Lineage of Zeal, Book One: Rosemary

Chapter Twenty-two: Embrace the Storm

It had not been difficult for Rosemary to find Courtney, as her dealings with Leviticus had woken the prince. He had appeared shortly after Leviticus had fled their sleeping grounds, something Rosemary was grateful for, for it meant that there was one less thing to concern herself with. Because, if what Leviticus said was true, there was no time to be looking after the prince. Rosemary had to act immediately if she wished to confront the forces of the Faith. She had a plan, but she did not expect to have to enact it so soon. Nor did she want to.

"What is all this commotion about?" asked Courtney, wiping the sleep from his eyes with small strokes of his pinky. "I was woken by raised voices, but I only see you here, my dear lady. Where has that Leviticus character gotten off to?"

"Give me your hand," Rosemary demanded, with hers stretched back toward the prince as she studied the crest of the hill Leviticus had pointed through.

Courtney approached his fiancée, but stopped a pace short of her. "You make such a proposition so early in the morning as a means of sidestepping the question I had posed? My dear lady, how forward of you."

Looking back, Rosemary closed the distance between herself and the prince and snatched up his hand, an act which the prince did not resist. "Can't you go one moment without—? Never mind."

With his hand in hers, Rosemary fell silent. She waited, but it never came. She did not feel that draining sensation, like her spirit was leaking out of its container her body. All she felt was Courtney's hand, and a slight tingling sensation where flesh would have met flesh were it not for the prince's gloves. The training she had done with Leviticus was working still.

"Good," she muttered. Courtney pressed her for an explanation, but Rosemary ignored him. "I'm going to do something stupid," she said instead. "I'm going to need you to watch over me for a bit. Can you do that?"

"You say these things and expect me to stand idly by?" asked the prince with a squeeze of the hand he held. Courtney looked up and met her gaze. "I will not allow you to—"

With her free hand, Rosemary grabbed Courtney by the waist and pulled him into a full embrace with one arm around his waist and the other about his shoulders. "You don't have a choice in the matter," she said into his golden locks. "Hold on tight to me no matter what happens. I have no idea what will."

Courtney said something, but Rosemary was already slipping away, opening herself just enough to allow Courtney to pull her where she wanted to go. She drifted through her own consciousness, a vastness stuffed with all the emotions, all the experiences of her life. She flitted about herself like a butterfly in the twilight sky, until she saw it, the verdant expanse from before. Once she laid eyes on it, she was there, sitting under the lone tree that stood in an endless expanse of green, bare save for the one squat pillar. She had returned to her place of self-discovery.

"Rose?" Rosemary called to the verdant fields, but she received no response. After what Rose had said during their last encounter, she hadn't really expected one. But Rosemary tried anyway, because if she had Rose's presence for what she was about to attempt, she might be able to do this without trembling so much.

There was one thing different about this place; Rosemary felt it when she arrived. She stood and circled the tree until it came into view. Beyond the shade of the tree stood the mirror she had faced when this place had been consumed by her own darkness. At the base of the mirror were the scratches her Fallen self had carved when faced with Ascended Rosemary, fresh as the moment they were formed. Rosemary approached the mirror.

The image presented to Rosemary was not herself, or even her Fallen self, but solid blackness, a blackness that had shape, an ever-changing, shifting, roiling shape, and depth. It was as though this mirror were no longer a mirror, but a portal to the darkness within her. Rosemary raised her hand to touch this blackness, but before her fingers made contact with the mirror's surface, the darkness pulled away, leaving nothing but a reflection of Rosemary. This reflection recoiled just as Rosemary did, but it took on a life of its own afterward. It relaxed, leaning itself up against the frame of the mirror, and crossed its arms under its chest. And as it did all this, black spread throughout its hair and clothing, staining all like an overturned ink bottle, until no red was left but in its eyes, which looked not at Rosemary, but back into the darkness beyond.