Finua

Chapter 36: The Prisoner

The first thing I noticed about being the Dark Lady was, when you have the keys to all of the forbidden doors in Cerrex's evil tower, it just becomes a normal building.

I was led down the imposing corridors of my new lair by a strange old goblin with a hunched back and long silver hair who I paid little attention to and whose name I never caught. I followed them in a daze, vaguely registering how excited and giddy they seemed to be to have been assigned my escort in my first tour of Syfor Lek as its Dark Lady. Our boots squeaked against the amethyst floors, echoing off the polished violet walls and tall arched ceilings down the hallway towards the throne room.

"It's much better to have a woman back in charge, yes they're natural caregivers—"

"Thanks..."

"Haraku was just too absent, you know he didn't care much about our tax rates—"

"Hmm."

"And did I mention the Long Table has already pledged its allegiance to you?"

"What? No, you hadn't."

"Thousand pardons, well they have! And now they are yours!"

"All three of them remaining, huh?"

"Well..."

They led me at last to the great spiky doors of my throne room. Last time I had been here, Dewey died.

"My esteemed Dark Lady, I'm so sorry but I am forbidden even as a guide to enter your throne room without your express permission."

"What, like a vampire?"

"They call it the vampiric clause, so yeah!"

I looked down at them, paying them mind for the first time since they began my tour half an hour ago. "But if I didn't know this rule before, who would have enforced it if you broke it?"

"Oh, ma'am, I would never think of swindling you!"

"But who would have enforced the rule?"

"I suspect the judgement would have fallen to Table Member Anthruan!"

Anthruan...?

I walked slowly into the throne room, leaving my funny little goblin guide stuck in the doorway. The throne sat silent and dark on its pillar of incrementally oppressed skeletons just as it had sat nearly six years ago. The room was painfully silent, and there were no additional decorations.

"Ma'am..."

"I..."

It was eerie to see the throne empty above me like that, unguarded and open. Without Cerrex already sitting in it, or indeed even Haraku, suddenly I came to the realization that it had been built by someone else, and wasn't just an innate fixture of the universe formed out of nothingness upon Creation for the leader's convenience.

"Ma'am...?"

I rose into the air, gently levitating myself up to the seat, and perching on it. The surface was cold and hard, and it throbbed with terrifying capability. It was also much too large for me: Cerrex's giant form had been splayed out luxuriously across both armrests, her glowing purple legs dangling carelessly in front of the gray bones that held her up. The ceiling felt very close. There was a kind of vibrating silence in the room that isolated me from the rest of the world.

"Ma'am!" the guide called up to me from down in the throne room doorway. "I must inform you, that as I am forbidden to enter the throne room without your permission, neither am I permitted to leave your presence thusly!"

No sound could permeate the violet quartz walls. Everything echoed, compressed into bass like a lonely howling whale, searching for an outside response. I sat, hunched over, on the very throne of Syfor Lek, straining my ears as if listening for someone who would be calling out to me.