Page 40 of Bright Blinding Ruin

A meow alerts me to a guardian’s presence, and I look down to my feet, where I find a cat with long, flaming red hair. The tips of its fur are a light orange color. With its bright, yellow eyes, the cat looks like fire incarnate.

“Hey, there,” I say with a wince. “Do you know where Krotas is? Or the undercroft?” Maybe the only remaining empress is waiting for me in the undercroft. Maybe she trapped herself there in an effort to put Invictis’s madness to rest.

The cat meows again, waiting.

Ah, right. Its name. I need to say its name.

I’m slow to drop to my knees near the cat—doing so isn’t the easiest thing in the world—and I reach out with my other hand to pet it. “Sorry,” I whisper. “Today’s been… a day. I’m not really at my best right now. I know everyone wanted me to find a way to beat Invictis, but I… I don’t know if I can.”

As if reminding me that I’m severely injured, my stomach throbs, and I groan as the cat’s name comes to me: “Hetrina. Your name is Hetrina, isn’t it?” I haven’t been wrong once, so I know that’s the feline’s name. It’s a bit of information I shouldn’t know, and yet I do—and I don’t know how to explain it.

I might’ve been shown some of the other empresses’ memories, but there are still things I shouldn’t know, these cats’ names one of them.

Hetrina’s fuzzy cheeks puff in a cute expression that’s almost like a smile, and she turns away from me and launches herself off the abruptly-ending hall and starts to trot down to the base of the crater, where a door formed out of nowhere.

The undercroft? Shit.

I have to lean on the nearby wall to get up, and only when I’m steady on my feet do I trail after the cat. It has quite the head start on me, but once it gets halfway down the crater, it waits for me to catch up.

Walking down such uneven ground is difficult beyond belief when you’re injured and feel like passing out. Honestly, the only thing keeping me going is spite. The pain is back, the adrenaline from the fight with Invictis having worn off, and sharp pangs of agony pierce my gut with each step I take.

It’s miserable. It hurts like a motherfucker. I’ve never felt this awful in my life—physically, I mean. After my dad died, I… I guess I did feel so terrible I made myself sick and depressed for a while, but grief is different, and it never really goes away.

I make it to Hetrina’s side, and then the cat disappears in a poof, reappearing near the base of the stone door that stands on its own. It doesn’t wait for me to reach it before opening the door for me, a black entryway all that greets me once the stone disappears under the archway.

Once I reach the entrance, I smile down at the cat and say, “Thanks. I’d pet you more, but… I think if I bend down again, I won’t be able to get up.” I don’t wait for the cat to respond; I walk into Magnysia’s undercroft.

Much like the castle, this undercroft is different. As I walk along the narrow stone pathway that I know eventually opens up into a wider, more circular platform, no magical torches light on their own. The undercroft is dark; the only bit of light comes from a dull reddish hue from the aether surrounding the platform.

“Hello?” I ask, and my voice echoes in the magical space. I get no answer, nor do I get any extra light. My eyes eventually grow accustomed to the darkness, but all I’m able to make out isthe end of the pathway and see the outer curve of the platform, where I thought Krotas would be waiting for me.

But she’s not here. I’m alone in the undercroft.

I groan as I think about what to do. Am I missing something here? Is there more to this since Krotas is supposedly still alive? If she is, where the hell is she? I feel… weak. My fingertips are starting to get a little cold. I don’t know how much time I have left.

When nothing happens, I decide it’s time I leave the undercroft. I can’t stand there and wait an eternity; don’t have that luxury. So, I slowly turn around and shuffle my way back. At least the door to the real world stayed open and I didn’t get locked inside a dark undercroft.

That’d be a shitty way to go. Almost as shitty as getting stabbed by someone you thought you knew.

I’m so focused on my wound, on getting out of the undercroft, that I don’t realize it’s not the same exit, that the outside world changed while I was in there. I walk out into a brightly-lit room, where a woman I’ve never seen before lays in an extravagant bed. A fresh sheet is draped over her, and she holds a baby.

But the woman isn’t Krotas. I saw Krotas in memories. This woman… I don’t know who she is, but there’s something about her that’s strikingly familiar. Dark brown hair, eyes that crinkle when she smiles. She’s covered in sweat, but as she gazes down at the baby, she looks the happiest a person could be.

I hear voices behind me, a man’s and a woman’s. The man says, “Forgive us, my lady. My wife thought it would be better to introduce you to the child after—”

“Nonsense, Frederick. You are some of my most cherished friends. We need not stand on pomp and circumstance,” the woman says, and right when she speaks, she walks around me, to the bedside, where she greets the woman in the bed.

That’s when I know what this is, who the woman in the bed is: Frederick’s mom. And that means…

Fred walks around the other side of the bed, a warm smile on his face as he sits beside his wife. He looks so much younger than he does now; his dark eyes don’t hold an ounce of madness. Clean-cut, hair short; his son really is a mirror image of him.

The woman leaning over the other side of the bed is Empress Krotas. She wears a yellow ensemble full of belts and buttons, plates of armor on her shoulders. Her thick brown hair has traces of red in it, and her eyes are nothing but kind as she gazes down at baby Frederick in his mom’s arms.

“I knew it would be a boy,” Krotas muses with a grin. She gently rubs the top of the calm baby’s head, an almost wistful expression crossing her face. “I think he will take after his father, in both generosity and intelligence.”

Fred and his wife both bow their heads, as if what she just said was a blessing. “Thank you, my lady,” Fred whispers in hushed tones.

Though there’s a lot to look at, I’m laser-focused on Krotas and the way she’s gazing down at baby Frederick. It’s almost like I can feel the wheels turning in her head, new desires popping up inside her. For the first time in her long life, Krotas wants more.

---