Chapter 15 - Sacred bonds of fealty (Rookie games arc)

　　Buffeted by the onsetting wind, Artisan staggered, his gait dreadfully impaired by the clubfoot now his brace had broken. But the prince lent him his shoulder, and the man leaned on it. Gratefully. Like once a whole nation had.

　　The prince would not fall—not this time. He fought past the pain and exhaustion. Perseverance was a Blackrose virtue. Though wherever he went, blood followed. A scarlet line in the sand, trailing evermore in his wake. Like a cloak in the breeze. Was that, too, part of his legacy?

　　They moved past where the bone-warrior had stood, funnelled into the chamber passage. It was dark now, but it was a sanctuary. Close and confining, the corridor proved a barrier from the world outside, its harrowing noises. The cries and heartless clamouring. The silence after.

　　Will she be who she was—will her mind and heart remember? The huntress. Upon her return, that fated devil-sworn comeback. Or is it in body alone she will look once more upon him, with eyes gone dark, the soul unwilling? Let her not go down the path of madness, though it was that way they would all walk, steadily deeper in the abyss. Oh, how the prince hoped Artisan was wrong, or that his words were lies—all of them lies, so that truth could reign and be more noble. But he knew better than to doubt when hell was here and not its opposite.

　　Then his thoughts dispersed, made way for the world of bodies: Artisan leaning deeper in, bidding the prince caution—the enemy may well have preceded them. The ruinous mage.

　　The prince held his buckler high, the faint radiance of a magestone red gleaming from its socket. But what good might it do? He felt naked now, stripped from his time-tested safeguard—the forged steel of his royal armour. It was madness to pursue a mage with nothing but a buckler and dagger. A single hex and the wood would crack; a bolt of fire or ice or a lesser element even... and it would shatter. So would they.

　　As they breached the sanctity of the birthing chamber, streaming through the muck and waste, stepping in or over the shards of hatchling shells with weapon raised... they heard a soft, wailful tone, vibrating sweetly like a chant. There was a scratching as well—the grating as from tinder and steel, flickers of a blue flame flaring. But the fire did not take.

　　A huddled figure sat in the corner in the dark, small and feeble to the untrained eye. Yet looks may deceive. This was a lone wolf of a creature, the prince thought. Fangs veiled yet ready for baring. The mark-bearing mage.

　　Though the prince felt the old tug of instinct—shield high and sword at the ready; trust not the foolery of magic... he was almost swayed to do the opposite. Artisan`s hand relaxed on his shoulder. The young old man`s body sagging in a steady peace.

　　"Failing... in spellforce?" Artisan eked into the open, speech belaboured by the lack of his ring.

　　The mage turned round, hardly alarmed but distraught all the same. "Here, have it back," she cried. "Your trinket is no good to me." Tears rolled down her cheeks as she threw a thing at Artisan—but it never reached; in a flash of heart, Cedric had jostled in... a timely block with his buckler. The projectile landing dead on the hard wood.

　　Artisan clapped Cedric on the shoulder, laughing like he had not before—a childlike glee as though the air in the damp and dark hole was somehow rife with amusement. He arched lower, bending his broken frame to the ground as he reached for the fallen object. His medallion. A trinket indeed—cracked and worn, a dull red blooming from the socket. As minor a magestone the prince had ever seen. A morsel and not more of magic.

　　But Artisan held it with reverence, plucked a bit of blood-spotted rope from his hip-slung pouch—a parting gift in scarlet, the prince intuited, for Vol`krin`s eyeballs had travelled with... and so had the bloodied bits at the end of them. The parts a wooden dagger would not cut.

　　Hanging the medallion round his neck, Artisan`s eyes softened. "The most minor of trinkets indeed. Plus one in strength and in intelligence—those are its stats (+1 STR, +1 INT). But to my mind, that singular point of INT is a world of difference." Turning to the mage, Artisan wore his stern face once more... but seeing her there, broken in the corner, the man`s features slackened, and he was fatherly almost—this thought the prince. Like the huntress had been a mother... not plainly but in fact; the very essence of her was woman—healing and nurturing, self-effacing to an irreparable fault. Cedric felt tears now, stirring behind a blank expression he strove, much like his guard, to maintain. He did not know the mage, and he did not trust her. He trusted one mage and one alone. Gael. Never far from the mind or heart. Gael always.

　　"You are a thief but a lousy one," said Artisan finally, chastising the mage but with a coy smile—her failure to utilize the medallion had brought the man some great relief. But a sadness came with it. The mournful hold of wisdom, the knowing that is too much.

　　"Slay me now, for I have wronged you," said the mage with a delicate voice, resigned to her self-appointed lot. "And you," she added, nodding up at Cedric with tear-stained eyes. "I had to be first in the taskmaster`s line, so I struck out... made you fall for selfish gain. May it bring you heart to know that it was for naught, and that I..." she started sobbing, thick and true tears gushing from this little creature who Cedric now thought fangless, or masterfully guised in sheep`s clothing.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

　　"Your mark, let us see it," said Artisan with gentle inflection, to which the mage gave ragged gasps in response, utterly disconsolate. And though she had aimed words along the tearful groans, they lacked the power to reach.

　　Artisan inched softly toward her, the clubfoot in half-lurch behind him, skin raw and bloody from scramble. He stood gazing down, a slight nod in affirmation.

　　The prince saw it too—her mark was fading, the purple of the Ruin()) kanji now decidedly less deep. Eroding her hold on the past, the sense of self.

　　A final whimper. Then the mage sat herself straight, her hands closing round a small box stowed behind her, adorned with the same faded craftwork as Artisan`s—the one he had dug up back at the beach, before Vol`krin and before the huntress had... but Cedric broke off the thought. It would lead him back to that place he did not now want to be.

　　"I thought I had more time," the mage said, clutching the box, the wood and metal wet with sorrow. "I cannot become like you." She looked at Artisan with fear and with loathing, but looking through him, eyes glazed as though staring not at a man, but at the spectre of her own self, a future rot of which she could not be availed. "Broken but time and again reborn," she continued. "And always the lesser for it... taunted by the hurt of remembrance. No hope for absolution." She shook her head wildly. "No—I have dug it up thrice. And there will be no fourth time." The box rattled in her grasp and the mage lifted it high, poised as if to shatter it... but she lowered it gently, sobbingly... cradling it close again. "I will choose to go mad, ravenous like the beasts outside. Never will I be like you." She looked hard again at Artisan. "Anything but that."

　　Artisan did not respond, took a sombre cast to his countenance, grave and pensive. But not spurned. He turned instead to the prince. "Why did you save me just then, leaping in the path of this... horrid projectile." A dim smile as he looked down at the medallion, the lightless thing he treasured so.

　　"What need is there for word in a matter so clear?" The prince in heartfelt response. "We are allies—I have said this before. Though I have failed. Already our fellowship lies fractured, for we have left one to the wilds. One of our own... or have you already forgotten, your mind flayed by weary preoccupation? That plaything round your neck. Is it worth it, the price in blood?"

　　"A lavish battering regardless, if words are not needed." Artisan paused, the strength of him flecked with remorse. "But I may well deserve it. My haste alone sent the huntress to bitter ruin. She was better... far better than I had thought possible. To think that one like her might learn to love. It was your doing, prince—of that I am sure. You pulled that forth, deep from the dark and hollow of a goblin heart."

　　Will she return a hard cold monster, the prince had thought to ask. A slave to madness, so much less than she had been? But he did not ask, for the answer might not sit well.

　　Heads downcast, the three allowed for a silent moment, each contained to their own, the quiet desperations that haunt the hell and halls of a private mind.

　　Then Artisan sought Cedric`s eye in the way he had before but not quite—when the sand had turned blood and Vol`krin had fallen. When one man had gone to the lake for another to return. The prince seemed always to spring into the path, buckler raised against some threat or other.

　　"You are petulant and brash," said Artisan to the prince. "But stalwart as well. You are the first to come after the very first... to do the Blackrose name honour. The great king Rodrich—no man living under the heavens can equal him, what he once was. But you fill the shadow better than all those come before. Devoted to your word as to duty itself." Artisan drew himself tall, a bearing that was almost noble. "Do you swear it, prince... do you swear to the depth of your wroth? Will you seek vengeance and succeed—there where we have failed?"

　　"That I have sworn, and that I swear, now and forever," said the prince, rising tall and regal as he had before.

　　Artisan beheld him, wavered for a beat but then no more. "It is all too early for this old fool to say what he will—you are proven to me, though not nearly enough... oh, how I want for time when there is none." His eyes bore the weight of the years, but there was a courage, too. He went on. "And is the blood so strong that a Blackrose will reign here below as doth above? Will you rise as first and be my fellow, to seek the retribution I could not—that we could not?" Artisan looked upon the mage, earnest and kind. Forgave her like the huntress had him. "Swear it, prince, that you will bring us justice," he said, voice breaking but not his will. "Swear it on your name... and in a dead man`s stead, I will swear to you in turn. As Artisan, I will bend before the Blackrose banner and renew it now and forevermore... the sacred vow of fealty."

　　"On my honour as heir to the Blackrose throne, I do swear it." Standing solemn and stark, the prince struck a mighty figure, like the kings of old or the gods who had crowned them. He reached up and removed the rustic helmet, cast it out to clatter on the cold hard ground.

　　"In the name of my king-father Bartold of the Blackrose... I, Cedric, prince of Lothrian do accept. Pledge to me your word and your body... and by royal decree will your vengeance be executed."

　　"That I swear," said Artisan, lowering to one knee.

　　The mage grew wide-eyed, grasping now the gravitas of the moment. "I thought you a pretender... a sideline halfwit sent to make mockery of the mark. But if it is you, Cedric... then as in life, my skill and breath are yours to command. Now that the name is still mine to speak... I, the Lady Linaria, devote myself to your service. I swear undying fealty to the Blackrose heir." She bent down low, inclining her head to the floor.

　　"Lady Linaria..." started the prince. If taken aback, he did not show it. "Would that I had not to see you here—a mage of your rank and temper deserves better. As a boy I looked up to you; as a young man I was enamoured by you, your devotion to the Arcanifactum... and now, all these years and a sentencing later... meeting you as a man proper, I find I become once more the boy and the young man both." The prince had grown fond of his fanciful lies—they seemed always to strike in the molten core of one. She was ghastly now. A goblin. Nothing more.

　　The Lady Linaria grew red at the honour.

　　The three sat down on the ground of the chamber in which this morning they had been birthed. But only now, in the nighttime hour, when words of fealty and sacred bonds had been spoken... were they truly reborn.

　　The one for the three and the three for the one.

　　Vengeance will be theirs.