Tragedy of Gold

TRAGEDY OF GOLD

Volume Three of Chasing the Unicorn

A Novel by J.J. Spencer

© 2023 J.J. Spencer, All Rights Reserved.

PART ONE: ANOTHER PLACE.

CHAPTER 1

The air was still. Too still. No wind or birds carried sound across the empty spaces, no chatter of voices or milling of hooves. It was too still. This was Bart's first inkling that something was amiss.

Bart, now a newly-minted Paladin and Queen's Champion among other, more intimate titles, was also now a veteran of these dreary not-quite-there demesnes in between. It wasn't even the third time he'd awoken either consciously or not to being somewhere not-quite-here. Somewhere else.

The big Paladin slowly turned his head, his helmet obscured his field of view to the edges, its visor closed. He was alone on the road, even the dull clopping of his mount's hooves was muted by the stasis that seemed to take the place whole and true. Before him, stood the yawning ruins of Lachheim — routed and crushed, laid to waste in a myriad of ways so multifarious that Bart found his mind unable to focus on them, unable to discern specifics — the details wriggled and writhed away from his gaze as he attempted to narrow his attention on them. Unreal and ephemeral, he looked skywards.

The Ossuary stood tall and baleful beyond, the skies unnaturally clear, its details stark and crisp despite the impossible distance, resolving beneath his gaze far, far too readily — the opposite of the ruins so close beneath it. Forward still he marched on this dead, still road. Ever forward.

"You are aware this isn't real," came a familiar voice to his side, and from nowhere the warmth of love bloomed in his heart. He smiled and raised his visor.

Cithara the Unicorn, Queen of Love, and Holy Beast of Our Lord In Ivory trotted alongside him on the alien landscape, her figure was startlingly real, the same as the Ossuary. Beautiful golden eyes and iridescently white pelt wholly intact, every single curve of flesh, fold of mane, and swirl of horn as perfect as he remembered it. She smiled at him. It was devastating.

"I've been such places before, I assume I'm asleep," He answered honestly, and she tittered at him.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, you dozed off in your saddle again. We will have a talk about you overextending yourself later."

"A talk where I will nod in all the right places and do it anyways," Bart agreed blithely, getting a roll of the eyes from the tiny cosmic mare.

"Men," she sighed resignedly, but with a warm throb of affection in the tone and cast of her features as she trotted closer to her lover and his torpid mount, "However, yes you dozed off and I peeked in just a moment to make sure all was well," she said, looking around with a haunted expression, "... It seems you have much on your mind, my love."

"Watching over my dreams, are we?" he chuckled dryly, and she turned that cosmic golden gaze upon him without hesitation.

"Yes, always."

Bart smiled and pulled his helmet free, looking out across the increasingly abstract surroundings, behind him loomed Crownspeak and the Glade, seemingly almost comically overgrown and massive. Yet around him, there were no names or places of such he could recognize; the middle distance was a smear of green hills and brown woods of no particular shape or import, and beyond... well beyond had been well covered.

"I suppose I do, but this feels wrong," he said, giving her a pleasant if crooked smile, "My dreams as of late have been far more enjoyable."

Cithara's muzzle colored with a mixture of coquettish embarrassment and genuine desire at that; her long, sinuous tongue rolling across her lower lip, "Oh, I know," she purred at him, a shiver running through her.

Nevertheless, she drew herself up proper, her face serene but serious, "Mine own enjoyment of your mind aside, this isn't its halls, not entirely," she agreed as they walked on the road that seemed to pass beneath their feet but never carry them closer nor further away from either fixture, neither Glade nor Ruin growing closer or more distant.

"It's the Wendigo, isn't it?" Bart guessed, and Cithara nodded.

"It is. Perhaps unintentionally, as you dreamed you crossed into its own demesne — or rather we did. I felt us slip into range of its orbit earlier this day," she explained, and Bart nodded, gathering the facts as she continued.

"When you dream, you stride the Astral, just a bit. All humans do, really, it's quite magical." she said as she ranged ahead of him a bit, swishing that long, leonine tail and its long silken broom of glistening white silken mane at the end, seeming to simply dance across the ground as if it were air, weightless and impossible as she always was, "We of the Astral Tapestry get to glimpse into your dreams as you cross our domains in that great, stretching realm. When you dream of love, lust, and soft touches, you touch mine own ever so slightly." she said, turning her gaze onto him with a smile.

"I treasure those dreams, the human heart is a wonderful thing." Bart smiled at her, gnawing a lip shyly at the compliment, yet she continued, looking up at the Ossuary.

"When you dream of darker things, you cross into darker places. It is how we all influence you, good and ill. Dreams are a catalyst, the yearnings of the heart and mind."

"So my worries and the proximity of the Wendigo..." he ventured, feeling out the idea, Cithara picking up the thread effortlessly.

"... And your connection to its dark place still on your soul brought you here, awake and aware, unlike the others." she confirmed with a nod, gesturing with her horn, "The Ossuary and I are quite clear, but the rest is... off, wrong, incomplete, no?" she said and Bart nodded.

"Yes, you are... very vivid, and the Ossuary is impossibly crisp for something I have never seen, but the rest... the rest is hazy, misshapen, and amorphous, if I stare too long it simply refuses to resolve to shapes and concepts as I know them."

"That is because both of us have a mark on your soul, beloved." She said, sadly. The tiny creature trotted back to him, pushing her small frame up against his somnambulant mount, laying her glittering head in his lap, "I and the Empty Queen both have laid marks upon you, so our works are clear and crisp in your mind's eye. You have never seen the Ossuary, seen its walls breathe or its shapes twist and flex in the wind, but your spirit has."

"So in my dreams, it is clear as day," he stated, and she nodded gently, pressing against him — her warmth the only truly real thing he could cling to, yet he was unafraid. Strangely unafraid.

"It doesn't know I'm here, does it?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"It does, but I am simply too close, it cannot precisely perceive or interact with you as I shield you. I thought to use such a moment as a teaching point, to instruct you on such things, as you will interact with the Astral differently now, marked by my love and the Queen's hatred as you are."

Bart's hand tousled the little unicorn's mane, threading along her cheek in a way that drew a satisfied sigh from her, Bart looked up at the abstract nightmare ahead of them.

"It's going to be bad, isn't it," it was more of a statement than a question. Cithara nodded.

"It is. Your mind already prepares you," She said, gently tapping her horn to his armored breastplate. He supposed that made sense, he dreamed himself as such both for his real-world state — and because he felt safe, secure in armor. Steel comforted him in times of danger. He caressed her cheek and stared off at the distance — at that dread tower and its impossible height.

He felt it stare back. He didn't blink. In a way, neither did it.

"Now, now," Cithara chided him gently, her lips kissing his knuckles as she leaned up tall as she could to his face; "This is all quite serious, but I fear I must cut it short," she said to him, he turned his gaze to her sharply.

"Why? Am I in danger here as I was before?" he asked, his eyes and mind alert. She laughed at him and shook her head.

"No my dear, you are about to fall out of your saddle. Wake up darling, wake up." she purred — and placed her soft mouth against his, kissing him with a lurid, promising passion.

~ ~ ~

Bart's eyes snapped open, and he caught his reins, swaying dangerously in his saddle. It was late morning, he had ridden once again through the night, as many of them had chosen to continue to do so in the wake of their first glimpse some days back of Lachheim proper. The memory caused him to shudder involuntarily.

Lachheim. God in his heaven, what an atrocity.

Bart shook himself totally awake, his eyes met Cithara's where she trotted some distance away at the head of their little column, and she smiled at him with an exaggerated wink of one golden eye before resuming her quiet pace. Bart scrubbed a hand over his face as he emptied his mind of the strangely unfinished dream, and instead cast thoughts back to the last several days of riding.

The days had gone by in a blur in the wake of their revelations at the crest of the hill, that pace had put Lachheim a mere half day's march from them now. They'd cut a considerable amount of time from the first trip; largely owed, Bart realized with a touch of resentment, to him not being a semi-comatose invalid in the back of a wagon. Perhaps a tenday had passed total, easily bringing them within the sight of the walls, within a spirited march even. In the present, things continued apace.

Later in the afternoon, the men had taken to rest at the insistence of Naima, and eventually Cithara — no matter how close their goal was, both steely women had demanded all of them rest, recuperate, and prepare. Multiple campfires sprang up in the leeward side of the hillock along the side of the Espree River, its deep, lazy waters an inky blue as the night had fallen, and the stars bullied their way past the smoke to glitter and twinkle their way across the Astral Tapestry, dancing in time with the Twin Maiden Moons. The sounds of singing and laughter filtered down — men-at-arms drinking and feasting on what they had on hand, dining together in solidarity — for tomorrow they may well die.

Bart found himself alone again. The big Paladin had never been one to particularly enjoy solitude, but neither had he much access to it. A boy in a small village, and then a novice in among the many others in the Abbey, he'd gotten used to the constant crush of humanity, the din of chatter, and the warmth of fire, bodies, and friendship. Yet and still... the quiet appealed to him now, a place to center himself. To look up at the stars, knowing now what dwelled there, and wondering what dwelled beyond.

He sat on a smooth, flat stone overlooking the water on a small shelf, fireflies darted to and fro — glowing as they sought their mates, the first life he'd truly seen this close to the devastation. They alighted around him, landing on his arms and nose, and bringing a smile to the tall man's scarred face. His gauntlets sat aside in his helmet, and he ran his hands across his face, feeling the scars and touching his new, golden eye gently. It was warm, smooth, and still clean. Daedolon's claims were it carried no magic... and yet, he had felt no pain, no discomfort, and even the hollowness he'd felt was gone. He may not have been given sight, but he felt the brusque, bristly old Goblin had wrought some minor mysticism into it, something to make him feel whole. He smiled at the thought... he never thought at the beginning of that year he would miss the alien soldier — but he had grown fond of him in their time together, a respect hard-earned on both accounts.

Bart had changed, here again at the end of his road — where it had truly begun. He felt as if more than just a year and spare weeks had passed. Across the horizon, he could barely make out the outlines of windmills just past the smoldering plumes of smoke in the gathering twilight.

Home. Just a stone's throw away.

Yet, it felt further, he was not the fresh-faced, bright-eyed youth that had left a year ago by his own time. He didn't even look the same, so told his reflection in the water as he looked down, the serene surface glimmering like a mirror beneath the bright moonlight. More than scars and the loss of his eye, his whole demeanor was different. His face was stern and resolute, thinner, drawn with lines that had not been there. His eyes, or rather eye — looked older, wiser; and even without grasping for it, now and again a faint glimmer of gold shone across its surface, like Absolute Iron. Cithara's mark on him visible in more ways than one. He stared down at himself, for once not feeling fear, revulsion, or anxiety at his changes; he looked at his close-cropped hair, his touch of beard, and the now full, curling mustache that had become the trademark feature of his broken-nosed visage... and he liked the man looking back at him. He was a good man, a man of quality. Peace flowed through him, a serenity even on the eve of battle that was a cool wash of comfort. The water's mirror sheen wavered, and suddenly there were two faces in the water, his scarred, rugged visage, and staring down next to it — a golden-eyed, white-maned image of cosmic perfection — her soft lips smiling.

"There he is, the man I love." she breathed, eyes on their twinned reflections, leaning her cheek into his, his hand coming up to slide along her short muzzle, stroking up into her mane and causing her body to shiver, eyes lidding slightly. "So dashing and handsome, even the Twin Maiden Moons gaze upon him with longing." she breathed huskily in his ear, making it his turn to quiver a little.

"You flatter me." he protested halfheartedly, even as she buried her face in his neck, breathing in his scent boldly, eyes two slits of aurum staring back at him from the pond like glimmering embers.

"Flattery suggests I don't believe it to be true, nay my love. I desire you every time I lay eyes upon you, your form is pleasing to me in all ways, in construction and character." she purred, her mouth touching the base of his ear.

"Surely I am not so exotic and standout among my fellows, we are all burly, craggy men hewn from battle," he said, smiling at her through the reflection.

"It is not a judgment of quality, but value dear one. You are as I would have my husband be," she purred, her orbit flaring, taking his hands in the iridescent outline and raising them to her face, pressing her cheeks into them; "Strong and true, full of the light of life. Powerful. Muscular. Masculine." she said, her voice lowering to a sultry, chocolaty timbre that slid through his mind like sweet, welcome numbwine. "I cannot help my nature, I am a woman, and in that respect I crave the strong, powerful companionship of a man. You feared your strength and size, and I relish it. Treasure it." she purred, eyes open to just slivers of hungry gold.

"Treasure you."

"Are there no male counterparts in the Astral Tapestry? No unicorns to love and cherish?" he asked honestly, and she laughed.

"No... not as you would understand my love. I wed myself to your people, to humanity at the dawn of our mutual creation. My heart belongs to Men, faithful and true," she cooed to him. "I cannot love another race any more than you could a fish nor a bird."

"Yet I can a Unicorn?" he challenged her playfully, and she laughed softly, devilishly.

"Your kind wedded I as well, beloved. My form is alien and yet mine own heart speaks to thine through the primal thread of passion. Our souls yearn for one another, for the cosmos are a primal place themselves, red in tooth and claw — and earnest about its passions." she breathed in his ear.

"Our passions."

A tremble struck him, as she once more soothed away doubts and questions... her form truly mattered not, nay he could not love a fish nor bird, nor common mare — nor would he ever countenance the idea, even in direct contrast. Her shape was something that bypassed his mind, slipped through his instincts, and twined its needs 'round his spirit. He felt his own ardor rising as she bit her lower lip, those fangs glinting in the light.

"Our friends?" he asked quietly, and she nuzzled his ear, staring into their paired reflections, a perfect cameo of lovers caught in the water's surface.

"Well, and with friends newly made," she said, "I graced them with my aura, and my blessings each and every one. My beautiful boys, and wonderful companions all."

"Lidia?" he asked, concern on the edge of his voice that itself, barely was a whisper.

"Gram has seen to her, if you listen carefully — he sings still," she breathed, turning her head upriver.

Bart canted his head, eyes on the middle distance as he listened... and then, like the babble of the waters below, the faint strains of a strong tenor voice came. A voice of angels, raised in hymnal to God and Heaven. Bart could not help but fall silent and listen.

"He sings to her, as a minstrel to his lover, a songbird to his mate," she sighed, eyes full of desire and approval. "He sings to her heart, a kindred spirit. It is beautiful."

Bart nodded, turning his head slightly, no longer did he gaze at the Unicorn through the glimmering mirror, but now they did across the bare distance between them. Her eyes were full of a hunger he knew, a desire he felt himself sharing.

"You have made me your wife in front of Men... I would have you make me yours again, before God and Astral Tapestry," she said, her voice a quaver of lust. "I first called you to mine own embrace on a night like this a year past," she said, her lips drawing his eyes to them, "In a place not unlike this... the water and moons our bedding and blanket."

"Is it so special?" he asked her, and she laughed at him, softly with just a touch of haughtiness.

"My dear... one thing you will learn about women very, very soon... we have a very, very special relationship with our dear Maidens above," she said, and pressed in between his arms, standing between his braced thighs so they were breast to breast, face to face.

"What of the others?" Bart asked, though as she drifted closer he knew that his mind was already made up.

"They will know naught, tonight is a night of lovers and loved ones," she said, breathing softly against his lips; "We are not the only husband and wife who seek each other's arms away from prying eyes this night," she said, Bart's mind going to of course Naima and Rashid, their exchanges earlier. The Twin Maidens crested their orbit above the horizon, the Older and Younger both full, bright discs casting cool, welcoming light upon them... the moons and women... perhaps he would ask as she meant another time...

"Love me Bart..." she gasped, her mouth closing the distance; "Fill me, fill in all my deepest places with your love..."

Their lips met, her tongue danced with his, his arms slid around her form, and her forelegs around his — her wondrous alien anatomy allowing her to embrace him as if she were a woman born. Her horn brushed his brow, tousling his forelock as they danced a slow dance of mouths and moans, soft touches bringing them together all over. Hands, flesh, eyes, and hearts.

They tumbled softly to his bedroll, faint giggles of bliss leaving her mouth as she sprawled with him, rolling atop him in an eager desire to devour him anew. Mouths melding and that sinuous, delicate tongue sliding into his lips like a seeking serpent, and he welcomed her with strong hands threading through her mane, pulling her close, crushing her to him like he was trying to squeeze her through his breastplate into his very heart. She drew back slowly, languidly, letting her lips leave his before her tongue, the lengthy organ sliding free before slipping back into her lips. Her eyes glittered, and her orbit flared.