Chapter 107 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 107: Tower of Crows 15
A black-haired head emerged from the swirling black water, an unsettling sight against the dark lake.
Violet watched for a moment. The dark-green water flowing around her gradually dissipated.
She let out a long breath, shifted her sword from her right hand to her left, and extended her now-empty right hand toward Lucita. Relief roughened her voice in an oddly noticeable way: "Come up."
Lucita shook her head, brushed the water from her hair, and looked around in mild confusion: "Violet, Delphine? You..."
She hadn't finished her greeting when Tatiana's ordeal in the death-energy suddenly came to mind, and she grew alarmed: "You... you really followed that bone crow in? Do either of you feel anything wrong?"
Seeing that Lucita wasn't moving, Violet made another beckoning gesture while answering calmly: "I'm fine."
Lucita studied Violet's expression carefully. There truly seemed to be nothing wrong. Somewhat reassured, she took Violet's hand and climbed onto the shore.
The sticky residue of death-energy covering her body dispersed in thin wisps along the creases of her clothing as she climbed ashore.
The sound of flowing water, and then Lucita's familiar voice — almost like a demon's low murmur — reached Tatiana's ears.
The half-blood child from the homeland had survived, somehow, and had indeed proven the deep friendship she shared with Violet.
Realizing there was no point hiding anything any longer, Tatiana opened her mouth. In the end, only a silent sigh of despair escaped her lips. She slowly slid down against the invisible wall until she was sitting on the ground, covering her face with both hands.
After a strange silence, Tatiana finally spoke in a hoarse, low voice: "I'm sorry for what happened. Please...please give me another chance. Is there anything I can do for you? I don't want to die. Just let me stay here. I've never harmed anyone before this...And after this... after this, I won't..."
Perhaps this former warrior had never begged for mercy like this before in her life. Each word was extracted from her throat with effort and humiliation: "I won't do this again."
Violet's brow shifted slightly. She glanced at Lucita with an unreadable expression, and in the end said nothing.
This was a member of her own kind who had suffered. The sight before her left a bitter taste in her mouth. This lake raised too many questions. But whatever she felt, it was not her place to speak on Tatiana's behalf.
After all, the one who had nearly been killed was Lucita.
Lucita hadn't caught the complexity in Violet's look, but her thoughts ran parallel. She crouched down on the other side of the invisible wall, meeting Tatiana's eyes on the same level: "What can you do for me? Can you help me understand something?"
Tatiana repeated dully: "Understand something?"
Lucita glanced meaningfully at the black lake: "I know you are in the midst of creating something remarkable. Death is a domain elves have never entered, never dared or been able to enter. What you are doing may have extraordinary consequences for the elven race's future. And so I must ask you many questions."
The life layer in her pocket watch had only just managed to recover and resume its healthy cycle. She could not leave such a significant unknown loose in the world.
Tatiana couldn't see Lucita's gaze, but the implication of those words circled through her mind regardless.
She replied: "Please ask."
Lucita was direct: "Why did you try to kill me?"
"I apologize. Your arrival was too sudden. This place exists outside the real world, and even now I still can't understand how a half-blood, an elf, and a dragon managed to enter the world of Death unharmed."Tatiana seemed to be recalling, measuring her words, speaking slowly: "I was terrified... afraid that you would bring news of my whereabouts back to my homeland, back to my former family and friends. So I acted in blind panic and did something wrong."
She was concealing things, and Lucita knew it. She followed Tatiana's thread anyway, playing ignorant: "You're afraid of going back? Why?"
"You've seen what I look like. Isn't it obvious why?"
"Is it? Just for that reason?" Lucita raised an eyebrow. "I don't believe they would reject you simply because of what your suffering has done to you. Do you really not trust them?"
Tatiana fell silent.
Lucita's challenge was undisguised, and she knew perfectly well this excuse wasn't enough to drive someone to kill. She had tried it on a slim hope that she could bluff her way through.
Lucita turned the hunting knife in her hand: "You have one more chance."
Tatiana drew a deep breath, and suddenly looked up, her voice turning cold: "Fine. Then I'll tell you. The reason I stayed and didn't go back is because I simply didn't want to go back." Her voice rose: "I hate humans. I want revenge. I want it on my own terms. Not by covering my ears, going back to the southern valley, shutting my eyes, and singing empty songs about harvest and peace. Not by licking my wounds like a stray dog and accepting other people's pity!"
The hunting knife in Lucita's hand stopped turning. She held it steadily.
Tatiana's voice came through gritted teeth, her chest heaving: "You ask me why I tried to kill you? I'll tell you: "If I'd killed you and fed your body to this lake...if I had finally brought the Lake of Death to maturity...I could have completely mastered the death energy raging inside me. I could have controlled this cursed power that's slowly destroying my body. And then...I would have shattered the elven crown locked inside the royal treasury, and slaughtered every last one of those damned humans!"
Tatiana's face was dark, her whole body shaking.
Lucita let out a quiet sigh.
She leaned forward suddenly, stepped through the rippling wall of air, and wrapped her arms around the elf before her.
The unexpected, comforting embrace cut through Tatiana's emotion. She went still for a moment.
Lucita's voice remained low and unhurried. It carried a faint resonance that settled deep within Tatiana's mind: "Then... how many people have you killed before me?"
"The…the first." The answer came instinctively.
It was a simple question, and the only victim she had actually faced showed no sign of being angry.
"Good."
Lucita's voice had a strangely gentle depth — very like, in Tatiana's distant memory, the voice of her mother.
Receiving that word of approval, Tatiana relaxed slightly.
"There are many gravestones here," Lucita observed conversationally.
"Mm." Tatiana responded without thinking.
"You are very kind," Lucita said softly, with conviction. "To put up headstones for strangers, I think if they truly had spirits, they would be grateful to you."
"No, it wasn't like that," Tatiana shook her head. "It was an exchange. Each providing what the other needed."
"An exchange? What use could they possibly be to you?"
"I needed to collect the death-energy produced by corpses, to nurture the Lake of Death and gain power. And they were simply left to rot in the forest. I gave them a burial. It was an exchange."
"There is a magic circle at the bottom of the lake?"
"Yes, a magic circle..." Tatiana reached this point, and then suddenly stopped: "Yes. There is one."
She had stumbled at this.
This was clearly an important secret, and even in the deeper reaches of her consciousness pulled along by Lucita's influence, there was a strong wariness guarding this secret, circling and unwilling to come out.
Lucita shifted her angle of approach: "You had a companion on that journey — Danice. Is her gravestone here too?"
The moment the words fell, Tatiana's entire body went rigid.
Lucita inwardly cursed. Not good. Sure enough, the woman in her arms suddenly shoved her away, catching herself on trembling arms, unable to stop her ragged, frightened breathing.
Then she gave a low, hollow laugh. It sounded like someone who had reached the end of every road: "Half-blood…I forgot. You're a half-blood..."
"You carry mermaid bloodline, don't you?"
Lucita neither confirmed nor denied it.
Danice...
When Tatiana had calmed, Lucita repeated her question in the same steady tone: "I'm sorry to ask again, is Danice's gravestone also here?"
Tatiana said, tight-lipped: "Yes."
Lucita showed surprise: "So she was the first body you buried here, and the first source of death-energy you collected? You could really bear to do that?"
Before Tatiana could answer, Delphine suddenly cut in: "Danice?"
The two looked toward the voice.
Delphine pressed for confirmation: "Was she an elf?"
Lucita nodded.
"She's lying to you, Sister Lucita," Delphine said with certainty.
Tatiana's face went deathly pale in an instant.
They heard Delphine say: "Under every one of these gravestones is a complete skeleton."
The place had seemed suspicious from the very beginning. When Violet set out, she had deliberately brought Delphine with her.
Delphine was the Daughter of Space. She had no physical body. She could pass through any barrier, unseen and undetectable. She and Violet complemented each other perfectly, one visible and one invisible.
From the moment Violet entered and began her conversation with Tatiana, Delphine had been drifting silently through the tower, exploring every part of it.
The bodies of elves were born from nature. When they died, they returned to nature. Once buried, they gradually dissolved into the earth and the air until nothing remained.
And so they all understood: the skeletons beneath the gravestones must belong to humans. Which meant there was no gravestone here for Danice.
Lucita turned back. Her black-and-white eyes rested on Tatiana, no sign of anger in them: "You've deceived me twice now."
Tatiana gave a hollow laugh and sat down heavily on the ground, no longer even trying to offer a denial: "How do you know about Danice?"
That would take some effort to explain, and Lucita had no intention of explaining it. She didn't answer: "Didn't you say you want to live?"
Tatiana: "You learned about me and Danice from family in the Esti range, didn't you?"
Mutual incomprehension. A stretch of silence.
"Vi— no. Your Majesty. My family sent you to find me, didn't they? My family…they know I'm still alive?" Tatiana began to lose coherence: "But…but they all died. Only Danice was left — only Danice."
Violet, watching, felt something dangerous rise in her eyes, her fingers tightening and loosening on the hilt of her sword.
Delphine's emotional perception was weak; she looked thoroughly confused. Lucita repeated with an odd expression: "Only Danice?"
She distinctly remembered Danice had died long ago in the dungeon in Soris City.
Tatiana had gone quiet again, and fell silent.
"Can you tell me about Danice?"
Tatiana didn't answer.
"You're not afraid to die?"
Still silent.
All of the crucial threads led back to Danice.
Tatiana's disregard for death just now was because of her. Likely the humiliation she had endured to stay alive before this had also been for her.
But now that this elf had grown wary, the persuasion technique could not be used a second time. And forcibly reading her memory against Tatiana's conscious, fierce resistance could very well have devastating consequences.
Lucita sighed quietly, no longer pressing her, and turned instead to explore the other remaining question: the magic circle at the bottom of the lake — the secret that Tatiana had refused to divulge even under the effects of the persuasion.
She tucked the hunting knife away, gave a nod to Violet and Delphine, and over their disapproving looks, leaned forward and plunged again into the black depths of the lake at the heart of the graveyard.
The lake water was thick and transparent. This time she kept her eyes open.
The magic circle at the bottom of the lake was intricate and beautiful, glowing with a faint blue light in the surrounding darkness.
And at the center of that magic circle, black vines coiled around a young figure.
Her pale gold hair, cropped at the jaw, drifted in the water. She had a pair of recognizable pointed ears. Her complexion looked natural, eyes lightly closed, expression peaceful, as though she were only taking a brief afternoon nap, and might come awake at any moment to laugh and play.
Lucita recognized the face immediately.
In the dungeon in Soris City, this face had been hollow where the eyes should be, tinged with the grayish-blue pallor of someone long dead. Nothing like the complete, vivid, lifelike figure before her now.
This was Danice.
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