Chapter 104 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 104: Tower of Crows 12
The tension rose once more.
Nothing showed on Violet's face, but inwardly she was far from confident.
In the world of Death, an elf who wielded the power of life was like a fish stranded in shallow water, constrained at every turn.
Her only real advantage at this moment was the sword in her hand.
That, and...
She suddenly turned her head, her gaze falling on the short corridor to the right and behind the fireplace, her tone unreadable: "This tower seems to be quite large."
***
The following autumn, the sky was high and the clouds were few.
Centered on Soris City, with smaller towns scattered around it, bordered by Kenting to the east and the royal capital to the west, this land belonged to the Marquis of Devonshire.
The war broke out without warning. The Marquis of Devonshire, who commanded a considerable military force, suddenly changed sides, throwing open the roads for Kenting's Dawn Expeditionary Army as it marched toward Starland.
The royal capital fell to ruin. Kenting and Spring divided old Eaton between them cleanly, and then the Expedition Army abruptly reversed direction and drove east toward Soris.
She had spent far too long in this dungeon, and it had always been unnaturally silent. There was nothing in her vision but darkness, not even the light of a flame.
Lucita understood that this was Tatiana's memory distorting things.
In her memory, the dungeon had left an impression like this: everything blurred and indistinct, nothing but boundless silence and darkness.
She had already lost her eyes and become an exhibit.
Yes, even an elf who had been drained of any further use would not be disposed of, because every trophy was a prized specimen displayed by the players of this underground hunting ground to flaunt their collection.
Her eyes showed not the faintest sign of regenerating.
That seemed to be a secret silently understood among the captured elves — not one of them would burn their life force in the cage to restore their organs, or even heal their own wounds.
Once the secret of regeneration was discovered, every fellow captive in every cage would face endless torment. That would be nothing short of catastrophic.
Tatiana could not tell day from night, and could only silently count the time by the frequency of the guard rotations and meal deliveries.
Until the day the guards did not come, and the muffled sounds of weapons clashing and fighting began to drift down from above.
The heart that had been on the verge of despair began to beat again — in the silence beneath the earth, she could almost hear each beat distinctly.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
She swallowed.
She had attempted to escape before. The missing ear was her punishment for that failed attempt.
This time she would not fail. Both timing and circumstance were on her side, and she had waited long enough for this day.
Tatiana felt her way along the wall, pried loose a stone, and from behind it drew a small knife, honed to a razor-sharp edge.
She was one of the most formidable warriors among the elven race. She had brought glory, she had brought disaster, and now she would bring freedom back to her dearest friend.
***
Tatiana understood Violet's intention.
She gradually relaxed and even allowed herself a faint smile: "It is quite large."
Violet smiled in turn: "Tower-shaped buildings are rare. Might I have a look around?"
"Very well." Tatiana appeared to give in reluctantly: "Ah, this really isn't a place you should have come to..."
She murmured to herself as she led Violet to the door.
The wooden door, long without maintenance, swung open with a creak and a wobble.
Violet's eyes went wide.
Before her: no wind, no rain, bare dead trees and gravestones stretching in all directions, a dense black night seeming to radiate a heavy sense of foreboding.
Something is definitely wrong here!
She was just about to look back at Tatiana when she felt a push from behind.
If this were truly an elf, her capacity for force in a world of death would be far less than even the half-blood from before.
Tatiana held no fear of her whatsoever. She had opened the door and was seizing the moment to shove her inside while she was off guard.
Beyond the door was another layer she had constructed within the world of death, a world-within-a-world, built specifically to nurture the Lake of Death at its center.
The deeper into the domain of death one went, the stronger her power became, and an elf would be like meat on a chopping block—
She shoved with all her strength.
Nothing happened.
Violet turned around, sword still cradled in her arms, expression somewhere between amused and not.
Tatiana recoiled as though burned, but her retreat came too late, her wrist was seized firmly in one of Violet's hands.
Violet's gaze lifted and settled on the surface of the lake: "Is that where she is?"
A young woman's voice carried through the air: "Yes."
Tatiana went rigid.
When had someone else entered?
***
A conjecture had circled in Tatiana's mind for half a year, refusing to leave. Like a vine, it wrapped itself around her heart, growing thicker with each passing day.
But she had not dared to follow it to its conclusion.
Until this moment, when she smashed open the lock on the cage next door, pushed back the door, and called out again and again to no answer — the same silence as always.
The old conversations rose up in her mind again.
At some point she could no longer identify, Danice in the cell beside her had simply stopped responding to her calls.
What took Danice's place were the sounds of "visitors" arriving, and the Marquis of Devonshire's voice — restrained, yet faintly self-satisfied: "This one would have made an excellent specimen as well. A pity her temperament proved too stubborn. At least the body remains largely intact. No significant damage..."
She had called out in desperate alarm, calling to the humans, calling to the elves, and received not a single answer.
She could only turn Danice's situation over and over in her mind, speculating endlessly, and every line of speculation slid toward the same bottomless abyss.
The fighting above still hadn't ceased. No one had found the dungeon yet.
She made her way forward by feel, slowly, until her hands found…a coffin, standing upright, ice cold.
Of course, in the Marquis of Devonshire's eyes, it would not be called a coffin. It was a container for a fine specimen.
And so the Marquis had fashioned it from the finest materials: pure gold edging covered in embossed roses, the face smooth and hard to the touch, like crystal — which made sense, of course. Only crystal would allow a visitor to view this magnificent specimen.
Tatiana clenched her jaw and, with the last of her strength, crushed the golden lock with her bare hands and pushed back the lid —
With a tremendous crash, the exquisite work of art made with crystal and gold fell to the floor like a stone, the enormous crystal face shattering into a web of cracks.
Then, with her exhausted arms, she lifted Danice out from inside.
It was the first time she had ever touched skin that cold. Cold enough to pierce the bone.
***
Tatiana listened carefully, but couldn't hear the breath of a second person.
That voice from before seemed like nothing but an illusion.
She clenched her teeth: "So you came prepared."
Violet shook her head: "Not exactly. It was all rather sudden."
Then, to Tatiana's bewildered expression, Violet tightened her grip on Tatiana's wrist and stepped forward, one step at a time, through the spatial barrier behind the wooden door.
Amid a flurry of disrupted spatial ripples, they entered the world beyond the door.
Tatiana's voice was complicated: "You're that confident in yourself?"
Violet said nothing.
The world beyond the door was genuinely uncomfortable for her.
The death-energy, growing thicker and more oppressive with every step, surrounded her like a shadow. Inversely, vitality was almost nonexistent, making it nearly impossible for an elf whose power drew on life force to take even one more step than necessary.
She made her slow way forward until she reached the lake's shore.
Tatiana tried the same trick again. Several vines suddenly shot up from the ground, coiling toward Violet's ankles. But Violet stepped back with quick, light grace, drew her sword in a flash like lightning while still airborne, and landed with the vines already cut into pieces. As she returned to the ground, a dark green sword-energy clung to the severed ends of the vines and slowly corroded them, eating through them inch by inch until they disappeared entirely into the air.
The vines' destruction still wasn't enough. Tatiana finally began to lose her composure: "Who in the world are you?"
Violet still paid her no attention.
She bent down and picked up a hunting knife from the ground.
The knife had dark red strips of cloth wound around its handle, slightly worn, now smeared with dirt and soil.
She held it in her hand, and looked back at Tatiana.
This was Lucita's hunting knife, usually kept in the pocket of her cloak.
"I am Violet," she said.
***
As Tatiana had expected, the city was already in chaos.
She pulled their hoods tight around both herself and Danice's head, bound even their eyes with cloth, then carried Danice in her arms, asking her way as she went, stumbling and lurching down to the docks.
Fortunately, the whole city was in the grip of war-panic. People were too desperate to flee to pay attention to two strangely-dressed figures.
She felt her way and stopped someone: "Madam, could you tell me when the next boat leaves?"
At a time like this, the few passenger vessels still willing to dock at Soris all belonged to powerful interests.
By chance, she had stopped a ticket clerk who was busy squeezing every last coin from frightened refugees, and had no interest in a small fish like her, especially when she appeared to be carrying a corpse: "Move along! No money, no passage!"
Tatiana was indeed penniless.
In her desperate uncertainty, an old woman, apparently taking pity on her, pointed the way: "Child, if you're not afraid, you can board that ship. No fare."
"What?"
"A Fool's Ship. A Fool's Ship with no destination."
The river stretched vast and indistinct in the fog.
As though by the will of heaven, a Fool's Ship happened to drift into harbor that day.
Lambs lured by the devil? Mad people whose minds had slipped away?
None of that mattered anymore to those with nowhere left to turn.
However frightening it was, it was still less frightening than war and death.
***
I am Violet.
This was the second time Tatiana had heard those words.
She had said I am, not my name is.
A subtle distinction.
The first time, Tatiana had let that subtlety pass unnoticed. The second time, hemmed in on all sides with no room to maneuver, constrained at every turn as an elf, Violet had cut down and dissolved the rotting vines nurtured by death-energy with absolute dominance, and then said those same words again.
Now, at last, Tatiana began to grasp a possibility.
She opened her mouth: "I lived in the elf valleys for nearly a hundred years. I never once heard your name."
"I was not born in the elf valleys." Violet's voice was calm, carrying something between threat and reassurance: "I was born in Alberga in the north, the Frost-White City. Hundreds of years ago, it was the true homeland of the elves."
It was as though a current of electricity crawled up her spine. The absurd conjecture that had been growing like a vine in her heart finally exploded all at once. The person before her was not introducing a name. She was declaring an identity.
The heroine — and the king — who had died in the Final War in the history books, before the Great Catastrophe.
Eternal Violet.
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