Koronos told Shelove through the Bond before they were parted, Do not resist them, for these people will most certainly harm you. I will come for you soon. That’s a promise.

  They marched him through corridors that were less hallways and more like the insides of a geode: smooth, polished, lit from within the stone itself. The air was stale and scentless, scrubbed clean of life. The guards, four of them, moved in silence, their crystal-tipped pikes held with ceremonial precision. They did not look at him, this wild thing in their midst.

  His chambers were not a cell. They were a cage of luxury. A vast room with a vaulted ceiling, one wall a sheer pane of crystal overlooking a dizzying drop to a mist-shrouded city of shimmering, white spires. A bed wider than his shelter in the Helfire Mountains, piled with furs so soft they felt like clouds. A low table of dark, polished wood held an array of fruits he didn’t recognize, their skins gleaming with unnatural perfection.

  A man awaited him. He was older, his blue skin a paler shade, his white hair cropped short and severe. He wore robes of grey and silver, and his face was a mask of polite vacancy. He bowed, a shallow, precise dip of the head.

  “I am Chamberlain Vale,” the man said with the heavy accented Old Tongue, his voice as smooth and cool as the walls. “These apartments are for your comfort while you are a guest of His Celestial Majesty.” The word guest hung in the air, weighty with unspoken meaning: prisoner.

  Vale’s pale eyes swept over Koronos, a quick, clinical assessment. They lingered on the dark ritual tattoos swirling up his arm and shoulder, on the old scar that cut through his brow, on the simple leather and fur of his gear, still stained with the mud of Terra Primius and the soot and blood of the Purifier citadel. A faint, almost imperceptible wrinkle appeared at the corner of Vale’s nose.

  “The baths are through there, to use liberally… at your leisure, of course,” Vale said, gesturing to an archway. “We will have your… attire… cleaned. Or disposed of. Suitable garments will be provided.”

  Koronos hefted the pack they’d grudgingly allowed him to keep. “My attire is fine.”

  “It is unsuitable for the presence of the court,” Vale replied, not arguing, merely stating a fact of the universe. “It carries the stench of… other places. And the markings.” He paused, choosing his words. “The savage customs of the frontier clans are not understood here. They may cause… discomfort. Or derision.”

  Koronos felt a slow heat build in his chest. He met Vale’s emotionless gaze. “These markings tell the story of my life. The scars are my battles. The ‘stench’ is the real world. I will not wash them away to make your court comfortable. I will wash because it pleases me to do so, if and when it does. I will clean my gear myself.”

  Vale blinked, unperturbed. “As you wish. Your companions are being similarly accommodated. The beast is in the Royal Menagerie, where it will be cared for.” He turned to leave. “You will be summoned when the Emperor is ready to hear your tale. Do not attempt to leave. The doors recognize only approved blood.”

  “Her name is Shelove, not ‘the beast.’ Mind your tongue or I'll rip it out.”

  “But of course, a thousand pardons,” Vale said with a completely false apologetic tone and a bow. The Chamberlain glided out, the stone door sealing behind him with a soft click that felt final.

  Koronos was alone. The opulence pressed in on him, a beautiful, silent enemy. He walked to the crystal window, placed a calloused hand against its surface. Far below, the ordered streets of the Bergian capital looked like a child’s toy. Perhaps this palace was not a place built by hands that knew the weight of stone or the bite of wind. It was a place conjured, a spell made manifest. A sickeningly opulent cage.

  He steps out onto the balcony, there is a chill in the air but it doesn’t bother him because of his genetic heritage. But now that he's alone and can gather his wits and he begins to feel it: this place is different, the reach and power of his Everliving abilities feel unhindered or set free. There is more free majikal energy here. He can feel the rhythm of nature like a breathing thing, he can feel birds migrating across the lands, feel the roots of the mountain beneath his feet, and can feel the winds across the land, not just on his face.

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  Corvannafax’s journey was not through gleaming corridors, but down.

  Spiral stairs of black, iron-bound stone, deep into the mountain’s heart. The air grew colder with each step, a dry, metallic cold that seeped into the bones. The guards here were different: larger, clad in heavier platemail, their faces hidden behind full helms sculpted into snarling, abstract beasts. They did not speak. Their grip on her arms was impersonal and unyielding.

  The Crystal-Frost dungeon was not a row of cells. It was a series of vertical silos, each a smooth, cylindrical shaft twenty paces across, dropping into blue-tinged darkness. A narrow platform ringed the top. There were no bars. Instead, a faintly glowing arcane sigil was etched into the air over the opening, emanating a slight, relentless hum.

  They halted at one. A guard pressed a complex sequence on a crystal panel. The hum died for a moment, and the sigil winked out. Without ceremony, they shoved her forward.

  She dropped four or five paces onto a floor of seamless, icy crystal. The hum snapped back and the sigil began glowing again overhead, sealing her in. The faint light came from glowing crystals embedded in the very walls, casting a dim, glacial blue that cast no shadows and made her red skin look bruised and alien.

  The cell was empty save for a bucket and a recess in the wall that held a basin of water and a small, hard slab for a bed. The walls were utterly featureless. When she slammed a fist against one, it gave a dull, monolithic thud: it was solid crystal. This place was designed to break the spirit through sensory deprivation and absolute control.

  Hours passed, marked only by the relentless faint hum, like an unwelcome companion. Then, crystals grew out of the walls, forming a staircase.

  Three figures descended. Two were helmeted guards like those above. The third was a woman, lean and sharp-featured, her blue skin almost grey, her white hair pulled into a tight, merciless knot. She wore austere robes of black and blue. She held no tools, but her eyes were instruments enough.

  “State your name and rank within the Emberhold Intelligence Directorate,” the woman said, her voice echoing flatly in the sterile space.

  Corvannafax stared, her golden eyes glowing in the gloom. “I am Corvannafax of the Amansuu Clan. I am sworn by blood-oath to protect Koronos, the ruler of The Realm of Koronos.”

  The woman’s lips thinned. “Do not play the primitive. We know the Reds use the frontier clans as covers for deep-cover operatives. How did you bypass the Eastern Ward? Who is your handler in the Sapphire City?”

  Corvannafax let out a short, harsh breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You speak nonsense. I am from the Helfire Mountains. Where is this place? What kingdom is this? I know no ‘Sapphire City.’ Your ‘Emberhold’ are the red-skinned ones of the hot lands, yes? That’s my people. In my homelands, your people are considered as our cousins. We fight humans together.”

  The interrogator stared, disbelief hardening into cold irritation. “I don’t believe you. It’s a convenient fiction and a ridiculous cover story. Your kind are incapable of subtlety. Your aggression, your very biology, betrays you.” She stepped closer, studying Corvannafax’s face, her musculature, as if examining a dangerous animal. “You will tell me how you corrupted the blue one. What hold do you have on him? Is it blood-majik? A geas?”

  The questions were arrows shot at a target that didn’t exist. They saw a spy, a demon, a political weapon. They could not comprehend a simple truth: she was a warrior, loyal to her warlord. The frame of reference was so utterly different, it created an uncrossable gulf. Her very identity was her resistance.

  The interrogation continued, circling the same absurd points. Corvannafax stopped answering. She stood, a statue of red defiance in the blue light, enduring the questions, the cold, the hum, conserving her strength. Her mind was not on their secrets. It was on the limits of the cell, the pattern of the guards’ rotations, the texture of the impossible wall. She was a rock in a stream, and she would wait for the current to shift.

  In his silent, opulent room, Koronos felt a tug, a whisper in his blood. The summons. The crystal door slid open. Chamberlain Vale stood there.

  “His Celestial Majesty will see you now. This is a great honor.”

  Deep in the Crystal-Frost, the interrogator left, frustration in her stiff posture. The crystal steps melted back into the walls. Corvannafax was alone again in the humming blue silence. She walked to the center of the cell, lowered herself into a crouch, and placed her palms flat on the icy floor. She closed her golden eyes, not in surrender, but in focus. She began to listen, to feel, to map her prison not with sight, but with the patience of a predator.

  She sets her resolve to find its weakness.

  Koronos the Kazarian | Royal Road