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If my memory was a failure for months, then at least for this brief stint it had succeeded me some because that map was ingrained in my head like no other. After all, I'd been studying each time I read through that filthy book. And here I was, recollecting like I'd been doing.
Down the steps I went, arm braced against the wind on this open stairway on the edge of the castle. The army of guards on towers passed me no mind in my armor, and it was all for this brief moment - to go to the prison cells to the main Collosseum, which was the hardest thing given how separated and watched over both sections were. I walked without fear. No one suspected anything, not yet at least. Through small ledges, shoulders backed to the corners as I heard the muffled steps of steel walk past me.
“And I spread her legs and I went like this.” A guard stuck his tongue out. They both laughed, walking past me as I hid in the shadow of blacked out torch. The door behind them slightly open, I ran and caught it before it shut. Back in the towers, into the Colosseum. I must have been near the south side, the picked stones were beneath me on the edge as I looked over an open window. Which meant I was near the bathroom. And as it was, I looked over the corner and the guard stood there plain and yawning behind the swiveling wooden door leading into the cobblestone baths. I looked to my side. A flag and a torch. Dragged shadows. You lived a good life Justinian, alright? It doesn’t matter how long, for what. It was good. I took off my armor and dumped it through a window in the wall, into a fall so steep the clanking metal went silently down the cliff side. Now in leather, with a mask over my head and two knives secured behind my back, crossed over each other. I grabbed the torch and lit the flag. The fires rose fast up to the ceiling, licking them and scorching black against the stone. I dumped the torch and hid in an indent of a wall.
The guard screamed. Rushed over. He patted the fire down at its stem and I rushed past him as he stood leaned over the burning flag. I entered the bathroom, and found the loose hole in the wall. It was pasted over, of course, with a fresh coat of concrete. Fine. It wasn’t that hole I was going for, not that particular stall at all. I went to the end of the bathroom to the final gutter hole and looked in. A hole, the size of a melon inlaid on the elevator floor. At the edge of this hole were cracks, pebbles fell down into the toilette.
I caved it in with the heel of my foot and jumped in. It smelled like shit. I landed on shit.
That was one way of getting into the sewers, at least. Above me the evidence was obvious, a half collapse toilet wall. Who cared if I got caught anyway? Why did it matter now? Into the septic tanks I went, feet water logged with piss or sea water. Mostly rain. It slipped beneath my feet, out into exit holes lining the small little tunnel. I went down ten minutes before I went to an exit down the sewer and stood at it’s edge over a small waterfall that bled into the ocean. I stood at it’s edge and held a grip of the cliff rock with my bad hand, rubble fell down my side into deaf destruction at the bottom. Jagged rocks pointed up to me, in want You were a crow like everyone else. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You fought well, because fighting at all is well enough I gripped the rock and started my climb. Shimmying my body in between gaps in the cliff, inching up with loose grip. A rock broke. I hung by one arm. My heart raced.
And I got a hold of the wall with my foot and pushed myself up. Up towards the spires. The waves clashed against water. I felt their breeze up, and felt their strength against the Colosseum. I came to a ledge and grabbed the window sill. Inside, the waft of meats. A kitchen. The only kitchen that served Wardens, and I knew it served the wardens by the smell of grease and roasted beef. We never get beef.
A yip yapping young man sung and whistled to himself, going around wiping and cleaning the tables. I came up a little higher and peaked. He would not leave. He had pauldrons gleaming against the moonlight. A juvenile, young man. No older than nineteen, I’m sure. I grabbed a window. It was the kitchen. He approached. This Shrieker’s Veil guard.
Everyone dies Virgil, you don’t have to cry for me. I knew what I got myself into.
“Wha-?” I reached over and pulled myself up against his body using his whole torso as leverage. I came up. He went down, screaming down towards the cliff rocks. His body popped when they struck the wall, but the noise didn’t make it far. All I saw was the red blotch on the ground. My hands pulsed, my stomach turned. I winced and kept my way forward.
Slipping in and out of it all the many halls, climbing the sides of walls to avoid traveling guards You can do it now, Virgil. I’m ready.
I walked through each aisle now with that calm I’d always imagined, without the bated breath or the sighs or the dread. I walked with calm past faces I’d seen before but who had never paid attention to me - because being a ghost had its advantages, and being unremarkable was a talent.
Past my vision I saw the many rooms; torture rooms, armory rooms, wine rooms. I saw men in baths with bubbles up to their faces, men drunk out of their minds. Some in dance, locked arms on tabletops. Some masturbating. Some screaming. Some fighting. Here in these warden halls.
And I came to a stop at last, an ornate dark oak door with the metal ring for a handle. Looking both sides; no one. Light shone underneath the door frame, I pressed my palm against it and -
It opened.
I walked in. He turned his head, mouth wide open, then it fell. A room wider than any court yard, that made such a king sized bed look so small. The tesselated moonlight fragmented against the iron curtain behind the windows. They divided Gunther’s face into diamonds.
His eyes returned to slits, he threw his head back and laughed.
“So you’ve come.” Gunther reached for the knife on a counter top. I closed the door behind me. The window snapped the metal against the window. Curtains blew. A warden laughed in the distance. Close your eyes Justinian. No I won’t I want to see it coming, I must. Then I should at least be able to bare it.
“Gunther.” I unsheathed my knives. “I’ve come to kill you.”
