Danny Phantom

The Kept

Author's Notes: Welcome back, all. This story hasn't been updated in awhile, since I've been so busy working on other projects, but I thought I'd keep it going at least to maintain that it still -is- a work in progress. Anyways, we've got more plot development and backstory headed your way, so sit tight. I won't waste any more time, so here is chapter three of "The Kept."

Chapter Three

Disillusionment

"Fright Knight?" Samantha repeated, blinking once. "I remember the name, but not clearly."

"Stories say he's been alive since the time of Virgenya, and even then, those are just stories. There's really no telling how long he's been alive." Skulker sank into his chair and rubbed his temples wearily.

Sam nodded. "Please continue, Sir Skulker."

"Well, once Her Majesty was able to make her escape with Dashiel, we were able to escort you and Miss Jasmine from the castle. We were pursued through most of the inner wall, but they stopped once we crossed through the gate."

"I don't remember any of this..." Sam murmured, fixing her gaze on her skirts.

"Might be on account of the nasty fall you took once we cleared the city, somewhere near the river north of Eldwist." Skulker glanced back at his wife, then to the small crowd in his sitting room. "Your horse had an arrow protruding from her left flank. The spooking she got upon leaving the city was enough to keep the adrenaline going in her, but once it died down... well, you're lucky to have made it out of that icy water alive."

Sam nodded. "So... one of you fetched me then?"

"I did," Jazz said quietly. Sam gave her a grateful smile.

"Once we retrieved you, we sent a scout ahead to Dora's manor to let them know we were on our way and that you were injured. Once we got there, we had a physician look you over, put you to bed with heavy blankets and some steaming elixir he concocted out of the herbs in the gardens. Then you woke, dropped the bottle, and the kid appeared." He nodded towards the silent boy behind the princess, who was listening quietly and avoiding attention as best he could.

"Sounds like it's been a rough night," Ember commented, touching her cheek lightly. "And... he's Esprit, no?"

Danny blinked a few times. "Esprit?" he echoed, the tone of his voice suggesting he'd never heard the term before.

Sam looked at him. "You said you're not human, that must make you Esprit... but you look terribly mannish for an Esprit." Danny blinked again. "You... aren't Esprit?"

"I'd tell you if I knew what exactly that was," he replied flatly.

"Impossible," Jazz said, shaking her copper-crowned head. "There's nothing else sentient but Esprit and Man, not since the days of Virgenya."

"Manson?" he inquired in almost a whisper, apparently to himself. The room turned their eyes on him.

"Maybe it's time he told us a story," Ember said, amusement playing on her silken voice.

The boy shook his head. "Another time," he murmured, and folded his arms across his chest. Jazz cleared her throat and eyes shifted to her instead.

"They've been tracking us all night, I have no doubt they'll track us here as well," she said matter-of-factly, getting to her feet and crossing the room to stand beside Samantha. "We all know that for certain. We might have lost them in the tunnels, but there's no guarantee that they'll stay lost for long. I think we should keep moving... we might even need to leave Amity."

Skulker nodded silently, taking in her words and swirling them around in his head. "You present a good point, miss Jasmine, but we don't even know if it's safe to leave the country yet. We would be better off sending scouts to ascertain the fate of Eldwist."

"And mother," Sam added, her eyes fixed on her hands.

The Captain of the Guard nodded again. "We were given specific instructions to keep you safe, and for now, the safest place I can think of is here. For now, I think it would be best if we awaited a messenger from your mother."

"But how will she know...?" Sam started.

"Trust me, she'll know, Princess."

Ember, who'd remained silent for the last several minutes, finally spoke up. "I think we should find rooms for our guests and go over how we intend to get them out in case of... unforeseeable circumstances." The glanced at her husband before continuing. "In either case, I agree that it would be safest for you to remain here, your highness. Open travel risks you being spotted, and the entourage we have here is not quite what I'd call inconspicuous," she said, a half-smile dancing on her lips. "I'll show you to your rooms, and if anyone is hungry, I can have the cooks whip something up quickly."

Food? Sam hadn't even thought about food since the party. Now that she thought about it, she was quite famished. She doubted she'd eaten in several hours, and while normally she would have been asleep in her chamber, they'd been running from their mysterious attackers for the larger part of the night. Which brought up another point: she had no idea what time it was. Judging by the faint pink on the eastern horizon, she had a pretty good guess that the dawn was rapidly approaching.

"That sounds wonderful, Lady Ember," Sam said. "Thank you so much for your hospitality."

"Think nothing of it."

"Sam, this isn't a good idea," Jazz whispered. "We're not allowed to wander when we visit the City of Shadows!"

"And no one will know otherwise if you hush," Sam snapped in a whisper. "C'mon, there's still lots of stuff here we've never seen."

The City of Shadows was a mysterious, dark place. It was home to many of the citizens of Amity, but the entire metropolis was silent as a tomb, save for the steps of the royal visitors that proceeded through its eerie quiet. They had proceeded forth, draped in black dress and veils, as was custom for the royal funeral procession. It was silent for the single fact that the City of Shadows was a tomb, the final resting place for the people of Amity. No one knew how old the Necropolis was. Some theorized that the city had been around since the time of Virgenya herself, and longer before that in the ten thousand year reign of the Ombra and their witch kings.

That day was a particularly sad one. The funerals they attended were those of Sam's youngest aunt, Katerina, who the family referred to as Kitty, and Aragon's wife Penelope. Kitty had died of some attack on her manor that had left she and many of her subjects dead within minutes. The king had said it looked to be religious extremists, but from what Sam had sneaked out of the reported, she thought it had been suspicious and pointed fingers in all the wrong directions. Certainly not on the level.

What she had found most intriguing about it was the reports of her aunt's condition upon death. Her throat had been cut, but that, according to the physician who'd examined her body, had not been her cause of death. Kitty's eyes had been carefully removed and her mouth and eyelids sewn shut, almost symbolically. What had killed her had been the excessive bleeding that resulted from an injury that had occurred during her apparent torture. Even with her eyes, she would have bled to death within a matter of hours, maybe less. The cutting of her throat must have been symbolic as well, she guessed.

Penelope's death, on the other hand, had been far less brutal. In fact, it appeared that during their midday tea, Lady Penelope had simply dropped dead of her own accord, in front of her husband and thirty guests, who all reported the same story: One moment she was fine, and the next she was dead. The physician had found no traces of poison, no wounds, nothing to suggest foul play, which made her death all the more suspicious. What was more, the Lady Penelope had been with child.

As per tradition, the funeral procession had proceeded to the dark twin of Eldwist Castle, Eldwist of Shadows. The large necropolis held many similar copies of the living versions of the cities in Amity, all connected by stone walkways and catwalks that crisscrossed over and under, some gleaming with smooth, polished black stone, some with gray marble, others with dull silver, representing the many roads, trails, and rivers that connected the kingdom. The several carriages made their way to the great stone castle, where the caskets were unloaded and carried by servants, followed by King Jeremy, Queen Pamela, Sam and Dash, the King's siblings, and the rest of the royal entourage.

Once inside the castle, they made their way to the great dining hall, where over a dozen long, ornate marble tables were arranged. Each table seated roughly twenty five, and Sam noticed that the older she got, the more tables there were. The older tables were all filled, stone effigies of long-passed Mansons sitting in their marble chairs, forever preparing to eat their meals of polished stone bread and wine. Seven of the tables were filled, a long feast of the dead enjoyed only by the stone. The eighth table was only partly filled. The royal entourage that had entered the castle were the only living that had been left. Sam sat beside two stone incarnations of siblings that had died young, the tiny body of a younger brother who had died in infancy on her right, and the stone child that was the older brother who died of a fall from his horse at a tender age to her left. Dash sat on the other side of young Prince William, and to the right of their mother.

At almost eight years old, Sam had always been bored by these funeral proceedings. She had attended both the funerals of her siblings and of her Grandfather, the late King Darier, and his wife when they had passed. She couldn't remember attending any other funerals, but by now she'd gotten used to the tradition.

The living sat and ate their corporeal versions of the stone food that the dead appeared to eat. Two of the wooden chairs had been removed and replaced by stone echoes, and as they prepared to eat, two more stone effigies were carried in by servants and placed in their stone chairs. Kitty's stone copy was placed to the left of Aragon, and Penelope was placed to his right. Sam had noticed that he looked unusually blank after his closest sibling and his wife had both died.

Once their meal was finished, the royal entourage, save the king, left the dining hall to walk through the halls of the castle. The King remained behind, where he, and he alone, conducted a traditional ritual to ease the passing of the living into the world of the dead.

"Sam, we shouldn't stray too far from your mother," Jazz cautioned again. "What if there are squatters here?"

"Nonsense," Sam replied, leading the way through the the halls at a run. Her black robes billowed out behind her and her hair began to fall from the black ribbons that held it fast. "You can't get into the City of Shadows unless the gatekeeper sees that you have a key, and you can't get into Eldwist of Shadows unless you actually have a key." She giggled as she slowed to a stop before the shadowed twin of her own bedroom. There were hundreds of bedrooms in Eldwist, and Eldwist of Shadows, and very few of them were used more than a few times in the history of the castle, save for the king and queen's chambers. Her own room, she knew, had been used only one other time in the thousand years of written history that encompassed Eldwist, but there was never a mention of just who had used the room. No one else seemed to know, either.

She peered in, marveling at how this room was an exact match to her room in the castle. She smiled and slipped through the door, jumping onto the soft black of the bed. The only difference in this room and her own was the colors, and she couldn't say she minded. She flopped back, ignoring the smell of dust and stale air.

"Sam, let's go, I'm getting really creeped out," Jazz said in almost a desperate tone. Sam sighed and sat up.

"Fine, lemme see something first and then we'll go back downstairs."

Sam climbed off of the bed and crossed the room, intending to peer into the armoire to see if there were any dresses, when something else caught her eye. It was small, but it stood out brilliant gold against the gray and black of the room. She was amazed that she'd never seen it before now. She bent down to touch it. A tiny golden handle, hinged to the floor.

"Sam..." Jazz murmured in a cautionary tone. Sam ignored her.

She reached and grasped the handle, turned it and then pulled. The floor swung forward, shocking her and sending her tumbling into the gaping hole that was now in the floor of her room.

"Sam!" Jazz called and dashed to the hole. "Sam are you okay?"

"Fine," the princess called up. "Just a little startled is all." She'd landed somewhat softly on a stone casket that was centered in a large, ornate chamber, filled with stone flowers in marble vases, decorative furniture, and beautiful portraits and tapestries. They all pictured one woman, with long, flowing raven locks and sharp violet eyes. She might have been Sam, but her eyes were much darker than the young princess. "Whoa," she breathed. She turned her attention to the sarcophagus again. It was covered in decorative, runic lettering, roughly spelling a word she didn't recognize.

V-E-R-J-I-N-Y-A

"Verjinya?" Sam repeated, hearing the word ring out loud.

"What?" Jazz asked from without the hole.

"This coffin says 'V-e-r-j-i-n-y-a. But when you say it out loud, it kinda sounds like-"

"Virgenya?" Jazz finished for her.

"Yeah. It's really old and dusty." She paused a moment. "What if it's Lady Virgenya Manson's tomb?" she said excitedly. Jazz simply shook her head.

"They don't know where she was buried, why would she be here? Now c'mon Sam, they're probably looking for us now."

Sam sighed. "Fine, let's go. We'll explore again the next time we're here."

Days passed with no word from the outside. Sam, Jazz, and the boy spent much of their time in the library, since the weather had proven to be fickle and had been pouring for what felt like an eternity. Sam perused the history sections, while Jazz sat patiently and the boy, Danny, had holed himself in a far corner, poring over stacks of tomes and scrolls for information on subjects Sam couldn't understand. It wasn't because she made no attempt to discover what he was reading. It was more due to the fact that the scrolls and tomes he read fluidly were all written in an archaic language that predated the King's tongue by at least seven hundred years. She couldn't remember what they called it.

So she sat in her pile of books, flipping through pages and pages of diagrams of relics and texts of translated tablets. Jazz sat close by, arranging her finished piles neatly. She was absorbed in a particularly fascinating retelling of the conquest of the Ombra when Skulker burst through the library doors, holding a letter in his hand.

"Your highness," he said, dropping briefly to one knee. "Your mother has sent word. Apparently, when she had her scouts investigate Eldwist, they discovered that it was in the same condition it had been in before the attack." Sam blinked in confusion, but Skulker went on. "She's also returned to the castle."

"But what if someone tries to kill her and Dash-"

"Prince Dashiel did not return to Eldwist. He remains in the care of a coven-trained woman that I've met only once. She seemed cold when we spoke briefly, but she's capable and she'll keep him safe."

Sam nodded. "So she went back alone?"

"It appears she and the rest of their entourage returned to the castle to assure the people that everything is well. No one is yet aware that both heirs to the throne are currently missing." She nodded and looked at her skirts, and he continued. "However, she gave us specific instructions as well. I am to return to Eldwist in the interest in safeguarding your father. You and your attendant are to take the bottle she gave you," he cast a glance at Danny, who pretended not to listen, "and proceed to Saint Lauraline's coven. She sent word ahead that she wishes you trained."

Sam blinked again in confusion. "So... I'm going to be a nun?"