“Blight?”
“It’s a substance from another Plain. It causes great illness to people who consume it,” Lynn said. She held out the vial chained around her neck, filled with black, viscous liquid for the men to see.
“As in, a disease from another dimension?” Landry asked.
Lynn nodded. “The Magister Prime believed that drinking it would bestow a person with powerful magic. He wanted to make more of it but needed ways to culture it. Although, most of the test subjects who were given Blight did not take to it very well.”
“And what happened to those test subjects?” Landry said.
Lynn paused, raising an eyebrow. “You found them already, in the basement.”
The dead children. They were the Imperium’s test subjects. Their twisted, melted faces flashed into Tomas’s mind like a show of lightning. The stench of their corpses, their blackened skin, and their mangled, inhumane features.
The very definition of unnatural.
Gharland peered back at some of the dismembered corpses of the Magisters they had found. “Good riddance, then,” he said with a snarl.
Lynn was growing more distressed. She was beginning to sweat. “My master, Magister Aymeir, thought he could stop what was happening here. He… he…”
“He allowed children to be murdered,” Tomas interjected, glaring at the girl. “Just as you did.”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” Lynn pleaded. “We were trying to help stop this.”
“And the things that attacked us?” Gharland yelled. “Were they made by your Magisters, too, then?”
“No! I don’t know where they came from.”
“Captain Gharland, we should chain her up. We cannot trust anything she says,” Landry said.
“Magister Aymeir was concerned about the Magister Prime and his experiments, captain,” Lynn continued. “That was why he sent word to your king; you have to believe me. He was becoming obsessed with the tome, with Kyzon’s Light and Blight. Aymeir and I feared what Impatus was doing was going to trigger something bad to happen.”
No one was listening to any more of what Lynn had to say. Gharland nodded to his men, who gathered some wrist shackles and chained her up as she struggled to get free of them.
No one listened but Tomas. He took in every desperate word that left her lips, somehow caught up with her ramblings.
“Please, you don’t understand! We did not cause this- we were trying to prevent it! It is only going to get worse as the Light gets closer! The natural order of things is shifting!”
“Find me a set of keys for the dungeon. Lock her away,” Gharland ordered.
Landry kicked the back of Lynn’s legs to get her walking.
“And you,” Gharland said, pointing to one of the soldiers. “Chain the boy up and put him down there with her for the time-being until we figure out this mess.”
Tomas then realised he was not yet in the clear, as Gharland was referring to him.
In an instant, his wrists were shackled back up, and he was being led down into the dark, cold underbelly of the Grand Repository to meet who knew what sort of fate.
Chapter 31 - Upon the Throne
Katryna Bower seemed to hover as she moved through the throne room of Castle Bower, down the long, red-and-white rug that stretched to the base of the dais on which the throne intimidating throne sat.
All eyes were on her. Hundreds of them. A room full of people yet as silent as a crypt.
Enormous pairs of decorated columns lined the centre runway. Hundreds of noble men and ladies, knights, barons, and baronesses crowded the wings of the hall in the guest areas, nervously awaiting news.
The court had been called.
Katryna’s shoes echoed around the grand hall. Some three storeys above her head hung circular, candlelit chandeliers with silver chains hanging between the canopies of the ceiling and the arms of the chandeliers.
Katryna had spent all morning with Trish in silence as the handmaiden applied makeup to hide her teary, swollen eyes and make sense of her dishevelled hair.
Trish had been awfully quiet, as had Katryna. Neither could read what the other was thinking, like they normally could.
The previous night’s events had planted an enormous wedge between Katryna and her ability to process the world around her.
She had put on whatever dress Trish had chosen for her. She could not remember which one. It did not matter. Her hair was pulled tightly in two coiled braids to the side of her head.
Now, she was ready to speak to the highborns of Camridia, called to Castle Bower for the urgent address. Well, as ready as she could possibly be.
By her side walked her brother, Prince Finnigan, adorning a bright red vest with a white, long-sleeved undershirt with ruffled wrists. His curls had been brushed and he looked as handsome as ever, despite tired, teary eyes.
Around the base of the dais were half a dozen Infinity Guardsmen, with Ser Arthus Medonia standing on the flank of the throne itself. The guards were in their classic silver and gold plate armour, except today they also wore long black mantles in mourning for the king.
Katryna had just come from a meeting with the High Sword, where he had given her and Finn an update on the search for Prince Rowan. She was so full of anger that it had been difficult to keep herself from boiling over each time something was said that frustrated her.
At the front of the throne hall, Katryna caught a glimpse of familiar faces. Jerrem Denar, struggling to hold his body weight up with a wooden cane. Hectar and Ellene Maarsden, her uncle and aunt, dour faced as always. The masked diplomats from Ember. Baron Maxim Seros, the father of Rowan’s wife, and Baroness Erin Thatch of Asterin, as well as many other notable people.
Normally, Katryna
