The carriage jittered over cobbled stone, rattling the hollow ornaments that decorated the ceiling - an all manner of glass and gold. Black silk hung across each window, masking sunlight from the tired eyes of the barbarian. Her back arched well over, pulling her head low enough to only occasionally require the removal of a certain chain link that kept her hands busy.
“Could we not have walked?” Kezaiah asked in accompaniment of a constant fidgeting in her seat.
“Walk? Walk, she said. You'd have me walk this distance–do I look a fucking peddler to you?” Orpheus replied with the point of his finger that intended to direct a myriad of shame upon her.
A steel-bonded hand swatted the finger from its path and replaced it with a firm fist. The fur-line gauntlet might as well have had each bristle rise to a stand.
“Don't point your fucking finger at me,” she responded. Her head had lifted slightly in the blatant threat of violence, just enough so that one of the many glass baubles poked and kicked and knocked against her forehead.
Kezaiah’s jaw clenched.
“Seems you've got something on your face, right here,” he mocked, tapping the mirrored spot on his own forehead. “There it is. And again. And again, and again.”
Her fist slowly retracted beside her face and caught the bauble in the eighth instance it swung for her. Embraced by leather and the worn hands beneath it, a crunch escaped into the air. Shards of glass trickled from the spaces between her fingers. They glimmered upon the carriage floor as Orpheus moved them aside with the toe end of his sole.
Her head lowered once more, releasing a deep and impatient sigh. The rattling of the carriage seemed to grow louder in the silence, each stone bigger than the last. As if to dampen the annoyance, Kezaiah tapped her heel to the floorboards.
A silence, accompanied by the beat of her boot, fell over the carriage for a while longer. Orpheus’ face had moved well into the sun's rays that slipped by the silk, leaving his view to drift amongst the hills past the road. Travellers had dubbed this grass-bladed ocean ‘The Peaceful Greens,’ where the wind washed through many a nomadic creature.
One had caught his eye. Hooves turning soil; mane sailing in the breeze; galloping in mad freedom; a wild stallion passed by in the distance.
What followed behind it was of black-feather. Each beak banked and spiralled behind one another, dancing in their flock. Passion flapped from their wings as they eagerly fought against the breeze - not quite as hardy as the stallion they chased.
“Hm,” he mumbled.
Then it struck, like a blood-curdling war cry or the falling of a star. The glass of the carriage shook in its frame, pulling Orpheus’ brow toward one another. He could see no sign of black clouds, nor battle or falling stars.
The latch of the door pulled back and he hung from his hand and looked out across the lands they approached.
A white tower stood over tiered steps of fortress-like buildings at its feet, but from its spire, a savage gathering of black clouds spiralled outward. Powerful gusts twisted the storm, broken only by streaks of white and blue which ran rampant around the marbling tower. There was an azure blue that shone from its core with primordial light. The not-so-green hills and rocky formations that encased the tower and its walls parted ways for a river, flowing from the illuminated arcane castle like a vein pumping blood.
Kezaiah let out a sigh, as the relief slowed her tapping to an eventual stop.
“So we're here,” she said, “About time.”
“What in bloody hell,” he turned and pointed and stepped forward, “what dipshit sleeps with lightning on the fucking terrace?!”
“That's all her,” she replied, “Credit where credit is due, Ravyn is one tough bitch,”
“Excuse me? The fucking bird?”
“No, not the fuckin’ bird,” Kezaiah echoed as they made their approach. “The Archmage.”
—
Their stead-led carriage eventually pulled itself beneath the blanket of shadow from the overhead storm, darkening the carriage. An eerie silence fell between them under the chattering rain as they passed over a bridge and beneath a matte-black gate. On the tower’s grounds lay a single road. It weaved up and alongside the river and its waterfalls, while large stone buildings lay empty beside them.
Lightning struck down upon metal spikes at the edge of tiled roofs; the pylons dispersed light and energy with small waves of sparks arcing between the diving droplets. These pylons were one of the very few sources of light, save for an occasional lantern or brazier at the road’s side.
The raging storm seemed a veil over the ghostly place that appeared void of life. Only the occasional figure could be seen passing by the pair, hidden under cloaks and hoods and the pelting rainfall. In all directions he could see a thin rolling mist overhead. Like the torrential offshoot of water beginning and ending along the sky.
“I’m expected to acclimate here? Sodden and soaked?” Orpheus commented. His brows had tensed little by little.
Then, with a sharp turn, the view of a wide stone staircase stood at the end of the carriage's path. Tens of steps lead on a straight ascent to the summit of the stronghold and the base of the marbling white tower, the parting of bricks and stones only shown in brief during the sound of the whipcrack. The spire had been long lost to view, unrevealed by the efforts of the shrouding clouds.
“You get used to it,” Kezaiah replied once the carriage came to a stop.
In an uncomfortable crouch walk, her fist busted open the lock and sent the door swinging open to clatter against the outer panelling. The behemoth of a woman then stepped forth into the rain, rocking the carriage as she did. Her hair thrashed in the wind until it gave way to streams of water down her back and stuck to the rear of her leather vest. Her footsteps came away with the soft crushing sound of mud and stoney puddles
“Used to it. It’s like walking down in soiled pigshit,” he muttered, having shifted slightly away from the rain that intruded into the carriage. He folded his arms in the chest of his cloak that felt little more than wet linen rags in the downpour. Despite his aversion, he climbed the steps through the doorway and into the storm behind her.
Before them, paved with marble, a rounding plaza tiled occasionally with granite and alabaster lay beneath rippling puddles. A large gazebo at the centre of the plaza, with its shining slate shingles, stood between four great braziers that steamed with the faint embedded glow of great azure crystals. He could see little light from the buildings that lined the ring of the plaza as he walked. Above him arching outward, an overpass between two buildings dripped from the sides with rainwater with empty lamplights beneath the bridge dangling and creaking like the rattling doors of the wooden carriage.
The barbarian turned and broke the silence. “We’re waiting,” she said.
Orpheus massaged his wet hair under the hood of the cloak and called back.
“For?” he spread his arms as if to address the lay of the land. “For?! The spectres in the Ghost Town of fucking Praerus?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Absurd. I’ll peel the bloody bones off the Dagon Duchess when I’m through.”
He followed Kezaiah to the gazebo and they leaned in the crooks of shade along the corner guards and they sat and waited. It had been a year since he was flogged for the beating of his sister and often had he touched his back with his fingers to soothe the aching scars.
After a while, they could hear the distant crackling of lightning in the air. He watched Kezaiah rise and exit the gazebo and as he followed, and the distant sound drew closer. He saw the brief flash of blue until the ground before him erupted in smoke. A robed figure stepped out from the remnants and the last few vapours that sparked squealed and fell away. Flinching, Orpheus threw back the hold of his cloak.
“They’d said so, that you were returning. I’d not believed it, believed you would. But, here you are, here you are, young Kezaiah,” said the man.
He had skin of tan with light greying in the folds and the skin lines. He was only a head smaller than Orpheus with a head of grey lightning that seemed to dance upon his scalp and a long beard that, by all accounts, defied the laws of motion. He adjusted the furred rim cuffs of his blue robe.
“High Steward,” she replied with bare acknowledgement.
“What the fuck. He’s old,” said Orpheus.
“Ah, the man. The man, yes, ah, Blackwell. Orpheus, Orpheus Blackwell. Your acquaintance is met well,” the man began as he twisted his head toward him. “I suppose I should, yes. Introduce myself that is. I’m not entirely sure, sure that young Kezaiah would, no, not at a-”
“Twenty-third Archmage of the Tower of Storms, now High Steward under the twenty-fourth, Anosorin ‘Storm’ Vague,” Kezaiah blurted out, irritation riding the coattails of her words, “Well known for talking in circles His family name is well served. I’ll be off now.”
Kezaiah stepped further into the rain and pushed onward, moving for the staircase beneath the tower.
“I think not?! And what bloody hell are you off to exactly?” Orpheus belted out, leaning forward as if to follow her.
“Meeting with the old lady,” she replied over her shoulder, waving him off without meeting eyes. “He’ll show you ‘round.”
“Why, I think I’m rather pleased, pleased to know she’s not changed. She’d had me worried, worried that she had,” Anosorin commented as he observed her walk off, watching as she slipped her hands into her pockets, a habit she’d often drilled Orpheus into avoiding.
“Then, one may suppose, suppose that it’s just us. Shall I show you, around or not, perhaps straight to your room, perhaps your room and more,” Anosorin began again, turning back to him. “One may also suppose, or rather, rather hope, that the Blackwell has brought a cover, a cover for his baggage. It is, after all, rather overcast, as usual.”
He could only sigh.
“Fuck.”
—
