Time to close up a circle… at last, after this comes the part I have been looking forward to writing! Next chapter: the one you've all been waiting for!... well, kind of. Find out more tomorrow, right?

Disclaimer: I'm going to college next year… I can't afford to be sued. Please! As my cousin said, "Say goodbye to your memories…" Wait. That's from HP…

Of Knights and Dragons

Chapter VII: Embers and Ashes

"…his contented silence as he watches the embers form strange fantasies to fit his dreams … charged with a thousand memories born out of the unfathomable past."

(Holbrook Jackson)

In three years, Paris had not much changed, Raoul thought, staring out the small window of the coach. Day had deepened into night that wrapped Paris in her clutches. The City of Lights reluctantly succumbed to darkness. "This time of night is what Erik loves the best," he remembered Christine telling him. "When the last light of sunset is hours gone, and one by one the houses in the city darken, and sound fades. It's dead silent then, and he walks on occasion free under the stars on the roof of the Opera. The night is so quiet, when he sings the entire city echoes it, an ethereal harmony…"

The carriage rumbled to a halt. Raoul didn't wait for the driver to get around to opening the door, merely swung it open and leapt lightly out. The night air was surprisingly cool for July, breezing idly by his face. "Shall I wait for you?" the man queried, stroking the team of horses, who ducked their head against the tender backdrop of the night.

"No need," Raoul muttered, waving him away. "Go on, now." The man clucked to the horses, who rumbled away, until the carriage turned out of sight about a corner, leaving the Vicomte alone on the street, wondering why he had agreed to come.

Before him loomed the infamous Opera Populaire. Even burned out and wearied by three years of neglect (which, he discovered, could do a significant amount of damage), it maintained its imposing façade. It was an empty shell, now, radiating a sense of loneliness, a crumbling monument to futility. He walked up the wide, deserted steps, his own footfalls hollow and hesitant.

The doors loomed before him… or what was left of them. Charred black tendrils wrapped up about the once-ornate frames like living tentacles of decay. The paint was scorched away, revealing bare wood, raw and untamed, parts splintered clean through in the mad rush to escape the burning deathtrap the night of Don Juan. Now the doors hung half off their hinges, rusted and idle. So close to the structure, Raoul could feel the heavy weight of its emptiness hanging over him. Standing there, he felt rather as he thought Samson must have at the temple—he had only to push and the pillars would give way, collapsing the stone edifice upon his head, a vast grave for a single man.

Raoul shook of the image and walked through the half-ajar doors into the atrium, removing his black top hat as he went, more out of habit than anything. The space was vast, and yet the air seemed so close, heavy with dust and neglect. The atrium was a cruel parody of what it once had been. Looking at the bits of stone, wood, and random detritus scattered was like wandering into a child's senseless nightmare. Here a ballet rat's shoe, there a lady's glove; a gentleman's hat, an umbrella.

Every step rang off the stone menacingly and left scuffs in the layer of dust. It was only then, as he crossed that forsaken place, that Raoul realized that he had no idea how he was to venture to the Phantom's lair, nor what he intended to do when he got there. His memories of that one night deep in the Opera were both too cutting and too vague for recall.

So, to give himself a moment to think, he turned and sat on the wide steps of the central staircase, about halfway up, heedless of the dust. He sat, elbows on knees, hands—still holding his hat—dangling off his legs. For a moment he allowed himself to close his eyes and remember this very place, not all that long ago. As if he had summoned a dream replete with ghosts, he began to imagine the colors, the music, the movement. Elaborate dancing pairs swirled past him coyly, men straight-backed, women twirling, a confusing tangle of sight and sound. There was a welter of gold and silver, black and white—and a single solid image of red, red as fire, red as death—

Raoul propelled himself to his feet, brushing away the gossamer threads of his waking dream, as irritably as if they were cobwebs clinging unfavorably to his jacket. No time for fantasies.

He knew of two ways to enter the Phantom's domain. The first was hardly viable; falling thirty feet into a subterranean pool was more likely to see him dead. The second way, of course, was through Christine's dressing-room. Meg had told him about the mirror…

The next hour was a nightmare he didn't care to recall. Endless minutes of carefully picking his way through the dilapidated backstage, testing each step as he took it. A uniform gray blanket of dust lay on everything undisturbed. No one had come this way in all of the three-and-a-half years, he guessed. Raoul could understand why—he could almost feel the structure shifting above him. One wrong breath, it seemed, and it would all come crashing down.

At length, though, he worked his way into what had once been the Prima Donna's dressing room. Here, curiously, the dust lay heaviest of all, and Raoul muffled a cough, lifting an arm to breath into the sleeve of his jacket—every step he took raised eddies of dust that spiraled up into the air, hovering insistently. The broken mirror drew his gaze like flies to the flame. He took a deep breath behind the sleeve, and began the trek across the room. Behind him his footsteps marched a clear line in the dust…like some futile mark, the treads of an archaeologist returning to study a civilization wholly ancient and foreign to him.

Raoul paused at the shattered mirror, fumbled at the catch for a moment, and at last opened it, stepping through into darkness. Tracing his hand along the wall, he was somewhat surprised when his fingers encountered the smooth glass shield of a wall-lamp. His hand slid along the surface and found a knob; hardly daring to hope he turned it, felt the rust resist the rotation, then at last give with a faint click.

A point of light, the beginnings of a fire, gleamed, and Raoul hurriedly twisted the lamp alight more, until a perfect flame dancing within the locking chamber. He was about to check if the lamp could be detached from the wall, and if so how much oil remained, when a far-off point of light intruded on his thoughts when it sparkled into view.

It was some distance down the corridor, perhaps thirty feet, flush against the wall and perfectly stationary. Its little pool of light dappled the floor and wall a few feet in each direction. Even as he watched, a third light flared to life further on, then a fourth directly ahead, betraying a turn in the corridor.

For a long moment the Vicomte de Chagny paused, trying to reason out the situation. Was Erik both alive and expecting him? Wild thoughts of Christine and betrayal raced through his head… but his love and his sense took over. He had only just returned from Oxford, and for all the Phantom's uncanny knowledge, he could not reach so far… surely?

Perhaps, Raoul thought decisively, the ghost had come and placed these lights after Don Juan. Or maybe Christine herself had experienced this same phenomenon the night of Hannibal. Perhaps they were, somehow, keyed to light the path of any who ventured this way. The Vicomte privately changed the word knowledge to genius in his mind, though grudgingly.

Emboldened by the thought, Raoul gathered his courage rather as he imagined the Phantom might gather a cloak, and started down the corridor (after all, his last trip to these abysmal depths had nearly ended in complete disaster). The dust was much less here, somehow, some hidden draft lifting it and spiriting it away. The stone walls glistened with just a hint of moisture as he walked through patches of light interspersed with pools of darkness, ethereal garments.

He traveled corridors, always the ones which were lit, descended stairs and crossed shadowed halls. Once he fancied he heard running water, thundering only inches away, but the sound quickly faded from hearing, making him wonder if he had only imagined it.

Given all of this, it did not take him long to arrive at the fringe of the lake. The stone "shore" was empty; here the lamp-lit path ended. If there was once a punt or boat of some kind—there was; he remembered taking it back across the lake with Christine—it was not there now.

Raoul crouched at the edge of the lake, dabbling his fingers in the water. He withdrew them hurriedly, shivering at the colder-than-ice touch that drew the warmth from his hand as if it were the malevolent spirit of some ravenous devil therein dwelling. He knew if he waded in that he would die within minutes… and it would take longer than that to forge his way first through the stone channels, then across the lake itself. And, if the gate were closed…

At an impasse, he sat back, the wall cool—but surprisingly not cold—against him, supportive of his backbone. He folded his arms close and thought, for the first time since Christine's dream.

His mind, he admitted wryly, was quite tangled over the entire affair (I suppose love has that effect on people, he thought). That strange pull that Erik had over Christine had existed from before the beginning and after the end as well—'beginning' being the night of Hannibal, and 'end' the fire and Don Juan. Though, he hesitantly began to admit, perhaps the closure wasn't so certain.

It had been easy for him to accept Christine's dreaming of the Phantom in her past. Looking back, he thought that subconsciously he realized there was nothing he would be able to do, and gave up his hold on the situation entirely. It had been for the best; their love had bridged those gaps left by their pasts, smoothing it perfectly flat for an idyllic sail through life. No wonder Christine had thought it all a fairy tale.

The darkness and cold wrapped close about the emotionally and physically exhausted Vicomte, humming a melody he did not recognize… but it reminded him of England and twilight over the hills. Just before he slid into the wide lake of dreams, he fancied he could hear a bell tingling faintly from far off, a tiny replica of the toll of wedding-bells in the hills of Oxford.