I…
I have to check on them.
Delilah didn’t know how long it had been, but she knew she needed to move.
Sen and Valgwyn were gone. The grisly sight of their horrific massacre remained, but…
I have to move!
Delilah put one foot in front of the other. She went to Alice first, who sat on her heels, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth.
“Alice?” Delilah asked, kneeling next to her.
Her voice sounded so small.
“I’m okay,” Alice said. “I’m okay. I’m… but he’s…” She took in a long, deep breath, held it for several seconds, and then spat it out, tilting back until she landed on her rear, stretching out her legs as she sat. “Ah, what the heck happened?”
“Are you…” Delilah started.
“I’m okay,” Alice said. Her white eyes flickered, just for a second, to black, before flickering back. “I just… Rabanastre. He…” She sighed. “Have your Summons ever been badly wounded?”
Delilah shook her head. “And their small wounds I’ve always been able to heal quickly,” she added.
“Yeah,” Alice said. “Well… count yourself lucky. I’d only heard about what it’s like before, but… that’s the first I’ve felt it.” She smiled grimly. “Our Summons are a part of us. When they hurt – really hurt – we feel it. And that…” she clutched her hands to her chest, continuing in a soft voice, “really hurt. Rabanastre won’t be able to come back out for a while, too. He’s not dead, though – he can’t die unless I do, you know? But…” She balled her hands into fists and glared down at the stage far below. “I won’t let that happen ever again.”
Thank goodness. Now for…
Delilah walked over to Marcus, still slumped on the floor against the wall. His staff lay across his legs, held loosely in his hands. As Delilah approached, he looked up wearily.
“I’m afraid I let you two down,” he said. He sounded ashamed rather than hurt. “I have contended with the forces of darkness for so long… I suppose pride got the better of me. Though I would have defended you two from him regardless, I honestly thought I could fight him on at least equal footing.”
“If anybody should be able to, it’s a Paladin,” Alice said, eyeing Marcus. “You totally wrecked Jormungand, and I kicked Kaohlad’s butt with ease. What the heck’s the deal with Sen?”
“He is the eldest of the Sons of Night,” Marcus said in a grim tone.
“Sons of Night?” Alice asked.
“I have much to explain,” Marcus said, pushing himself to his feet, leaning on his staff. “It’s part of what you need to learn, but I was saving that for later. It seems those lessons can no longer wait. But first…” He gazed down towards the stage. “We need to clean this up, and give these noble men and women a proper burial.” He placed a hand on Delilah’s shoulder. “I know it will not be easy for you. But we are the only ones who can do this for them.”
Delilah nodded, steeling herself for the arduous task ahead.
Marcus led the way down the many stairs to the stage, and then peered into the stage’s open trapdoor and the stairs that descended into darkness. “Stay close to me,” he said softly.
Into the darkness they went. Marcus lit lamps along the way, until they found themselves in a cylindrical stone chamber, about twenty yards in diameter.
“This was a safe room,” Marcus said wearily. “And yet they were still able to break in somehow.” He lit more lamps, and Delilah stifled a gasp. She started to turn away, to close her eyes, but…
No.
I…
I have to face this, don’t I?
But it’s all so…
So…
Delilah looked, moving her eyes quickly away from the most gruesome aspects of the scene. Most of her focus ended up on phrases written on the floor and on the walls.
They were, horrifically, written in blood.
On the floor was scrawled in huge, messy letters: THE STAGE IS SET.
On the walls were various scattered phrases and words in the same messy script: DANCE. THE FIRST WILL. CURTAIN CALL. DROWNED.
“What’s it all mean?” Alice asked.
“I’m not sure,” Marcus said slowly. He had often stood tall, even in the most gruesome scenes throughout the Abyssal Sanctuary, but now he leaned more heavily on his staff, bent forward, looking older and wearier than Delilah had ever seen him. He let out a long, bitter sigh. “But I do know what this is.”
He strode to the center of the room and knelt, plucking something from the floor in the middle of the G of THE STAGE IS SET. “Sen, the butcher,” he said, standing. “And Valgwyn, the gardener.” He turned, holding out his hand to the girls. Pinched between thumb and index finger was a pitch black oblong seed the size of a thumbnail. It was alive, bristling at Marcus’ grip, but he didn’t seem at all bothered by it. “This is how it begins. Valgwyn plants the seed and nurtures it, and from the seed the living darkness spreads, infesting a place with its evil. Once it spreads enough – reaching a critical mass – the seed no longer exists, and eliminating the darkness is a much more difficult matter. But finding the seed like this…” Marcus pinched his fingers tightly together, and the seed shattered into a million motes of dark dust, vanishing in the air. A faint, chilling cry could be heard, echoing outward and then fading away.
“So from a certain point of view, we got here just in time,” Alice said.
Marcus smiled. “An interesting perspective,” he said. The smile swiftly faded. “Now, come. I will show you the proper procedures. Alice, you and I can handle the dead themselves. Delilah, there is magic available to you that will make cleaning much easier. Though, for now at least, keep these words intact. We mustn’t forget them.”
Slowly they set to work. Marcus led them all upstairs, to a secret door on the top floor of the Sanctuary. Through there was a path that led outside, to a clifftop cemetery. There were seven graves in all, stone pillars on stone ground, lined up close together in a single row.
“We don’t bury them?” Alice asked.
Marcus shook his head. “They will be burned, here in the open air, among their fallen comrades. And we will raise monuments of remembrance for them. None of them shall be forgotten. Alice, please bring the bodies here and lay them out – don’t pile them on top of each other. Delilah, come with me.”
On the second floor down, in a room next to the one with the Light Catcher, Marcus showed Delilah how the Bastion itself had its own magic. This magic could be used by Paladins, Sub-Paladins, and Sub-Paladins in-training for many purposes, and Marcus showed Delilah how to use it for the purpose of cleaning and restoring what had been horribly stained and ruined.
Delilah followed Alice and Marcus, and as those two cleared areas of the dead, she harnessed the Bastion’s magic to clear away the blood, the grime, the many other things she didn’t even want to think about.
It was slow, quiet, heavy work. Alice even was subdued, though her tune steadily changed. After they had finished clearing and cleaning the entire bottom floor auditorium, Alice went about the rest of her work humming a cheerful melody, tapping her foot, bobbing her head.
Marcus spoke little. But for every body they found and transported to the cemetery, he softly spoke a name.
He knew every single person who had died here, almost two hundred in all, by name. Even the most horrifically disfigured by violence, Marcus recognized in an instant.
His eyes looked hollow.
Twice, Delilah stopped her work entirely, finding her way to the dining room, the one room that was both clean and bore no memories of past violence. She sat there, head in her hands, breathing slowly and steadily.
Her Felines arrayed themselves around her in a protective circle.
Delilah saw a few clocks here and there, and she couldn’t stop thinking about time. How incredibly long it took to put everything…
“Right” wasn’t the word.
Everything… clean. Orderly.
But…
After six and-a-half hours of heavy, somber work, the dead had been cleared and the stains washed away.
But the Sanctuary was empty.
Death had been cleaned up, tucked away, removed from the premises.
But life didn’t swoop in to take its place.
Out in the cemetery, Marcus spoke over the arrayed dead. Again, he named each and every one of them.
“Your souls rest in eternity now,” he said at the end. “We will continue what you started. Your names, your memories, your deeds, will never be forgotten. And one day, we will see all of you again.” He tapped his staff on the ground, and a single bell chimed, echoing ever outward, a beautiful, clear, yet mournful tone.
White flames rose gently to swallow up each and every body. They burned brightly, and in surprisingly little time vanished, rising up as thousands of motes of light to soar away on a frigid wind.
The dead were gone.
Stone pillars had taken their place, each marked with a name.
Marcus turned and strode back inside without a word, and the two girls followed.
They sat around the dining room table, no one speaking for a long time. Alice clearly wanted to speak, but contented herself with occasional humming and giggling as she sat on the floor and cuddled Reginald, the blue butler-cat purring softly at her touch.
Somewhere in the distance, the faint ticking of a clock could be heard.
“The stage is set,” Marcus said softly.
His sudden breaking of the silence was immediately followed by an excited Alice hopping to her feet and pulling up a chair. “You’re thinking the same thing?” she asked, her white eyes alive with enthusiasm.
“Thinking what?” Delilah asked, though it was an effort just to say those two words.
“We were confused about the placement of the violence,” Marcus said. “Rooms that were untouched, strange sights of battle that didn’t make sense. It was a mystery, but now it seems the pieces fall together.”
“Sen staged the whole thing,” Alice said. “I mean, he actually did kill all those people. But he orchestrated the whole thing so it raised all these questions. ‘The stage is set.’ It’s not just the words, but the stuff we saw before that. They’re clues.”
“Clues to what?” Delilah asked.
“Their next move,” Marcus said. “This is only the beginning. And those other words and phrases… they’re all clues to the larger picture.”
“I bet it has something to do with an actual stage,” Alice said. “I mean, it’s no coincidence there’s that stage at the bottom of this place, right? And Addie’s place where she was locked away by Kaohlad for so long was a theater with a huge stage. It’s like these Sons of Night wanna put on a show, you know?”
“But where?” Delilah asked.
“That’s what the other words and phrases must point to,” Marcus said. “But I… can’t seem to put the pieces together. Not in their entirety. I feel… echoes. They tug at my memory, but not enough for me to truly find the way forward.”
“So what do we do?” Alice asked.
“We’ll need help,” Marcus said. “I had no idea things were so dire. I thought we could take our time, visit every Bastion in turn, and teach you at a steady, proper pace. But that path is lost to us now. We must take the faster, more perilous path.”
“Where are we going?” Alice asked, staring expectantly at Marcus.
“Two other Bastions,” Marcus said. “Great places of knowledge and information, with Paladins and Sub-Paladins of the highest caliber. And the two of you must be well prepared. Things will not be as easy as they’ve so far been.”
I don’t think they’ve been all that easy so far.
“I’m ready for anything,” Alice said, grinning. She nudged Delilah. “We both are!”
Marcus nodded. “Good. It’s time to accelerate your training.”