"She's free!" The shout echoed down the corridor. "The Corpse Queen has escaped. Get reinforcements." A man started down the stretch between us. He carried a wooden blackjack in one hand and a burning torch in the other. "Get back in your cell." I had already decided I would die before I allowed them to put me back, but they would die first. "Get back in your cell and we'll pretend this didn't happen." He stopped to glance down at the door lying before him, ripped from its hinges, huge rents gouged from it. "How did you…"
Now!
I lunged towards him, crossing the ten paces between us at a flat sprint my body should not have been capable of. I recognised the man in that moment. Clews, one of the Grave Watch who escorted me to and from my cell each day. A man who stood by and watched my torture day after day after day. He no longer mocked me and called that a kindness, but he was as responsible for my suffering as the Emperor himself. They all were. All the Grave Watch. All the soldiers. All the people of Juntorrow. All of them!
Clews raised his blackjack, but it was a stick and I was a monster. Black wings brushed the weapon aside and I slammed them into the man, twisting him about and driving him against the corridor wall. The bladed ends of my wings, talons of shadow, sunk into his chest and Clews gasped in pain, unable to even scream as the wings pierced his lungs. Blackjack and torch dropped from his limp arms and Clews shook as death reached up to claim him.
"No!" I dropped the lantern and reached up with my arm, gripping hold of Clews' neck. "You don't get to die!" I screamed it at him.
Necromancy is a poorly understood school of magic. Attuned Sourcerers are rare, and even at its height the academy had only one tutor. By the time I was attending the academy, so much of the school's arts had been lost, and they were not willing to teach a young girl how to control death itself. Of course, that didn't stop the Iron Legion from injecting the magic into me. I had spent much of my time in the Red Cells studying that innate Necromancy. Every time I unravelled one of my ghosts, I learned more about it. How to control it. What it could do.
I pinned Clews into his body at the moment of his death, not allowing his soul to escape. His body died, but he did not. Trapped between life and death, and mine to command. I gave him an order, one so simple to carry out. and I turned his unlife into a curse he could spread.
"Kill them!" I hissed the words and they became Clews' only purpose. "Kill them all and spread my curse."
I stepped back from Clews, my shadowy wings sliding out of his flesh and dripping with blood. For a few moments my Grave Watch captor swayed on his feet, staring at me with damning eyes. I think maybe he fought against my command. He lost. Footsteps and shouts echoed down the corridor and Clews turned towards them and sprinted away in a headlong rush. It wasn't long before the screaming started. This time it wasn't coming from the prisoners.
I wandered through blood streaked halls, following the chaos I had unleashed. There were no bodies. Every Grave Watch who fell stood back up again only moments after death and carried out my terrible purpose. How far my curse would spread and how many it would affect, I did not know. They were questions I had not stopped to consider when I wrought it. I had given it a life of its own and set it free to destroy and kill until it ran itself dry. I did not feel pity for the soldiers who died and were brought back. They all knew what they did here. They deserved their fates.
The Red Cells are a labyrinth of corridors and torture chambers and stairwells. I called out as I went, shouting Hardt's name to a chorus of replies, but none of them were him. Other prisoners begged me to release them. I did, tearing doors off hinges and shearing shadowy wings through the bolts that held them closed. The prisoners stared at me like I was a monster rather than their saviour. I was both, I admit that, but it would have been nice for a little gratitude. I can't blame them. A one-armed woman, my face made ghoulish by my scars and the gauntness, and two great black wings hunched behind me. Anyone would have run from that. In truth it might have been kinder to leave them in their cells. The curse I had loosed upon the world was not too selective in its victims. I told Clews to kill them all and that is exactly what he and all the others were doing. I hope some of the prisoners escaped. I hope some of them deserved to escape. When you're an inmate, it's hard to tell who around you are guilty, and who isn't.
It took some time to find Hardt. He was two floors below me, trapped in his own cell no larger than my own. I called for him at every door and my stomach gave a nervous flutter when finally I heard his voice.
"Eska?" He sounded weak, weary. I saw dark eyes peering at me through the little hole in the door.
"Stand back, Away from the door." He did and I made to tear the door down. My wings did not move.
He is a weakness.
"No. He is my strength. Just as you are my strength. I won't escape without him. I can't."
"Eska?" Hardt asked.
My wings ripped into the door. I was not gentle. In my fervour to free Hardt, I tore the wood to splinters and stood amidst the wreckage.
Hardt stumbled forward into the light of the corridor. He was smaller than I remembered, so much of his bulk wasted away. He held an arm across his ribs and limped. His beard was patchy and matted with filth and his face was a patchwork of wounds and old scars where the torturers had plied their trade. But he was alive!
"Eska!" Hardt slumped forward and wrapped an arm around me pulling me in to a tight embrace, heedless of the wings that still sprouted from my back. "I'm sorry." He sobbed into my shoulder. I would have sobbed back, but my throat closed and I choked on it. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault." He was babbling, leaning much of his weight on me and only the strength I was taking from Ssserakis kept us all upright.
When finally we pulled apart his face was soaked from tears and he was shaking. I smiled at him and hoped I didn't look as monstrous as I was certain I did. His eyes dropped and horror played across his shaggy features. "What happened to your arm?"
That sob I had been holding in broke loose. "They took it." Tears streaked down my face and I felt like a little girl again, hurt and afraid and running to my big brother for protection. "They took my arm, Hardt. They fucking took it."
He hugged me again then and we spent some more time finding strength in each other. I am not embarrassed by this. I was nothing but glad. So happy to see Hardt again. So happy he was whole. Even if I was not.
It's time, Eskara. Time to tear down this fool emperor's walls and show him what his fear looks like.
I pulled away from Hardt. "I know."
"Eska…" Hardt said and looked at me again, his eyes moving over my shadowy wings. "Is it… Are you in control?" His face made the pain of the question clear.
I smiled and nodded. "Yes." And that was it. We never really spoke of Ssserakis, but Hardt knew I carried something inside. He knew. And he never asked.
"We have to go," I said and started towards the stairwell.
Hardt followed me through the bloody halls, limping but easily keeping pace. "Was this you?"
"Yes and no. I… I've caused a lot of chaos. We'll use the cover of it."
"To escape?"
I stopped and turned on my friend, wiping away tears. "I'm not running."