Chapter Text
Iron chains stretched from blackening walls across the burning room. Through the flames the twisted form swiveled its horned head, massive and goatlike. Red eyes burned from its ungulate visage, hotter than the flames themselves. Hotter than hell. From somewhere far beyond, yet near enough for its shadow to tower over all, Death’s long skull clacked shut and snapped its horselike teeth…
The snap resolved into a horrified indrawn gasp as Nadia, Countess of Vesuvia sat bolt upright in her bed. Gasping, she tried to make sense of her surroundings. The light coming in her bedchamber’s windows looked cold and overripe. It must be at least noon, if not later. How had she slept so late? Why had no one awoken her—
Her stomach then knotted as she remembered. She remembered flames and death, and not from the nightmare she’d just had. Lucio was dead. The count, her husband, dead inside a horrific fire inside his very bed chamber. Why could she remember nothing after that? The shock and strain of his murder just one night past? That had to be it. Well she could not lay here forever. She might not have loved Lucio, but she had always done right by him and by the city she had adopted as her home. Word of his death must have spread among the populace by now. She needed to be seen. The people had to know there was still a government and it was still in control.
Nadia reached for the cord of the bell that would summon her servants to help dress her in her finest, only it wasn’t there. That was strange. Why was her bell taken down? Who would do such a thing? Annoyed, she rose from her bed and padded to the window looking out on the palace garden. But doing so brought a more disturbing sight than the missing bell. The gardens were overgrown, as though the gardeners hadn’t worked in weeks. Impossible. Yesterday the gardens had been fine…
Trying to process these frightening errors in her reality, Nadia stalked back to her bed and that was when she discovered the objects on her nightstand. These included a pair of leather goggles with round lenses and a leather half-mask for covering the mouth and nose with tightly-woven steel grills covering vents to allow breathing. Beside these lay the cavalry saber she sometimes wore with her riding outfits. Weighted down by the sheathed weapon, she found a note in an unfamiliar feminine hand.
If you wake up and I’m not here, put these on & keep them on. Carry the sword for your protection. DO NOT open the door or leave the room! STAY PUT & wait for me to come to you. Keep the door shut & stay quiet no matter what you hear. I’m coming back for you so just wait & I’ll explain everything when I see you.
Your Servant,
P.
”Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?” Nadia wondered aloud. Then she examined the mask and goggles again, really examining the bits of brass and steel that had gone into their construction. She recognized them. Even the leather looked like it could have come from the box of leather scraps in—
”My workshop!” She couldn’t believe it, but what she held in her hands had indisputably been made from materials in her tower workshop. But the craftsmanship was good. These could not have been made in the few hours since the fateful masquerade…
She ran to the window again and cast her frantic gaze across the garden. It couldn’t have gotten like that overnight either. Time had passed. More than one night. Nadia began to feel cold and she now looked to her chamber door like she no longer trusted it.
“How long have I been asleep? What’s been happening all this time?”
She didn’t recognize the handwriting on the note. Nor did she have any idea who “P” was. She knew of no one in the castle’s whose name started with that letter. She wasn’t going to sit and be a prisoner in her own bedroom just because a piece of paper from someone she had never heard of told her to. But still… She could not dispute that something was wrong. And if P knew anything about what that was, then perhaps her warning merited being taken seriously.
But how could she just sit? Something was happening and she had a feeling her people needed her.
In the end, she compromised. Putting on one of her riding suits with trousers to allow for freedom of movement, she bound her Tyrian hair up in a braid, donned the mask and goggles left for her, strapped her sword to her waist, and set out into the hallway of a palace seemingly abandoned. ***
Nadia cautiously walked corridors eerily abandoned and in frightening disrepair. It looked like it had been years since the place had been inhabited. She began to regret her riding outfit that she had thought so practical, its polished boots resounding far more with each footfall than she wanted them to despite all her efforts to move quietly. The wing that contained her bedroom seemed lonely and sad rather than threatening until she reached the south stairwell leading down to the ground floor. There, on the left-hand wall was a long smear of blood that led all the way down to the first landing where a pool of it had formed on the floor. Far too much of it for a human being to survive losing. The blood was long-dried, but it was enough to make Nadia draw her saber from its scabbard and proceed with its blade held out before her.
Having grown up in Prakra’s ruling family before becoming Countess of Vesuvia Nadia was, of course, fully trained in swordsmanship. But she had never had cause to draw her blade. The idea of doing so now within the walls of her own home did not please her. Doing so made it feel not like home anymore. But then she made herself look at the huge pool of dried blood on the landing as she skirted around it and realized that it would no longer feel like home whether she had her sword drawn or not.
Nadia left the mahogany double doors at the base of the stair ajar after skirting through them. She now thought of her bedroom upstairs as home base and she wanted a clear line of retreat if she needed to get back there. Walking the deserted corridors, she saw further splashes of long-dried blood and other signs of damage everywhere she looked. How could she have slept through something like this, and how could she have been spared if she had? She had thought that the note by her bed meant she was not the only one left, but what if that were no longer true? Everywhere Nadia looked she saw no signs of life, just evidence of a carnage long past.
She instinctively worked her way inward, moving toward the center of the palace and the grand ballroom there. But once she reached it she found herself standing before the great double doors, now barred with a hastily bolted-on piece of lumber and staring in confusion at the ominous message written across them in black foot-high letters.
Nadia blinked, not comprehending and read the bizarre message aloud to herself. ”’Don’t dead open inside? That doesn’t make sense…” Then her ruby eyes widened as she read it again. “Oh. Don’t open. Dead inside. I get it. But I still don’t—”
Something slammed against the door from the other side, making Nadia skitter backward a full two meters. Whatever had attacked the door now seemed to be steadily pushing on it from the other side. The two-by-four that barred it held fast, however, shuddering in its brackets but holding whatever tide lay behind it at bay. Nadia still held her sword at arm’s length against the unseen horror, now more talisman against insanity than weapon against the real.
“What is going on?” she whispered to no one as a bead of sweat trickled down the side of her head. “What the FUCK is going on?”
Something shuffled behind her, far down the hallway she had just come from. Nadia spun and found herself looking at a female figure in a disheveled servant’s uniform and Nadia realized that she knew the girl: a cook’s assistant from the kitchens.
“Sera?” She called out. “Sera, thank God! Another human being. Sera, can you tell me what happened here? Can you tell me what’s behind this door? Where is everybody else?”
The figure did not move; but seemed to tremble.
“Sera, are you injured? What’s happening? Talk to me.”
But Sera did not answer, and the silence pushed back against Nadia’s twinging nerves.
”Talk to me! I order you to talk to me!”
Sera’s mouth dropped open into a feral rictus. She snarled and began to run full-tilt at Nadia, arms out stretched and grasping for her Countess in animal greed.
”SERA!” Unbelieving, Nadia dodged only at the last second and Sera slammed headlong into the barred door, renewing the fury of whatever lay on the other side. When the servant turned her face toward Nadia it was contorted in unthinking hate, but that was not what made Nadia gasp. Sera had sores on her forehead that opened up down to the bone. Part of her bottom lip had been torn away too: a bloodless wound revealing teeth set in receding gums. The smell of death bloomed from her as the result of the impact. But the unholy hunger on the woman’s damaged face did not change and her stiff muscles clenched as she prepared to pounce again.
”Sera…” Nadia pleaded. “Please don’t do this. It’s me!”
But Sera only growled and forced Nadia to spin away as she awkwardly lunged again. Unable to bring herself to use her sword on her own servant, Nadia ran. With Sera between her and the south staircase she sprinted for the north one instead, the feral maid hot on her heels. Nadia’s longer stride and good overall physical conditioning let her easily outpace the other woman, but it seemed all for naught when she found the doors to the north stairwell locked from the other side. With Sera closing fast, Nadia did not hesitate to bring the pommel of her basket-hilted saber down upon the ornamental door handle again and again. The doors themselves might be sturdy mahogany, but the fittings themselves were not built to withstand such an assault. The handle broke and Nadia slipped through and up the stairs just as Sera’s jaws snapped at the air where she had just stood. She gained more time as the flailing Sera stumbled and fell at the base of the stairs, but the pursuer was quickly on her feet and scrambling after Nadia again.
Nadia burst out onto the second floor and made a beeline for her bedchamber, but froze when she got halfway down the hall leading to it. There, at the end in the direction of the south stairs stood two more hunched, feral figures in servant’s clothes. She spun back around to see Sera skulking toward her getting ready to pounce once again.
The Countess braced herself and readied her sword. “Sera, please. Don’t make me do this.”
But Sera only snarled like a beast and threw herself at her prey. Nadia’s sword flashed and the servant crumpled to the floor, moving no longer. Chunks of brain matter oozed from the crack that the sword had dug into her skull. Nadia had no time to process the horror at ending her own servant’s life, for two more like her had now emerged from the north stairwell. One was one of the palace guardsmen. The other Nadia recognized as the wife of one of her lesser court officials, her gown now in tatters. Both only regarded Nadia as prey and lurched toward her snarling. The two servants at the other end of the hall joined the assault. Boxed in, Nadia made a grab for the door to her bedroom. It didn’t open. It must have locked again behind her when she’d left. She didn’t see how she could fight a four-on-one battle against the fearless, reckless beasts these people had become. But she had no choice.
Suddenly, Nadia was no longer alone with the maddened. A cloaked figure appeared from the direction of the south stairwell. With a throaty shout, it charged the attackers on that side and they turned snarling to face the new threat. The glimpse Nadia got showed the form of a small woman in sturdy, knee-high leather boots and bits of leather armor girding her torso and forearms. Goggles and a mask not unlike Nadia’s own partially concealed a pale face beneath a mane of thick red hair. The weapon she raised looked like a quarterstaff mated with a heavy-bladed knife grafted to each end. Nadia thought her eyes deceived her, but the small woman appeared to sprint halfway up the wall as the two feral servants lunged for her. With another battle cry, she launched herself off of it and brought her weapon down, cleaving through an enemy skull.
The distraction almost cost Nadia dearly, for the guard and the noblewoman had reached her. She ducked their flailing arms and used her forward momentum to propel the blade of her saber through the woman’s corset and into the fatty meat underneath. The noble’s wife gave no indication that she even felt pain, and Nadia had to lunge away as the woman snapped her jaws in defiance.
The warrior woman, having now felled both her opponents finished the noblewoman off from behind, smashing a blade through the back of her skull. Nadia claimed the guardsman for her own kill, slashing through his scalp to end him in kind. From unseen corridors, further snarls unfurled and hunched shadows played the walls, heading in their direction.
“Come on!” The woman grabbed Nadia’s sleeve and dragged her along. Seizing a key that hung on a cord around her neck, she unlocked the bedroom and shoved Nadia inside. Once she had locked them in, the redhead yanked off her goggles and breath mask to reveal a fine-featured, freckled face with large, alluring blue eyes. For all the soft delicateness of her features, however, the young woman came on as fierce as a drill sergeant.
”Are you injured? Are you bitten?” she barked at Nadia.
”What? No…” Nadia stood rubbing her wrist from the young woman’s powerful grip but stopped under her intense gaze and removed the coverings from her face. “Thank you for saving me, but those were my people. We just killed my people! I need you to tell me what is going!”
The redhead ignored her. She stomped to the nightstand where she yanked up the note, which she carried back to Nadia and waggled before her face. “Did you not read my note?” she all but screamed. “It said wait for me! Stay put! Don’t leave this room! Don’t go outside! And what do you do but the complete fucking opposite!”
She crumpled the note in her small fist and flung it aside. “Why did I even bother learning to write your stupid language if nobody pays attention when I do? Damnit, I have worked too hard keeping you alive since this started to have you commit suicide five seconds after finally waking up! Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through to make sure that you were safe here and that none of those things could get to you? Do you?”
”No, I do not!” Nadia retorted. “Because I have no memories! My husband died and that’s all I know! How could I just stay put? I’m sorry for putting us in danger, but for all I knew, years had passed since that note was written and the person who wrote it was never coming back. I didn’t even know who wrote it.”
She narrowed her eyes at this mysterious woman. “I still don’t know who wrote it. Who are you?”
The redhead held her stare a few seconds longer, then the drill sergeant seemed to drain out of her. “My name is Portia, and you’re more right than you know.”
”What do you mean?”
Portia drew a heavily-stained cloth from a pocket within her cloak and shuddered with a sigh of regret as she wiped the gore off the blades of her weapon. “It has been years, Countess. I think you’d better sit down.”