Crimson Court

The Sage

Jocasta gropes her way through the stonework womb overgrown with capillary red moss. She stops as the tunnel leads to a rickety rope bridge suspended over a precipice. Its aged wooden footing is grey from decay, swaying as howling winds rattle the slats. Scattered torch light emanates like souls lost amidst the immense cavern. Their evanescent glow contours the tapered surface of stalactites as large as castles. She squints through the darkness, steadying herself on the swaying bridge. Each step is a test of courage in her pilgrimage; from the unstable footing, to the curtain of pitch black draped over her vision. With precarious balance, she reaches the first spire, heart in her throat.

The black rock is slick to the touch, jagged and unwelcoming. Light is sparse, with braziers spaced every hundred paces. Following the path takes Jocasta around its perimeter in an ever descending spiral. She passes countless prison cells carved into the inverted spire, utterly mundane in their soul-crushing function. Most are in disrepair, long forgotten mining picks still buried in rock. Only a few cells look occupied. Where darkness is as thick as ink, the prisoners succumb to madness. Frail whispers emanate from their quivering lips, idly humming the words of Phillipe Phillipe. The semblance of a tune is fragmented by sharp breaths and stirring consciousness.

Jocasta jolts when something grabs a handful of her cloak. She whips around, pebbles tumbling into the abyss as the crumbling floor gives way to her commotion. From between the prison bars, a gaunt arm clutches her robe. Jocasta yanks her cloak free, and the hand falls limp. Crimson drips from long yellow nails sharpened to a point, like the nib of a quill dipped in blood. The arm is pockmarked with scars, some fresher than others. They are uneven and ordered in a pattern, as if keeping track of days. Hundreds of days. Jocasta rubs her arm to comfort a nagging tic. The arm sluggishly retracts into the shroud of its cell.

A raspy laugh breaks the silence.

"What've I said about greeting our guests!" A voice so decrepit, as if cobwebs flutter within his throat, creeps into Jocasta's ears. She steps away from the cells, seeing the glint of manacles shift at the source of this voice. "Beg your forgiveness... He's still an impertinent mimmerkin."

Despite being surrounded by the mutterings of the mad, Jocasta found the strange sense of comfort in the old voice infinitely more unnerving.

"Ahh... you do not yet don the mask," he says in a hair-raising ooze that arrests Jocasta's attention.

"Mask?" she replies, despite her better judgement.

"The mask of the Court, of course. They are who you seek, are they not?" His tone adopts a knowing smile that revels in her ignorance.

"What would you know of them?"

"You are not the first, nor will you be the last to seek them out. The Coalition attempted to change the old ways, but Aldwynnian fear runs deep. Mortality is the maelstrom into hell. Isn't that right?"

"And you are already at hell's gates," she retorts with a façade of confidence.

A green tinged arm spears out of the cage, grabbing her collar with force majeure. It reels her in, pinning her to the iron bars, her left cheek swelling with immediate bruising as she grits her teeth. Her arms brace against the bars to try and pull away, but the nauseating stench of death comes wafting through the darkness, sapping her strength. From the shadow, she sees an unkempt mane of ashy hair billow closer. An ancient face, gaunt as a skull, stares at her with bandaged eyes. The gauze is decaying with age, necrotic in color. He opens his mouth to speak, revealing gnarled teeth, worn down to nubs.

"You think me ravaged by sin? I see the graying hag rotting through your body. The weight of sin dragging your skin to hell. I see all things behind these hollow eyes. You fumble through life, blind to the world around you. One day, you will see as I do. As we all once did, roiling within our mothers womb. The kaleidoscope of the universe... Beyond the veil of this world, and into the stars."

"What the hell are you talking about!?" Jocasta sputters through clenched teeth.

"But until such time arrives, I have a gift for you." The relic of a man leans in even closer, regurgitating with a lurch, as drool trickles down the side of his mouth. Jocasta can only stare with one eye, watching with morbid dread as he unravels his tongue like a snake. It swathes her cheek as she desperately tries to break free, cringing in disgust. A brackish orb, slick with saliva, rolls down the arc of his tongue and rests at the trough. It turns, revealing a purple ringed iris and a black pupil that undulates like broken yolk, staring back at her.

The old man exhales a fog of rot over her face, inserting a crooked finger into her mouth to pry her lips apart. Jocasta tries to clench her teeth, but the odor forces a gag. He relinquishes the eye into her mouth, like a bird feeding its young. She feels the orb drop and heaves, constricting her throat as her tongue seals passage into her esophagus. The man releases his grip on her, and Jocasta stumbles back, spitting the eye out onto the floor and retching in revulsion. She doesn't spare a moment to look at him and runs. Runs down the precarious slope of the stone pathway, runs from the echoing laughter erupting from every passing cell.