Salvation

by voroshilov

The Heart

The Heart of Sorrow was like something out of a nightmare, which Penumbra supposed it was.

From where she was stood, on a stone platform some fifteen metres long and five across, Penumbra could see the Citadel. In overall construction it was identical to the Citadel in Entropy’s Pinnacle, though in a state of considerable disrepair. Deep gashes cut into the structure, with the stained glass windows at its foot sporting an enormous hole, further up the Citadel, large chunks broke off the structure and floated in the air, until the structure ceased to be at all coherent about where the Throne Room would have been. The city that surrounded it seemed slightly less worse for wear, with some buildings cut at like the Citadel, but most otherwise perfectly intact. Unlike Entropy’s Pinnacle, nothing had been buried, though that was in part due to the fact there was barely any land to speak of, save the small satellite platforms surrounding the larger central point.

She made the mistake of looking down off of the platform’s edge, seeing nothing below. The only light seemed to come from the Citadel, giving the area around it a vaguely purple tint, with the entire rest of the world being nothingness.

Before she could adequately get her bearings, she felt the platform below her shift. In total silence, the polished smooth surface she had stood on slowly spun out below her, revealing the jagged and rough edges below. Penumbra managed to catch flight in time, her wings the only things keeping her from falling into the void below.

“Penumbra,” Ablazed Glory’s voice echoed, “Penumbra, where are you?”

“I’m here,” she yelled back, then realised that she didn’t know where ‘here’ was, “I’m coming to you.” She lit her horn, the light not nearly as strong as she believed it would be.

She flew vaguely in the direction of the Citadel, over the various platforms. Some were large and had what looked to be parts of a building’s facade attached to them, as though they had been sheared off, others were barely large enough to accommodate her - some were just pebbles. It took her a few minutes of flying and scanning her surroundings to spot Ablazed Glory, identifiable by her faint fiery glow, standing next to the broken bottom half of a large marble column.

“Are you alright?” She asked, to which the burning alicorn nodded and gave a one talon salute.

“Yep,” she said, looking out over the void around them, “you know I was expecting something a bit grander.”

“So was I,” Penumbra said, looking back to where she came from, “the platform I was on spun over, I nearly fell off, we should be careful.”

“Yeah, don’t really want to end up falling forever.” Ablazed Glory tossed something off the edge, “Let’s go, I bet whatever we’re looking for is in the Citadel.” She took flight, gesturing with a talon for Penumbra to lead on.

“What exactly are we looking for, by the way?” Ablazed Glory asked as they flew towards the Citadel, “I know it's whoever sent you that message, but, who is that?”

“I don’t know,” Penumbra admitted, “but I think I will when we find them.”

“Now there’s the issue, how do we find them? I mean, this place looks fairly expansive, would take days to search every building, at least.”

Ablazed Glory made a very good point, Penumbra thought as they approached, a cursory search of only some of Entropy’s Pinnacle had taken hours - going through the battered labyrinth that lay before them would take far, far longer; that was, at least, if most of it could even be reached.

“We’ll land at that platform.” She pointed out a smooth stone platform extending out of the front of a larger marble building, with a columned facade and a purple glass dome. “Then make our way to the Citadel from there, then we’ll search the Citadel and work our way outwards from there.”

“You got it.”

They touched down, a faint but apparently sourceless breeze starting as they did so. Penumbra looked to Ablazed Glory, who shook her head, the fire on her body providing no indication that it was even there.

Though she didn’t get any sort of sixth-sense feeling something was wrong, Penumbra couldn’t help but be on alert.

The building they entered was undamaged, with one of the two large, double doors leading further in ajar. Ablazed Glory poked her head through carefully, beckoning Penumbra forwards when she knew it was safe. They entered a long corridor, with two available exits and archways at equal intervals of twenty or so metres. One of the exits was one archway to their left, the other, three to their right. Penumbra gestured to the right, Ablazed Glory following just behind and to her left.

“Reckon there’s anything here?” Ablazed Glory asked, checking one of the strange - apparently decorative - metal bowls attached to the walls by four chains. “Anyone, I mean. Like, this place looks to have been abandoned a long time.” She blew on the bowl, expecting dust, though none came.

“That’s because it has,” Penumbra said, “abandoned by everyone, except, I believe, the person who messaged us.”

Ablazed Glory sighed. “You see,” she murmured, “that’s what concerns me.”

Penumbra stopped after two of the archways, turning left into an adjacent room, Ablazed Glory trotting quickly after her. It was small, about ten metres by ten metres, with an eight metre diameter circle of slightly darker stone in its centre. There was an altar at the end of the room, with a small bowl that had been knocked off of the top of it, a scattering of tiny gemstones on the floor next to it. Penumbra knelt down next to them, lifted one up and carefully she viewed it with her magical sight.

“What do you see?” Ablazed Glory whispered, keeping an eye on the entrance.

Penumbra continued looking. “It’s artificial, somehow. They contain something, an energy I’ve never seen before.”

“So, what are they? Something interesting or just some fancy rocks?”

Penumbra shook her head, placing the tiny stone back where she’d found it. “I can’t say for sure. Could be anything.”

Ablazed Glory turned. “Let me have a look at them.” She ushered Penumbra over to her spot and sat by the pile of gems, lifting one at random with her telekinesis. “It’s.” She paused as she looked it over again. “It’s writing. It’s a story, I think, ‘I descended into hell, to challenge its king, I shattered him and his throne, and took his power for my own.’ It rhymes, how nice.”

Penumbra ran the words over in her head. “Challenge hell’s king? Could that be Luysifer?” Well, at least it wasn’t a “you die immediately” spell.

“The king of the Rift Leviathan told us about?”

She nodded. “I think so.” It would certainly make sense.. “But they said ‘I’, could it be?”

Ablazed Glory finished her train of thought, “Nicholas made these?”

“Does each one of them tell a story?” Penumbra lifted another at random, holding it to Ablazed Glory, who observed it.

“It’s the same one,” she said, “I think they’re all the same one.”

Penumbra placed it back into the pile. “Why, though? Why would he go to all the effort?”

Ablazed Glory shrugged, throwing down her gem, which did not make a sound on impact. “Maybe he was proud of his rhyme? Maybe he just really liked that particular rock? Maybe it wasn’t him? Maybe it doesn’t really matter?”

Penumbra scoffed. “Fair enough. Let’s get going again, if we see another place like this we’ll check it out.”

Ablazed Glory held out a talon. “Lead on.”

The end of the corridor led out into a courtyard, with dark grass lining a stone pathway up to a marble pavilion, with a crystalline dome for a roof. Small chunks of the land had been torn out, suspended off of the ground, floating aimlessly, perfectly still. The way further into the Heart of Sorrow was a number of larger, floating platforms, leading into a raised building.

“There’s something under that covering,” Ablazed Glory pointed to the pavilion, “let’s check it out.”

At the very centre of the floor, directly below the dome, was an hourglass shaped table, little more than a foot tall, with a perfectly smooth surface. There was a note on it, the paper being apparently frozen in place, with even Ablazed Glory’s best attempts failing to move it so much as an inch. The ink on it was still wet, dirtying the alicorn’s talon but making no dent in the writing.

“What does it say?” She asked Penumbra, who she assumed would make sense of the runic writing.

“It’s a list of names,” she said, slowly translating from the few symbols she could easily identify, “Kyhron, Lilith, Lotan, Kaurava, Cecilia, Haisan - and a few more I can’t read. All marked with a cross, except Kaurava.”

“The one Aurora spoke about? What does everyone on that list have in common?”

Penumbra thought for a moment. “He considered them all children.”

Ablazed Glory nodded. “I thought so. A little morbid to cross out the names of your dead kids.”

“All except one.”

“Kaurava, the only one left unaccounted for,” Ablazed Glory took a look around, more out of instinct. “Speaking of unaccounted for, I want to find whoever brought us here and then leave, quick. This place.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t vibe with it, not one bit.”

Penumbra nodded, prying herself away from the note and towards the set of platforms that led further in. She looked about for another way for a few seconds, before settling on what looked to be the only course.

The Heart of Sorrow was all kinds of wrong, she thought, she felt like she was walking into a minefield every time she walked through a door.

“Up we go.” Ablazed Glory took flight first, Penumbra following behind, sticking close to the platforms so as not to leave anything to chance. Penumbra’s flying was shaky, due in part to the lack of wind, yet the fact she could feel wind all over her, causing her to subconsciously adjust her flying to cope with an issue that didn’t exist.

When they landed, entering into a large, circular, domed structure, they were greeted by a sudden rush of silence. The wind they had felt all over previously, heard though it had no effect, was completely gone.

“What’s going on?” Ablazed Glory whispered, slowly lowering into a combat stance, “where’s the wind gone?”

Penumbra took a step forward, which echoed slightly. Something had changed, though she didn’t precisely know what. She reached out behind her with her magic, though didn’t feel the expected membrane or barrier, rather just emptiness. She took another step forwards, again hearing the faint echo, the room had acoustics, as it should have done, though no other room they had been in made so much as a sound.

Minefield.

“Penumbra,” Ablazed Glory whispered frantically, “Penumbra, space back in a fuckin’ second.”

“What?” She asked, lowering her voice out of instinct, “what’s wrong?”

Ablazed Glory clenched her jaw. “You looked like you were about to pass out. There’s an opening ahead, behind that rubble, I don’t know where it leads.”

When Penumbra’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, a pile of rubble, apparently from another building entirely, stood some metre and a half before an open door, leading into total darkness further within.

“I think it leads to where we want to go,” she mused, trotting towards it with Ablazed Glory scrambling behind her.

“I suggest we take it slow,” Ablazed Glory whisper-shouted, “as in slow down! This place is bad enough without you running off into every dark hall you can find.” Ablazed Glory shook her head, though Penumbra was too far ahead to notice. “First you go throwing yourself off of cliffs, now wandering off into the darkness.”

Penumbra stopped dead in her tracks ahead of her, causing Ablazed Glory to again think a number of expletives. “What’s gotten into you?”

She too, stopped dead when she saw what was ahead of them. A vast chasm, like a scar cut through the world, a drop straight through the shattered rock into the void all around. Three platforms marked the way across, two small and one large; the large platform holding a small bit of garden, a path running through and decorative bowls on either side. The wind started up again, too, though it would periodically stop for a second or two before starting again.

“There,” Penumbra said, pointing to a large opening on the other side, leading into a scarred structure attached to the bottom of the Citadel, “that’s our way in.”

“So.” Ablazed Glory took a look over the edge of the chasm, expecting to find a drop into the void, which she did. “What, we just fly across?”

Penumbra scoffed. “I doubt it’d be that simple.”

If anywhere in the entirety of the Heart of Sorrow was a minefield - this was almost certainly the minefield. Penumbra had an excellent system for getting out of minefields unscathed: don’t walk into them.

“Then, what do you suggest?”

She squinted, surveying the path of platforms ahead of them. “Jump the platforms, quickly. Hopefully we make it to the other side before they slip out from under us.”

“Hopefully?” Ablazed Glory gave a disbelieving chuckle. “And what if we don’t?”

Penumbra shrugged. “Then, we make another plan, quickly.” She was good at thinking on her feet.

The two stood in silence for a few seconds, neither moving an inch, before Ablazed Glory held out a talon. “Ladies first.” Then raised a flaming eyebrow - which was more a slight movement of her face muscles and widening of her left eye - at Penumbra’s questioning reaction. “It’s your plan, if anyone’s going to fall into the void for your plan it’ll be you. I’ll be behind you, I just want you to test the water is all.”

She gave a smile and a thumbs up with a claw, whilst Penumbra judged her jump. Whilst she was fairly certain there was no danger to be had, she decided to hang back a few moments once Penumbra had started off regardless. Not because she wanted Penumbra to be hurt, far from it, but rather than if there was danger it would be far less likely to wound Penumbra than herself.

Penumbra sprung forwards, landing on the centre of the first platform, which, mercifully, held firm. As Ablazed Glory had suspected, no giant eldritch horror rose from the void and swallowed her whole, so she assumed it was safe enough to follow. With a run up, she flung herself onto the platform’s near edge, the pervasive wind doing her no favours when it came to keeping herself steady.

The next platform was some distance away, further than the first had been, but was larger, giving more of a space to land. Penumbra hopped over without much difficulty, the incredible musculature of her freakishly long legs giving her more than enough power. Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, had to do a run up, time her jump perfectly to propel herself using the platform as a springboard, then give her wings a beat to bring herself to a landing next to Penumbra, who was already exploring the way forwards.

Ablazed Glory took a cursory glance into one of the bowls, which held a pair of sticks on its purple geode interior. She lifted one of the sticks with her telekinesis, studied it a moment, then gave it a sniff. “Huh.” She held a burning talon towards it, lighting one end, a thin stream of sweet smelling smoke rising half a metre or so from its end before vanishing.

“Hey,” she yelled over to Penumbra, who was already lining up the penultimate jump, “come smell this stick I found.”

Her companion, as evidenced by her lack of reaction, wasn’t interested. Ablazed Glory sighed theatrically, before throwing the stick back into the bowl, where it continued to emit its pleasant vapour as she left it behind, trotting over to Penumbra’s side.

The gap to the next platform was the largest, without the conveniently sized landing platform of the previous jump, but with a metre or so extra in length.

“Reckon you can make the jump?” Ablazed Glory asked, with a faux seriousness, “wouldn’t want you to fall,” her voice dripped with sarcasm, though Penumbra leapt forwards before she could utter another word.

The instant Penumbra landed, right on the edge of the platform, she pushed off again, bouncing like a skimming stone to their final destination. Ablazed Glory sneered at her, certain she could make her jump far more visually impressive. She contemplated doing it with her eyes closed, but gave one last look to verify the platform’s location in her mind’s eye.

It was very fortunate she had such a measure of her own memory, as the platform had, in direct contrast with its fellows, been knocked off course by Penumbra’s skip. It slowly drifted down and to the left, rotated slightly so the vertex of the smooth upper and jagged lower halves was facing upwards. Ablazed Glory breathed a sigh of intense relief and thanks for her sensibleness, before swearing at Penumbra.

“You knocked it off!” She yelled, making every rude gesture she could with her talons. “I could’ve fallen through if I’d jumped then, or worse!”

By worse she, of course, meant landing on the vertex with her undercarriage, upon which event she would have become the omniversal champion for most swear words said in five seconds. Fortunately, however - though her mind still graced her with an empathetic idea of the pain that would have followed, causing a sudden flare up of her fiery coat - the event did not occur.

Her immediate response was to simply fly over, being already in the air by the time Penumbra yelled out why they were jumping in the first place, causing her to rapidly set down.

On the one talon, flight was really her only method of crossing the gap, given that the platform was out of action; on the other talon, however, if there was a genuine danger to flying, then she would almost definitely suffer a fate worse than a bruised downstairs - no matter how painful such a thing would be.

Considering her options for the thorough time of five seconds, she took flight and sped across the gap, zipping past Penumbra like a blur before circling around and landing, her back legs crossed together at the continued thought of her jumping arse first onto a rock.

Penumbra squinted at her, not quite understanding why she looked like she’d just jumped arse first onto a rock, before shrugging it off. “Well,” she admitted, “seems I was wrong, there was no danger after all.”

She walked past her friend, whose laboured breathing and wide eyes suggested she was coming down from some extra horrid thought, towards the entrance to what was, ostensibly, the bottom of the Citadel. A large staircase led up from the garden courtyard and up into the plaza, which sported a number of cracks in the ceiling and walls and no doubt a number of chunks of debris inside. The crystal dome at the centre of its ceiling was, however, completely intact, not so much as a crack in its surface - a pleasant change of pace.

“You alright back there?” She asked, not turning from the entrance.

Ablazed Glory hummed. “Fine.” She popped up at Penumbra’s left. “This the way in?”

Penumbra nodded. “I think so.”

“Well.” Ablazed Glory stepped onto the first stair. “Only one way to find out. Let’s consult the map.” She laughed, which began as a laugh but ended in a sigh. “I’m hilarious, let’s go.”

The staircase was irritatingly long, with each individual stair not being wide enough for either of their full talons, forcing them to stand on claw point and essentially fall upwards, until they reached the top and were able to flatten out their feet and regain their stability - which was significantly harder for Penumbra than it was for the smaller and hyper-nimble Ablazed Glory.

The atrium, or what they assumed was the atrium, was of a decent size, with various unidentified vines growing from pots on the walls and floor, completely black in colour. There were two doors to go down, one closed and one open. Penumbra very quickly worked out the closed door was locked, it also didn’t have a handle - nor did it seem to have anything beyond it according to her magical sight, though that power’s efficacy had come into question from the moment they entered the Heart of Sorrow.

Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, proceeded through the other door and into a mezzanine floor, overlooking a large circular hallway with a slightly raised dais in its very centre. The mezzanine didn’t appear to connect to anything else, so Ablazed Glory jumped down to the dais once Penumbra had arrived in the room with her.

Using her wings to slow her descent, she landed and spun in a full circle, surveying the whole room but finding nothing save the pillars holding up the mezzanine above, built of a dark stone polished to a fault and in the shape of a plus symbol, and a set of double doors on the side of the room opposite that of the entrance to the mezzanine.

Penumbra landed next to her, looking about in a confused fashion as if searching for something, shaking her head when she didn’t find it.

“This place,” the Shining amulet said, startling both Ablazed Glory and Penumbra, who whipped into combat stances in an instant, before relaxing when they recognised the source. “Power has seeped into the ground here. This was once an arena, a champion guarded here, guarded the path further up the Citadel, to the Emperor of Sorrows.”

Penumbra nodded. “I knew something was missing,” she mumbled, “what sort of Champion?” She reached down into the ground with her magic, with her vision being almost immediately clogged by a thick veil of power, visible through her magical sight, seeping from the ground like smoke.

“A nightmare, given flesh by the Heart of Sorrow. Now vanished, fortunately for you.”

“Lucky us,” Ablazed Glory muttered as she trotted slowly towards the door, taking far greater care after realising there were once guards.

It, like the locked door further above, had no handles, nor any apparent locking mechanism. After a push with one of her talons, Ablazed Glory realised that it was definitely locked, though a quick onceover the lock with her telekinesis confirmed it wasn’t a mechanical lock. That, however, didn’t stop her from kicking it just to be sure.

Only one thing for it, she thought. “Penumbra,” she called, “need your help here.” Call the lock nerd to do some fiddling.

Her companion popped up behind her in an instant. “Ooh.” Her horn lit up as she explored the intricacies of the magical mechanisms. “This is high brow stuff, way beyond my ability to make.”

“I don’t want make,” Ablazed Glory said, “I want break.”

Penumbra waved her off, talon coming very close to Ablazed Glory’s face, the burning alicorn pulling her head back with a look of indignation, before realising Penumbra couldn’t see her.

“If only I had something to record this with,” Penumbra mumbled under her breath, “the way the mechanisms are folded into one another to allow for more to be added and to make them more difficult to overcome is just ingenious. And the way it lattices with the framework on a quantum level - built into a counterpart in a whole other realm - such a simple method to prevent it simply being destroyed when you say it aloud, but just a genius design choice.”

“Are you done creaming yourself over a door lock?” Ablazed Glory deadpanned, having had lit up a cigarette - a task completed by grabbing the stick with her telekinesis, holding the end to her talon, then placing it into her mouth, lighting the entire stick and smoking the whole thing in one - tossed its butt aside, lit another and then considered having another for a good minute, “we need to be through it, doesn’t matter if it’s made of Nicholas’ own strands of hair or a twig and some sellotape.”

“Admiring the craftsmanship,” Penumbra said slowly, “of a master of the arcane, of Emperor Nicholas, no less, is an endeavour worth a few minutes.” She paused, something having caught her magical eye. “Oh, my goodness! I had almost not seen it, the way these conflicting psionic nodes are used to give an extra layer of rigidity to the whole structure whilst also providing a secondary part to the lock itself, how did he come up with these techniques? They’re just brilliant.”

“Come on, Penumbra!” Ablazed Glory half-yelled angrily, “I’ll have died of lung cancer by the time you start on the bloody lock.”

“Fine.” Penumbra tensed up and shook her head. “I’ll get to work.”

Ablazed Glory nodded curtly, then sat back on her haunches, lifting a pack of cigarettes out of her fireproof saddle bags and contemplating smoking a whole pack at once. Surely her mouth was big enough for forty at once? She spun it round in her telekinetic aura, reading all the labels on it, suddenly struck with a curiosity to know every ingredient of her favourite unhealthy but not as unhealthy as it could have been pass-time that had definitely not come about from boredom whilst Penumbra finished her fiddling with the lock or whatever it was she was doing.

She had learned when she first discovered what a cigarette was that it was incredibly fucking dangerous - quoted from herself. When she saw the picture of the lung that looked like a large popcorn piece she had wondered how the hell such a hobby could even be allowed. Apparently, from what she understood at least, Emperor Nicholas didn’t know what smoking was so never had the chance to ban it.

She had come across - come across being a codeword for stolen in Ablazed Glory’s vocabulary - a whole crate of the things during downtime - downtime being a codeword for breaking and entering in Ablazed Glory’s vocabulary - so she had decided to take them in and give them a chance, leaving her health in the hands of fate; before realising that she was both immortal so it would have little effect on her and she was on fire so putting fire in her wouldn’t exactly do her any harm regardless.

Penumbra, meanwhile, was talking to a lock.

“I just want to go through,” she pleaded, “there’s two of us, we won’t make a mess, we promise.”

“It’s not about the mess.” A complex lattice of matter-data hovered right in front of her mind’s eye. “There’s more than enough mess already, you couldn’t exactly make it worse.”

She sighed. “We just want to pass through, explore the Citadel.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but if I let just anybody go through to, as you say, ‘explore the Citadel’ I wouldn’t be a very good guard, now, would I?”

“But, I’m Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra, I was a student of Emperor Nicholas and served with him during the War in Heaven.” She regarded the conversation with the complex lattice of matter-data, that had been told to believe, whether by Emperor Nicholas or itself, that it was a guard at a door, as perfectly normal. “He’d allow me to pass.”

The complex lattice of matter-data was slowly unravelling with every attempt, creating stable streams that Penumbra’s other half - which she had broken off from herself in the spirit world to allow her to perform more tasks at once - was able to cut off and correct.

“Anyone could say that, though,” it said, as apologetic a tone as an algorithm could get, “you have to understand, I’m in a difficult position here.”

She nodded. “I do understand. Really, I do. But I have to get through that door, there must be some way I can convince you.”

“Hmm.” It made an impression of thinking, which was, in reality, an exact, pre-coded response. “Well, could always bring Emperor Nicholas down here.”

“You know that wouldn’t be possible,” she said, which prompted the lattice to begin unravelling quicker, “there must be another way, another way in which I can prove to you I’m who I say I am without involving Nicholas personally.”

The lattice was almost fully unravelled. “Perhaps, you could show me what he taught you?”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I can do that.”

The lattice unravelled completely, her other half mopping it up for a second more longer, before her soul fully fused back together and her mind’s eye image fell away, the lock giving a satisfying click in both real and spirit world, the door opening at the slightest touch.

“Finally,” Ablazed Glory said, “I’ve been here for ages, at least five minutes. I nearly gave up on you, left you to die here.”

“Sorry.” Penumbra bowed her head in a mock gesture. “I was having a chat with the lock.”

As she turned and headed through the now open door, Ablazed Glory stood behind her, a look of confusion and contempt on her face. “I don’t doubt that,” she said, “and I hate you for it.” Regardless, she scrambled after her companion. “Stop wandering off!”

The door was connected to a corridor, which went on for about ten metres before it opened out into what should have been a room but was, in fact, a large hole. Pieces of wall, roof and assorted decoration hung in the air, disconnected from everything. A potted plant hovered a few feet from the corridor’s end, the plant apparently confused as to which way was up and thus growing in three different directions. Further below, with a semicircular wall behind it, was a glowing circular pad, emitting a cone of light upwards.

Penumbra pointed to the pad. “I think that’s a lift of some kind,” she said, “don’t ask how I know.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Ablazed Glory retorted, “where do you reckon it’ll take us?”

“Up,” Penumbra said, delighting at her companion’s irritated reaction, “it should take us into the Citadel itself,” she continued, “which I think is a little further in that direction.” She pointed forwards, in the direction of the pad. “The pad should take us to somewhere with more floor, from there we can access the Citadel.”

“Sounds like a plan then.” Ablazed Glory spread her wings. “Let’s go.”

The two propelled themselves off the edge of the corridor, gliding steadily to the pad’s platform, which was a large enough target to easily land on. Penumbra observed it for a moment, before tentatively taking a step onto it, being promptly lifted upwards to another platform some half a kilometre above. Ablazed Glory followed suit, audibly expressing her surprise at the suddenness of the rise.

The next platform had more substance to it, but was still noticeably fractured. Aside from the somewhat large landing platform, there were a good two dozen other platforms scattered about, all vaguely level, no doubt once having been a fully coherent room. The platforms at the edges sometimes held bits of wall or pillar, whilst one of those in the centre contained a marble cube with a silver bowl atop it.

Ablazed Glory took a moment to regain her footing on landing, shaking off the strange feeling that arose from not being able to control her flying. Penumbra, meanwhile, was inspecting the bowl, finding that it was halfway filled with little purple crystals, just like the first altar they had found when they first entered the Heart of Sorrow.

“Over here,” Penumbra called her companion, who hopped carefully from platform to platform, noticeably mindful of their ability to move. “It’s like that bowl from before,” she said, “except this one hasn’t been knocked over.”

Unlike previously, Ablazed Glory’s magical sight was not needed to read their message, as it appeared in front of Penumbra’s regular eyes when she looked into the bowl itself. “‘I am the future, ever approaching yet never arriving. I am the end of things.’”

“Just what I wanted to hear,” Ablazed Glory deadpanned, “why is this one readable?”

Penumbra shrugged. “Maybe the crystals are supposed to be in the bowls? Perhaps they’re like a kind of plaque, but more arcane.”

As Penumbra studied the crystals, Ablazed Glory looked up, noticing the distinctive form of the Citadel’s walls, who became closer the further up they went. “We’re in the Citadel now,” she said, “or, at least, at its entrance. A map would be useful right about now.”

Penumbra took a minute to think, using her magic to feel around the area and find them a path further in. “There’s another one of those pads,” she said, “across this room and below us. That should get us to a more central point.” She set off walking, Ablazed Glory behind her. “If the rest of the Citadel is like this,” she said, glancing about at the wrecks and emptiness around them, “we might have some trouble.”

“Unless our messenger can fly,” Ablazed Glory said as the pair glided down to the next lift pad, “I doubt they’ll have got around much.”

“I doubt they can’t,” Penumbra replied as the two boarded the pad and ascended, “this place is a death trap without wings.”

The platform they landed on next was far more solid, with a double door some twenty metres ahead of them leading into what appeared to be an intact room. A quick telekinetic push of the door by Ablazed Glory revealed what was, in fact, a fully intact foyer area, complete with staircases leading further up and down.

A cursory glance by Penumbra to the upstairs staircase removed the option, as the staircase didn’t appear to lead anywhere, proceeding up for about ten metres before simply stopping, connected to nothing. As such, they opted for the downward staircase, which, unlike its fellow, appeared to go somewhere.

That somewhere was, however, wreathed in darkness. They had been walking for all of a few seconds before both froze, a strange aura of unease all around them. They looked to each other, communicating silently on whether or not to keep going. No sooner had they made their decision to turn back that a sound echoed from below. It was not a sound that could be particularly identified as anything specific, rather it was simply an echo by the time it reached them, but it was an echo nonetheless.

“Keep going,” Penumbra said, overruling their decision, “something is down there.” Part of her was certain it was her messenger.

The staircase was far longer than expected, extending so far down that the door above vanished from view. The echo continued, appearing again every half a minute, the sense of unease slowly morphing into a sense of dread.

Eventually, the staircase levelled out, revealing a room some ten by ten metres in area, a large, thick, metal door at the opposite end. The door held a small square indentation, apparently a window like that of a cell door, though it was closed. Unlike many of the doors they had encountered up to that point, it had both a handle and a visible mechanical lock, though Penumbra was sure there was a magical back up too.

The two approached in silence, until freezing solidly when a screeching cackle erupted from beyond the door. “Welcome,” a voice, like a banshee’s, followed the cackle, “welcome.”

“Who are you?” Ablazed Glory questioned, authoritative voice disguising her unease.

The thing beyond the door cackled again. “A friend, a friend,” it said, speaking as though it was giggling through every word, though still practically wailing. “But a prisoner, imprisoned. I imprisoned myself in this dungeon, cell, so that I could wait for you, you, Penumbra.”

At the mention of her name, the alicorn spoke up. “Imprisoned yourself? Why?” Now, she thought, why did that sound like a trap?

The thing cackled again. “It was the only way. The only way I could meet with you.”

“And, why do you want to meet with me?” Penumbra had drawn her sword from its scabbard, holding it next to her in a telekinetic grip.

“I have grown lonely,” it cackled, “very lonely in my little world, prison. Break the lock, and join me!”

Ablazed Glory turned to her companion, shaking her head just once.

Penumbra, however, nodded. “You want to be free?” She brought her sword forwards, targeting the lock with her magical sight. The thing did not answer, with Penumbra driving her crackling sword into the lock, shattering it in a single strike. With a telekinetic push, the door opened, the two alicorns stepping inside.

The room beyond was enormous, empty save a large object at the far end, visible only by its shadow. Whilst Penumbra tried to get a better view of it, as well as scanning around for the creature she had just spoken to, Ablazed Glory looked upwards, then shot a bolt of magic upwards into the centre of the ceiling, illuminating a small chandelier.