Page 52 of Blood Red Woes

This place is wild.

I reach the main door, but it’s so large I can’t move it. Not even an inch. I don’t feel like drawing a bunch of attention to myself either by using magic to blast the doors open, so I decide to do a bit of climbing instead.

One thing that’s good about the entire place being carved from a mountain is that the stone is uneven, broken in places. It leaves good footholds to haul my ass up the wall.

Surfing, rock climbing, cross-country running… what else will I be forced to do here?

Oh yeah, kill someone.

“Don’t look down,” I tell myself. “Don’t look down, Rey.” I’m a few feet from the top. So close, and yet never have I felt a stronger urge to look over my shoulder as I do right now. Don’t know why. I already know what it is I’ll see when I look: a sharp drop since I’m thirty feet up.

I’m not afraid of heights. Just… you know, don’t have much experience climbing like this. Don’t want to risk it.

My hands reach the top of the wall, and I pull myself up and over. Thankfully, the wall has a flat part where I assume guards are meant to patrol and keep watch. I move to the other edge and gaze out at the small city that surrounds the innermost castle.

I guess each empress had their chosen people living close. I don’t see a hoard of afflicted this time, and even though it’s stupid, I hope that means everybody was able to get out while they could.

The castle sits higher than the rest of the town, its spirals and spikes thin and jagged, pointing at the mist-covered sky. It’s not near the wall, so even if I follow the wall around, I’d still have to get down to reach it. I pick my path and then heave myself over the edge of the wall. Magic cushions my fall, and I push onward.

I’m not going to lie: I’m nervous. I don’t know what to expect or how this will go. Facing down someone like this, someone who obviously lost her mind a long time ago… I don’t know how I’m supposed to beat her, but I have to try. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not alone. Rune and magic are on my side, so it isn’t like I’ll walk into the castle and demand a game of rock, paper, scissors where the loser dies.

You’d think after walking through so many forgotten, abandoned villages, so many settlements where nothing but charred skeletons are what remain, that I’d be used to walking through emptiness.

But I’m not.

It’s still just as bizarre as ever to me to walk through the streets and hear not a single sound. Not even the wind. No laughing children. No adults hustling by. No cars since I’m not at home. Nothing at all to grace the air other than the eerie chill of silence.

I get close to the castle. I have to cross what looked to be a colosseum of sorts, and then I’ll reach the path to the castle’s front door. To get to the colosseum, I have to walk down into it. I can’t see around me; the walls of stone make for better doors than windows. It’s only when I turn the corner of the hall and walk out into the grounds of circular, wide-open space that I see.

The hair on the back of my neck stands straight up as I take in the ghastly sight. The colosseum isn’t empty. The ground of the space is full of black, charred skeletons of all shapes and sizes.

“Well, I guess we found the inhabitants of Pylos’s castle,” Rune remarks with a sigh.

It’s more than sad. It’s devastating. To see all the skeletons—what must be hundreds—piled together like this; it means their empress corralled them, gathered them here, and then killed them all.

How can a kingdom ever come back from this? This is just cruel beyond belief. The absolute destruction of a people who thought they were safe, who, even as they filed in here, believed their empress would save them. They trusted her and it was their doom.

“A pity,” Rune whispers. “So much wasted life.” The understatement of the year. From what I’ve seen so far, everything in Laconia is wasted life.

The colosseum has three entrances. The one where I came from, another on the far side, opposite me, and the third from the castle itself. It is that entrance that I have to reach, but to do so I must walk across the field of bones.

I try not to step on any, but the bones are so thick and there are so many it’s damn near impossible. I make it only two steps in before I hear the cracking of a dried bone, and the sound makes my skin crawl.

This isn’t right. I’m not the picture of a saint, but even I know this isn’t right. This is as wrong as something could be—and it’s exactly why no one should have this much power. No person, magical or not, should be revered as a god.

I have to ignore the crunching of bones under my feet. Once I get further in, there’s no avoiding them. There’s too many. I try my best not to think about the people and all the liveslost, instead focus my anger and my rage on the woman who should’ve done better.

Empress Gladus. I’ll see her sorry ass soon enough, and when I do, I’ll make sure she regrets everything she’s ever done.

Never considered myself a vengeful person until now.

I reach the path that leads from the colosseum to the castle. It’s the only way to the castle; the rest of the area surrounding the castle is a sheer drop into the abyss of the mountain the entire place is carved into.

The stone bridge is about fifteen feet wide and more than quadruple that long. Each step feels like it takes an hour, the anticipation turning into dread and anxiety in my blood. As angry as I am, as much as I want to teach this woman a lesson, I know she’s older than me. More experienced. She might mop the floor with me in two seconds.

Am I ready to die?

No, of course not, but what choice do I have? Turn the other cheek and live out the rest of my life in the wilderness, alone, eating out of rivers and seas because all the other animals are too tainted to eat? I’d never be allowed back in Laconia, so even the pathetic dried meat and cheese I’ve been eating are things I’d have to say goodbye to.

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