The street is climbing steeply, and I dig into my memories for any information about this city. All human capitals of old had magical academies, back when magic was not that scarce. Maybe if I find a higher ground, I can take a look around and locate the academy. It is a vague plan, but it is better than nothing. The only problem is that the others might be doing just the same.
Some parts of the Teír Mekheret are almost intact. It seems like a devastating wave of something gruesome swept through it centuries ago, but some areas were spared. The tower looming at the end of the uphill street is halfway torn by some grand force. Yet most of it still stands, and with some luck, there might be a way to climb it.
The moonlight drips over the ruins like quicksilver. The frozen sea of marble and decay presses on my senses. Searching for a small artifact here is worse than searching for a needle in a haystack.
Out of breath, I reach the top of the slope. The colossal bone-colored tower looms ahead, piercing the starry sky. Sections of the walls are in ruins, revealing spiral staircases within.
Wait a minute.
I curse softly when I notice the light burning in the arched ground-floor window.
Atos take me with my damned fireflies and cautious dancing around the ruins. Someone was faster and set up a camp on the ground floor. Shadowfeeders and Tainted ones despise fire and light—so this is for sure another contestant. Or is the ancient city not as abandoned as believed?
And because fate always likes to make things worse, a tender, otherworldly melody spills out of the door and reaches me with the night breeze. It lingers over the ruins and drips down the dead streets like the sweet scent of blossoms, like the fresh air after a summer rain.
Tempting and powerful, the flute seduces my senses and makes me abandon all reason. Is there any mysterious spell in the tune, or is it my hexed curiosity? I need to see who is playing this flute as if it were Elder Raynisse herself.
The Prince
The Tower
The city is ancient, haunted by memories that cling to crumbling walls like shadows. Death lingers here, ever-present, watching from the darkened windows like hollow eyes.
Yet, in this desolation, there are tiny pockets of life, defying the decay. Bindweed has taken root in the cracks of the masonry, its slender vines reaching upward, blooming with small, white trumpet-shaped flowers. Praise Cymmetra! Nature always finds a way to remind us that there is still beauty in this cruel world. Cicadas and crickets have found a refuge between the leaves and are singing the oldest hymn of the night, a reminder of times when the gloom was a time for peace and rest.
My fingers close around a blossom stem, but an old memory holds me back.
The day I tried to pluck a flower from the royal gardens, driven by the desire to have something beautiful that was mine, Viridis stopped me, his deep green eyes flashing with disapproval. “Leave them for the bees and the tiny creatures whose lives depend on them!” he had said.
There had been another time, a darker memory that still stings. I was just a boy then, full of frustration and anger at the world that seemed to demand so much from me. While tending to the fragrant black roses, I spotted a stubborn weed choking one of the delicate stems. I grabbed the weed and yanked it out of the ground with all the strength I could muster.
“What are you doing, Princeling?” Viridis had appeared out of nowhere, his face a mask of anger that I had never seen before. The sight of it froze me in place; the weed still clutched in my hand. “I thought you came to my gardens because you valued life, not because you loathed it.”
“But it’s just a weed, Viridis.” My voice trembled with confusion and a childish sense of justice. “It was strangling the roses!”
His anger had not abated. “Just a weed? And does that make it unworthy of life? Do we destroy what we do not find beautiful or useful? Is that what you believe?”
I had no answer for him then, only the burning shame of a child caught doing something wrong.
“And yet the Elders condemned them all to die, just like the rest of this world,” I murmured.
“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they have just laid them to rest until better times come and someone worthy finds a way to end this suffering. Like bulbs deep in the soil, maybe the life in the Wastelands waits for the spring. For the war to end.”
“I thought the war had ended,” I responded with a condescending smirk. The old gardener tended to get confused sometimes, the long centuries of his life clouding his mind. He often muddled memories with reality.
“Oh, is it? Then tell me, Princeling, when was the last time you slept without a dagger under your pillow? When was the last time your father didn’t spend the morning signing death sentences to those aiding Seelie refugees?”
I swallowed my remark that he might lose his head over comments like that. Because even that young, I’d realized how right he was.
Yet his words settled in my heart and made their home there, sprouting roots and growing, just like the bulbs he mentioned.
I lower my hand, leaving the tender bindweed blossom.
A firefly lands on a waxy leaf. An omen of Cymmetra, I chuckle.
Time to press on.
Stomping my feet, throwing stones, trying to make as much noise as possible, I head deeper into the city.
