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Fretia was unfortunately familiar with the Verboten Domain. She had spent too many months here, trying to heal, letting herself be studied by faceless mages. Even before the Crimson Blighted Lord, she would be taken down to the scientists regularly. The Heretic was a familiar presence. Faden had not always worked alone, however.
And Fretia knew what had become of Miriel.
Even though no others whispered theories and suspicions, even though no sightings of the assistant were ever made…What else could have happened but the blight?
Miriel’s remnants existed in this domain for far too long.
Fretia would end that today.
No matter how much exhaustion she had to battle just to reach Faden’s private corridor. No matter how her wrist was a mess of black and red that drew far too close to making that hand useless.
And no matter if Faden stood against her.
He did.
He greeted her in the hall and blocked her ability to reach his room without subtlety, until Fretia finally grew tired of such a dance.
“Miriel was blighted in there,” she stated rather than questioned.
His flinch was enough.
Whatever the Heretic had done or meant to do, Fretia saw him for his humanity still. She knew him where the rest of the mages were nothing but their grotesque masks. She had known him since she herself was young, though he was not a Heretic then. Just a scientist, in the King’s employ. A man whose purpose was to protect her so she may remain useful in protecting the Kingdom.
For some time, she was familiar with Miriel as well. Faden was the one who spoke most. He seemed oblivious to many things and as a child it had put her at ease. As an adult, she learned of what he was responsible for. She watched his domain twist more and more with each visit. By the time she was bedridden here, it was a monstrous place. And how much of that was he responsible for? The blight was responsible for more, at the root of it.
He was capable of caring for her as a charge, and for his old assistant. Fretia in return felt some degree of debt.
She was here to repay it.
“You never reported her.” She looked over his shoulder towards the dark room that none were allowed to enter. “So I was never sent to purify the spot. Am I correct?”
He was silent. Scrambling for words.
She was stern, but she did not mean to be cruel for it nor give orders as an uncaring royal.
“Let me through,” she said. “I will purify her.”
“She is already gone. That would take her from me,” he denied.
Even those so educated could be fools. She almost smiled. The wise men did not recognize their own contradictions.
It was difficult to smile under circumstances like these.
She was surrounded in agony.
“You have already admitted she is lost to you,” she pressed. “Let me purify her, Faden. Let me end her pain.”
Faden shook his head and wrung his hands.
“Every purification drives you closer to your own ruin! I will not be more responsible for your agony,” he protested.
It was not his responsibility to take. This was the lot of a White Priestess. And she was a Priestess yet. Her use had not run out.
“I will not leave. I am here to purify her. It is not an offer nor a request.”
Fretia stared him down.
“Let me in, Faden.”
He did not want to. He blocked her path and danced and protected something that should not be defended, but rather exposed. She knew he could lock himself in there. His spells were unique and powerful and he was able to keep places private from all the other mages through their use.
But he listened. At least he listened. She recognized he did not want to, for he had never reported Miriel to start with. And how many years had it been?
His hands wrung. They were not yet overgrown in rot.
It felt as if everyone would be blighted soon. Either because she failed to stop it at its source or because of the elixirs of the mages here.
Had Miriel been the first to drink one, perhaps? No. He said she was lost to him. The immortal knights kept their minds despite losing their physical humanity.
Faden finally caved.
“Only to see. To see we are safe,” he rambled, shaking his head. “You cannot purify again.”
For the first time, Fretia entered the place that Faden called his home here. It was where he ate and slept and lived when he was not in one of the other labs with her.
There were hardly any lights.
It was not a livable scene.
The room was a mess of tools, books, the ghost of a study, still recognizable in the remnants that remained untwisted. Plants overran the room, leaving it wild and untamed. Mad. Madness, made flesh and given flower.
The table was still visible, if barely. The body atop it resembled such only through informed knowledge. Her flesh had crawled down the legs of the table. Roots, tendrils, organs, indistinguishable from one another, had long risen up out of her gaping body cavity to cover the walls and reach into the ceiling.
There was color in the room. Bright blues- from wings slowly flapping where they were attached to fibrous stems instead of insect bodies-, iridescent pinks- petals that glowed and bloomed from masks and bones-, plants of rubbery meaty tissue instead of wood. Blight. That was blight. A twist of colors and rot and unity between things which should not be capable of union. Houndsmen and their hounds, melted together. Spiders and fetus, one and the same. Agony- mindless agony- shared. A cruel chorus of many voices.
(They sung in her. For all she purified, all the hearts she let feel painless peace, their terror chewed at her, cried within her, clawed to escape and twist her body on the way out.)
That was blight.
Miriel was the few fingers left still distinguishable as such and the shadows of feet visible on the table. Miriel was the system of roots that came from her core, reaching and replicating. Miriel was long lost to blight and blight here rose as Miriel.
What of this could the Heretic bear live amidst?
He did not carry the blight yet (he would) (all would, for she had failed to stop it); was this not constant horror and grief to stand surrounded by?
Though they claimed she could not purify much of anything anymore, Fretia would, here.
(She still had use.)
But the worst of it all was the heart of the room.
It was an organ. No. A cocoon. But made of flesh and tissue and blood. A flower and a beating, leaking heart all at once. Its walls were torn open, flaps solidified like stone where they hung down. The massive cocoon was ripped open as if it had been torn by its inhabitant on their way out, but the shifting shadow inside revealed it was not unoccupied. Light glittered from one small source- then another. Fretia was being stared at. Those eyes must be deceivingly disproportionate. The hulking shadow was too large for eyes of those size.
Fretia had witnessed the Crimson Blighted Lord with Silva. Why did her heart beat til nauseous here? It would be a difficult purification. But none were as difficult as that.
(Faden didn’t think her capable of even the smallest purifications. Her use had run out to him.)
A growl rumbled through the room. Fretia grit herself.
“That is her, then? What remains of her?”
At the sound of her voice, the growling rose and the organ sagged and rumbled in movement. The blighted within was moving to find the source of the words and kill it, undoubtedly.
The cocoon was an ugly thing, but the ghoul was far worse. Its claws left the shadows first: massive, deadly things that half-curled around the folds of blight but lacked the dexterity to grip them fully. That was common for the blighted. They grew rigid in some areas while melting into fluids elsewhere. Most were rheumatic, first, before growing as thickly immobile as plants.
It did not detract from the danger of those claws.
The body slid slowly out, roll by roll. Devastated, scarred, cratered in unnatural wounds and pain. So much pain. All throughout the Verboten Domain, woven into its air and walls.
The blight glowed out from small openings in the skin, lined like dots down its shoulders and back. Above the claws were purple half-wings. The stench was nearly unbearable.
Fretia had not seen a singular blighted so large besides the Crimson Blight. It was a terrible sight.
Much to her alarm, Faden scampered over to the abomination and shushed it, waving his hands and arms in full until it stopped climbing out into this room. It did not retreat inside again. Fretia found it difficult to tear her eyes from the half that lay down from the cocoon, even when Faden did return to stand in front of her.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I-”
“You approached it. Do not do so. You…That will get you killed.”
The blight growled, through mouths and walls and Faden ran back to the monster instead of coming closer to Fretia for protection from such a threat. The priestess reached for him. What was he doing?
Shushing it, again. Putting hands on its…face, talking as one would a nervous hound.
“No, no, you are gentle.” He looked back at Fretia, never pausing in strokes or tone. “She was so much better at demands at the start. Blight takes the mind and spirit. Yes. But she is gentle, she is gentle with us.”
With how many others? He was the only individual in this room other than Fretia.
And the instincts left in a blighted did not make them who they used to be, nor did it negate their agony. Neither still did it mean they would never turn on one they had before ignored and tear them apart.
He’d not stopped talking, she realized. Fretia refocused, as difficult as the haze of her thoughts made it.
“She’s beautiful. My butterfly-”
“She’s not there, Faden,” she interrupted with a deepening frown. “What are you talking about?”
It didn’t matter. She shook concerns away. The Heretic was mad, this was well understood. Her task here was not to cleanse his mind.
Her light was weak and polluted. Fretia still let it reach out. She could purify what lay before her. She would pray for the travesty she witnessed in this room and leave it stone. Whatever it did to her, it would be more difficult now to go without cleansing the sorrow here.
The blue flesh shuddered. Faden looked at Fretia with intensity that their masks hid away in shadows. He moved from the monster back towards her slowly, though he went around towards the terrible table instead of coming to her side directly.
“I have records of her every behavior. Since she grew and is capable of mobility again, you will see. She is gentle. She is innocent.”
She felt sick, heavy, greasy, an abrupt reaction to an abhorrent statement. It rattled her. She was not even fully sure why. But it drove her to reply rather than leaving his delusions unchecked.
“Nothing in this place holds innocence.”
“Come see my research. Come. Will you be at ease then? Will you feel safe in leaving now? You’ve seen her, she is fine-”
“I haven’t purified her yet.”
“You can’t!” he snapped. Then flinched back. Looked down. In a whine, he began anew. “She has done nothing to deserve death, and you cannot purify more. Let it be a sign. I let you in only to show you that we are safe.”
He was convinced of his lunacy. Fretia looked at his back as he rifled through his notes. He acknowledged that Miriel was gone and yet he would keep her memory trapped like this. Here Fretia had thought he was refusing her access because of her own failure to purify the blight. Now, she thought his reasons were more selfish. They were irrational, but men were driven on without reason on plenty of occasions.
She did not care to see his notes. It would only make this worse. Already, it was a situation that felt sick where it lay in her chest. She did not want to hear of how Miriel deteriorated. She did not want to know what a scientist like Faden might have done to try to keep her alive while her own guts grew like a tree from her still living body. Misery and pain were all that a White Priestess knew from the blight. They took it on for themselves, but that was better than seeing it, feeling it, hearing from the hearts of others, all the pain, all the torture that they could put an end to.
She did not want to know why that cocoon had grown and let its abomination free for Faden to call a butterfly, blind to its nature and danger and pain.
Fretia pushed herself to walk forward and lift her near-ruined hand. Unfortunately, she did not go unnoticed.
“No!”
The madman scrambled to get between them and block her path. Frantic, insane. She was so weak now that she would not be able to push him aside.
“You’ll kill her! She won’t hurt me, leave her be!” he wailed.
“Faden!”
The abomination growled from where it had paused to lay, half in and half out of the twisted cocoon. Now its arms pulled it down towards the floor while its mass slunk out. Fretia couldn't help but look at it in dread, though she stood her ground. She’d stood her ground against the Crimson Blight.
Her glare did not make the monster pause. Its growling grew two-toned; one broken mouth hanging open and another hole rumbling from beneath its body.
Faden twisted to make shushing noises and Fretia watched its growling taper off, though it did not retreat into its cocoon. Too close now by half. Better that. It would mean less steps towards a purification that would leave her weak.
She brought his attention back, softer but stern. “I do not like to raise my voice.”
His eyes were wide behind the mask. They were not red with blight, not fully. Not yet.
He slept in a room of rot. It was more surprising that he was not completely lost to it.
But there was no reason in those eyes regardless of blight.
She felt her chest clench.
“You keep it all as it has been left, but it must be cleaned. Don’t cling to ghosts,” she tried to entreat, but she feared that he was past listening. He had to be distracted. He couldn’t be convinced. She must reach what he called Miriel. She must.
Faden shook.
“I could not save her,” he said. “You would not let me save you.”
“You were-!” Fretia cut herself off. She had had this argument before. She knew Faden did not understand why she would take issue with the little clones (her daughters, children) (truly innocent) and what he’d intended to use them for. There was no point in trying to argue it once more.
“You did help me live, Faden,” she tried to swear, to ease his tension. She needed by him. “So that I may purify more. Let me pass.”
“No. I can save us from you,” he promised in return. “Let me.”
He pled for her to go? When it was his lover in such a state?
Fretia straightened to her full height over him (it hurt, it hurt, but the pain of her blight was still not more important than the world’s).
“To leave her like this is wicked, Faden. And you have made a domain of evil already. For this to outshine the rest…” It was difficult to even voice the rest.
She had put her life in the hands of the mages here so many times.
It was an agony.
Fretia moved past him and lifted her hand to the creature laying flopped half in and half out of its terrible nest. Its mind was full of pain and final, despairing thoughts. Its heart mourned- no time, no time, not your fault. Light stole the color even as the rest of its body flailed and fell from the cocoon and it roared.
Fretia couldn’t keep it calm enough. Faden- he was spurring it on. The blighted had to be subdued or left without instigating factors for her to ease them into purification. She-
It-
He-
Had grabbed her and ripped her back. The claws of blight were slamming to the ground. Not a danger? Not a danger? He was going to die, she was going to fail to protect him.
Fretia’s yells and swipes were outshone by its roars and the noises that Faden was making as he tugged her away, prevented her from fixing this.
She could do it. She could fix this much. This much pain. She could do this much healing.
Faden remembered to be careful a few feet away, At that point, he released her and hesitated before pushing her out into the hall. She saw his arms waving. The arcane whipped between his fingers. No matter how she rushed, Fretia did not make it through. His spell shone gold and red and he was unrepentant on the other side.
“Faden.”
She stood across from him. He did not respond.
She placed her hands upon the spell but could not push through the door. Through its red center, she could still see him.
“Do not do this, Faden. Let me-”
“You cannot bear more!” he shouted from the other side.
“Faden!” she yelled. It was not his choice to make.
The red distorted her vision. But what occurred beyond it was twisted enough. She saw him leave her. Watched him go back to where the blighted creature was still growling on the floor.
Heard him, from where he ignored her repeated calls.
“Shh, shh, beloved, there is nothing to be alarmed over. You need not rise, I am safe. Miriel, Miriel, Miriel…”
Fretia pushed at the door one last time. His mutterings knew no pause. He repeated himself as he stroked the side of the blighted creature. It did not kill him, as the blighted often would to anything that disrupted them. But that did not make it sentient.
It made leaving Miriel even more of an evil.
What was Fretia to do? She could not bypass the spell. It would have been a difficult purification regardless. Miriel’s blight stretched far. Its roots extended through this hall into the verboten domain. Her old body was like a plant, spreading. The creature Faden called Miriel was a bud, severed in chrysalis to walk free while the rest continued to crawl and twist and leave replicas of her body in the walls of teeth and ribs, the beating organs and spores that waited to plant even more of her, all of it. Fretia would have needed to purify all of those roots.
She would have.
Faden did not acknowledge her voice or knocks again.
She left, retreating down blighted halls in disgust. The final source of the Blight was further below them still, she felt. Another Crimson Blight, a seed left by the Ancients, or perhaps nothing at all- even if there was no source, it was a place far from civilization for her to fall apart worse than Miriel had. But should that source be below, then when she purified it, those smaller seeds- Miriel, sinners, the things that walked from the snow- they would be hers to hold.
Faden doubted that she could manage to purify Miriel here without the pain overtaking her. He would call her plan mad.
But he was mad.
She was desperate. She could bear no more of this evil.
The teeth in the walls chattered at her, and an agonized, tortured creature curled protectively around a man who was not himself blighted.
Madness had overtaken them all.