Far Off Unhappy Things
Chapter Twenty: Achlys
By Renko Doremi Rodenburg
The dungeons under the palace of Autumn were quite comfortable. They were damp and clammy and cold, but not freezing cold. Just cold enough that Achlys could almost bring herself to believe that if she laid down just so, she would be comfortable enough to sleep. There were trickles of water running down the walls of her cell, which tasted bitter. A steady stream of water leaked along the bars of her cell, mixing with rusted metal into some kind of brown sludge, which tasted somewhat like blood.
There was a sort of moss or mold that could move by itself. It moved along the cracks in the cobblestone walls, absorbing grime and mucus that had accumulated there. If she stayed motionless, the mold approached her- probably intent on nibbling from her wounds. The moment she moved it would shy away again, so it took her a few tries before she managed to catch it and drop it in her mouth.
It really was a sort of moss, stringy and hairy, with a slimy core. She chewed on it for a bit and then swallowed the gooey mass. Content, she sighed and marveled at the white fumes rolling over her lips, the vapours pouring ever so slowly down along her body and mixing in with the slowly building, slowly souring fog that clung ever so slightly above the dungeon floor.
She did miss her feet, though. Autumn had disintegrated her feet by calling upon his winds of decay, and only blackened splinters of bone and remnants of gangrenous flesh remained below her ankles. But the rot slowly crawling up her legs felt delightful, her body eating itself in an arduous spiral of self-destruction, so it wasn’t all bad.
“Autumn be damned,” she heard a familiar voice echoing down the hallway outside her cell. Someone clearly wasn’t happy with the delightful fumes slowly eating away at the skin of the world. Not long after, he stood before her.
“Witch,” Tintenzuge addressed her through the bars of her cell.
Limp and motionless against the wall, annoyed that her pretense of being a beautiful corpse was being interrupted by someone talking to her, Achlys refused to answer. She never answered her captors, and delighted in how much this infuriated them. How long would it take them to start to question if she was even alive still?
“Do you have pretensions, Witch?” Tintenzunge asked her. “Do you not deign to speak to anyone but the Prince?”
From the corner of her eyes she saw him shake his head in disapproval.
“I’ve been wondering for a while now,” he said. “You said I was your adversary, but I now think you only said that because you intended to replace me at Autumn’s side. How glad you must feel that the object of your affection immediately forced himself upon you.”
She would have her revenge on Autumn. She had thought that the arrogant stag had learned his lesson about laying hands on her or her sister a while ago, but he clearly hadn’t. Perhaps he was growing arrogant beyond his station, and forgetting the old ways. That would have been impossible, but alas! Clementine had seen fit to introduce a narrative current into the Lands, and now everything was going haywire.
Her patron did not mind. All things were supposed to eventually end. The problem was that the Lands were on their way to annihilation, not a proper ending. No endless field of snow perpetually trapped in one last final sunset. No pale faces looking out of the windows and recollecting how good it all had been, the tiny sliver of their existence where they had known warmth and life before the long, dark sunset of the soul had set in.
No, the Lands were being pulled on from all sides, and would inevitably come undone if nobody lightened the stress on the Fabric of All Things, so that they might be eased into their proper End instead.
Tintenzunge, rambling about how important he thought himself to be outside her cell, was one of the major headaches she was to cure. The art of staining the tongue with inks and paints to impose new truths on fabric eroded the world, one word at a time. It was a luciferian art, a self-serving and egotistical art, that elevated the individual at the expense of the world. It was the disgusting demiurgic desire for creation which her thrice-damned sister had poisoned the entire fabric of reality with.
“You will answer me, Witch. Sooner or later you will speak to me.”
That was seemingly the last he had to say today, because he left.
In solitude, she rotted and contemplated what the end of her bodily existence would mean for her. In the service to the Silver Prince she had long ago made peace with her inevitable ending, but ending did not mean cessation of existence. If anything at all, ending meant unceasing, unmoving existence rather than the false death of the reaper.
Perhaps if she could not heal her wounds or find another form to live on in, she would waste away until she was naught but a mind, observing the area around her for all eternity. This thought brought her some stress, because she would rather be a corpse in the snow, pale and pretty, than rot away entirely.
This was a contradiction in her beliefs that she would have to meditate on more. Tragically that would have to wait, because a few hours into this meditation her solitude was once again interrupted by someone wandering up to her cell and talking to her. Or at her, really.
“Lady Achlys,” a girl she had never seen before said while bowing before her. It was surprising enough she moved one of her eyes, just enough to properly see the woman.
She wore a long, purple dress, and had most of her long blonde hair tied into a ponytail. To Achlys her surprise, the death-mist that had been accumulating on the dungeon floors avoided her, circled around her. A nasty stench exuded from her visitor- a stench of strawberries, of light and life and worst of all, love. Not the red hot smell of lust, which all-too-quickly turned into yellow hues of sickness and rot, no, the hazy smell of true love.
This was no normal visitor.
“Do I know you?” Achlys said, barely moving her lips.
“I have served a Lady Achlys in another time and space, dreadfully far from here,” the woman said, her head still bowed. “I cannot abide by your imprisonment.”
“I am content here,” Achlys answered. “Leave me, dreadful Summer-whore.”
“Are you not Achlys of the Summer Shade then?” The visitor asked.
A horrific pain shot through Achlys’ heart. Memories of summer afternoons, of being young and pretty in spirit as well as body, memories of being beloved flooded through her. The pain of all the beautiful things she had once been- before the inexorable march of time had stolen them from her- wracked her body and soul. Icy tears streamed down her cheeks as she desperately tried to force memories- memories of looking in the mirror and thinking her youthful vigor would last as long as her immortal body would- back down into the mire of content depression where they belonged
“Leave,” Achlys demanded. “Leave!” She screamed.
She would remember this woman, this girl. She would inflict pain on her without equal. She would force the woman to watch her face wrinkle and feel her bones grow weary, and then she would curse her with eternal life. Not today, and not tomorrow, but one day she would remember, and she would stifle this woman and her disgusting radiant youth, optimism and potential.
As she remained in the dungeon, ever so slowly Autumn came to a close and it started to become Winter. This surprised her- that her patron’s influence could wreak such havoc right under the Autumn Throne was unexpected.
Prince Autumn, she realized, had not come to see her, while one of his cronies had ran all kinds of tests on her and had taken her blood. Slowly, the dots connected.
This time it was her who interrupted her corpse-play. She couldn’t help but laugh. The narrative current her rival had introduced into the world had made Autumn vulnerable to change- and that change was now wreaking havoc on him in the form of the myriad diseases and ailments that made their home in her beautiful corpse-doll of a body.
That made things a whole lot easier. Easy enough that she considered attempting to break out of her cell and going straight after Tintenzunge again.
But then again, if the Prince was out of commission, she could very well attempt to take the Autumn Throne by herself. She giggled at the thought of beautiful winter washing out of Luson, bringing about the same beautiful End that had befallen the Other Luson so long ago, salivated at the thought of the Spire being once again inhabited by a winged folk, though this time by one of much darker disposition.
She could hardly move with her injuries, but that did not matter much. She was a general, not a soldier. If she went that route, she needed servants. Creating ghouls would take years- time she did not have. Calling on angels was impossible until the hazy shade of winter slowly taking over the dungeons had spread far enough to turn them into a proper stronghold. She did not have feet, so she could perform no beautiful dance that would cause all of Luson to descend into cannibalistic madness. No, what she needed were warm bodies to breed worms in. Unliving soldiers that devoured everything around them until only a pristine white remained.
There were guards in the dungeons. Even better- there were other prisoners here, weak from years of malnourishment. She only needed to get her hands on one for the infection to begin, for the rot to start festering.
It was most impossible to get out of her cell unassisted. She had tried before, but everything was well-constructed and there were several layers of wards to prevent any overt attempts at trickery from working.
Instead, she groaned in resignation and started to take off the rags they had given her to wear as clothes. She hoped that the combination of her death-mist slowly getting to the guards and her beautiful, cold, stiff and oh-so-still naked body could entice someone to enter her cell sooner rather than later.
It was not altogether too long before a guard passed by her cell, turned his head and found it hard to avert his gaze. He hurried along, perhaps somewhat ashamed of the thought that had just entered his head, but she would get to him before long. The vapours- all but invisible to them- that the guards were breathing in day after day were slowly whispering into their minds the seductive cold of winter’s death, whispering of a new kind of lust, a lust for sickness and the End of All Things.
Over the course of the next few days, several guards- men and women alike- found their gaze drifting to her naked body, still and doll-like, unmarred by the blemishes of physical age save for her rotting ankles. A toy more than a person, abandoned in the dark. Who would judge them? Who would chastise them? Would it not be a kindness to share some of their warmth with this still corpse, so hungry for warmth and love?
If only her mind and soul and inner beauty had been kept from the ravages of time the way her body had, she mused full of regret while whispering this dark poison into the minds of all who came into contact with her vapours.
She had hoped Tintenzunge or otherwise perhaps the young alchemist had visited her once more before her plans came to fruition, but it was not to be. Late at night, under the imagined cover of darkness, a guardsman, one who had spent several hours looking at her each day for several in a row now, unlocked her door, sneaked in and with shaking hands locked it again behind him.
Somewhat to her relief, he did not seem intent on forcing himself on her straight away. Instead he sat down next to her, and ruffled through her hair. He looked at her face, and she could see the haze of her own death-mist in his eyes. His eyes were clouding, and his end was fast approaching.
Slowly, to not startle him, she raised up her hand and stroked him on the cheek. She moved her hand ever so gently along his head, and nudged him to come closer.
He did.
She pushed him towards her, and slightly opened her mouth.
He kissed her, and she rolled over, pushing him to the ground with strength he could not have known she possessed. He struggled, but she pinned him to the ground, and retched.
Within her stomach, kept in torpor by the waters of Lethe she had drank so long ago, were maggots. Worm-maggots. She threw up, and forced them down his throat. His eyes were wide, but he was in her grasp. He would not move unless she wanted him to. She smothered him with a kiss, choked him by blowing her fumes into his nose while keeping his mouth otherwise occupied.
When he finally stopped struggling, she rolled back into the beloved corner of her cell, and watched as the guard stopped. Watched as his existence came to an end on a fundamental level. It took less than an hour for the last shred of heat in the man his corpse to be devoured, before the guard rose anew, now one of the beautiful frozen dead.
Smiling, she commanded the corpse to remove the bars to her cell, and get the next guard, so that he too might receive her kiss of unlife.
The frozen soldier of winter does just so, ripping the bars to shreds as the metal rusts to nothingness in his hands.
Unconcerned with subtlety, her soldier came dragging in a screaming guard not long after. This put the entire dungeon on high alert, with a dozen heavily armed men and women bearing torches running down to her cell, arriving only to witness two beautiful knights of winter whose very substance had been turned a pristine, beautiful white. Returned to the nothingness from which all arose, their corpses now tools for Achlys to work the will of the Silver Prince with.
The sight of the End is no easy thing to behold. Several of the guards rushing towards her cell have the eyes with which to bear witness, and their mind shatters under the strain of witnessing the hue of the end.
“Get help!” one screams with a child-like terror as he succumbs. Those incapable of true sight grapple with their fallen comrades, try to get them to return to sanity. They are torn to shreds by corpses with the strength of a glacier and grips like frozen steel, and before long a deadly quiet falls over the tunnels of the dungeon.
Some, she infects with worms. Others their lungs and stomachs she blows full of death-mists, so that they might be slowly devoured by the fog procreating by digesting their flesh. A surprising amount of reinforcements rushed into the dungeons and to their deaths beneath the palace before the people in charge upstairs realized something had gone terribly, terribly wrong down there.
She didn’t mind. She had enough resources for now. Worm-corpses did not last long, eventually fading to white altogether, but before then she would build the dungeon into a veritable fortress of winter. There were dozens and dozens of other prisoners locked in the dungeons, and soon she would take stock of the citizens of her new, dark, underground empire. Some would no doubt be useful for anything but becoming fertile soil for worms- be that innately or from the damage Autumn his torturers had inflicted on them- but there were bound to be prisoners with potential. Prisoners who could be made to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and become treasured servants of Winter.
Laying in her cell, ever still as a corpse, she delighted in the panicked screaming coming from the dungeon as her servants tore up the tunnels for anything of use. Wood from barrels where they kept the putrid water they fed the prisoners was fashioned into a makeshift throne. Frozen corpses repurposed braziers for her new throne room, and she spent some time whispering to the flames to seduce those, too, into servitude to the pristine white of the End.
With her activities, the presence of Winter grew ever stronger, and soon, an interstice was formed. The dungeons below the Autumn Throne were no longer entirely in the Lands Lost- at least not in the version of the Lands Lost they had been before. Time grew convoluted, and snow and frost covered the floors and walls.
Autumn was most definitely dead or dying. If he hadn’t been, he would’ve put an end to what she was doing down here the moment he had smelled as much as a hint of snow. Still, it was odd that nobody had stormed in to stop her yet. She wondered if above her, the Twin Cities were tearing each other apart in Prince Autumn’s absence.
Content, she sat on a makeshift wooden throne in her cell, watching a group of soldiers before her, sitting at a frozen campfire. With solemn expressions they contemplated their end, with no company but their own thoughts. The ability to communicate had been taken from them, and even if they could, they would not recognize the men next to them as their one-time companions.
The world faded to white. A beautiful ending.
Achlys was jolted awake by something intruding on her pristine realm of white. A while ago she had freed the other prisoners from their dungeons, to live in delightful solitude amidst the worm-corpses, now completely faded into memories. Memories that would haunt the snow for all eternity. One of her subjects now stood before her, in the cave-palace that had once been a cell.
“Lady?” The man asked. He was covered in scars from years of torture. In the absence of anything that would physically harm her beloved slaves, his scars had taken on a beautiful silver hue. They were but physical memories now. Unchanging.
“Speak,” she said, hoarse from not having spoken for a while. She wondered how long of a while it had been, but it was useless to try and make sense of the passage of time once the Silver Prince had had his way with it.
“A visitor, Lady,” he said, bowing his head. His hair was dry and white as paper.
“Are our enemies finally moving against us?”
The palace guards had blockaded all entrances in and out of the dungeons. As her domain eroded the wards on the dungeons, new wards appeared. At least some upstairs knew what they were doing, and had quite effectively made sure she would not leave her prison. Until they tried to move in to eradicate her and her new apostles, she was trapped.
“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “She says she, euh, pardon my audacity, Lady- she says she is your kin.”
“One of my sisters?” Achlys asked, somewhat confused, but nonetheless excited. They rarely showed any interest in talking to her.
“She appeared from the lake,” the man said.
She hadn’t actually moved out of her cell yet, so she had no idea what lake the man was talking about. It was a nice thought though, that there was a lake now. If her sibling had come from the lake it was, in order of likelihood, either Aster, Narcissus, Fleur or Violet. She didn’t care much for speaking to Aster- they’d had a falling out recently.
“I’d like to speak to her, then,” she told the man.
“Alright, mistress,” he replied, then left her cave again.
It was interesting to see how much her environment had changed. Her cell had been warping into a shallow cave when she had gone into contemplative torpor, and had now fully completed its transformation into a part of a more ‘natural’ environment. She couldn’t wait to fix the rest of the Lands Lost in a similar manner after she had removed the cancer eating at the world.
An eternity of quiet passed, and Achlys almost drifted off back to sleep when her servant returned, followed by a barely recognizable Fleur.
Things had changed for her sister. She seemed weaker, having diminished in presence somewhat, but more motivated. Some sinister agency radiated from her eyes where before they had been dull and dead. Instead of her usual black or blue dresses, she was wearing the pants and shirt of a wanderer or adventurer. There was some spring in her step as she entered Achlys her cave, which was also unusual for Fleur.
“What have you done?” Fleur asked, gesturing at the environment around her. Achlys couldn’t tell if she was angry at her or not.
“I have transformed what was once my prison into my own realm according to my own desires,” Achlys answered, trying her best to smile. She hoped Fleur would be impressed.
“What?” Fleur asked. “I- why is it winter in here? Achlys? I need to know, what are you doing? What has happened to you? You look like you went through hell.”
Achlys cursed her sisters and their convoluted ways of communicating. She had just explained what she had done here, so either Fleur didn’t understand or was after different information altogether. She still wasn’t sure if Fleur was mad with her, to boot.
“I have turned the dungeons into a wonderful land of peace and quiet,” she said, stressing each word individually.
“Why?”
“I want to avert the destruction heading to the Lands Lost,” Achlys answered. “I want everything to finally end. No more misery. Just quiet. Quiet and beautiful memories.”
“Achlys,” Fleur said, with pain almost dripping from her words. “Why? Did you cause time to start moving again? How does ending everything avert destruction?”
Those were three different questions, Achlys mentally cursed. Which did she want answered?
“Why? Because I like the world, I don’t want it to be lost.”
“Achlys, because time is moving again the world has started to rot. How does that avert destruction?”
Fleur didn’t understand, then. Annoying as that was, at least it also meant that she did not come here with malicious intent.
“Clementine has introduced a novel narrative current into the world. That’s what causes time to move. I’m trying to stop her by freezing it, blanketing the world in white and silence,” Achlys explained. She hoped Fleur would get it. She’d always gotten along well with Fleur. She was probably her favourite sister, maybe after Violet.
“What? Do you know where Clementine is, what she is doing?” Fleur asked.
“Yes,” Achlys said. “She’s blended herself into the substrate of reality, infecting everything with her own malignant presence. She has pretensions of godhood, you know.”
“How do you know this?” Fleur asked.
“Her shrine is high up north, where it is winter. I have many eyes there.”
“Did you try to assassinate Autumn’s court poet? His alchemist claims that you have, in the process, poisoned Autumn.”
Achlys rolled her eyes. She loathed Fleur for making her remember the horrible, horrible things she had suffered at the hands of Autumn.
“He started it,” she said. “He raped me, you know.”
Fleur was dumbstruck, and walked up to Achlys with a horrified look. Was she grossed out by her now? Would she chastise her for being humiliated like this?
“Achlys,” Fleur said, pained. “Are you okay? Can I help you? Is that why you’re hurt?”
“What do you mean?” Achlys asked, not entirely understanding why Fleur would pity her.
“That is horrible. I thought- I didn’t think he would dare. That anyone would dare. He deserves death for such an infraction. Achlys, I know- I know our family hasn’t been doing well. Hasn’t been doing well for a very long time. But things are changing- have to change. I’ve seen things, unpleasant truths. I want to quit the duels, Achlys. I want to stop hurting each other. I don’t care if that means I will diminish and fade.”
Achlys smiled. “Better to be a happy memory than live in pain.”
“Yeah.”
She was overcome by a feeling of utter exaltation. Fleur understood. Fleur got it.
“I have a friend, who- I, god, Achlys, so much has happened the last few months. My friend, my friend is worried about the Lands. He loves this place and though I barely understand why, he doesn’t want to see them truly lost. Destroyed. I don’t- I’ve been thinking a lot, and I can’t see them lost either. This destruction you said, you say Clementine causes it?”
Fleur was rambling, and Achlys could barely understand her.
“No,” she said while shaking her head. “Clementine does not. She’s made her play for godhood, and inadvertently causes this damage in the process. There are other factions moving, them all pulling on the narrative threads of the world at once causes the fabric to come undone. I have been hunting and killing them for a while- it is why I tried to assassinate the poet.”
“Autumn,” Fleur cursed. “The Court Alchemist thinks the poet- Tintenzunge is his name- is going to try and dispose of Autumn now that he is incapacitated. He’s got pretensions of godhood.”
“He needs to die,” Achlys said. “I want Autumn as my plaything. And then I want to serve him to his brother on a silver platter.”
Fleur looked around for a bit. “Achlys?” She asked. “You worship the Silver Prince? Winter? The Death God of the Angels?”
“Yes,” Achlys said. “I have been to his realm, you know. I have borne witness to my own corpse, perfectly preserved in a field of white for all eternity. I’ve danced with his court, and was made to properly understand the beauty inherent to the End of All Things.”
“Achlys,” Fleur said, an odd distress in her voice. “The Silver Prince is a cancer even worse than Autumn is.”
“How could you say that?” Achlys screamed at her stupid, stupid sister. “Decay! Autumn is perpetual decay, an ending that never comes! Do you want to waste away forever? At least-” she choked on her words and had trouble seeing, with frozen tears poking into her eyes.
“At least The Silver Prince never put his hands on me! I am his disciple! His messiah! I bring the cold, loving embrace of death to others the way he brought it to me!”
Fleur took a step back. “Okay,” she said. “You don’t have to scream at me, Achlys.”
“Leave,” Achlys demanded, scared that Fleur would chastise her further. “Leave me, I need time to think.”
“Achlys, I want to help,” Fleur said, backing off a little more. “Who else is pulling at strings? Do you know? Tintenzunge, and who else? Does Clementine have her own schemes?”
“I know not, care not for Clementine!” Achlys said, perhaps a little too loud. It was difficult not to get angry with Fleur, who was so terribly clueless. “Aster is plotting something, and I think factions from Elsewhere are moving around in the Lands, but they are hard to find.”
“Aster,” Fleur whispered. “Aster is doing really strange things. Hyacinth is too. I feel like I’m the one person nobody ever talks to.”
“Welcome to the club,” Achlys spat.
“Do- Do you need help escaping this place? Or can you leave by yourself if you need to? The court alchemist and this girl from the past are plotting something, intending to deploy some terrible alchemical heat into the tunnels under the palace. I caught them talking about it when I was moving through the mirrors in the palace to try and find a path to you.”
Achlys had to think about that. It was possible that Fleur was actually trying to trick her, and was conspiring with these very people. But she had met the woman Fleur was talking about- and had sensed the disgusting heat radiating out from her. There was no way Fleur would ally with someone like that, she thought.
“Can you help me escape?”
“Yes,” Fleur said. “The euh, lake? Has a reflection clear enough for me to open a portal to the mirrorworld.” She paused for a bit, then added, with pride in her voice: “to my mirrorworld.”
Fleur really had changed, evolved somehow. Perhaps, that too, was the fault of Clementine her new narrative threads. Or maybe Fleur had escaped the chains that bound her by herself. It was intriguing. At the very least, if she went with her, she could try and show Fleur the beautiful truths she had come to understand. They could finally be sisters again.
“Okay, I’ll come along. I will have to go collect some worms, first. They’re bound to be around here somewhere- hiding behind the skin of the world, behind the plaster, so to say. I don’t want to leave them behind, they’re dear to me.”
“Worms?” Fleur asked, confused.
“I will show you,” Achlys said, doing her best to smile warmly, as much as she loathed the feeling, no, the very concept. “Oh, can you carry me? I lost my feet,” she said while pointing at her legs, now covered in black gangrenous rot to her knees.
“Yeah,” Fleur said. “I’ll carry you.”
Oh, the wondrous things I am going to show you, Achlys thought.
