The Secluded Queen, page 22
Amaryllis wouldn’t have it. She clamped her teeth down on Veronica’s breastplate and dragged her out of the building. Veronica struggled in protest, grasping helplessly at the dirt and kicking at the unicorn, but she was so weak that it didn’t do much good. She dumped her in front of a small raspberry bush on the edge of the old city and demanded that she eat.
Veronica stood up indignant, but she nearly fell over from weakness, so she conceded to sitting in the dirt. “You could have asked nicely! Honestly, you are the worst!” But she did eat until her belly was full of the sweet fruits, her head balancing as the sugars boosted her energy. There was something odd about these ruins, and as she ate and took in the sights surrounding her, she realized what it was. These buildings are modern. The buildings had stone holes fit for modern glass windows and well-structured doorways with battered but modern doors. Instead of a mere hole in a thatched roof for smoke, there were chimneys and stone-tiled rooftops. There were old fountains, public bathhouses, and a brilliant tower standing sentinel above it all. She could still make out these details, though the wear and tear of time was apparent and present- even with the entire city in ruin.
The evidence of destruction was everywhere, but the manner was odd as well. Many of the buildings and statues had black scarring from intense heat, but the scarring was angled downward, as if the destructive flames had not originated from the ground, but from above. The walls of the felled buildings did not look crushed from falling stones launched by catapults but looked as if the destruction originated from within the building, in the form of some sort of explosion. The ground of the city looked dead, cursed, and blighted. Indeed, this must be the case, as the bush she ate from grew just outside the city. The only vegetation growing was the vines that infested the stone buildings.
She turned to Amaryllis. “What is this place? Where did you take me?”
The unicorn only snorted and gestured for her to follow her to the tower.
Chapter 18
The tower was the pinnacle of exactness, of symmetry. The stones of which it was comprised were cut to exact measurements, with no irregularity between one stone and the next. Anatolian masons are the best in the world, yet they couldn’t possibly be this precise with a hammer and chisel. The stones were evenly stacked, the mortar an exact and unwavering width as it filled the gaps between each perfect stone. Nothing made by human hands could be this perfect. The doors to the tower had long since been destroyed; bits and pieces of the doors lay strewn around the base of the tower. Other than the unnatural perfection and destroyed doors, there was nothing special about the tower. It was tall, gray, and had many keyhole windows, probably for archers to fire from. Compared to the Castle Myra, it was boring.
Inside was just a simple staircase, spiraling up and downward. Nothing hung on the walls nor covered the stone floors. It smelled of the open forest air, with the wind blowing through the many perfect keyhole-shaped windows, and leaves from the trees gathering in every corner of the building. Veronica looked back to Amaryllis, who stood outside the tower, looking on expectantly.
“Are you not coming?”
Amaryllis tried walking into the tower but was blocked by an invisible red barrier, which angrily shoved the unicorn back, and then went completely translucent once again. Well, that’s something. Who would block Virtuusians from entering an old tower in the human realm? Who could make a magical barrier in the first place?
Veronica cracked a smile. “Now I know where to go when I need a break from your ego.”
Amaryllis snickered and flashed flames out of her eyes—pink flames.
Sargon’s magic is red, just like the barrier to this tower. Amaryllis, a Virtuusian, has purple and pink magic. Is there a connection between Sargon’s ability to wield Virtuuce and this barrier? She looked back at the stairs, deciding which way to go, up or down. Perhaps I will find a clue as to why Sargon wants to sack the Castle Myra here, in this odd and ancient tower.
Veronica started heading up the stairs first. The stairs were deep and short, which made the climb gradual and less strenuous than at the Castle Myra. These stairs are the exact same height and are perfectly level. How could an ancient civilization build something so precise? They had lesser tools than we do now.
There was nothing to the tower other than stairs and keyhole windows. There were no secret rooms or landings. She climbed and climbed, puzzled why a people would devote so many resources to building a useless tower in the middle of their town. Even though the tower may have given guards of the city a superior vantage point, the trees surrounding the city were so thick that they still wouldn’t be able to spot an enemy. Maybe this is why the civilization fell, because they wasted magic and resources building towers that served no purpose.
The top floor of the tower didn’t answer any of her questions, but it did introduce a few more. There was a lone locked cabinet against the far wall, with rusted metal apparatuses attached to the floor wherever there was room, each of which looked like some sort of spring-powered mechanism. While most of these mechanisms were empty, in the center of the room, mounted to one of these metal springs, was an iron monster, the shape of which resembled a slug mixed with a bird.
She circled the inanimate beast warily, unsure what to make of such a creation. The metal monster wasn’t attached to the floor, so she could assume that it was no statue or altar. When she gained the courage to touch it, her fingers brushed away dirt and rust to reveal a clear piece of glass. She wiped a full circle on the glass and leaned forward to peer inside. The skeletal face of a long-dead man stared back up at her, resting in some sort of chair at the base of a flat board with a number of levers and switches. The manner of his death was not apparent. He was wearing some sort of armor; made of a material that she didn’t recognize. There was one thing she did recognize, however, an emblem stitched into the alien fabric, the same emblem that was chiseled into her spearhead, and the same emblem that had been etched into Edward’s breastplate: the crown symbol of Anatolia.
She was dumbfounded. How could the crown symbol of Anatolia be stitched into this ancient man’s uniform? Was this some sort of elaborate prank by Amaryllis? But she couldn’t enter the tower because of that red barrier, so how could she have? Where am I, what was this city, and who were the people who had lived here?
Veronica continued her search for clues at the locked cabinet. She tried to get it to open, but the hinges were not rusted enough to break from the cabinet box. But while she was hanging and yanking on the locked door, she noticed that the cabinet did seem only loosely attached to the wall, and with an old piece of metal, she was able to wrench it free. It was heavy. She banged the cabinet on the floor several times, but the locks still held fast. So, she picked it up, hefted it over her shoulder, carried it over to a keyhole window, and threw it out of the tower. A few seconds later, the cabinet shattered against the ground below, and she heard Amaryllis bray in shock and anger. Veronica hung her head out of the window and stuck her tongue out at Amaryllis, who answered with an odd vulgar-looking wave of her horn. The force of the fall had blown the cabinet door off the cabinet, and many ancient scrolls were scattered on the broken road. She took one last look at the old skeleton, still unable to believe that the crown of Anatolia was emblazoned upon his chest, and then headed down the stairs. More mystery, no answers.
Amaryllis had already started nudging the scrolls into a pile on the ground by the time she had finished the long climb down the tower. Veronica walked over to the pile of scrolls, picking them up and unrolling them one by one. The scrolls were faded but legible. Legible? This is Anatolian script! The scrolls looked like a merchant’s ledger, like what her father used to keep track of goods purchased, sold, and the profits from each trade. The materials didn’t make sense, though. They mentioned canisters in exchange for machines and land in exchange for machines. There was no mention of fabrics, gold, jewels, spices, or weaponry like what she knew was commonly traded by her father. Veronica looked to Amaryllis. “What are canisters, and why would these people trade machines for them?” The unicorn simply pointed a leg towards the tower and then gestured downward.
Veronica stood up, reached into her satchel, and pulled out her torch, flint, and steel. She struck the steel against the flint and ignited the torch, then headed down.
It was the same experience as going upwards, but after the tower went down below ground level, the keyhole windows stopped. Her torch was the only light in the stifling darkness. The descent into the darkness was brief before she reached a large wooden door, with the crown of Anatolia carved across it, nearly exactly as it was on the doors of the Great Hall in the Castle Myra. The door swung easily, revealing a crescent moon table, walls filled with maps, and glass cabinets with artifacts stored within.
Veronica held her torch up to the first map she approached, labeled “Virtice, Land of Magic,” in thick lettering across the top. The land was split down the middle, with “Human” on the left, and “Virtuusian” on the right, with various cities dotting the human lands, while only one marked on the Virtuusian side, named only “Pillar”. The human cities, however, were laid out exactly as they existed in Anatolia, but with the northern border, which now is shared with Phoenicia, rotated to the right, sharing a border with the Virtuusians. Tarsus, Turhal, and Gordion would have been the first line of defense against an invading army, just like in the human realm. The port cities of Patara and Ankara were there, with Izmir, Sardis, Nerik, and Adana filling the center of the land area. Instead of the Castle Myra, a large star was labeled as Atlantis. This puzzled her. If Veronica remembered the map she had studied correctly, Atlantis was not located in the same location as the Castle, but rather just West of it, based on the rotation of this map. Veronica pictured the map orientated as it was in the human realm, and she realized that this fallen city very well could be the ruins of Atlantis itself. This means when the humans had been banished from Virtice, the Virtuusians banished not only the people from that magical land, but their cities along with them.
The entire scene had sent her head spinning. Each of the Ten Great Cities were not founded here but were established in another realm entirely, and had been transported to the human realm during a war between humans and mythical beasts. It just couldn’t be possible. Growing up, she had heard tales of mythical creatures and magic in stories, but never in her wildest dreams did she think that the magic was actually real. This city she now stood in, had been founded by her ancestors, who then moved on to construct the Castle Myra. Why didn’t they just stay here like the other Great Cities did? The battle-scarred buildings sprang to mind. They probably didn’t know that their city had been transported back and believed the Virtuusians could attack again at any time. With their grand city in shambles, they had no other option but to leave.
Veronica was looking at a painting of what she assumed was Atlantis at its full might and majesty. The tower was directly in the center of the Great City, with several of those metal slug birds flying about the tower that she now stood in, and many oddly dressed people laughing and lounging about the city, which was surrounded by rivers, not trees. The tower itself seemed to be cracked open at the top, and it looked like one of those flying metal slug birds was trying to roost there. That explains why they built the tower. It was designed to be some sort of magical flying machine roosting place. She did not know if it was artistic or realistic, but in the sky on the painting, there was not one sun, but two, spaced evenly between each other so that there would never be a moment without sunlight.
Distant braying from Amaryllis could be heard, and then the sounds of footsteps began echoing off the stairs from whence she came. She scanned the room for a hiding place, but there were only two options- either under the crescent table or behind the large door. She opted for under the crescent table. She ducked down and crawled under, swatted away a loose dangling spider that had made its home there, smothered her torch on the stone floor, and held her breath.
Voices joined the sounds of the footsteps as they descended. “I never thought I would have found it... Sargon will surely be pleased.”
“My Lord, Oh, you are glorious, my Lord. I never doubted you for a second, my Lord.”
“Finding a ruin like this is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The irony is that I don’t think we would have ever found it if that Virtuusian hadn’t led us right to it. Sloppy. Just like a beast of Rhea.”
Laughter followed. “She thought she could attack our supply train and not be tracked she did?”
“Indeed. The unicorn was wise to flee when I arrived.”
“Yes, my Lord, because you are fearsome. But what of the scrolls outside of the tower, my Lord? How did the Virtuusian enter the tower to retrieve them?”
The other man scoffed. “She couldn’t have. She had to have had some help, probably from some traitorous human filth siding with the enemy.” The men descending the stairs paused at the door, still ajar from when Veronica had entered, their torches flickering through the partially open door. “Human filth that may not have fled with the Virtuusian.”
“Why do you say that, my Lord?”
“Imbecile! When was the last time you entered an ancient Atlantean tower and smelled the aroma of a burning torch?”
“Please don’t be angry with me, my Lord. I haven’t ever been inside ruins, my Lord. Most are haunted, to be sure.”
The door was shoved open, and the two men barged into the room. “If you wish to join the ghosts, Samuelson, continue on with that drivel.”
They separated and began searching the room. Veronica cursed herself for not having her spear with her—she had left it outside the tower with Amaryllis. She clenched the smoldering torch with both hands, ready to use it as a club when they inevitably found her pathetic hiding place.
The room went deathly quiet as the two men circled, their shoes the only thing visible to her from under the crescent table. One of the men stopped walking and turned abruptly to the other. “My Lord, er, it seems that we are alone.” Veronica remained frozen under the desk, eyes locked on the man who had turned, trying to stay perfectly still. “Perhaps his Lordship would like to look elsewhere...”
Veronica was seized by the other man, the one she had not been watching, and was hauled out from under the desk.
“Would you look at this, Samuelson? A pretty Virtuusian sympathizer, playing a game of hide and seek.” The stout, clean-cut military man pulled her face close to his. “It looks like you lost.” Veronica sent a feminine disarming smile in reply, locking eyes with the servant of Sargon, then, eyes still locked with his, struck with the torch. It was an awkward one-handed swing, the torch sailing right for the balding military man’s head. He tried to catch the torch with one of his hands, but he didn’t have enough time to let go of Veronica’s armor and bring it up to where she was aiming. The torch crunched through flesh and bone, breaking one of his eye sockets and sending him to the floor. She fell to her knees, then raised the torch high above her head with both hands and brought it down hard on the fallen man’s temple.
Then, without warning, she was placed into a headlock from behind by the man called Samuelson.
“Now, little miss, don’t you be struggling.”
He flexed an unarmored bicep, squeezing her throat, cutting off blood to her brain. Her eyes became unfocused, and her body went weak.
“That’s it, sleep, little miss.”
As she fell into unconsciousness, the eerie repetitive whispers of “Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.” followed her into the dark.
She found herself lying on her side, face in the dirt, her hands bound behind her back, her ankles bound together, her helmet removed, her hair falling across her face. She felt no pain; it was as if she had fallen asleep, not choked into unconsciousness. They were outside of the tower now; it was midday, and Amaryllis was nowhere to be seen. Veronica grimaced and tried to right herself. Typical. The coward ran. Again.
Samuelson, a weaselly looking man with a stubbly five o’clock shadow, wearing a dirty yellow tunic, unkempt shoulder-length brown hair, and a crazed look in his eye, scrambled from where he was kneeling by the door of the tower and extended a shaking paranoid hand towards her face. “She is awake!” Veronica tried to flinch away from his hand, but her binding held fast. He scraped his dirty fingernail across her forehead, timidly moving the loose strands of hair from her face. He looked up, past her head, to something, or someone, just out of sight. “Oh, but little miss is pretty, isn’t she, my Lord?”
Veronica squirmed, trying to move away from the delusional man and to get a glimpse of the person he was talking to. She twisted just enough to be able to look back, finding the dead Lord, his face crushed where she had struck him, sitting up against a fallen building, staring at her. She saw with horror that the corpse had been tied to the stone in such a way that it looked as if he was just sitting down to rest. It looked as if Samuelson had been playing with the dead man, as he was now wearing a helmet, had gloves on, and had his sheathed sword lying across his lap.
“The little miss was naughty to my Lord. She hurt him, and now Samuelson has no one to talk to.”
She turned back to Samuelson, who had inched even closer, studying her face as if he was looking to find an answer to some unrevealed puzzle. “My Lord was everything I had left. He was family he was.”
Veronica couldn’t bear this insane man’s touches any longer. She tried to head-butt him, which he dodged easily, leaving her with few options to deter his advances. He got closer again, and she spat in his eye. He fell backward, frantically wiping with the sleeve of his tunic.
He arose, shaking, jabbing a gnarled finger at her face. “Oh, you are not a little miss; yous are a monstrous traitor you is, and you will pay for what you did to my Lord and this...” He scrubbed at his eye like it had an itch that he couldn’t scratch. “This infestation of my eye!” He grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and hurled it into her face. “Does the monstrous traitor want more dirt in her eyes?” He giggled like a little schoolboy as she sputtered and coughed, then he did it again. And again. She tried to turn away, but he danced around her, hurling dirt and debris into her face.
