Consolation Sent Down

by Comma Typer

Of

The circle of ghouls carries the aged corpse into a wagon. A few, which includes Variegate, pilfered his clothes for anything resembling relics and artifacts in an effort to rid the archon of any "holy radiation." One more vial was found; its contents were promptly spilled to the ground.

His body is heaved onto Rosa's chariot. The Watertowns await.

---

Days pass in the water forest's labyrinth. It teems with refuse and the vestiges of fruits, nuts, and critters. Autumn and winter last forever: leaves browned or blackened, snapping like twigs under the rattle of bones. Mushrooms make a killing here, several sizable enough to double as chairs or beds, not that her unnatural body needs rest nor sleep.

The first signs of former civilized life appear as robes. The second signs are spear tips and daggers, found within them. Here lie the remains of the hooded, mystical ponies of the Watertowns, the keepers of the holy springs. Fertility and abundance were advertised to the few that dare enter here, speaking of luscious foods blooming from the branches and an army of mothers and fathers taking joy in rearing dozens of foals for a century-long life, watching over the sacred geysers of who they call God.

She smirks at how lifeless the forest is now. It was her plan, after all, set into motion from her personal quarters to drain the natives' waters and send their protectors packing, cowering in so much despair that their last duty left would be to kill themselves out of failure. That plan composed of pipes, tubes, and vacuums stolen from the more industrial nations they had conquered. Rosa's answer to the Watertowns was a lethal dosage of black comedy.

Her killing jokes of years ago yawn out to her in dried up river beds, bridges over untroubled (lack of) waters. It was fitting for their leader to drown in one of them, of course, while the rivers still flowed. Keeper Eathelin... in another life, she might've opened up the disparate villages to the larger world, welcomed visitors and state officials to a treasure trove of mystery and intrigue. She was also cute, an attribute that hood did help, in life and in...

Past the bridge, roofs peak through the trunks. An arrow is shot overhead, tied to a magical flame that does not burn anything. The illumination cuts through the outlines of wooden homes, then it fizzles out. A second arrow is shot, carrying a much brighter and more permanent flame. The mobile torch plants itself on a branch, unveiling not much else: half a dozen houses or fewer, all abandoned. Spare bones, she detects; they're not enough to form an additional soldier. The forest-keepers were thorough in their retreat.

The final section of directions leads her to the nearest treehouse. She upturns the bed, according to Eros' instructions, to discover a secret staircase, similar to Griffenheim's hidden underground passageways. (Poor kid.) A barricaded door at the end of the tight corridor falls to her kicks, and a fleshed-out ghoul (Variegate, she discerns without looking), holds up the magic flame from the surface to shed light on a box, equipped with a lock once drenched in these geysers' waters.

Excitement grows at jumping headfirst into the end. Eros' corpse is dropped.

She shoves Variegate aside, trotting out the second slave behind her. His body dissolves at the touch of the lock, his soul screeching for relief from the mortal realm. She creeps closer to the prize over warbled shouts for help. The lock disassembles itself, weakened enough for Rosa's dark magic to overwhelm it. The bones turned to cinders.

The box snaps open. Her phylactery sits there, laden in coarse rags, set in gold, blessed by her presence.

Like a waterfall or a raging creek sending those who've fallen down it to suffocating depths, peace washes over her. Into her magic grip it goes, then into her hooves. The mandatory kneeling of her ghouls is brushed over. Their fealty will no longer be necessary.

All their flesh vanishes. All their skeletons, she breaks into mindless piles. She then makes her escape.

---

Northward, Rosa goes. The wagon of bones she pulls bumps with the dirt road's pebbles and rocks. A stagnant sky stares down at her and says that all will be finished at her word. Hills flatten into a blank horizon, bisected only by the elevated city of Magehold. Stumps stand beside foundations of bombed-out structures; sometimes, half a floor protrudes from underneath, sporting knick-knacks like lamps, clocks, and swords. Every item, colored with history and use, misuse, disuse. An ornamental plate or the shattered pieces thereof: a conversation piece that ended up as a weapon in someone's hooves. The blood on it, which she can spy from afar, tells that much.

After passing by the house with the murderous plate, quiet reigns. It's the peace every failed hero strove for when they dashed themselves against Rosa's legions. Evacuations from the port cities, chasing them across the sea, facing down alicorns—they only have to die once. The only blood that remains to be shed in her name is her own.

Her hooves feel dusty.

The silence does not howl. Here rests true quiet; it sweeps across land and sea. Rosa's sole company is a trail marked by millennia of hooves, claws, paws, and wheels. She sees only the path laid out before her, for wariness is a thing of the past. Not that an unkillable mare like her cannot afford to gloat at time: A dying marshal bayoneted her over an eagle's screech, sliced her head clean off. She bashed him down with her own head, then put it back on.

It was that way for the windigoes, not so literally. (The old saying goes on about puppets on strings.) Revelations implanted themselves in her supposedly free mind, to sow global chaos via crusade. Wars, rumors of war, famines, and pestilence mobilized every nation to stop Rosa the Menace. In its wake were fathers against sons, mothers against daughters, brothers against sisters.

Unchained from their control, she feels a foreleg. Cold, still comparably as warm as the pre-war sun, away from their subtle brainwashing (or brain-nudging), their ethereal forms scattered like ash, reduced to countless snowflakes stowed away in the planet's peaks.

Which leaves her. The last one, so said the geezer. She raises her head, perfect vision (despite her officially dead status) letting her see the ancient Magehold skyscraper that has sought to reach the heavens. There flourished a site where the scraps of gentler societies gathered, never to be dispersed to the four winds again, to make a name for themselves in the occult arts for acceptance or professionalism—or revenge. The Society of Blood, the Coven of Blood, the Dread Council...

She clicks her tongue. Rosa chose one of them, wiped the others off then dealt with her own until there was nothing but the Society of Rosa, the Coven of Rosa, the Dreaded Rosa. The world feared her name.

There is no world left for that, no world but the bones and distended flesh dumped into the landfill that is her wagon.