Title taken from the "Legend" track of Nox Arcana's Darklore Manor. Subtitles taken or paraphrased from other Nox Arcana works.
He had lost count of how many times he had been here, naked and cringing and praying that this time, maybe this time, would be the last.
The Lord of Darkness laughed.
He ducked his head, and the laughter grew louder. "You think you have any secrets from me, you pitiful fool?"
The glowing orb on the Dark Lord's staff touched his bent neck. He screamed in agony as the magical fire consumed him, burning him to ash while leaving him intact.
All the better to start over with, as the Dark Lord promised.
And Rhapthorne always kept his promises.
They had left him.
It was the one thing Jessica couldn't get past, couldn't forgive.
They had left him.
They had thought Rhapthorne dead, fought their way past monsters maddened with the loss of their master as the Black Citadel crumbled around them, they'd been outside, damn it, they'd been free.
Then the ruined towers had risen into a stone giant, which, with a single blow, had swept Angelo off the walkway, into the rubble which spawned it.
Angelo hadn't had time to scream. She had.
They had fought, and won, and fled.
They had left him.
She had left him, let them drag her back from the edge and force the transformation of the godbird's soulstone on her. She had believed when they'd said that even if Angelo had survived the fall, he couldn't have survived the towers collapsing back upon him.
They had landed back on the ship, and turned to watch the Black Citadel fall from the sky. But it hadn't fallen. It had shaken and convulsed, then slowly dragged itself back together, shattered stone re-forming, broken spires rising.
That was when they had known Rhapthorne was alive.
And in her heart, Jessica knew he had Angelo.
He had been unmade and remade so many times he wasn't certain anything of his original self remained beyond fragments - names without faces, faces without names. Even those might have been imagination rather than memory.
It mattered little. Neither memories nor imaginings were acceptable. They were distractions, diversions from his service to the Dark Lord.
Rhapthorne's thoughts, slick and black, probed the places where memories once lived. He had no secrets from Rhapthorne; there were no secrets left for him to have.
The staff touched him, unmade and remade, and a few more of those fragments vanished like smoke.
"Jessica."
The sound of her name wasn't a surprise; it had become a nightly ritual for Eight to come coax or bully her away from her vantage point by the rail, convince her to eat and at least try to sleep. Tonight, his voice was ragged, and he sounded painfully tired, so that even distracted as Jessica was, she noticed.
A part of her felt sorry for him, but she didn't move from her place, or look away from the ominous black shape in the sky, even when his hand settled on her shoulder.
"Jess, you need to get some rest."
"He's up there." It hurt to talk; she hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day. "We left him up there, and Rhapthorne has him."
The hand tightened. "He couldn't have survived..."
Her temper flared at the over-used assurance, at the way he acted as if it might somehow comfort her to believe Angelo dead. "How many times has one of us not survived a battle?" she demanded. "How can you even think that's an excuse for what we did?"
"It's not!" Eight exploded, and in that uncharacteristic display of temper Jessica saw, for the first time, what leaving Angelo behind had cost him. "But it's done and we can't change it."
She turned away. She had no comfort to give, just her own guilt and anger. "Yes, we can."
"Jessica."
"We know where he is. And we know we have to go back. Why are we waiting?"
The question was just to vent her frustration; she knew they still weren't ready, knew they needed more time to heal and re-arm and, Goddess help them, find some way to fight through the Citadel without the aid of Angelo's magic.
She didn't expect any answer, much less the one she got.
"We aren't."
He owed Rhapthorne his life. His first memory was of his Lord demonstrating that fact by undoing his healing spells and leaving him broken and screaming in agony, unable even to beg for mercy. He had lain thus for hours, his blood slowly seeping out onto the tiles, staining the dark stone even darker.
When his world was reduced to cold and darkness and the agonizing effort to draw one more breath, Rhapthorne healed him.
He needed no further demonstrations. His life, his service, belonged to Rhapthorne.
And he would gladly do whatever the Lord of Darkness asked of him.
They didn't - couldn't - attack immediately. Nothing had changed; they still needed to recover from their last attempt, repair weapons and armor, stock up on the herbs and potions which, they knew, would be a poor substitute for Angelo's skills. But the passage of time now had a sense of purpose, and gave Jessica the distraction she desperately needed.
She still found her gaze drawn to the sky, but the Black Citadel no longer held her for hours.
When they turned north to find a town and re-supply, it didn't feel like they were abandoning Angelo all over again.
The dark fabric rested heavily against his hands, the weight almost enough to still their trembling.
It took him a moment to recognize what he held.
A uniform.
The sudden familiarity carried with it voices, disembodied, stripped of meaning and identity. For a heartbeat, he strained after them: cool tones, clipped with impatience; a softer, friendlier voice; a woman's voice, as impatient as the first, but backed by fire instead of ice.
"I trust it meets your approval, my knight."
He looked up at Rhapthorne's voice, the other voices forgotten. "Forgive me, my Lord. It is..." His fingers tightened. "Perfect."
As soon as they set foot on the Black Citadel, it was obvious Rhapthorne had not been able to fully restore his fortress. Stone walkways, already broken and cracked during their first visit, now sported crumbling gaps, while the towers leaned and swayed drunkenly. Even the monsters they encountered showed the effects, less numerous, slower, weaker.
It was, Eight thought bitterly after their second battle, the only thing keeping them alive.
He finished pouring amor seco essence over the bloody gash on Jessica's arm, watched the wound stop bleeding but not close, and resisted a sigh as he reached for another precious vial. Their healing supplies were not going to last, and he had no choice but to save his magic in case one of them got killed.
Jessica stopped him before he broke the seal. "Don't waste it," she said. She tested the arm cautiously, and the bleeding didn't resume. "I can fight like this."
He offered her a smile - he should have realized she'd be as aware of their limited supplies as he was - and turned to Yangus.
The bandit wiped away a trickle of blood where a demon's spear had gone through his shield and reached his shoulder. "Don't need no doctorin' yet, guv." He lifted his axe. "Now come on. Shouldn't keep ol' Rhappy waiting."
They had to find their way through the mazelike castle all over again, picking their way through rubble, backtracking from shattered stairways.
They finally reached the doorway through which they'd escaped last time. Jessica went pale, her gaze going immediately to the pit of shattered stones where Angelo had fallen. Eight and Yangus both reached for her, but she shook them off and went fearlessly to the very edge of the crumbling walkway.
For a very long time, she looked down. She was silent, though her shoulders shook as if with tears. Neither man dared approach her.
When she turned around, red-eyed and grim, they didn't speak or question. They simply followed her through the scarred wooden door and into the heart of Rhapthorne's lair.
Daily, he stood guard by Rhapthorne's throne. Such a thing should not have been necessary, but there were spells which required all of Rhapthorne's concentration, or all of his strength, and there were those who would dare assault him even here, in the heart of his realm.
He feared, sometimes, that he would fail his Lord, regretted that he needed food and sleep, that he could not be as tireless as the sentinels too-slowly repopulating the castle.
But Rhapthorne would not have saved him, given him this position, if he could not fulfill it. As any who challenged him would learn.
None of them spoke until they reached the Spiral City, and saw that the four statues had been reduced to three.
"Oy, guv," Yangus said, his lowered voice still managing to bounce off the stones around them, making Eight flinch. "This place is tellin' wot the future'll be or somefin, right? So then, if Angelo's statue is gone, don't that mean..."
"It doesn't mean anything," Eight snapped. He didn't know or care if the Spiral City truly showed them a past in which their fight had been prophesied, or led them into a twisted future, or if it was all illusion. "This doesn't mean any more than the four statues did the first time we came."
"Yeah, but..."
"We haven't time for this," Jessica snapped. She crossed the corridor to the inscription on the far side and stood, waiting for them rather than touching the dark stone.
Eight looked at Yangus, then followed, climbing the stairs slowly. As he had known it would be, the inscription was different.
The three statues represent the three pilgrims who will journey under a cloud of loss and despair.
He glared at the words, glad Jessica didn't seem to have read them. They had suffered losses, yes, but none of them had ever given into despair.
Until we lost Angelo.
He ignored the unbidden thought, and placed his hand on the magical seal.
"It is time, my knight."
He looked at the Lord of Darkness, who leaned forward on his throne, an expression of - expectation? - sharpening his features.
"They come."
Anticipation surged through him. His Lord's enemies were coming, as Rhapthorne had known they would. This was why he lived, why he took his post daily beside Rhapthorne's throne. This was his opportunity to repay, in small part, everything his Lord had done for him.
"You will serve me well."
He bowed his head. "I will serve you," he brushed his hand against the hilt of his sword, "with my life."
The magical seal flared to life under Eight's hand. Just as it had the first time they entered the city, it healed them, restored their own magic, even repaired the rents and damage to their weapons and armor.
Eight smiled with relief. He'd been half afraid it wouldn't work, that the magic had been exhausted before, or that Rhapthorne had realized what the seal did and destroyed it, that they would be trapped, too weakened to face Rhapthorne, too weakened - or too stubborn - to escape.
They had a chance.
He turned around to look at the others. Yangus was frowning and shifting nervously, and Jessica stood with her head bowed, the hands over her face in no way concealing her tears.
She hadn't cried since those first few minutes on the ship, when they'd returned without Angelo. The sight now gave him a sick feeling of dread.
"Jess?"
"He wasn't there," she whispered. "In the pit. I could... I could see where he'd fallen... so much blood... the stones didn't cover it, weren't near it." She looked up, her gaze going to the statues - no, to the gap where one statue was missing. "The dust must have kept us from seeing him when it happened, but today... I could see all the blood where he'd been, and he wasn't there."
Eight swallowed hard, the dread giving way to literal sickness. He hated to think Angelo dead, but truly believed the Templar lost to them, crushed under tons of fallen rock. As much as the idea hurt, as much as the imagined image had tormented his dreams, it was preferable to Jessica's belief that Angelo lived, in Rhapthorne's hands.
For the first time, he suspected that she had looked down into the pit hoping to refute those fears, not confirm them.
Goddess, if she's right...if Rhapthorne has him, has had him all these days...
He couldn't bear to think of what they might find, if they did find Angelo, and he wouldn't consider not finding Angelo, if there was any chance he was still alive.
Silently, he took Jessica's hands, cold and still damp with her tears. "We will find him," he vowed, and fresh tears streaked her cheeks. "If we have to take this place apart stone by stone, we aren't leaving him behind again."
Part Three: Realm of Lost Souls
