Tragedy of Gold

"Indeed," the burly warrior agreed, his gray eyes warm as he glanced down at the tiny woman, a now-familiar magnetism between the two of them. "I would not trade this time away blithely, its pains and triumphs alike have been quite a story. To see two men I have such pride in find themselves," he said, looking at Nazir and Bart — both the most visibly changed by the ordeal, both strengthened. Tempered. The fires of conflict and hopelessness had passed over them both and burned away much of their former selves into something harder, purer, and more focused. "It has been a rare privilege to see such growth, even in so dark a time."

"I would agree with that," Cithara said approvingly. A divine edict, practically. Rashid raised his cup with a grin. Cithara's voice answered the toast, her own cup raising with the glimmering outline of her orbit.

"To Life, bittersweet as it is — it is worth every moment," she said, tilting her head down to Gram and Lidia, caught gazing into each other's eyes, fingers enfolded. "To Love, new and old alike," she continued, getting Gram to smile with a rare display of white teeth, and Lidia to raise her cup. Naima and Rashid as well, their fingers linking closely, eyes on one another.

"To the struggle, for it bears both as its fruit," she continued, looking between Nazir and Bart, both battered men smiling and raising their cups.

"From the Lady's own lips," Nazir said in a rueful tone, laughing as he raised his cup to his lips "To Life! May it be long as it needs to stay interesting, and not a moment more!" he crowed and took a heavy sip — as did everyone else, Rashid coughing roughly as the potent beverage hit his lips, Naima however perked her head up, looking down at the cup.

"Oh, that's lovely," she mused, taking another long sip to the goggle-eyed looks of her fellow companions. Bart grinned at her over his own cup as Rashid quite casually poured the remains of his own into hers, and Cithara descended into almost girlish giggles as the Alchemist looked between the others.

"What? I like strong coffee," she said, and Bart raised his cup to her in a salute, which only got an eyebrow up from her, she shrugged and sipped more.

"Coffee, Men, language. You do seem to have a preference," Nazir observed blithely, his sister giving him an arch little look over the rim of the glass, Rashid not bothering to cover his grin at that.

Cithara simply giggled all the harder.

CHAPTER 3

They mounted and rode out with little fanfare, it wasn't a grand campaign of legend — nay, this endeavor strongly reeked of the personal, even among the men-at-arms. The Spears each seemed to have an intimate stake in this, many were citizens of the city, if not simply the Heartlands themselves. The ride was mostly silent as they crested the hill, and traveled down into the yawning mouth of hell that awaited them.

The sky darkened as they grew closer, unnaturally so; the soldiers bristled uneasily as the grim pall seemed to pull the very light and color out of things the closer they grew. Bart, Cithara, and surprisingly — Lidia, rode at the head of the pack. The rest of his companions were not far behind, Gram at the rearmost, leading the short column of soldiers.

The mood changed as they approached the walls, the oppressive pall growing heavier, the sounds of nature snuffing out to naught but the whistle of wind through shattered stones and the creak and groan of decaying infrastructure. The group reorganized as the gates loomed, Bart and Cithara still at the head, the Ivory Spears taking up ranging and flanking positions, building a line for a series of staggered charges as their doctrine dictated. They were ready for an attack, they had all read the reports. They knew the numbers and had heard Bart and his companions tell them of the horde besieging the city during their escape. They braced for it, visors shut, weapons at the ready as they rode up to the northern gate.

Yet it never came. Silence reigned, only broken by the clatter of hooves or the creak and groan of ruins settling. Nary a soul or soulless being to be seen. The portcullis was still a twisted, destroyed mess from where Humbaba simply walked through it, and ahead the crater where Naima's bound familiar had annihilated him with a thunderbolt stood out.

Bart paused his horse as the rest of the men filtered into the city through the shattered gates, burned and skinned corpses of defenders hung high from the crumbling walls — sport or a message, it was hard to say. He looked at the shattered gatehouses, the old, dried smears of blood and gore telling the tale of the occupants. He had been waved the toll for passing through the city, but he had paid it all the same in blood. Absently he fished a remaining copper penny from his purse, looking down at it in his mailed palm. It was such a small thing, but it felt like it carried the weight of the world. The rest of his companions filtered past him. The tinny sound of the coin spinning through the air was almost swallowed up in the clatter of hooves and armor, clicking off the stones to land face-up on the gatehouse's floor. Bart was already moving before it stopped quivering. He had paid the toll and yet felt more was owed.

So it continued, the party moving through the ruined city. Unnatural twilight encompassed the ruins as they picked through, whole buildings flattered by what looked like main force, and others seemingly torn open as if they were bears getting at delectable beehives. More than a few heavy doors were simply ripped free from hinges and lay strewn across the cobblestones, the houses themselves wafting out a charnel reek that told the story of what had happened within.

"What is this gloom?" Bart asked after a while, looking to Cithara for answers. The Unicorn had been withdrawn and silent since they passed the gates, her expression was pained, dismal even as she looked at her beloved.

"The Queen is here," she stated simply. "Part of her, like the altar we destroyed near Fort Ivory — but a far grander scale," She said, looking up at the dark, overcast skies and seeming... staleness of the air and stillness abound. "Her weight drags everything beneath it, even light cannot escape. The parts of the world fully beneath her power are dark indeed — Lachheim is hers now. Time and reality grind to a halt," she said, and turned away, straightening her neck sternly.

"Be on guard, beloved. It will grow worse as we draw closer to the seat of her power here." The roads became in some places impassable, forcing them to wend around smoldering ruins, the stagnant time seemed to have frozen some parts of the wreckage in a perpetual burning; the charred innards of buildings, businesses, and homes pouring smoke when they should have long burnt to ash. In other places, so much of the buildings had been razed that no stone stood atop another, and the roads vanished into wide fields of rubble and destruction.

"Where are all the fell beasts?" Nazir asked, tension thick in his voice, his amber eyes flicking to and fro beneath the hem of his steel-capped turban. "They crawled across the very walls beneath Fort Ivory like great, gangly spiders."

"Dinnae remind me," Lidia complained in a hollow voice. The little changeling's face was a bleak, impassive mask, her skin pale and sallow as she looked about, beyond Bart — Lidia was the one who most considered Lachheim her home. She looked up to Bart, eyes empty of emotion.

"It's all gone, forever, innit Bart?" she asked — but the question was rhetorical at best. He looked around, the destruction, the sheer scale of the terror that had been visited upon this place, he shook his head, glad for his visor to hide his own hopeless, blank expression.

"I don't know, Lidia. God help me," he managed after a fashion, gripping the hilt of the First Blade tighter. He and the others had drawn naked steel early on, and even now it was a comfortable weight at the end of his arm, bracing against this grisly silence. Lidia nodded once, her wan face turning back to the road. Bart wished more than anything at that moment that he could take the hurt from her heart, selfish as it may be, he had come to love the young girl and would stand his body between her and all harm — yet here he could do naught but watch.

Similar scenes and similar silence followed them across the river, which itself was clogged and bracketed at the bridges with wrecked and ruined barges and carts, Bart looked around, and he began to frown, turning his visored face to Rashid.

"No bodies," he stated plainly. The big Akali nodded.

"I have noticed that as well."

"I've seen blood, scarring, bits of gore here and there but aside from the atrocities at the wall, I haven't seen a single corpse," Bart continued, reining his horse around a collapsed section of bridge. Rashid drew in a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh as he looked towards the skyline of the ruined city.

"I fear we will find them elsewhere," he said, pointing his bearded chin towards the city center, where the plumes of white smoke rose unevenly from all around it. Bart didn't need to further question Rashid's meaning, the smell of the place told him all he needed to know without looking at the sooty white plumes.

The horror struck home for Bart as they passed the waterfront. The pathway to the northern drawbridge of the Order Militant fortress in the river was blocked by a massive, gouging rent through both the buildings and earth beneath it, as if the ground below had simply erupted, churned up by some massive subterranean force — and thus they'd been forced to detour to the southern gate Bart had first entered a year and some days ago.

"Oh God, no," Bart breathed as he drew the reins up on his horse, a sudden stop making his harness clatter and rattle. Cithara came up short as he stared off the main road. This part of the city was mostly workman's homes, common folk's dwellings, and their needs, surrounding the Cathedral Quarter — the center of the lived-in city proper.

"Beloved?" the Unicorn inquired as he stared. It was a small, two-story building that was once whitewashed and doughty, with a shingled roof and a well-tended garden — now a pile of crushed, pummeled ash, cinders, and rubble. He placed a hand over his belly, feeling a hollow sickness fill it as his eyes cast over a single glint of light in the pall and soot.

"Oh no," he breathed. A silvery mare, still perfect but for smudges and ash, peeked from the ruins and rubble. The remains of a sign. Parias' final words echoed in his mind like the screams of the damned:

I will kill everyone you ever loved, ever spoken to. I will bring ruin to your name, ruin upon your very mention in history.

"Bart, Bart please... speak to me," Cithara whispered, close to him now. He could not look away, he saw the sequence of events, the torn and gouged cobblestones, the door thrown clear with much of its frame and surrounding bricks still attached, wrenched free by main force to make way for horrors.

"Mila, Marie," Bart said in a dull tone. His shoulders went slack beneath his armor, which for a moment felt as if it weighed a thousand stone, the crown atop his helm with its draping veil felt as if it were made of lead, dragging at him.

"Oh no," Cithara gasped as understanding dawned on her. She pressed against him. "No Bart, do not let her darkness into your heart, remember you are vulnerable to it. Fight it, my love, for the lost if not yourself."

Bart heeded her words, his helm tilting with a weak nod. His one blue eye gleamed with unshed tears behind his visor.

"They were... friends. Of the family. Of my father," He said and slid from his saddle. His armor crunched down on the ash-caked cobblestones; the quicklime in the whitewash had cooked off in the heat and fury of the sweeping blazes and mixed with the settling ash into a crusty, eerie layer of gray-white film over everything, cracking and breaking like ice beneath his boots as he walked forwards.

"Bart..." Cithara breathed, but he paid her no heed. Kicking and crunching his way through the ruins, he thrust his gauntlet-clad hand down through the still-smoldering ashes, grasping the gleaming image of a rampant mare and pulling it free of the crust of soot and lime that covered it, shaking it free.

"Pyotor was so proud of this sign. Mila, too," he droned, driving the First Blade into the ground nearby so he could take the metal mare in both hands. "It should not be buried, dirty and unseen," he said, taking the hem of his white half-cape and scrubbing the silver — Sidhe Silver, truly, he recognized it readily now from the Wild Hunt's fell blades — clean and clear, the glimmering metal recapturing its shine with little effort. Cithara watched, saying nothing. The sadness in her eyes was old, familiar to her. Familiar to him now, as well.

"There," He said and took the sign, propping it up over the ruins of the inn. A headstone more fitting he could not imagine. He said nothing more, kneeling before it for a long moment. Silent prayers filled his mind, driving back the sorrow. Cithara simply stood by, not too far, but not too close either. She was present, and for that — he was grateful.

"Come," He said quietly, standing. "It is unseemly for me to take such time, all of us here have lost ones in this place, better to use that time to punish those guilty of this... violation," he said, ripping the First Blade up from its interment. It was only then Bart realized he'd driven it straight down through solid cobblestones, from which it emerged unscathed. A fearsome edge indeed.

"Bart..." Cithara began and then seemed to think better of it. Merely drawing close to him, leaning her soft, warm weight against his side. He took but a moment, yet a needed one to draw his hand through her mane. He didn't have words for this yet, the enormity of the return to the razed city had yet to truly settle in his mind. It may not for some time. He would be patient. So would she.

Remounting, he rejoined the column of soldiers, his companions exchanging looks with him, but the withdrawn silence was contagious, each of them feeling the weight of the unnatural gloom and strangely vacant carnage keenly.

The ride through the southern side of town was much the same as before, the creeping crush of lime and ash spreading as they entered the parts of town more populated by commoners; wood and whitewashed houses out-populating the stone and masonry manors of the more affluent northern half and Merchant's quarter. The southern gates towards Fairharbour had been reinforced, barricaded by the city's men-at-arms and seemingly held for a time, the ground and masonry around them utterly savaged, the barriers themselves torn and shredded, cast about in ruin. A delaying action, a last stand fought for refugees to escape.

They arrived after some additional detours for collapsed buildings and still-burning fires at the avenue leading to the Order Militant fortress. It was a scene out of hell itself, when he had left they had packed the area with slain abominations, ghuls, plagued men and even an ogre or two had lain here — now there were no bodies to count, but the cobbles and bricks were absolutely blackened with fire and the greasy, caked-on blood and gore of the unholy monsters. The walls of the fortress across the span were pockmarked by all manner of assaults, the raised drawbridge showing visible scars of fire, fang, and claw.

"Ho, the fortress!" Called Bart, his voice ringing out in an oddly muted fashion in the quiet. He stood at the head of the column, visor down, cape and crown gleaming along with the First Blade in his fist — and alongside him stood the Lady in White, glimmering pelt as bright as a star in the preternatural pall. Atop the wall came a surprised call, and a yell backwards of unintelligible phrases. No doubt could remain for the defenders seeing this, and the sound of a clattering windlass came to the ears as the drawbridge lowered, and at the other end stood a familiar figure. Bart smiled and came down from his horse to cross the wooden span, Cithara at his side.

He paused before the figure, and pointedly saluted, visor down still. The armored figure seemed to be confused by that at first... and then a crooked smile crept across their face.

"Still outrank me, Ser," Commander Viconia said, clashing her own fist to her breastplate as Bart raised his visor. She was worse for wear, many new scars decorated her armor and flesh alike, but she stood strong and tall still. Unbroken.

"My apologies, I am but a provincial boy," Bart conceded with exaggerated piety, earning a fresh grin from the grim-faced, blonde woman. She stepped forward and clasped his wrist, perhaps too familiar but neither warrior was about to raise any considerations on ethics or rank.

"God's Blood, Ser Bart. You look like a figure of legend," she said, looking him up and down with a mixture of awe and approval.

"Language," Cithara chided her quietly from his side, the words seeming to jolt her out of her staring at Bart's changed frame.

"Oh by the Lord, the Lady in White." She breathed, dropping to one knee, crossing her fist over her heart as she had at Bart in mockery, this time in piety. "I meant no offense, I..." she raised her eyes, one blue, one milky white still. "... I prayed you would save us."

"God hears your prayers, my darling. He answers as he can." Cithara said with a beatific smile. "Rise, please. After such trials, I dare not ask you to kneel for anyone."

Viconia seemed stunned by the entire interaction and rose to her feet. Cithara smiled at that, the Commander caught Bart's gaze, noticing the scarred, golden eye.

"Seems we have more and more in common with every meeting," she remarked, and Bart couldn't help but chuckle a little, his armor clattering as he did.

"More than you think, Commander," He said, shooting Cithara a sidelong glance, before resuming a more serious bent. "I bring you reinforcements, a hundred-strong force of the Ivory Spears — and with them, the Lady in White — and a Paladin of the Radiant Order," he said... proudly. He felt that bit of pride at this point was earned. Viconia smiled.

"A valiant force indeed, and needed. We've been undermanned and overtaxed for months, almost a year," she said, and Bart rocked back at that, though Cithara merely sighed.

"The Queen's presence," She reminded them both; "She bends and breaks the flow of time."

"How long has it been?" Viconia asked, she looked haggard and tired despite her readiness. Bart hesitated, his words stuck in his throat — Cithara, however, took up the thread without a moment's wait.

"Three months give or take a week or two, dear one." Viconia fell back a step, seeming a bit unsteady. "Three months... to us, it has been at least ten. It became harder to track the days when this damnable twilight settled over the city."

"How have you managed to hold out so well?" Bart asked, and she refocused on that like a hawk, thankful for the lifeline to cling to.

"They came up through the sewers everywhere else, but as before — the Fortress has no underground access, the river is deep and feeds our cistern through sand filters," she said, hooking her fingers into her swordbelt. "Moreover we have plentiful reserves of fresh water barreled, and as much if not more provisions. It is a fortress, it was designed to weather a siege of years," she stated, her chin raising proudly.

"My men have sold their lives to the highest standard, not a single cursed monster has crossed this span and lived long enough to gloat about it," she stated... and then furrowed her brow.

"At least, until about a day or so ago. They all just... left," she said, clear confusion in her voice.

"Left?" Bart asked, looking around at the empty cobbles before the fortress, clearly showing recent signs of mayhem. Viconia nodded.