Chapter 609 - A sorcerer’s tale

A marked one?

But taking the Regulator title is a bit presumptuous, isn’t it?

Could it be the genuine lord? But why? Especially Ormoncleth, why come and play around disguised as a mortal?

So probably actually a marked one? Both feel possible… But then she died.

Wait, was the hand…

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” the count asked rhetorically, “I daresay this must be one of the best paintings remaining of her highness. A grim reminder of what was lost, I suppose, yet I only feel nostalgic bliss when I gaze upon her majestic allure. Our queen was certainly the second most charismatic woman after my late wife…” he trailed off with a weary sigh.

“And so… I have many questions, but… How is she the reason everyone here is doomed?” Sofia asked.

The count answered with another sigh. He propped up the painting against a wall and sat back down in his chair, his head thrown back, he looked at the ceiling as he answered, “Our Queen passed quietly in her sleep, about five years ago… It was an unexplained and unanticipated death. The Queen was laid to rest in a crystal coffin, and Chancellor Izzaro took over the reigns of the kingdom for the time being. About a year later, a new unknown plague started ravaging the population…”

In her head, Sofia started connecting the dots. 

“Eternal youth…” she mumbled, “Don’t tell me…”

“One year after her passing, the Queen’s body was still as pristine as the first day. It was the chancellor’s idea… A syringe was filled with a few drops of the Queen’s prismatic blood and fed to the sick,” the count explained with a clear shame in his voice, “For those who tasted the blood, the plague was cured in a matter of minutes. We could have stopped there, but the Queen seemed to produce endless amounts of blood, and this is where we all turned mad…”

“I think you can stop there,” Alith said, “it’s pretty obvious where this is headed. All we’re missing is why this ‘madness’ will lead to everyone’s death.”

The count sat back up, his hands joined in front of his blurry face, “As I said, the other side of the moon, our kingdom, is already gone. The queen’s corpse kept bleeding and bleeding, and the people… The people started changing. There is nothing left there, and as the blood seeps deeper and deeper into the ground, more and more of the kingdom changes. It cannot be stopped. For all of us who have tasted the blood, it’s already too late.”

“This is a crazy story… But what is keeping you from leaving?”

The count laughed, “You don’t get it…”

While he said that, Sofia was looking through Pareth’s eyes. She had to strongly hold herself back from retorting that yes, in fact, they really did get it.

The count grabbed a hidden dagger from the interior of his vest, and violently stabbed his own left hand. He raised the bleeding hand to show Sofia and Alith, it was bleeding with iridescent blood. “Beyond saving,” he concluded, clenching his fist, which stopped the bleeding. “That is why you should leave. We here do not have long left. You would also do well to leave the life fruit behind, it is spawned from trees grown of the Queen’s blood, you will only become one of us should you eat that… That bell in your hair, too,” the count said, pointing at Sofia, “It is clearly tainted. I know not where you picked it up, but it would be best left behind.”

Right… Good opportunity.

“That’s a shame. I quite like the soft ringing of this bell,” Sofia said, sounding dejected, as she played with the bell in her hair.

“Definitely a strange-sounding bell…” the count said, “It feels warm and distant. That is quite reminiscent of our Queen, I must say…”

So he can hear it. Safe to assume he’s not been lying until now, then…

“What about the ritual, then?” Alith asked, “What about the lighthouse? The towers? The blessed daggers?”

“The chancellor’s last attempt at righting his wrongs,” the count said, “he’s gone madder than the rest of us. Believes we can yet be saved by harnessing the power of the blood before it changes us. The light is supposed to help us control it, while the ‘ritual’ is… I need not even go into details, it’s pointless. Forget about it. Forget about it all,” the count said, sounding quite annoyed and standing up from his seat. “You know enough now, leave, and if you will, spread this story to the land below. Let our foolishness be a cautionary tale,” he continued as he walked to the door opposite the one leading to the hallway. He did not even look back as he addressed his two guests for the last time, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to spend my last moments with my daughters…”

The door closed, Sofia and Alith were left alone in the drawing room, with the painting still against the wall.

“I feel a bit sad for him…” Alith said, breaking the silence.

“Feeling shared. It was especially hard hearing him talk about his children when… Yeah… I can still see them, right now. They’re… Well, I said it before.”

“Tethered… We still don’t know what to, actually. I have even less of a guess now. If anything, I’m more confused about this place now.”

“This definitely raised many questions… But we also have some answers. And we learned that eating the fruit is a terrible idea, which, you know, I’m glad we found out before you tried eating it.”

“That’s a bit of a letdown, but I can live with it… Do you think the queen was the actual Lord?”

“I don’t know,” Sofia answered, “Could be a marked-one like us. Could be the real Lord playing around… Considering how bad the ‘blood’ seems to have screwed up everything here, I could believe it was the Lord, but then again, why come here as a mortal?”

“Right… I could believe it if he said it was Orator, but the big universe-thing one? Didn’t strike me as the type to come play pretend waving a sword around, from what you described it as. He also said something about ten lords. That’s not very well-aligned with what we know of the actual lords, and-”

Sofia was going to say more, but she abruptly stopped, having noticed something strange.

“What? Is something going on in the real world? Should I turn off the lamp?!” Alith hurriedly asked.

“No… Everything is fine out there. If we can say that. It’s just… I think I saw the painting move.”

“The painting?”

“The ‘Queen’ in the painting, to be exact. But it was so brief… I might be imagining things.”

The queen laughed lightly. In the painting, her mouth moved, “You are getting better at noticing my presence, Saintess.”

Bookie summoned himself suddenly, “Uncle!” he called out to the painting, with a dark tone that he had never used before. “You killed Sofia!” he accused, “I hate you now!” he blamed the painting with a pointed finger, before crossing his arms like an angry child, and disappearing back into his book form.

“A rebellious little one,” the voice from the painting commented, “how nostalgic…” it continued, the words trailing off as if carried away by the wind.

“Wait, Orator, I-” Alith started, being interrupted by Sofia.

“He’s already gone…” she pointed out.

“Asshole,” Alith grumbled in response.

Sofia stared blankly at Alith. “Do you have a death wish?”

“What? It’s not like me saying it out loud changes anything. You think he can’t read our thoughts?”

“I-...” Sofia started, but she failed to find anything else to say. “We should probably leave…”

“Think we can grab the painting?” Alith asked.

“I was wondering about that too, but even if it somehow survives the shift to our reality, we don’t have a working storage item.”

“We grab the painting off of the frame, roll it up and you put that in a bone cylinder. We can carry that. It’ll look good in Zangdar’s main room,” Alith suggested.

“Let’s try it I guess…”

Sofia stood up and grabbed the painting’s golden frame, trying to see if she could find an intended way to separate things up, when she suddenly got a bad, pressing feeling.

Pareth?!

She switched to his vision. Pareth was not looking at the manor anymore, but in a different direction. Something was coming toward him from the distant horizon. Something huge, shining in a myriad of shimmering colors visible even through the moon’s darkness.

“ALITH! THE LAMP! WE OUT!”