Prince Gyllen Ch. 14

It took her slightly longer than her average best, but the goblin managed to unlock the outside door soon enough. It actually took more effort and time for Min to shove the door ajar upon its rusted hinges, causing it to retch out a horrible wail which rang about the entire hilltop like a demented banshee. Even the sturdiest orc or minotaur would have had problems making it move and the noise was so unbearably grating, Min had to stop pushing midway through as her sensitive, pointed ears could withstand no more punishment. The opening she managed to create was just barely wide enough for the buxom goblin to slip through, though she nearly found herself stumbling and careening down a winding, stone staircase which immediately lay on the other side when she did. Had it not been for her lowlight-adapted eyesight, Min would have had no choice but to seek out a torch to see and safely manoeuvrer down the steps as they plunged into deep darkness. Even still, she took a nervous, impulsive swallow and took her hesitant first step in descending down the helical stairway.

Angst and uncertainty slowly built up inside Min with every step she took deeper underground, the only sounds to be heard being her footfalls echoing against the stony steps and her own ever-intensifying breathing. She was accustomed to trespassing on other people's property without permission or sympathy, yet she could not shake the premonition she was currently heading somewhere she should never go to, like an insubstantial sixth sense badgering and warning her of the unknowable hazards to her life should she continue...or worse. The goblin persevered past her instincts, her intense curiosity had overridden all portents after coming so far and would not allow her to retreat now under any lesser circumstances.

After minutes of vigilant descending in virtual silence, just when the goblin started to wonder if there was truly a bottom to the stairwell, she set foot upon an even, granite floor which stretched out before her into a dank, underground chamber. Min stepped forth from the mouth of the corkscrew staircase, sharply gasping and red eyes widening as she took in the startling surroundings. Lined and propped up within recesses across the eroded brick walls were boxes built of wood and shaped into seven-foot high rectangles. Coffins! The goblin had stumbled upon a crypt of some variant. There must have been at least fifty of the caskets flanking her from either side, each one displaying differing stages of wear and age compared to its neighbours and each one having a brass name plaque affixed to its lid, presumably denoting its occupant.

Initially, Min believed she was currently standing in the Mircalla Dynasty's familial tomb, though taking a glance at some of the inscriptions which denoted the boxes - at the least the ones that were still in a legible state - seemed to imply that was not the case. 'Greta Mezzanotte', 'Mōtī Madhyarātri', 'Shinju Mayonaka', names which all originated from the furthest reaches of the world, and all of which seemed to be that of feminine persuasion. It was highly unlikely that every one of them was part of a Dacian-born family, yet here they were: women from across the world all resting eternally within the catacombs of a Dacian castle. Min was not too sure what to make of these uncovered details, and her bemusement was only highlighted further by one particular name on a relatively young-looking box giving her an eerie sense of déjà vu when she read it, feeling as though she knew it from somewhere prior, and quite recently too, yet failed to recall the precise context from where. That name was 'Margaux Minuit'.

Most rational people would have instantly about turned and left the way they had come upon discovering this damp, dismal sepulchre, and Min would have done precisely that had she not found herself drawn towards one particular sarcophagus which lay by its lonesome at the exact opposite end of the room. While it was the only box to be poised perpendicular to the ground, where it was positioned made it look as though it lorded over all the other caskets in the vicinity, and the material it was made from definitely reflected that notion: lacquered, polished ebony as black as the night sky, compared to the inexpensive birch the rest had been constructed with. Min stood beside the coffin and read, on its cover - carved in golden block capitals, plain as day, clear as crystal - the assumed name of whom it had been built for:

'ELIZABETH MIRCALLA'

Min's heart receded into her intestines as her mistrusting eyes read the lettering over and over again just to validate she was reading every single last vowel and consonant writ upon the epitaph correctly while a million and one intrusive thoughts raced through her reasoning all at the one time, though she soon recalled the portrait hanging over the dining room fireplace that depicted a past countess whom bore an exact name and likeness to that of the current countess. It was possible, nay, more than likely that this casket in fact merely belonged to that selfsame forbearer.

But she had to make certain.

To this day, Min still could not fully articulate what had possessed her to lift the coffin's lid. Perhaps it was just for comfort and closure to the wild speculations she had accumulated during this visit that the subsequent revelation would potentially bring about. She wanted her fears to be proven wrong. Wedging her petite digits beneath the lip of the coffin's lip before summoning up a mighty heave, the goblin flipped the cumbersome covering clean from its edges, letting it clamour nosily as it impacted against the stone floor on the other side from where she was situated.

Let me just preface the following paragraph by saying Min considered herself to be a woman of the world who had borne witness to many strange occurrences in her 25 (goblin) years of life, both the wondrous and the despicable, and she has certainly had her fair share of dealing with corpses in one way or another, both fresh and old. Her days as a buccaneer and day-to-day survival on the Monster District's crime-ridden streets especially contributed to her become desensitised to horror and death more so than most. Little truly shocked her anymore barring the sheer unexplainable, but nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to see lying within that obsidian coffin. Where she had expected to see, at worst, a skull grinning in her direction, the beautiful, unspoiled visage of Countess Elizabeth Mircalla in death-like tranquillity was what instead faced upwards back at the goblin.

Min was both astonished and terrified to the point where she could not even express her fear through a scream. She merely stood there, shaking in place like a leaf in a squall while she took a closer inspection upon the unperished body that resided in the coffin. Inexplicably, the supposed corpse had more ruddiness to its face than that of the Countess while she was up and walking about, making it seem positively alive by comparison if not for the perceived lack of any respiratory activity. There was also two encrusted streaks of mysterious red stuff visibly trickling from each corner of its mouth and running down its chin. That was only concerning the cadaver's head, however, as Min was in such shock, she initially failed to notice the rest of its figure and what it had been draped in for its entombment...or more accurately, the ABSENCE of what it had been draped in as it was, for whatever reason, completely devoid of dress of any sort!

The body's slender, white arms were crossed over its chest, with their respective hands touching the shoulders on their opposing sides, concealing the bare, medium-sized bosoms from view. Min's gaze then involuntarily fell lower down the corpse's gracile form, absorbing more of its characteristics, such as its flat stomach, supple thighs, cleanly-trimmed pubis and smooth, lithe legs. Even though she was petrified, Min had to mentally admit in the moment that this dearly departed countess exceeded attractiveness even in death more than many of the other living women Min had ever been in the company of over her duration on this planet, finding a feeling akin to enamorment steadily replace her previous aversion...

She must have stood there, staring in both solidified wonder and vehemence, for five minute straight before snapping out of her bizarrely besotted stupor, the goblin could not fathom how she had been reduced to such degenerate contemplations while in her terror-stricken condition. In a panic brought about by the extreme unease and nausea for both the pristine corpse she had exhumed and her own necrophilic musings, she hoisted the coffin lid up from the floor and slammed it shut against the casket once again before making a mad dash back up the winding staircase and into the castle's keep. Min could only remember her flight in brief bursts of recollection, as if her brain had purposefully deleted some of her memory to cope with the trauma, though the unearthing of the body remained as fresh in her mind as when it had happened, all the while envisioning her irrational fear of the untarnished cadaver rising from its grave to stalk after her. Intuition drove her in the direction of the only other person atop this hill she trusted to seek sanctuary with.

Before she knew it, she had burst through the library's door and ran headlong Gyllen just as he was in the midst of performing a balancing act transferring a sizeable pile of texts from one point to another. The prince plummeted directly onto his delicate bottom, woefully groaning while Min lay across his body and between his thighs, her face planted into his chest. She shortly scuttled back to her feet using the blond's knees as handholds, kicking aside the books that were now all laying around them in a disordered heap as she moved away from him with her back turned.

"Min...?" Once recovered from his disorientation, the prince began to speak as he concerningly watched his goblin friend pace about the room like a demented asylum patient.

"Don'. Ask. Anythin'." Min sharply replied, shuddering as she recalled what it was she had been fleeing from. "I'm just gonna forget everythin' I ever saw..." She muttered.

"For Odin's sake, woman, what happened to you!?" The blond picked himself back up before going over to the goblinoid in an attempt to comfort her.

"What did I jus' say!?" The goblin shouted back at Gyllen before he had the opportunity, repelling him away with her tone of voice alone.

"Alright, alright." The prince said, ambling backwards away from her before going around to pick up every last one of the novellas he had dropped to the floor. "I'm just going to amuse myself with the idea of you walking in on the Countess sitting on the loo.." He chuckled to himself, blissfully oblivious to the trepidation Min was currently undergoing and the thing which had brought it about.

"If only, Gyllen...if only..." Min said with a loaded sigh, returning to the encyclopedia she had skimmed through the previous day in an attempt to take her mind off matters, yet the image of Elizabeth's peacefully dead duplicate remained burned in her retinas for the rest of the afternoon and following evening, and would crop up again here and there for decades to come.

The next few hours ticked slowly away. Min kept a close eye on a dwarven-made chronometer that hung on a wall until it indicted about ten minutes till six o'clock, at which point she got up from her seat and once again made her way towards the door.

"Where are you off to now, Min?" Gyllen asked, noticing her walk to the exit.

"Jus' feel like stretchin' me a legs for a bit." The goblin lied.

"Well, don't wander off for too long. It's nearly time for our dinner." He reminded her before she left him by his lonesome.

Even after her eldritch excursion, Min was not quite yet done with her inquest. She strutted directly towards the dining hall in the hopes of catching just a glimpse of whoever it was that had been serving their meals during their stay. Upon reaching there, she put one mitt to the door's knob, twisting it ever so gently then quietly pushing the entrance open by the tiniest crack, just enough to let her peer into the room and not be noticed by anybody inside. It was just as she hypothesised. The castle had no servants. Instead, she only saw Countess Mircalla, this time alive and (relatively) well, meticulously setting silverware and glasses about the table by herself before going to and fro the kitchen to fetch several dishes which the goblin could only surmise she had prepared herself. Min found difficulty in looking directly at Elizabeth's face, having just seen it's disconcertingly lifeless mirror-image in a cist earlier that same day. Like the corpse though, it seemed as though this Countess' face now strangely possessed a similar healthy colouring to her ennui countenance compared with the pallidness which plagued it before. And for those wondering, the animated Elizabeth was fully clothed, much to Min's subliminal discontent.

When she watched Mircalla produce an enormous, roast chicken upon a long platter, Min figured the Countess had almost concluded her table-arranging and was about to seek out both the goblin herself and the prince in the library. Min quickly returned said archives and seated herself down by a desk as she took up her bestiary, acting as though she had been cooped up in there for the entire day alongside the blond as she pretended to read from the softback.

"You're back?" Gyllen asked from the second storey upon noticing Min's unexpected reappearance.

"Uh, yeah? Is that a problem?" Min responded with the question of her own.

"I would have thought you'd go straight to the dining hall instead of coming back here." Gyllen said, as he took a glance at the timepiece. "That's six o'clock now. The Countess should be calling for us any seco-" The prince's final syllable was cut short by the slow creaking of the ancient library doors reopening. Both of them were momentarily startled, but Min probably moreso when she saw the Countess' chilling form poised as still as a statue in the doorway, and twice as imposing, as her vacant eyes looked over to the teen, and then to the redhead.

"Dinner has been served." Mircalla unceremoniously stated, while she awaited her guests to accompany her to their next meal.

The Countess brought the prince and his plus one back to the dining room, and three of them found themselves all sat around the table for what would be their final dinner during this visit. As Gyllen engaged the noblewoman in chatter, Min decided to forego directly raising her concerns to their esteemed host, as she doubted she would have been very cooperative or lenient had she found out the goblin had been spelunking in her ancestral mausoleum, and instead found herself in a reverse situation to how last night's meal went down, as in she was the one now gawking in Mircalla's direction. The goblinoid composited the image of her here in the now with that of the cadaver. The similarity was unreal. It was truly as if Mircalla had died at some point during the night, was interred in the morning and then was resurrected in time for tea. Min looked up and behind from where the noblewoman sat to the domineering portrait still attached above the fireplace. The only discernible difference between the person in the picture and the person seated below it was the hair on their head...the hair...

"Wait, what hairstyle did th' stiff have...?" Min mulled over, desperately trying to dredge up the tiny detail that could prove the key to understanding the truth. "Was it long like in that doodle? Or was it shorter like what old Liz's rockin' right there? I'm leanin' towards shorter...but that don' mean nothin'. The carcass coulda got it cropped a smidge jus' before croakin'...right? All jus' a freak fluke...or is there really a clear-cut link somewhere in there...?" A terrible thought then surfaced to her consciousness. Was that truly the ancestor Min had met in the tomb? Or had it been the current Countess all along? Either answer dismayed her, but one had direr implications than the other.

Harking back to tales she and her friends would conceive and share as children in back alleys under cover of moonlight in contests to instil the most fear in one another, what if the Countess Mircalla was, in actuality, not at all alive in the conventional sense of the term? What if she was damned to forever walk the earth in a limbo state that was not quite dead, yet was neither truly living? What if she was compelled to return to the undercroft to escape the sun's rays by each and every dawn? What if the streaks of crimson pouring from her mouth were, in fact...

"Excuse me." The wearisome, Dacian-accented voice derailed Min's deep train of thought. "I have some things to attend to elsewhere." Mircalla rose from her seat and left the room without awaiting a response. Deciding to trail the noblewoman then and there, Min waited a full minute after Elizabeth had gone through the doors before she hopped out of her chair, feigning a stretch and a yawn.

"I think I'm gonna bugger off meself." She crassly put things. "Hope ya don' mind snackin' by yer lonseome, Gyl."

"Really, Min? You've touched practically nothing." Gyllen said, thoroughly disgruntled by the goblin's disregard for wasting food. "You're not ill, are you?"

"Hey, I'm jus' doin' as our host is." She responded. "'sides, I ain't got much a' an appetite after t'day..." That much was true at least.

"You know, you've been acting peculiar all day and I'm starting to feel concerned. Are you sure you're feeling fine?"

"Yeah...jus' gotta be the boredom finally gettin' t' me..." She said before abandoning the blond.

Min went to her bedchamber on the third floor and put her ear to the closed door, able to decipher someone or something shuffling about on the other side. Again, she opened the door ever so slightly and peered inside. Sure enough, it was the Countess again, this time making the bed where the goblin had believed she had nipped her nape during the last time she dreamt. Min was impressed by the Countess's housekeeping skills during her surveillance, which would have put the maids of most five-star hotel to shame by the professional techniques she employed in fluffing the pillows and neatening the sheets to a flawless degree. As Min saw Mircalla finish up, she again completely closed the door before ducking around the nearest corner in the corridor to avoid being caught, peeking over just in time to see Mircalla, fortunately, walking down the corridor in the opposing direction from where Min was hiding, presumably to deliver the same service to Gyllen's place of rest.

Min entered her now-empty guest room, immediately bolting the door behind her once inside. She then spent the next while searching the entire chamber from top-to-bottom for any secret compartments or hidden hatches within the crannies, closet and beneath the bed but, much to her relief, came across nothing of the sort in the end. Though knowing it to be a silly thing to even consider, she also latched the balcony door shut as well in order to make her feel at least a tiny bit more at ease. With the room completely sealed so that no corporeal being larger than a housefly could enter as they pleased, Min started undressing, far less energetically this time than was the norm while she reviewed today's events in her mind.

"Alright, Min, pull yerself together." She began thinking to herself. "What you saw in that box musta jus' been...modern embalming techniques at work...yeah, that's it! An' Lizzie's prob'ly jus' been forgettin' t' doll herself up for our visit 'till this morning. Doubt she gets enough guests for it t' be a habit. Weird how different people can look wi' just a bit a' make-up..." She cherry picked out the vaguest of reasons in a desperate effort to put her mind at peace in the same way a child would find justification in the most minor of aspects, conveniently not accounting for the entombed one's nakedness or the crimson strips dribbling from its mouth amongst her interpretations. The goblin simply shed her worries alongside her outfit, springing back onto the mattress to ponder things over some more, hands behind her head and one leg crossed over the other.