A Red Ending
As suddenly as it had sprung up out of the earth, the Tower vanished. It did not sink back into the ground, where some ambitious fool might see it fit to excavate, but instead was simply gone. There was no pit in the earth where the network of catacombs had once taken root, but neither were the countless skulls and intricate corridors still present for the intrepid explorer to investigate. And as for its keeper, Ardost Belastiot, too, had vanished utterly, without even so much as a shattered wine glass to prove that he had ever existed. He was gone, and had taken his memory with him, leaving only a void in his wake. Perhaps he had gone to drown as he said, but there was no body to wash up on any shore in Tamriel. The water had beckoned, however, and in his slow, shambling way, he had responded. The imprints of his feet did not remain, but carrying only a light, he wandered in the dark until he found her. Ah, she doesn’t love him anymore, and his heart has long burned out, but the sight alone is almost like feeling something. A rustle of wings caught his eye. Pell, come to watch; a chestnut he began to feel he would never taste the meat of. But what was that small victory? Fitting, that the only living witness was the one who could declare only that he was dead, dead, dead! Isaretta stood in at the heart of the pond, her reflection a perfect double on the surface, disturbed only when he strode from the shore. The water carried him, but for how long, he neither knew, nor cared. A helpless smile touched his lips, but for once he was silent as he approached, each step a ripple that did not move her. He dropped his light, and it sank below the surface. There was no need of it, now. “You’ve grown ugly.” Her voice was a desiccant, and in hearing it, the fruitless ambitions he had nursed here shrivelled up within him. “I have ever been ugly,” he answered. “Then you’ve grown uglier,” she countered. That roused a laugh; not the raucous cackle that was almost as familiar his signature, but a softer, wistful sound. “I must have,” he conceded. “Are you come, lady, to put me down?” He was not blind to the hatchet in her hand. He strove for a time to recall when last he had seen her without it, and in striving, accomplished nothing. She lifted the weapon, testing the blade, though she knew it for razor-sharp. Wisps began to pour in from the edges of the clearing, spectating in strange mimicry of the stars overhead, all of them indifferent. “Does it matter?” she asked. “No.” Ardost was drawn forth, either way. Her presence alone had summoned him here. “If I kneel,” he began, “it will be easier to strike off my head.” “Will you go so quietly?” Even she looked disappointed. “I am tired, and I’ve only this to lose.” Ardost spread his empty hands. “Have you not ventured here to take it from me?” Isaretta was always pitiless, and she remained so, then. He beckoned. “Take it.” An odd pain touched him, struck him desperate. “I no longer desire it,” he said quickly. “I’ll be rid of it. Take it from me.” Isaretta looked on, indifferent to his crumbling, impassive to his pleas, until at last she gestured to what little space remained before her. “Come closer,” she said. Ardost obeyed without question, and without jest. Focused on her, he didn’t hear when the hatched dropped from her hand and into the water. The wisps seemed brighter, and had taken to whirling; another useless universe in motion around them. Isaretta’s touch was fire, but Ardost did not recoil when her fingertips found his cheekbone, almost testing its sharpness with the pad of her thumb. It was her other hand to which he ought to have paid mind, but too late. Her fingers were wrapped around his heart in an instant; too quick for him to ponder at how she had passed them through flesh and bone to get there. It was with a curiously smooth motion that she tore the iron out. The pond ran red, and the wisps, too, seemed to redden. Ardost turned his face skyward, but all that reflected in the moon silver of his irises was crimson. He did not see the waters closing in, nor felt her clawed fingers digging into his shoulders, dragging him into the deep. It was red, and it was gone from him. It was finished. The wisps dispersed, a thousand shooting stars, burning out in the night, and in an instant, the pond dried up. Nothing beside remained.
