Ruby ascended the black iron stair case with the relish of a beast approaching a fallen prey, and all the glamour of a fine hostess clad to the nines for the ball of the decade. Each click of her heels on the black marble steps heralded one less opportunity for escape for her captive, each click of her stilettos a blade to the gullet of all of history. Atop this staircase, as was foretold centuries ago, the Crimson Mistress would realise her true power. She, like all other women, would suffer no fate decided by man, she would show no mercy, and with her wrath, leave no stone untouched by her scorn.
She licked her lips, her tongue pricked by the glimmering points of her fangs. The cold air of the valley felt dissonant and airy on her exposes skin, which shone with porcelain sickness beneath the paltry, if not resplendent harvest moon. As she stepped out onto the pulpit, she began to admire the jagged ruins which extruded from the walls of the valley, as if the gods themselves had forged a strange collage from the broken architecture of a thousand worlds. Though half clouded by mist and darkness, Ruby could hear the rushing waters that ran along the narrow gorge’s very deepest depths, carrying away the weakest structures of the long forgotten realm. Every now and then the air cracked sounds of stone breaking against stronger stone, a constant turbulence that forged new worlds and ruins from old.
“A brilliant setting for the zenith of my power,” she said smarmily. With the end of her sentence came a great flash of lightning, so strong and sulphurous it threatened to sunder the tall tower of the castle Ruby called her own with its strength. Static ran down her spine in between bolts, and three more peals of thunder and navy blue streaks tore the silence of the night wide apart before she looked back into the depths of the valley.
“All Hallow’s Eve, cradling the pure malice my contempt for the world needs, I beseech thee, castigate my woe!” Her voice skipped over the river and crashed against a tall bell tower that jutted out from a half formed amphitheatre. If she had been paying attention, she would have said a prayer of passing for the last fragment of Radasanth’s Citadel before it fell into the Abyss. The invisible energy that sprung from her syllables rolled down the valley’s far side, gouging a great tear in the granite until it fell from an overhang and it too vanished in a torrent of rubble.
The world had gathered about the citadel of the Tantalum troupe, its darkest hour clinging to the last of the Thayne Tantalus’s power. It had been millennia since any of them had seen another soul, and the solitude had driven the Crimson Mistress mad with rage. Her hair stood on end, whipped to life by sprites and phantoms. Her tongue lashed the air as she flexed her vocal chords, and her long, bloodied nails clawed out patterns of ancient magical summoning through the last air of Althanas’s long and heavy declaration through history.
It was time for the troupe to free of its long vigil over such a history. They had protected its secrets and it’s legacy in their tall tower and ivory libraries for longer than any of them could remember. They had saved the world from gods and monsters, sated rebellions and quelled uprisings in the desert lands and the frozen wastes. They had given rise to happiness in the darkest of hearts, killed daemons in the name of the light wielding saints of their heroes. They had done dark deeds that even Ruby could now never forgive herself for, despite what she had become.
She scratched her right nails down the length of her exposes arm and let the blood run cold in spectral trails down to her fingertips. The release of tension in her bones was a welcome respite, but in no time at all, a new hunger replaced it.
“Forgive me Thayne, for what we have become, and what we do now to rid our shoulders of our burdens.” Her solemnity bridled energy into the air around her scantily clad person. She ran the tip of her tongue up along her arm, the iron liquor red wine to her millennia refined palate. It tasted faintly of pork, gin, and fear.
Invigorated, Ruby spread her legs wide, planting her red knee high boots firmly on the obsidian pulpit as if the recoil and magnitude of what she was about to do might topple her over the edge and drag her away into nothing. Long unlit candles flickered to life in the base of her pedestal, casting a faint glow of amber and ochre light over the well-worn material of the last spell singer’s favourite stage.
“I sing a song of sixpence, of blood congealed and dry,
I tell of crimes committed, before the world did die,
I speak of tales unspoken, kept vigilant and true,
I sing the Last Song now with grace, to see all time be through.”
With the end of the first verse, Ruby sucked hard on her cuts, allowing the power contained within her blood to sooth her vocal chords. Arden had lain down his life only an hour before to channel his life force into her body – the silent swordsman’s last act of bravery and service to the troupe he had for so long protected with his bloodied blade.
“We warriors of artistry, we zealots of the stage,
Our lives have been in sacrifice, but not indeed in vain,
With our blood we shed our hopes, and with our deaths a tear,
We sing in glory and in love, as the End of Time draws near.”
Finally overcome, Ruby cackled, her very soul shattering. Her clawed hands spread apart and from their shaking lengths red lightning flashed. In time to the melody that sprung from her long dead heart, lightning flashed overhead, striking the castle’s tower time and time again. It’s empty, echoing halls reverberated and shook themselves apart – each strikes a death knell to the last bastion of mankind.
In between her fingertips a sphere formed, bound with ancient sigils and formed from the blood of the four Thayne borne children of Tantalus. It span and span quicker and quicker still with each drop of blood that flew from her cut to its centre.
“Oh sigh for me; oh sing for me, the children of the gods,
Reform the world anew with grace,
Deliver us the odds.”
She started to sway back and forth as a fell wind rose from the depths of the valley, pealing the tattered remnants of her once scarlet dress into tendrils of sentient silk. They whipped back and forth, adding to the growing cacophony of her spell song. One final bolt of lightning, thicker and stronger and brighter than any other bolt throughout history struck the lightning rod atop the castle.
Ruby did not flinch as the rubble from the eruption crashed down over the bell dome chambers and courtyards; each a comet to the home she had lived in for a thousand life times. There were no children in its halls no, no loved ones dying in the stone rain to care for.
She had killed them all, consumed their blood, and sacrificed their spirits to end their pain.
“The First Song is the Last Song, a duet with the mind,
I sing a song of sixpence, to erase all that I find,
My notes and my accompaniment, shall wipe reality clean,
With the blood of the fallen, I am finally redeemed.”
Her words were almost being drowned out by the lapping winds, the sound of rock falling and the churning stormy skies over head. Though no lightning cracked and no thunder rolled, the last part of reality began to crack. Ruby fell silent, her verses sung, her energy spent, her emotions long faded into nothing. The sphere between her finger tips showed signs of her life in its vibrant cage. Visions appeared, like memories bound in a ruby snow globe. She saw Duffy first, a youthful smile and a playful spirit quashed by her blade’s advance through his heart.
Lillith appeared second, her last note played on her ghostly shamisen echoing in Ruby’s mind. Her death was too visceral even for the power of blood magic to reveal. Her monstrous soul quelled the reaction she would have given in too long ago. Arden appeared last of all, in between memories of the very early years of the troupe – of long walks in the sunshine, of oni and tea and gin soaked spectacles on autumn nights.
“My faithful brother…” she mouthed, the words not quite forming with sound. As she let the sphere go, it fell into the Abyss, like a fire fly’s ember descending into madness.
The Crimson Mistress watched the heart of the Thayne Tantalus, reformed with the troupe’s sacrifice disappear into the river of time. Sound vanished first as time restarted. Ruby could only watch in the anti-noise as the pinnacles of the Windlacers fell into the river, accompanied by the crystal spires of Dheathain’s Fae cities, the strange bronze domes of Fallien’s temples and the slate covered villas of Scara Brae. Her arms fell limply to her sides, her fangs dripping with blood, her hair silent and lifeless and stuck to her brow with perspiration – all the vestiges of her beauty were gone.
The light began to fade next, drawing from the skies down like a sunset heralding the arrival of the night.
The silver sea in Ruby’s mind was next, but not before it exploded brightly as if were truly alive for the first time since its Thayne was sundered long ago.
For a long time, Ruby saw and heard nothing, but felt her heart beat strongly and slowly in her rib cage. Though her flesh had died centuries ago, and her blood had been replaced with that of her friends and lovers and family, she could her the great muscle that had given her so much beat out one final rhythm.
Then, there was nothing.
No life, no laughter, no murder, no joy.
Infinite bleakness, infinite blackness, a void.