Vanysa watched the ghostly shades of translucent figures walk past her, their steps didn't even bend the grass, but it felt so real… 'I can hear the clink of armor and almost smell the oil and sweat…' Vanysa thought and watched things continue as if it were a staged play. She followed the Lord all the way up to the wall and stood behind him while he looked out over the vanished world that was his domain.
"We rally the bannermen. I won't take a chance on this. Especially not with the other scouts not having returned yet." Barintacha said and his evident mate clung closer to him as if sensing the tension in his body.
Then the vision was gone, and she found herself standing on the shattered remnants of an ancient wall alone again.
'Okay, this is getting strange… but then again, I'm the remnants of a dead girl turned into a demon so… who am I to speak of strangeness?' She asked herself and hopped down from the wall, landing a few seconds later.
The entrance of what was left of the inner keep beckoned to her, the darkness was no obstacle to her eyes, there was a winding stair leading down into the darkness. The steps were bloody things, splashed here and there as if their natural gray were deliberately painted black.
'So the beastmen first appeared here… this must have been before their kingdom was forged…' Vanysa tried to work out an estimate of the time in which the events she'd seen had to have taken place. 'Far more than six hundred years ago. The records Demi mentioned combing through about the Supreme Beings put them at thousands of years ago. And according to Forli's testimony the demon-elves have a near complete record of their existence many thousands of years back, before there were any true cities… but this place is well established. If the beastmen were created long far away from here, allow for generations of migration…?'
She scratched her horns as if they itched while she began to descend into the darkness. 'If that was Inta and not an ancestor… was the scholar wrong?' She wondered about that and was still wondering when she set foot on the last step.
Then she heard it again, an echoing noise of distant, shouting voices. "Hold the gate! We've got to buy time! Go to the gate and hold it!" Barintacha's voice was bellowing from somewhere, and the sound of fighting and screaming went up behind her. She looked up, the sound of distant combat was rising to a fever pitch, the bloody stones around her were clean, and the door ahead, which was a shattered bunch of splinters scattered on the floor when she reached the bottom, was now intact.
It burst open and behemoth-like defenders emerged, charging through her, their shades chilling her marrow as she was passed through like she was but empty air.
Their battlecries were hauntingly familiar. The cries of the fearsome who knew they were lost. 'It's like when the city fell… the day I was captured… no, the day 'she' was captured… the woman I was made from… I suppose…' It was a struggle to grasp sometimes, she watched the men dead for untold ages charging out again to the last hours of their lives. The roars of beastmen filled the air outside, it took no imagination to know what was happening.
'The ones who lived didn't leave ghosts behind here… that much is certain. So then… these can't be ghosts, at least not all of them.' She concluded, and stepped toward the door.
"You can't!" He shouted at her.
"I can and I will!" A woman's voice cried out. "They may have mocked you with their demand to give them living gold as a sacrifice for peace, but I can be that sacrifice! That will buy you time! Call for a truce! Call for a truce and let me go!" The woman's voice carried on.
The crash of boulders outside sent a feel of tremors through Vanysa's feet.
"I can't lose you!" Barintacha shouted.
When Vanysa stepped into the room, she saw the source of the voices, Barintacha was now clad in battle armor stained with blood, a mace with spikes blunted from overuse, hung from his belt. He was haggard, his beard untrimmed and his body not a little bit dirty. The golden woman was weeping as she yelled at him, her face twisted in anguish, her shaking hands held fast in his. "I'm sorry!" He said and pointed to a guard along the wall. "Confine her! Don't let her out of her room!"
"Sire!" The guard answered, and Vanysa watched as, kicking and screaming, the gold skinned woman was dragged away.
"We won't fall! If we hold out for just a little longer…" Barintacha didn't finish the thought, he likely didn't know how to complete it.
Then the vision was gone… all was ruin. When he passed through Vanysa's body he muttered, "I hate feeling like I'm being watched…"
Vanysa looked over her shoulder as he left the room to go strengthen the defenses himself. But something nagged at her. Nagged at her hard. She chose instead to follow the guard out the door at the far end of the room.
A sinking feeling came over the demoness. 'I know that kind of thinking…' She followed the winding steps upward, the tower itself was a ruin, but that didn't stop the steps from being there as she hastened after a distantly defiant voice.
As if her cursing and defiance gave reality to the stones, Vanysa followed her up the tower and found herself in a small room. It was well enough appointed, but the woman of gold showed no interest in any of that, instead she was standing at a window.
Vanysa's curiosity piqued, she went to stand beside her. "Damn them… damn them all…" The gold woman cursed, and why she cursed was readily apparent, the defenders of the wall were fighting with the ferocity of a dozen times their numbers, but birdmen and bigger beastmen kept attacking the walls over and over again. 'If they knew anything about sieges, this would have been over in hours.' Vanysa realized, which meant this had to be long before they were a true kingdom.
Even so, the end seemed inevitable as minute by minute went past and the smell of blood and death forced the golden woman to vomit out of her window.
When the sun was set on the scene and the walls were quiet but for the light steps of guards watching the enemy just out of reach, Vanysa saw what she expected. The golden woman began making ropes out of cloth, tying knots and stringing everything together. "This has to work… this has to…" The nameless woman whispered to nobody as she climbed out the window.
As her body vanished out of view when she dropped from the window, the scene vanished and Vanysa found herself standing on nothing. "Shit!" She cried out and her wings popped out and flapped to keep her aloft. She looked down to the ground far below her feet.
Dozens of bodies reduced to mere skeletons lay scattered about in tattered rags, faded and ripped by light and time and the claws of scavengers.
"I suppose that explains why nobody ever came back. People saw this and fell to their deaths." Vanysa muttered when she landed amidst the pile of bones in the shell of the broken tower.
"So… what happened next…?" Vanysa muttered and kicked a skull in passing, it bounced off the stone and bones and shattered against a stone block as wide as her wingspan.
'Places trigger these things, I'm sure of it now… some magic is at work…' She told herself, and hopping over the remnants of stone, she made for the logical choice and began to walk toward the ruin of the wall.
As she came close to what had been a gatehouse, the night was gone and the gate was strong and intact, if bloody, once again. "She's gone?! What do you mean she's gone?!" Vanysa heard Barintacha's roaring behind her and the rattling of soldiers in their armor.
"My Lord, the beastmen have gone too! It's a miracle of the gods, she was sent to us for this, that must be why she was put among us! To save us from the monsters!" Some soldier well out of sight shouted.
The sound of a crunching mace on metal helmet followed the protest, and the noise of spit flying out to spatter against the dead.
"Cowards! You trade away my Queen for yourselves to save your lives, this isn't a miracle! The miracle is that I don't crush all your skulls for letting her sneak out when she went to the gate last night!" The bellow was full of rage and fury, and when she looked toward the noise of running, Vanysa saw Barintacha heading alone toward the gatehouse. "Whoever is still loyal to me, come with me to save her. Who isn't, stay here and die for all I care!"
A handful of men on horseback galloped over, one of them clinging to the reins of a white stallion with an empty saddle.
Barintacha shoved his foot into the stirrup, slung himself into the saddle and looked around at the shamefaced band of warriors who chose not to move from where they stood, except to look down at the ground. "You swore an oath to defend my house, my people, my lands… and you sold out your blood oath to save your skins. Damn you all." He cursed, and spurred his horse out, followed by the little band of armored men toward whatever end.
'Wait, so if she sacrificed herself then…?' Vanysa looked at the destruction and scratched her head. 'I guess I'm back to searching… where'd they go from here?' Certainty eluded her, but perspective did not, she opened her wings and took to the air to scour the land for any clues about a past the world forgot.