In a locked room on the top floor of the east wing of the Rozay-en manor hangs a painting. It sits among many others, each more gruesome than the last. They can be nothing else, for the Eyes of Roses perceive death in their own way, and their bearer may never be blind to it.
This painting differs from the rest. It's small, square. Watercolour and pencil. Nestled in an unassuming frame in a dim corner, visible only by moonlight. Its creator does not wish its existence known. Yet she can neither destroy nor hide it; that would be a betrayal.
The painting depicts a clear night. The moon is new; a carpet of stars illuminates each inch. Within a garden whose greens and reds outshine the sky and whose flowers bear no thorns, sit two girls at a table. Between them are eclairs and macarons and mille-feuille and a steaming teapot and books and baubles and half-woven garlands. The girls look like they have just stopped laughing. Their hands are entwined. Their eyes are closed. They rest against each other as if sleeping. There exist no others in that painted world. The garden fits two corpses, and no more.
The painting is the first one she ever made. Even as she and her tastes degenerate, she still returns to this picture every night, searching within for the answer to a child's question.
She hasn't viewed the painting tonight. It was seen, instead, by another.
It doesn't matter, she thinks. She will be one of the girls in that painting one day, and together with her friend she will find rest.
But her friend is away, at the bottom of the ocean. Too far to arrive and honour their promise. Thus, she feels no trepidation; the Rose Prophetess already knows this is not her time of dying.
One step took the boy halfway across the room. Another had him in striking distance.
Black and silver filled her vision. A knife's blade leapt for her eyes. He was there, approaching her space, poised to bring death.
She met the eyes of the blade's wielder and smiled, making no move to avoid it.
"…tch!"
The boy halted, shifted his gravitational axis in an instant, and launched himself back as a mass of vines thrust through the marble floor. He landed, stumbled against a far-off pillar for support, trailing red from the ragged stump at the end of his left leg.
"What's this?" Rita smiled. "Trepidation? Most unlike you." All around her, vines swayed to an absent breeze or inaudible rhythm. She sat back, vines coalescing beneath her to form a lounging chair. "Well, do take your time. The moon is only half awake yet."
"We're both unlike ourselves tonight." Roa replied, his foot slowly – too slowly – reverting to a usable state. "When did the princess overcome her fear of death?"
"Long before your rediscovered yours."
His palm slammed into marble, sending cracks through the pillar. Fingers curled into a fist. As the tiles around Roa rose atop onyx shadows his blade flashed once, twice, thrice, and then he was buried in living darkness.
A thundercrack washed over the room. The ceiling shook. The moonlight wavered. A beam of searing light blasted apart the thorny prison from within, and through it emerged a figure whose wrathful visage exuded crackling static. "Then I'll make you remember!" he crowed, flinging his fingers forward, letting lightning leap towards the lazing noblewoman.
Her outstretched arm caught the blinding light and flung it aside, leaving naught but numbness in her fingers. When Rita lowered her hand she saw no boy. Only Ciel, standing obediently by a distant pillar, imprisoned in memory. The chamber was silent, save for the rustling of greenery.
"Is this how you'll do it, snakeskin?" She pondered the moment. "Not by battle, but by a children's game?" The princess was unperturbed. She closed her eyes and stretched out her senses. Vines writhed and squirmed across the floor like snakes, searching for the one actual serpent among them. "Then you had better play well."
The vines spread over every inch of ground and sensed nothing – besides Ciel, who could not move a muscle. She sent them crawling up the pillars, staining the white chamber black. Still nothing. Her foe had become an imperceptible ghost. Yet if Rita was nervous, she did not show it. The ceiling was next. The arches darkened, one by one by one by – there.
He clung to the stone far above like a bat, with only his knife arm hanging loose. As Rita cast her gaze upwards and met the smile of a man ignorant of how cornered he was.
The vines leapt towards him and scattered against the air. A runic circle carved into stone lit up around his legs, crackling with lightning that stung and rebuffed encroaching feelers. Laughing, Roa released his hand, hanging now by his legs as he stared down at Rita. His knife hung over her head like the sword of Damocles.
Vines probed at the perimeter of the circle and found no weaknesses.
She scoffed.
The vampiric plants changed their approach. They tunneled into the ceiling around the circle, digging above and around. His footing cracked and began to crumble.
"Hmph!" The spell, once muttered under his breath, was now proclaimed in six Latin syllables. The dagger narrowed and lengthened into a shining saber, strengthened by sacrament.
Just as his last refuge collapsed, he kicked off the roof. All around him was ravenous darkness. The vampire, falling, flying to his foe, was hungrier still.
There was no stopping him. No hidden angles to attack from. All the plants that barred his way were sliced apart in an instant by movements more fit for an assassin than a madman. The Rose Princess could only meet death head-on.
She flung forth her hand, a last desperate defense. The blade flashed through her arm at the elbow and all feeling vanished below it.
Then he was before her. The blade buried itself in her stomach and pins and needles perforated her from every angle. The seat of vines collapsed and then she was on her back with the boy straddling her waist, devouring her with his gaze.
"Give it to me," he said. "Or it's your other limbs."
"No."
With a growl he grabbed her other wrist and slammed it into the ground. Then he opened his maw wide and went for her neck.
Something shifted. Steel wire wrapped around his throat and snapped his jaw shut. His mouth was shoved upwards and missed its target.
The boy found himself locking lips with the woman he wished dead. Staring into her eyes like flowers. Feeling her fingers (hadn't he sliced that hand off?) running through his hair and her nails digging into the back of his skull and piercing into his brain. His body would not move. His joints had been bound in place. He tried to shift his knife hand and felt warm feelers creep out from the flesh he'd pierced, wrapping around his arm. He struggled, calling on all his mad strength, and could muster no more than a muffled protest as a long tongue ran across his teeth.
She kept him close until she finally glimpsed in his eyes what she had been looking for: uncertainty, anger, and disgust. Then she pushed him away, breaking the bloody kiss. They both floated up, carried by vines that now enveloped the entire room in black.
"My, my, how disappointing." Rita licked her lips. "No appeal as a man. No restraint and no class, shuddering like a boy at unexpected touch." She was unbound. Her severed limb was already restored. "I'd thought, perhaps, that Elesia and the True Ancestor brat saw something special in you," she tittered, holding a finger to her lips, "but to think they simply had poor taste!"
"How did-?"
"What, this?" She traced around the hole in her stomach as his words died from a crushed windpipe. The trio of thin tendrils that had seized his sword arm withdrew into Rita's stomach with a sickening slurp as the wound sealed shut. "How unlike the Serpent, to ask what he already knows." Vines dug into his skin, slowly, deliberately. "That appearance is her last memory of you, but your manner and abilities are her last memory as you. Death is invisible to you, snakeskin. Your struggle served no purpose except to entertain me. Now," she beckoned with a single finger as her once-haughty opponent's struggling grew increasingly panicked. "Your secrets. Your despair. Your memories."
"You cannot hold me-!"
Her eyes bored into his. Pink rose petals blew through the dark chamber on a nonexistent breeze, filling his vision with flowers. His struggles weakened, and then he went limp.
"We start with agelessness," Rita's voice had a distant quality to it now. She was both there and elsewhere. "A fine bargaining chip to make Laurentis dance…"
The vines deposited them both on the ground, receding slowly from the chamber. They loosened only slightly for Roa, holding him still in case of an impossible revival. Cluttered desks and bookshelves and delicate contraptions appeared where the sarcophagus had once been. Tall tubes filled with reddish liquid, holding indiscernible lumps of flesh. The moon's light had dimmed, not from a change in scenery but because thick clouds had blanketed the sky, as if summoned by what was taking place in the garden.
"A dead end," Rita said softly. "Stopgap at best, to his curse. Dull." She ran a finger down his cheek. "Let's go back further. Show me inheritance. How did that girl harbor Idea Blood? How did she take it? How would you have taken it from me, given the chance?"
The furniture and research dissolved as dust, reforming as a long table, upon it an unfurled scroll spanning the entire length. Scribbles traveled from one end to the other, interspersed with diagrams and symbols that could not be easily made out, nor understood. Memory was hers, yet understanding would take time. Unless she used an interpreter.
"Elesia!" Rita commanded. "Before me!" Her giddy voice rang through the vast chamber.
But nobody came.
She turned away from Roa, scanning the room with her eyes. Her prisoner was nowhere to be seen. Nor felt by the vines squirming beneath every surface. At some point she had vanished.
It was impossible for the girl to free herself from the Rose Eyes. Roa had not touched her. That left only one possibility.
"The partner," she snarled.
"Come on, come on, wake up already…"
The barrier was cramped and claustrophobic. Stakes had been planted into the ground in a triangle. Between them stretched wavering curtains of pale moonlight, scarcely bright enough to create shadows. Behind the curtains were two women. One, on her knees, cradled the other. Noel could no longer summon the strength of a cathedral; she had only enough for a quiet confessional.
All around the barrier black vines wriggled like earthworms, feeling about for anything out of the ordinary. The curtains warded off the vines and provided privacy and quiet to those within, but would not stand up to direct scrutiny. They were on borrowed time.
That was perhaps why Noel shook her unresponsive partner by the shoulders with more force than necessary, and also why she'd struck Ciel's cheeks several times with both sides of the hand until they shined bright red. Neither attempt to wake the sleeping beauty had shown any success, and she was not about to try a kiss next.
"Why do you have to be so difficult?" she whispered as loud as she dared. "God, you're the worst!"
Noel herself couldn't say why she'd chosen this moment to jump through the aperture in the chamber's roof. If she had waited, perhaps a better opportunity would have appeared. She had no way of actually leaving, let alone with an invalid in tow, and neither could she stand up to any of the vampires in the garden in a straight fight. Yet she'd found herself there nonetheless, and as soon as Rita lost interest in her repulsive distraction, Noel would find herself six feet under.
She tried a nicer approach next: "Come on, please wake up? With sugar on top?"
Ciel did not stir. Her eyes were half-closed and unfocused. Noel bit back a curse.
What did she know about the Rose Eyes' hypnosis? Manipulation of memory and souls, and not much more. Ciel's soul couldn't be trapped in those eyes, or else there would be no need to keep her body alive. She had to be in there, somehow, bound by mental chains. Noel's knowledge ended there. She could only go by instinct and feeling now. Except her only feelings towards her partner were unpleasant at best.
"Can you even hear me in there? Am I talking to a brick wall? Give me something."
No reply. She could try shouting next, but dared not risk it, even with the barrier's sound-dampening effect. The panic in the pit of her stomach grew and pressed against the inside of her lungs. She wanted to scream. Instead, she balled up her fingers in a fist and stifled herself.
The vines outside intensified their search. Several brushed against the curtains of light and turned away only at the last moment. Noel shivered. Soon the Rose Princess would notice the tiny gap in her sixth sense. What next? What could be done before that?
"I'm sure it's hard in there." She tried a different tack. "But you've – I mean, we've been through worse, right? This is nothing. Just shake it off like you always do. I have faith in you, p-partner!"
The insincere compliments succeeded only in bringing an embarrassed flush to Noel's cheeks.
"Okay, maybe not… but you know who else is here, right?" She dropped her voice. "Roa. She pulled him right out of our nightmares, Ciel." If encouragement didn't work, how about fury? An ever-burning fury that could even wake the dead. "Think of all he's done to us. Think of who he took from us! Think of everything you've wished you could do to him every single day. He's right there alongside Rozay-en. She was there too, remember? Laughing. She's still laughing at us."
Once more, no response. Just a glassy stare straight ahead, indifferently taking it all in. The promise of vengeance had kept Noel going with one foot in the grave. Yet it did not move her partner. Of course it wouldn't; that monster had not once fought for revenge.
"Then – then let's pray. The word of the Lord – oh who am I kidding? Neither of us actually believe in that crap."
There was nothing left. No strategy she could think of. Just a monster closing in and the end of the line drawing closer and closer.
"Ugh…" Here she was, burnt and tired and scared, and Ciel was in pristine condition being treated like royalty. Staring at her partner's face forced Noel to remember everything she despised about the girl. "I hate you so much…" she said, blinking away tears. "You're the reason we're in this mess! You had so many chances…"
The click of heels reached Noel's ears. Rita was pacing about. The chamber was not large. It would be soon.
"You've had every chance in the world. Chances they never got!" Noel hissed as she pounded at Ciel's chest, feeling desperation taking hold. The girl splayed out across the cold marble floor like a broken doll. "You never changed. Ever since then. You never apologized. Never got mad. Never cried, never fought back. Not once! What am I supposed to do with that!?"
The barrier creaked and groaned. The vines covering the floor were a carpet now. There was no escaping, even if she left behind the monster she'd come to save. Death was footsteps away.
"Everyone bought it. The Church, the students, everyone." Noel trembled, speaking between gasps as she rested her head on Ciel's chest. "Even – even Tohno. But I never trusted you. Never. I know the truth: you wanted to drag me into it, you bitch. Drag me into your suicide by vampire. Because I never let you forget who you are."
Had she gone mad? Her words had long since stopped making sense. Rather than waking up Ciel, she'd submerged herself in despair. The fear of death, the hatred towards herself and her partner and every undead in France, had forced out feelings without logic. Just like that her anger died, leaving her numb and heavy.
"I – I feel sorry for him," Noel muttered. She pulled herself to her feet, cheeks wet as she glared at the fallen warrior. "He thought – he thought you were somebody. He thought he was somebody. But he was just Roa in the end. Just another vampire…" She rubbed at her eyes with a sleeve and sniffled. "He told me… he told me, y'know… that you saved him. Told him a bunch of nonsense about forgiveness… like you could ever save anyone. Couldn't save him. Couldn't save me. Can't even save yourself."
Was there something worth protecting at her feet? Or was it just a monster? If a broken girl vanished from the earth, would anyone miss her? What about if the woman called Noel vanished? Who would stand by her grave, holding back tears?
There was no one else.
"But I…"
"Ah, there you are."
The barrier vanished, scattered by a rotten breeze.
Dead air invaded Noel's lungs. Dead air and the overdone smell of roses.
"The maid? Really?" Each step Rita took towards them echoed through the hall, bringing with it a pang of panic. "What nerve it must have taken to serve your nemeses. Yet you've lost that nerve by now, haven't you?" She folded her arms and raised her chin, offering the girls a pitying gaze. "Dry your tears," she said. "I grant you that courtesy."
Noel's fingers tightened around her mangled weapon. She shook her head.
"Just make it quick," she said.
"No."
A flick of a finger sent a hundred vines towards her. They fell upon the tired Executor, promising to turn her nightmares into reality.
"Ciel!" came Noel's last cry. "I'm sorry-"
Her world turned black.
There was no body beneath the gravestone. Only a name etched into grey slate, and a single black rose left there.
Snowflakes slowly spiraled from the stony sky, melting against the cool grave. Fall had been short that year; the still green grass and leaves wore frosty shells.
The two women standing before the grave were the last allowed a visit, after sister, teacher, and friend. Noel shifted her weight from one foot to another, still restless from the sharp looks she'd weathered from the others, feeling the evening chill climb up her legs. The sight of the name on the stone wouldn't allow her to relax. It should have been a different name. If only it were the name of a monster rather than a man. She averted her eyes from it, towards her partner.
Ciel was not much better. She stood and stared, stiff as a corpse. Noel considered herself an apt reader of the other woman's mood, but that pride crumbled before a motionless facade. It was even more unnerving than the empty grave.
Noel sighed. No way out but through, then. Some people just needed an example. She knelt down by the grave and placed a hand upon it. Her breath frosted in the cold.
"Sorry, Tohno-kun," she said. "I'll remember you as who you were, not who you became. Being your sensei was fun."
She rose, leaving behind a warm palm-print. He had reminded her of someone. Another boy who'd been trusted and betrayed that trust. Now Ciel too resembled – no, no one at all.
"Well?" she reminded Ciel. "Go on," Noel said, almost gently.
Ciel's mouth hung open. Her brows furrowed. Eyelashes fluttered. "I…" She swallowed whatever had nearly burst out of her. "No. I have nothing to say."
"…nothing?" Frustration found its way into Noel's eyes. The hand that had been reaching for her partner's shoulder instead curled into a fist. "That's not true. Say it."
But Ciel merely shook her head.
Noel clicked her tongue. "Then we're done here," she spat. "It's empty, after all."
She turned away, leaving Ciel on her own by the grave. Noel hoped, as she left, that she would hear something behind her besides the crunching of boots through snow.
But there was nothing. Her world had stopped turning.
One moment the woman stood straight and true. Her eyes stared into the distance, seeing something that had yet to be. Timeless, if only for an eternal instant.
The next moment, eighty tons of solid stone slammed into her side, sandwiching her between one column that stood and another that had somehow traversed the chamber's diameter under its own power.
The plant matter that had nearly torn Noel to bits spasmed, twitched, lost all coordination, and crumbled into shadows.
"Huh?"
Noel was stunned into a stupor by the sight of a vampiress pinned between columns, with only a twitching arm to signify her inevitable recovery. Then a familiar face emerged from behind another pillar. Her stomach twisted itself into a knot.
"Oh, quit your gawking," said Roa, "and get out of my sight."
"…huh?"
Rita's free hand twitched again, grasped at the air. The boy scoffed at the sight of Noel dumbstruck. "Given up, have you? Perhaps you'd like to go the way of your father, compressed into a light snack under a star's gravitational field."
That did the trick. Noel's dumbstruck face twisted under the weight of the hatred that came rushing through her.
She charged, brandishing her halberd and howling curses like a banshee, and was entirely unprepared when a wave of force blasted her away from the man who'd destroyed her life. A soft body arrested her landing. Ciel, still comatose as ever.
"Save yourself the effort." He spread his arms, revealing unharmed flesh beneath his tattered school uniform. "The one you seek is dead. You missed your chance. Now do as you're told."
"I'll never let you go-!"
A great groaning and grinding drowned out the rest of Noel's curse. A new set of black vines wriggled out from beneath the two columns. They pushed, probed, drilled into the stone, searching for weakness and quick to find it. Cracks ran up and down the marble in all directions, and a muffled screech resounded beneath it.
"Hmph." He sneered. "She's invincible here, in the heart of her power. Take Elesia and leave, Executor. This is the chance you prayed for."
Noel wavered, doubt making itself known. The man she hated most was dead, yet now stood here, wearing a friend's face. But no Roa would ever help her.
"Don't misunderstand," he said, as if reading her mind. "So long as that spare shell survives, I might be restored. If you want to stop me, either kill her now or watch her for as long as you live."
The pillar cracked and crumbled. Vines lashed out blindly towards the sound of the boy's voice. His blade hand flashed and they fell apart before reaching him. Where one fell, two more appeared.
"Choose!" he bellowed. "Kill me or save her; or die as half-heartedly as you've lived!"
Marble was sent flying. The creature that emerged was more plant than woman. Her mouth unfolded, rows of thorns where teeth should have been. The whites of her eyes bore a green tinge. Pale roots pulled skin and bone together in tandem with the Curse of Restoration. Slighted and set back one too many times, she abandoned decorum and embraced her inhuman truth.
The rose beast took one step and stiffened as the ground beneath her erupted in light. Electricity surged through the woman-monster. An acrid scent assaulted Noel.
The smell woke her from her stupor. She did not even need to consider her answer. But a problem remained: "I – I can't. The skylight's too far up. We're too heavy-"
"Are you daft, woman!?" He was already before Rita, saber arcing through her chest. She ignored half her body withering into nothing; fresh plant matter surged from the other half and wrapped around Roa, wringing his sword arm like a wet towel. She relented only when a sphere of black light flashed between them, thrusting them apart in opposite directions by gravitational pull alone. Feelers sprouted from her shoulders, catching onto nearby pillars to arrest her flight. Roa had less luck; he collapsed hard against a column. "Ugh – the sacrament, fool! The one you use for-"
Three holes opened up in his left lung, right knee, and forehead. Cracks spiderwebbed through the pillar behind him. The light in his eyes went out.
A smoking seed pod had grown from the shoulder of the monster clawing her way out of the shadows. Already it regenerated, turning its next payload towards Noel.
Roa's open hand twitched, fingers crackling with red energy.
A rock from the ruined pillar flew at Rita's head. She barely noticed. Ten more slammed into her back in quick succession. They did nothing more than disrupt her aim. She glanced back for but an instant to gauge whether another barrage would come. In that moment an orb of light, charged with arcing electricity and flung forth by Roa's unsteady hand, sank into her body. She bellowed furiously at the familiar sensation of scrambled senses and momentary paralysis.
Noel ran past her, clutching Ciel, muttering prayers through clenched teeth.
"There's no escape!" came the roar nipping at her heels. She paid no mind to it.
The stormy skylight loomed overhead, over a hundred feet up. Noel could not leap half that distance on a good day. Yet she charged with reckless abandon, light as a feather. She tensed her legs, took aim, and pushed off the ground with all her strength.
Noel flew as she never had before. Gravity had no hold on her, nor on Ciel.
Not once had she considered applying her weight reduction sacrament to the human body. The texts had said it could not be done. Fool that she was, she had believed them. Now she soared. The aperture grew larger. Her estimate had been on the mark. They would sail right through. She did not notice the red sparks dancing about the soles of her shoes.
She did, however, feel a great warmth behind her. A beast leaping up to seize its escaping prey.
Something slipped around her foot. With a jolt she came to a sudden stop, inches from the aperture. Ciel flew from her hands, tumbling through the hole, and Noel instinctively thrust her halberd forward, hooking its mangled end onto the lip of the exit as the grip around her ankle tightened, eliciting a pained shriek.
"No… not like this…!"
Just like the painting. She would not escape this garden.
The incessant weight only grew, moment by moment, dragging her down. Noel fumbled for a Black Key, only to remember she'd used them all up. Then came a pull stronger than all the others, a wrenching that twisted flesh and bone, followed by an inaudible command from below. She held onto the creaking and groaning halberd with both hands, slowly sliding down its slick length, desperation fueling a hidden wellspring of soon-to-fail strength.
And then the weight was gone. Her leg was free. Noel pulled as hard as she could and sailed through the opening, leaving the Rose Garden for good.
Down below, the two vampires landed simultaneously in the dark. The edge of Roa's sword sizzled from where he'd sliced through the vine. Rita's monstrous appendages slowly receded. Her body returned to its proper shape, though an inhuman scowl remained.
"Disgrace," she cursed him.
"Hardly." Now he was the champion, and she the challenger. "Just hedging my bets."
"You're a Dead Apostle!" The strength of her shout attested to the pride she held in that identity. "A superior being who trampled thousands of vermin!"
"No; I am memory made manifest." The boy raised his blade once more. He was calmer now. Softer, almost. "You'd have known if you paid attention, princess of self-love: She never forgot the look on his face. When he had his knife to her throat, poised for the kill, and instead begged her to live on without him. She dreams of it every night, wishing she could have spared him the anguish. You, whose world holds only herself, could never have realized it."
The lady's eyes blazed red. Rose petals swirled in his peripheral vision. He ignored them, smirking. "Is that all? Do try again. Take the soul of a soulless spell."
None had ever seen the Rose Princess so furious and lived. "I can end you in an instant," she promised.
"By all means," Roa said, uncowed. "Break your connection to her. This place and I will disappear – and she will wake. Your wish will vanish. You will never be alone."
"Serpent…!"
Darkness filled the room once more. The black vines wriggled free of every surface in the garden. She was out for blood now, and no compulsion to entertain herself would interfere. No escape remained. No victory. Only repeated deaths and battles against impossible odds.
"Hm. Round two it is."
Just the way he liked it.