20. Trapped

20

TRAPPED

A s we come into the catacomb of Staphylogenes’ tomb beneath Florence of the Ascendants, I realize we’ve entered the stillest place. Though an intense fear vibrates through me now at the wrathful presences I’m feeling all around, I also sense this is the epicenter of the still-point between Realms I had been sensing before I fell through the golden rift to nowhere.

This is not nowhere, however; this is an actual place, as I understand its function. Created by the ancients to anchor all Realms into the very fabric of reality, it is one of many still-points that exist in the universe.

Here, but nowhere—all at once.

Like an ancient underground catacomb, the still-point goes on and on. This place has no Music, I realize, as I face an intense silence here, except for the sound of Quinn’s, Lucca’s, and my heartbeat and frantic breath.

Our individual Fae powers don’t even work, as we try to raise our auric wings and can’t, shivering with fear in this space. Our Music does not rise here, either; and it won’t, I understand suddenly, because this is not a place that creates. It is a place to house and store things which have been created.

Things which have been ruined forever—unredeemable even by the Music itself.

“It’s like an endless storage cellar.” I risk speaking, though I must communicate this to Quinn and Lucca. I can feel how even our connections to each other have been nullified by this place. Whatever power exists here can take away everything that connects us; not just our Dark Fae connections to the Music, but to each other, as well.

Even to our own innate magic.

“A storage cellar for evil.” Lucca’s voice is a growl, low and furious now. He’s realized along with the rest of us that our Faeanic spears aren’t working here, either; they aren’t lengthening out into the bright killing-blades they should be in this place.

As I try to cast a simple sigil with my short blade, nothing happens. Nothing of my magic can manifest here, nor Quinn’s or Lucca’s, as we all try a bit of magic in this place.

“It’s a void,” Quinn says now as he tucks his spear back in its thigh holster, though he keeps his hands ready as we turn a slow circle in our back-to-back knot. “It’s a place that tethers all of reality together, but where that which creates reality is not applicable. A place truly beyond our comprehension of magic, power, space, and time—where our rules of physical manifestation don’t apply. Only the most ancient rules of cosmic harmony and manifestation, of the Ascendants themselves, work here. It is a place they made to be empty of physical harmonies. Entirely.”

“It’s like an endless prison, where those ruined things we feel in the darkness can no longer create,” Lucca says now as I feel every hackle upon him rise. “Of course, Staphylogenes would hide his heart in such a place. Where no other Ascendant would dare tread… lest they get their entire soul ripped out by whatever’s lurking in this darkness.”

“They used to be Ascendants.” I fight a terrible dread, swallowing hard past a prickling dryness in my throat. “All these things in the darkness we feel; they used to be sublime before they fell so far, even their own kind could not repair them.”

Trespassers. A cold, ancient voice moves through the darkness, right through our ears as it buries itself inside our minds. I feel like screaming from that vast, dark invasion, though I find I can’t.

Terror swelling my throat shut.

“We have come for the sundered heart of Staphylogenes. Nothing else. We do not mean to trespass,” Quinn says now, like he wasn’t affected in the slightest by that voice. Though I can feel how hard his heart thunders, entirely inappropriate for Quinn, thanks to whatever is speaking to us.

The Golden Child of Light has no more need of his heart. But we do. That voice says now as I feel something—some things —encircle us from the darkness. Though I can see nothing in the low-lit catacombs and vaults, it doesn’t mean something isn’t here. It’s simply not manifesting in a way we could see it.

As I feel it draw nearer—along with its cohorts.

It’s like the most powerful Vampire Revenants in the universe, as Quinn draws up tall now, facing off with them. I feel Lucca firm his courage as even I feel stalwartness return to my heart. We will get what we came all this way for, or die trying.

Whatever lingers in this darkness can be sure of it.

You will die trying, that voice says now as it approaches. You will die a thousand shrieking deaths, and a thousand thousand deaths more, until there is nothing left of you but starlight shredded across the winds of the universe. You know I am capable of it. And my fellows are, too.

“Why should you kill us? Are you threatened by our lowly mortal presences?” Quinn banters back now, as I sense his reasoning. If this ancient being, ruined as it is, is taking the time to banter with us, we still have a chance.

And we’ll take that chance—however slim it might be .

“You call him the Golden Child of Light, Staphylogenes. Why?” I take up Quinn’s cue now as I address the creature and its cohort.

Because once, he was the most sublime among us. That voice slithers through the darkness, tightening in an invisible knot all around us. Once, he was the most beautiful creature to Ascend through any Vir, anywhere. Aching to look upon, with a voice drawn from the most supreme ancients themselves, he was of the Music, and he was in the Music, and he was the very essence of the Music, as he rose to become the most profound creator with it. He was of the highest resonance with the Music—his very heart was Music, song, dance, and all the various arts of Creation.

“He created… but something went wrong, didn’t it?” Lucca asks now as we feel the noose of the void around us pause, thinking.

Hubris began to devour him after he created this place. I feel the black serpent of emptiness regard us. He meant for it to be the most sublime seat of all creation, anywhere—a place of the greatest art, song, and dance, just like he himself was with the Music. What he didn’t know is that there are beings far more powerful than us, who created works many times greater than he or I could ever imagine. He began to think himself infallible with the Music. It was so much a part of him, he believed he could do anything with it. But thence came the Child… and forever after, he was dissonant.

“The Wanderer. Cereus. His daughter.” I recall Staphylogenes’ horrible history with his quasi-immortal daughter.

Dissonance devoured him after he co-created the Child of his loins with his beloved. The voice circles in again, as if eager to tell us its tale—then eat us. He did not understand there are laws that govern physical form, even for us; disappointed with his Child’s creation, he tried to change those laws with the Music, and it ripped this place apart.

“It ripped apart you and the others who are bound down here, forever locked inside this place, didn’t it?” Lucca says now, knowing like Quinn and I do that every moment we stay alive in here is another moment for us to make our escape with the heart.

If any escape is even possible from this place .

For his Music was terrible in its sundering, that voice says now as it tightens around us, closer. He was the greatest creator with it we had ever seen; thus, he was the greatest destructor with it we had ever encountered. Many of us tried resisting his madness; it ruined us. Then we were trapped in here by our still hale brethren. To rot for all eternity… while the Golden Child went free.

“You want to keep the heart,” I understand then, as the deepest truth of my life hits me. “You hate Staphylogenes so much, you never want him to get his heart back, because of what happened to you. You glorify in the fact that he can’t make it back here anymore without his Light. That his heart is yours now, forever. Lost inside this place with you.”

Clever child. That voice seems to come from all around me in the semi-dark now, as it cinches in. It feels like a massive boa constrictor of the coldest midnight has coiled all around me now, speaking right into my ear with its terrible, ancient voice. You differ from the others… strong, like we once were. For our Light and Night were once harmonized, as yours are. Though you can see now… that is no longer the case.

As the voice in the void rises up, I see it flare to life in the semi-dark. Like an endless Revenant smoke, it fills the catacombs’ highest vaults, tall as the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with its presence.

I feel it as millions of red eyes, each more massive than the last, pop open, pinning me with their horrible gaze. They all weep blood, as terrible black and crimson blood-oilslick sigil phrases write and rewrite throughout the thing’s terrible reaches.

I understand what it is, as it reveals itself to us—a Descendant Revenant, an Ascendant fallen, then gone utterly mad into a total Revenant state, over countless eons. Beyond terrible, a sound like breaking skies thunders me to my bones as it shows itself. But that vast, wrenching sound goes further than just break the skies.

It breaks all of creation, as I feel myself being torn apart to this thing’s vast, immortal delight.

Quinn, Lucca, and I don’t even have a moment as we all scream, inundated by the Descendant Revenant’s destruction. As the others in this nowhere-hellhole join in, we’re hammered by sheer power—which launches all three of us off our feet.

Tossing us like rag dolls, we slam against the side of Staphylogenes’ white tomb. Everything is chaos, then, as a massive sound rings from the tomb like a furious bell, a thousand universes high and a thousand universes deep.

The tomb explodes out behind us. Shrapnel of white stone written all through with golden sigildry hammers into the black creature of a million eyes and its cohorts. They scream with a million voices of unending torment as they’re pummeled with it, those chunks of blazing white stone ripping through them, tearing their most horrible Night apart.

We’re in; somehow, Quinn, Lucca, and I were not damaged when the heart’s tomb exploded. A many-faceted crystal lies within the shattered white stone, covered in golden Ascendant’s sigils.

Which contains a slightly larger-than-normal, human heart.

That heart still beats, still pumps as if it was pumping real blood, though we see only a strange, shimmering liquid full of golden light, which flows inside the box.

But as Quinn, Lucca, and I touch the heart’s crystal case, a tremendous intent moves through us. As one, we scream to our deepest minds, hearts, and souls, save us! —suddenly, it’s like a bomb of the Music goes off inside us, though it’s not outwardly manifested in this endless, still-point space.

But as the Music rushes through our bones now, united by our trio’s bonds which are renewed by our touch upon the heart’s crystal case, a towering Ascendant Sigil roars up inside us . It’s all through the crystal case of the heart, also, as I feel the heart respond from our new, internal Music touching it.

Because it is the heart of an Ascendant, still filled with the Light of Staphylogenes, which has forever left him. As if feeling our plea, responding to that towering sigil of the Music we just manifested and our dire heartwish, the heart flares to life.

Where it was calmly beating with slow, endless beats, it now hammers hard, fast like it’s in some tremendous race. The heart screams with energy, its entire reaches flaring with golden sigils and the purest white Light, as the many-sided crystal case it’s in responds.

Both the heart and the case seethe with Light now, tremendous, making their own endless complex phrase of the Music as Ascendant’s Sigils pour from it in the semi-dark. As the Descendant Revenants with their million eyes surge in, furious at how the tomb damaged them and ready to finish us, we’re suddenly being portaled out.

Ripped through endless worlds—as the Ascendant heart finds its way back to its maker.

We’re hurtled through countless Realms of destruction in the ruined city of Florence, as the heart finds its way back to Staphylogenes. I finally feel us hit the ringing tones of the Seventh Vir that is the Twilight Realm, and I know we’ve made it; we’re through, as the portal the heart made chucks us out.

It’s night. The air is crystal clear all around as a glowing blue-white nimbus fills the sky. We land in a tangled heap somewhere, the crystal case of the heart thudding to emerald grass beside us.

We’re in some sort of ruin; a massive, ruined building like those in Rome in the human world. But this is in the Twilight Realm, as I hear a shocked shriek of dozens of voices hit my ears. For a moment, I think it’s the Descendant Revenants, coming for us.

Until I realize those shrieks came from embodied persons, standing all around us.

Because we’re arrived back in the Twilight Realm from the Ascendant city of Florence, but not back to our Florence. We’ve come through to somewhere else, as the heart tore open a portal through countless worlds to find its way back to its maker.

And we’ve arrived right smack dab in the middle of someone’s meeting—the Vampire Council of Rome, as I feel them surge now.

Sending a towering vortex of Night up all around us.

Quinn, Lucca, and I are sealed in with Staphylogenes’ heart, as we find ourselves in our worst nightmare—being trapped by the Vampire Council of Rome. Hate seethes from many eyes now as the Vampire Council gather around us; we killed a good number of their members the last time we appeared before them, though that was without Lucca standing among us.

We’re all here now, caught like flies in the web of spiders as their towering dome of Night surrounds us. Worse, the heart seems to not care, as Quinn, Lucca, and I desperately try to flare our Music again to get it to resonate with us and portal us out of here.

But it doesn’t.

The heart does nothing now, as if it played its part and is content now to watch us suffer. And suffer we do, as the Vampire Council put a stinging, roaring energy into their dome, hammering us all to our knees with the heart trapped between us.

Making us writhe and scream from the torture the Council has set for us.

“Quindici DaPonti. Well. Something tells me you did not expect to portal yourself right into the Council’s midst, just as we were having a meeting about how to destroy you. Some dire oversight in your plans, perhaps?”

A voice emerges from the group as the Council stands stalwart around their seething barrier of Night. I’m shocked to see one of the Dark Fae Masters from the Council approach us now, Mistress Elena Iliescu of Romania.

Her golden hair perfectly coiffed, she smirks with a cold amusement as she stands before us, wearing one of her immaculate white pantsuits with a light lavender silk top, and long, draping necklaces of gold and diamonds, glittering against her shirt .

As she taps her buffed nails against her thigh, however, I see the brief worry that crosses her face before she stills it. Because she and the other Dark Fae Masters on the Council were counting on us to mount some sort of coordinated attack against the Vampire Council that they could join when the time was right.

This is not that, as I feel Mistress Iliescu’s evaluation of us, wondering whether she needs to change her plans immediately.

But Quinn draws up tall now, as he pushes up to standing and hauls Lucca and me up with him. He faces down Mistress Iliescu and the entire Vampire Council with iron in his gaze.

Not about to be undone, when we finally have the biggest prize of all in our hands.

Staphylogenes’ heart.

“Trap a tiger and feel it bite.” Quinn speaks quietly as he faces them. He’s got the many-sided crystal case of the heart in his hands now, as if showing it to the Council. I see all their eyes go to it, wondering what in seven hells it is.

And what it might do for us.

“You are not a tiger.” Mistress Iliescu snorts now, as contempt drips from her perfectly red-painted lips. But it’s a show for the Council; I feel it as her gaze connects to Quinn again.

Wondering just what in blazes his plan is.

“You’re right, I am not a tiger.” Quinn stands tall before the Vampire Council now, as he stares them down. “I am a burning spear of Night and Light. Feel my fire as it comes for you, and ask yourselves this: do we, the Council, dare come for the Dark Fae, when they bind themselves as one in the Light? Because though myself and my Dark Fae trio are trapped now inside your dome of magic, the rest of our people are not. And there are more… Vampires who support us and true Fae, bound to our ideals of heart, mind, and soul, as well. So ask yourselves this: is it wise to mount an attack against Quindici DaPonti, orchestrator of this vast movement, with his two bound beloveds, who inspire it to its utmost? Or should we set th eir fire free… rather than have it burn us to smithereens as we try to trap it?”

“Set a fire free and watch it burn everything to ashes, including us.” A strong Master I’ve never seen before steps forward now, his regal garb reminiscent of the ancient Maya, his eyes cool and black as he regards us. “My people learned long ago not to set a fire free in the thick forests that surrounded us. No, we will keep your fire contained, and ferret out all the various combustibles that could feed it. Then we shall put our blanket of blackest Night over your fire. Smothering it… before it destroys us.”

As all heads around this strong Mayan Master nod, I see Mistress Iliescu’s disappointment. And I know we’ve just lost our Dark Fae allies on the Vampire Council of Rome.

Even as Quinn lifts his head high—the most terrible smile I’ve ever seen on his lips.

“Harm my people, Master Cabrakan, and my wrath will be terrible,” Quinn warns as he stares this ancient Master down.

“Empty words.” The strong Master Cabrakan’s gaze bores into Quinn, only sparing the barest glance to me, Lucca, and the heart in Quinn’s hands. “Your arcane relic is no use beneath our barrier, unfortunately. Even your most cunning Music will not rise under this dome, Quindici DaPonti; that you and your trio are Dark Fae and can wield it means nothing now. For this past week, we have been at work while you rested. We have anchored our Council’s might to the ancient Vampire relics that live beneath Rome, still there from the Fall of the Descendants themselves. We have attuned them to prevent the Music’s rise; this dome of power surrounding you is specifically attuned to not let even a single vibration of the Music come alive inside it, nor any ability to share power with those you are bonded with outside the dome. You are finally trapped, Quinn. Your people may come for you, but they will find their ability to raise their Music inside Rome’s oldest city-center hindered, just like yours. Which leaves them only their regular magic to accost us. Do you think they will win, when faced with our Council’s Societas Sanguinis and our own furious might? I doubt it. And so… you are finished. Enjoy watching your people fall as we exterminate them. At last.”

With that, the Mayan Master waves his hand. The Vampire Council withdraws, though Mistress Iliescu gives us one last gaze, before finally turning away like the rest.

Departing and leaving us trapped in the night.