was how hot she was.

It was time to end their fiery game. With a turn of her blade, she knocked his aside. He had been a worthy adversary, but Katya saw an opportunity and took it. He was holding his head a little too high. It was just enough space for the Godkiller blade to break through his guard and plunge into his throat. He gurgled, dark eyes meeting hers briefly before death took him. Withdrawing her blade, she ducked away from the descending flames. Beneath her armor was drenched in a thick layer of sweat. The heat of the metal was misery.

Unlike the fire doors, these opened inward. With a furious kick she pushed the doors open. She heard shouting beyond. Solitary shouting. Only a single guard stood in the next room. The cold air within, as stale as it was, was a relief. She knocked the doors closed behind her and the soldier stared at her in surprise before jumping to action.

Her heart was suddenly in her throat as she barely rolled out of the way of the end of a brutal mace. The spiked ball at the end of the thick chain flew toward her with impressive momentum. She watched as it crashed into the ground, shattering stone. There was no parrying that thing, that’s for sure.

“A lucky dodge, foul beast! You will not be so lucky a second time!” The soldier slammed his left hand behind him and struck a button along the wall. Tiles in the ceiling creaked open and water suddenly poured into the room in thin rivers, like rain. Katya kept her balance in the water that was suddenly filling the room. The soldier stumbled, unprepared for his own attack.

Thin rivers became mightier streams and the water crept around her shins. If it got much higher, it would be impossible to fight in. There was only one thing to do. Katya grabbed the doors behind her and yanked. They resisted but with a yell and a shove, she forced them open, and the water rushed around them into the fiery room beyond. Water met flame and a hiss of steam was accompanied by a billowing cloud of white. The water sucked them both back toward the open door. Katya stepped to the side and held firm within the watery room. The soldier swung his mace wildly with a yell.

She ducked, trudging through the water and out of the way. Despite it pouring into the fiery room beyond, it was creeping up to her knees. She struggled to navigate through the water, but her opponent was worse off. He was covered in thick, heavy armor and the mace was just as heavy. Now fighting one of the more brutal elements, the soldier was failing. Katya had trained in difficult conditions and while she’d whined about it at the time, she was grateful for that experience now. It had saved her ass more than once.

With a well-timed dodge, the mace struck water and stone. She stepped on the chain of the hefty weapon as her opponent pulled and his momentum dragged him into the water with a splash. Katya sliced at his gauntlet and got through the metal and leather. Then she sliced again, and his hand was cut clean from his body. It happened so quickly that the soldier was in shock, screaming incoherently while holding his bloodied stump of a wrist, on his knees.

Flames from the ceiling in the previous room roared and created a torrent of steam that filled the air and made it so thick she could barely see. At this rate, the water would boil. It was becoming difficult to breathe. But with the water being as high as it now was, the doors would be nearly impossible to close. Katya had to think quickly and move quicker.

With a clasp of her fist, shadow filled the chamber at her will. She trusted Vrana’s magic to guide her. The Godkiller blade was heavy in her hands, and she swung, closed her eyes, and trusted her sword. The warrior’s head fell from his shoulders with a splash, followed by the rest of his body in an instant. She considered closing the doors, but it felt a wasted effort.

Forward was the way.

No intricate design on this lock either. Katya trudged through the water and examined the keyhole. Aither. The key of air. She slipped the key into the lock and turned. It clicked, just as the others did, and then with a great grinding of gears and another gasp of stale air, the doors opened. Katya pushed them inward, and water rushed in with her. She then forced both doors closed to keep the room from flooding. There was a terrible crash of water against the door.  It groaned and threatened to give but held fast.

Within the next room were two soldiers but they didn’t withdraw their blades at the sight of her. They didn’t rush toward or shout their allegiance. They stared at her with terror in their eyes. They’d discarded their armor to the side long before her entry. Thin, starved, exhausted- they weren’t a threat. Her heart ached for them. They’d sacrificed their health and wellbeing, their lives, for a thankless God.

She lowered her blade.

“If you take another step then I will be forced to press this button.” The man’s voice cracked, as though parched. He gestured to a square button behind him near the final door. It was white, only out of place from the other tiles because it was raised. Katya didn’t move. She didn’t speak. “The air will be sucked out of the room. We don’t want to die.”

She slipped her blade into its sheath.

“And if you fail, we’ll die anyway for having let you past us.” The second soldier’s voice was stronger but still shaky. “You intend on killing Veran, then?”

Katya nodded.

“Could you promise us that you will not fail?” The first soldier’s voice was desperate, searching for hope that he could survive. Katya, still on her guard, bowed low. The guards exchanged looks and then bowed in return.

“We never saw you then. So, there is no need to press this button.”

Katya stood and gestured to the door that they guarded. She wouldn’t trust that they were harmless. They could be tricking her in hopes of an easy kill- preying on the decency of all living things. She removed the final key from her bag, the key that had nearly cost her life.

The guards stepped to her left and out of the way, hands up defensively.

“Beyond the door there are two soldiers. One on either side. There are no other traps within the palace. He did not think anyone would get past the gates.”

Katya bowed again, then ever aware of the soldiers to her left, she placed the key within the lock and turned. Like the doors before it, the gears turned and there was another gasp. But the air wasn’t stale. It was fresh and heavily perfumed. Like tea she’d never been able to afford. Paya had allowed her a sip of it during her time as her personal guard. She’d laughed when Katya’s face had twisted at the taste.

The doors opened.

The soldiers from the chamber of air pretended they did not see her as she left. It was a relief to not have to kill them. It gave her hope that there was some sanity amongst the soldiers serving Veran. He did not value their lives, no matter how loyal. With a push, she knocked the doors open and the two soldiers on the other side jumped alert.

Katya struck the closest on her right in the head. He wore no helmet. He wore no armor. They held spears, highly decorated with strands of feathers and beads, staff painted in a spray of rainbows and adorned with tacky jewels. They wore long skirts, tied around the waist, that shone in a descending, shimmering rainbow. Thin plates of gold-plated metal adorned their shoulders. Their chests and abdomens were painted with streaks of white. They had no shoes. No gloves. Just spears and aesthetics.

Veran’s vanity continued to surprise her.

Spear clashed against blade, but it was no match. They weren’t prepared for a fight, not the way they should have been. No one was sounding an alarm. She marveled once again that they hadn’t been trained to handle intruders, especially since that was what Veran feared the most.

Yet, they didn’t surrender or back down. They fought with all their might, as though their very lives depended on it. She supposed that their lives did depend on it. Their cheap, but pretty, wooden spears splintered beneath the Godkiller blade. She knocked them both back and then kicked one of the soldiers to the ground. She then pinned the remaining one, who bled from his ears, to the wall.

She offered them a chance. A single chance to not die by her hand.

They could surrender. She waited.

The soldier on the floor scattered desperately to his feet and lunged. The one against the wall shouted madly for her to stop in the name of his God. She pushed away from the soldier near the wall and out of the path of the one lunging for her. He fell instead of tackling her. She stabbed the soldier against the wall in the gut and he slid downward, a smear of blood painting the pristine white and gold castle walls. His rainbow skirt stained a deep, rich red.

She grabbed the hair of the soldier on the floor and pulled him to his feet. She then tossed him against the wall next to his fallen ally. She pressed the blade to his throat. He spat at her.

“Intruder. Wicked demon. Cruel death! You will not harm our glorious King. You will die here.” He spat at her face and then at her feet. Only a gasp followed as she slit his throat.

Not today.

Katya then crouched to feel the pulse of the first soldier. It was faint but steady. When certain no other soldiers were coming, Katya bound the wounded soldier and then wrapped his wounds with a piece of his skirt. With any luck, he would survive. There was nothing to be done for the second one.

The soldiers in the room of air had closed the doors behind her. Katya was left alone within the cavernous entry hall of Veran’s palace. Gaudy damask wallpaper in shades of brilliant orange and blue lined the walls all the way up to the rounded ceilings. The ceilings were painted with murals of Veran, some nude, some dressed in decadent linens and jewels.

Massive golden chandeliers hung from up high, tethered with strings of jewels. The light from the chandeliers shone in prisms through the jewels, reflecting rainbows on the walls. It was overstimulating.

The ceiling was so tall that it created the illusion that the chandeliers were very small. Four stories high, she guessed, with landings on each floor at the far end. Behind her the wall was white and gold, now stained with blood. A grand staircase stood before her, leading presumably to all of those floors. Paintings lined the walls. All of them of Veran in absurdly decadent bejeweled robes with a different woman dressed equally absurdly on his arm. They wore so much and yet it covered so little.

They were his wives, Katya guessed. With a quick count of the paintings, it added up. The women were painted staring at him with reverence. Veran’s palace was a monument to over-compensation.

In the far corners of the hall poured springs of artificially blue water from decorative grates. They poured into steaming springs that spread through canals in the floor throughout the room. A thick, ghastly film had grown atop the water at the furthest end of each canal. They hadn’t been cleaned in ages.

Her footsteps echoed as she studied the layout. There were no changes from the blueprints that she’d memorized. Luxurious couches and chaise lounges lined the springs, covered in dust. The floor beneath her boots radiated warmth.

Veran’s people were suffering, living in fear.

His floors were heated.

Three halls lined the northern and southern walls to her left and right. The staircase to the east led upward but a secondary staircase behind it led down. Veran would likely be upstairs in his chambers.

To the north there was a sudden commotion, but Katya did not hide.

Let them come.

Let them witness the death of their God.