Chapter 21

"Have you noted the way time passes here?" I asked curiously, my fingers drifting along a wall of deepest red, exploring the nooks and crannies of the unnatural bricks. "Like it trickles and then spurts. Water blocked by a dam and occasionally allowed free."

"I'm more concerned about the beast which has been trying to eat us," Max growled at my back, his voice a deep bass of marked panic.

"Well of course you are," I said, knowing he would be so distracted. "That is the entire point after all. Yet I have scented the trick beneath the trappings."

Our magic was unpredictable here, and though a silencing bubble held us snug and dandy, I didn't trust it not to pop at any given moment.

"What trick?" Max demanded.

I turned to him, my gaze lingering on the ragged claw marks slashed through the shoulder of his fighting leathers and the shining blood of the wound which our magic had refused to heal.

He'd saved me from that wound, my gallant barracuda, knocking me aside when the creature had lunged from the sky, talons poised to snatch me away, its ruinous face filled with hungry glee.

I had smashed said face like an overripe banana with the Flail of Unending Celestial Karma for trying to wrench my Maxy boy away, but those talons had dug deep and cut well before releasing him.

The run here had been swift and desperate, his wound drawing far more of my attention than I could admit to. We were an ill-fated pair for a quest such as this. Our emotions were too tangled to allow for the ruthless decisions of war.

We'd found a modicum of shelter here, in the porch of some stately building that looked like it might have housed a great lord or lady once. Now left to moulder in this city of forgotten bones.

A ferocious cry rebounded from the walls of the surrounding buildings and though terror tried to tempt my trumpet, I cast it aside, listening instead to the way the sound moved.

"There's nothing here but death," Max hissed, his teeth gritted against the pain.

"Even death cannot hide all things," I countered. "For I have discovered a game afoot."

"What game?" Max stepped closer to me.

I pressed a hand to his cheek, looking into his eyes and taking in the stalwart determination of a true warrior therein.

"Have you the strength left to run?" I asked him with all seriousness, though I didn't doubt his valour for a moment.

"If you're running then I'm right there at your back," he swore, and by golly my waters did run riotous at that.

"The sound moves," I breathed, my eyes alight with the truth of it. "It dances all around in a pattern anything but natural."

The beast hunting us screamed in the heavens again, and my soul lit with the truth of my words as the resounding echoes failed to sound from the path that led away to our right.

Max stilled as he noticed the unnatural silence too and a spark of determination lit his eyes.

He drew his bow and I swung my flail.

"Into the yonder we ride," I hissed, and without another dilly, we were off.

The beast shrieked as it spotted us, the sky darkening overhead where its leathery wings spread wide and chased us down the gently sloping street. But its cries were precisely what I required, and I grinned a savage grin as I raced towards that spot of nothing, that silence in the dark.

Max ran powerfully at my back, loosing an arrow which blazed with Phoenix fire and causing another roar to echo out around us when it hit its mark.

But I knew well the legend of the Rather Bat, though it was thought to be extinct. I had my suspicions that we had come across the last of its kind in this foul place. It had four hearts, each of them able to regenerate given the time to do so. Its talons were razor sharp and its fangs laced with a poison so toxic that it was said to paralyse its prey instantly upon biting them.

Though my noble form feared no poisons, my dear Maxy was not so fortunately endowed.

The enormous bat was forced to wheel aside as Maxy fired again, and I jerked to the right abruptly, squeezing myself into a near non-existent gap between two towering houses of red brick.

Maxy cursed as he followed, his broad form perhaps a tighter squeeze than even my Brendas afforded me, though as the tips of my pointed breastplate gouged lines into the bricks, I wasn't entirely certain of that.

"The silence shifted," I said by way of explanation, and Max grunted his agreement.

"We can't outpace it much longer," he added, not in a cowardly way but with the practical words of a soldier who had deftly assessed his enemy.

"Take heart," I told him, "For we fight on the side of what is just and true."

The little scoff he gave was clearly a wordless agreement to my assessment, nothing could thwart us in this quest. I knew it in my bones.

I pushed myself from the end of the alleyway, a scream lodging in my throat as the bat sprung its trap, colliding with me at full force and throwing me to the ground.

"Gerry!" Max bellowed as I was dragged along, its talons fighting for purchase in my gleaming breastplate, the metal coating my back shrieking as it dragged across the cobbles at speed.

I was thrown against the hard edge of a stone fountain, pinned there with jaws snapping for my face and my flail flying from my grasp. But then I heard the silence pressing in from my right.

"Head west!" I bellowed, using what little time I had left to tell my sweet love where to find the answer to this riddle. "And remember me well!"

The jaws of death snapped at my throat, and I swung a fist clad in a shining gauntlet emblazoned with the mark of the True Queens at its foul face.

The beast reared back, propelling me away from it so my momentum flung me into a wall which cracked at the impact.

Still the silence rang out from the west, thicker now, nearer than ever.

But between the thrashing wings of the beast which dove for me again, I did not see dear Maxy running for victory. Nay – he was racing for insignificant me. And though I groaned at the valour wasted on a wretch such as I, I couldn't help but feel a note of warmth in my cockles at the gesture.

I scrambled on my back, reaching for the knife at my belt and ripping it free just as the bat lunged for my throat.

Its fangs pierced deep and true, poison sliding into me, my arm slowing in momentum though not stopping as I swung my devilish blade.

Four hearts did not save it from a dagger through the eye.

Its weight fell slack upon me, its teeth slicing through flesh and cartilage as even in death it tore deeper into my body.

A stillness came for me then, even as its weight crushed me to the ground. I was in the grasp of its poison and I knew that none could survive such a bite.

Maxy ripped the thing off of me, the cool air kissing my cheeks, though the taint of this cursed place hung stagnant within it.

"Gerry," he gasped, eyes all a-panic, hand going to my throat as he willed healing magic to spark between us while the curse of the city fought to keep it from him.

But it did spark, like kindling snaffing hold of a frame, it did.

"I've got you, Gerry. I'm here," he swore, and oh, wouldn't there be far worse ways to die than this – in the arms of my beloved lobster?

But not today. For I was no mere collyrodger and my blood pumped with the power of the Cerberus. No poison could lay claim to me, and no bat would steal me from the wings of this war and the final ascension that I knew was to come.

I heaved in a breath laced with blood from my ravaged throat and pushed Maxy back before he'd fully healed the wound. I could breathe and I wasn't bleeding enough to beckon death closer yet.

"West," I hissed, rolling to my feet and ignoring his spluttered protests as I took off through the red streets.

Left, right, left again. I cried out to make the silence answer me, chasing it through alley and gully, past temple and tower until finally, I came to a glimmering chest which sat there plainly in the centre of the street, power emanating from it in a way which seemed altogether too mocking.

"What ho," I breathed, my footsteps echoed by my deadly dolphin as we approached.

"It could be dangerous," he muttered, reaching out to take on the danger himself, but I knocked his hand aside.

"Save the gallantry for the boudoir," I told him. "This trifling trinket shan't thwart me."

I kicked the chest open, and we peered into the near empty space inside, spotting a fat, amethyst stone at its centre representing Aquarius. It lay upon a parchment with ancient words inscribed across its surface, no doubt denoting the curse that had befallen this city. Beside it lay the feather of a forlax, a gnarled bone, and a scattering of mandycrops – bad omens indeed. The makings of this city's bane by some wily sorcerer's hand long ago.

A smile crept across my lips and I reached out to claim the amethyst, the relief of finding my suspicions correct a resounding boon upon my pride.

A rumble trembled through the ground at my feet as I stood upright again, parting the Guild Stone from the curse-bringing items, and the city of Herithé released a long, overdue sigh as it crumbled into ash.

All around me buildings, streets, and walls fell to nothing, fading away as if they'd never been and revealing our companions in the wasteland which was left behind.

"Oh, sweet raisin bran, had you given in to the call of death, dear fellows?" I cried as I spotted Orion and Seth snuggled up in a ball where they had quite clearly given in to the inevitability of death and sought comfort in the arms of one another while they wept for all they assumed lost. "Wipe those tears from your eyes, dear Orion, you need sniffle no more. For I have found the stone and saved you like a damsel who had given up all hope before a knight came to your rescue."

"I'm not crying," Orion snapped. "It's water that's melted – we were freezing in there and ice had formed on my cheeks."

"Whatever you say, sweet boy," I told him, giving him an understanding wink which caused his face to contort in a way that I could only describe as pure, undying gratitude to me for saving him.

A blur of motion announced the arrival of the other Vampire in our midst as he sped to us from the furthest reaches of what had once been Herithé.

"You did it!" my lady Tory cried as Caleb placed her on her feet, and I could only bow before her gratitude, gasping in surprise as she threw her arms around me. "You really saved our asses, Geraldine. Me and Caleb were trapped in a tower fighting these fucking crow things off, but I don't think we could have lasted much longer."

"You would have prevailed!" I protested, refusing to believe she might ever succumb to such a lowly death.

"Luckily, I saved our asses when the city crumbled," Caleb added. "Because we fell about two hundred feet out of the damn sky when that tower fell to shit."

"Yeah, yeah, the day was saved because you made the ground spongy – nothing at all to do with Geraldine being a badass and finding the stone," Tory replied, and I blushed deepest crimson at the compliment.

"Cooee!" Washer called, running towards us in nothing but a ghastly purple wrapping around his loins.

My Pego-brother and his herd were with him, trotting this way with some strange splodges on their hands, but those very splodges crumbled, turning to dust along with the city and they all paused to stare down at their fingerlings in relief.

Darcy and Darius finally reached our motley crew, not looking at each other too closely and having very little to say about whatever danger dangler they had faced. But it seemed they had come out as triumphant as termites in an ant war.

Once everyone had assured themselves that we were all alive and dandy, I knelt before my former professor and offered up the final piece to his puzzle.

"What now?" Darcy asked keenly as he took it, despite the Dragoon looking inclined to snatch it for his own.

"Now," Orion said thoughtfully, inspecting the stone in the light. "We find out exactly what way the Guild Stones can change the fate of Solaria. And we learn what happens when the rightful sovereigns hold the power of all twelve."