An Ancient Heritage

*The next day at Clearcourt Castle, The King's Quarters*

The door opened quietly, Cassandra's small frame passing through the space she had made quickly before she turned and closed the door behind her, taking great care to make not a sound. Although Jacob had passed several days ago, it would be many years before Cassandra lost the knack for slipping past the guards in the section of the castle reserved for the King and his family. She had met with the young king clandestinely many times, and knew the guard schedule well.

She threw the bolt into place, sealing herself in the room before turning and pausing, resting her back against the wooden barrier and staring at the room she was now in. The King's bedchambers were as she remembered them, all of King Jacob's personal items still in their places where he'd left them. It was as if he was not really gone, and would be back in only a short time to don the coat he'd strewn across the back of a chair or pick up his sword and scabbard from where it leaned against a dresser.

Hesitantly Cassandra stepped further into the room, pausing to run her hand over the coat, feeling the fabric beneath her fingertips. She knew in her heart that Jacob was gone, and the feeling of being here was like a thousand knives stabbing into her. Even so, she took a shaky breath and straightened upright, letting her hand fall away from the coat. After her talk with Tristana, Cassandra was resolved to get to the bottom of Jacob's death. Whether or not her visions would eventually be the death of her, she was not going to let the King's passing go without investigation. Just as she had told her friend to be bold, it was now Cassandra's turn for boldness.

Although it was one of the most painful things she'd been forced to do, Cassandra began a diligent search of the room, looking for clues or signs that might indicate something suspicious about Jacob's death. She started with his writing desk, rummaging quietly through the papers there and finding nothing out of the ordinary; most of the documents were related to the affairs of the Kingdom of Olinoth.

With nothing turning up in the most obvious place, Cassandra paused, turning towards the large four-post bed that dominated one side of the room. The bed where the King had passed in his sleep supposedly, and the bed where she had lain with him in secret. Swallowing a lump in her throat, the young noblewoman forced herself to walk towards it, her hands running across the comforter on the top of the thick mattress, her keen eyes searching for the slightest thing that was out of place.

At first, all seemed as it should be, and Cassandra was about to give up and look in another area of the room before she noticed the soot on the floor. It seemed like nothing, just a few specs of dirt on the stone floor of the King's chambers, and yet as she bent down to look closer, she observed that the soot seemed to be smeared ever so slightly, as if it had been dragged in.

Cassandra knelt beside the soot, her fingers running across the stones of the floor. She bit her lip pensively in thought, studying the pattern of the mark there. She knew that there were no candle sconces above the bed, and the fireplace was on the other side of the room, so what had caused the mark? She looked harder, practically crawling across the stone floor as she followed the angle that the little mark took, her eyes coming up to the blank stone wall beside the bed.

She rose, walking over to the stones, pressing her hands against them and feeling along their edges, searching for anything unusual. As with the other parts of the room she'd searched, at first she felt nothing. As she ran her palm across the edge of two stones one final time, she felt something strange.

She felt a draft.

Cassandra's eyes widened as she continued to press her hands against the stones. For there to be a draft coming from the solid wall meant that the space beyond it was open. It meant something was hidden there. Being that there were no obvious signs of a lever or other device that might open the space, she decided to take a chance. Keeping her voice low, Cassandra sang a few small verses of a prayer, using a minor incantation that would allow her to detect the presence of magic.

The small spell sunk into the stones, and suddenly a square outline began to glow. Her mouth hanging open in shock, Cassandra pressed a hand against a glowing symbol that would normally be invisible to the human eye, her spell revealing the secrets of the hidden door. The stones began to shift, grinding against one another, the wall opening before her and revealing a passageway with a set of stone steps leading downward beyond. The dim glow of candle or flames illuminated the bottom of the stairs where her vision ended.

Heart pounding in her chest, Cassandra cautiously stepped through the opening in the wall, her sandals placed carefully on each stone step as she brushed cobwebs from in front of her. Determined to discover what was at the bottom, she boldly pressed on, the glow of the flames growing brighter as she neared the bottom.

Finally arriving at the bottom of the stairwell, Cassandra paused, finding herself in a strange, round chamber. Two other passageways branched off from the central room, trailing off into the distant darkness. Along one curved wall a small shrine of some sort had been set up on fallen stones, candles and melted candlewax all around a central flat stone. Atop the center of the shrine sat a tome, the book having a dark black chain around its cover and a steel lock keeping it shut. It looked partially charred at the edges, with strange runes running along its cover. The entire chamber was illuminated by a fire that burned in a hole in the wall opposite the shrine, seemingly without fuel.

Hesitantly Cassandra moved into the circular room, approaching the shrine and studying it. She had never seen such a dark place, and the layout of the candles and the tome set her on edge. She reached out, carefully taking the tome up in both hands, feeling the strange leathery cover and the way the runes had been burned into its surface. The chain binding the tome made a faint rattling noise as she took it from its resting place, and just holding the object made Cassandra uneasy.

Surely this is a clue as to what happened to Jacob. I'll need to take this and find a way to open it.

Even as Cassandra thought about her next move, she noticed something unusual. She tilted her head, staring into the dancing flames that illuminated the chamber. Oddly, one portion of the fire seemed not to move like normal fire would, the flames curving around a round object that almost resembled a face. With a start that set Cassandra's heart to pounding, she realized she was staring at a face.

And it was staring back.

Shaking with fear, Cassandra slowly backed away from the fire, heading towards the stares. To her horror, the object in the flames moved, slowly slipping from the hole in the wall and into the chamber she was in, a thing from her worst nightmares.

It was some sort of dog, made of cinders, ash, and fire. Flames licked up from its molten body as its ashy paws pressed against the stone floor of the chamber. For a moment, it just stared at the intruder before it opened it's mouth, revealing almost magma-hot flames within it and a row of razor sharp teeth made of burning ashes. When it growled, the sound echoed through the small space, and Cassandra nearly felt her heart stop in her chest.

Her morale breaking, Cassandra turned, dashing up the stairs and back towards the king's chamber, the tome clutched against her chest. Behind her the demonic hound growled again, and she could hear it bounding after her, its paws making small hissing sounds as they burned the dust on the stone steps.

Cassandra ran as fast as she'd ever run in her entire life, but even so it was not enough to escape the flaming hound. As she reached the questionable safety of the top of the stairs and the king's chamber beyond, she heard the hound growl right behind her. It leaped into the air, its weight slamming into her back and throwing her forward and onto the ground.

Cassandra hit the stone floor hard, the breath rushing from her lungs and the tome flying from her hands. It skidded across the floor even as the hound tumbled past her. The beast slipped, its four flaming legs scrambling for purchase as it sought to turn. For her part, Cassandra tried to rise, only succeeding in rolling over as she struggled to draw breath. She lay on her back for a moment, dazed as a shadow fell over her, the flaming maw of the beast inches from her head.

When it growled directly next to her head, Cassandra nearly fainted in fear. She went to bolt upwards and failed as the beast's jaws clamped down on her shoulder, the bite painful and searing her clothing in an instant. She began to scream, and the beast growled again, releasing her shoulder and jumping on top of her, its jaws clamping down on her thigh this time as the weight of its two front legs drove the air from her lungs again.

The pain was intense, the burning combined with the feeling of the beast's teeth sinking into her flesh. Cassandra thrashed, struggling to scream and hearing distant shouts from beyond the locked door, her fear having caught the attention of the guards. Even so, she knew they would be too late as the flaming hound began to thrash and clamp down harder on her leg, her blood welling up from the wounds it was causing.

As the beast continued to bite her, Cassandra felt a strange tugging sensation deep within her, the demonic creature beginning to feed on her life energy. Weakness flowed through her, making it impossible to scream or even bring her hands up to try to push the beast off her. She could feel her life slipping away slowly, the pain and darkness rising up around her. Mournfully she thought of Jacob, and realized that this very beast might have been the creature that drew his vibrant life from his body.

I am sorry my beloved. I will die as you have died, and they will only find my mysteriously bloody corpse on the floor of your chambers. I have failed you my love.

As her vision began to gray at the edges, Cassandra felt her body rock, vertigo swirling around her. She realized with wry amusement that she was about to have a vision, even as she lay dying. Apparently her family's curse didn't care what the circumstances were when visions arose. As the horror of the real world faded around her, Cassandra began to see something else....

********************************

A spark glowed brightly, its light so bright as it hovered above the fields of green that it was almost impossible to look at. It was inspiring, and Cassandra felt her spirits soar as she looked upon the glowing light. In the distance, darkness rose up, hurtling towards that glowing spark, and it shone all the brighter, throwing back the darkness that closed in around it.

In time, the darkness grew too strong, and Cassandra mourned as the spark began to dim, it's light covered in the surrounding darkness, no longer visible to her. It seemed that there would be only the darkness forevermore, and yet even as she watched, other sparks arose and drove back the darkness, revealing the first spark she had seen. It was dimmer now, and a speck of darkness was within it. 

Her vision followed the spark as it floated above the green plain below, watching as it finally landed on the vibrant terrain. There it sank into the earth, a small tree beginning to bloom. The tree grew, branches coming out from it as it reached towards the sky. Along each branch apples began to bloom, and Cassandra felt joy with the birth of each one. Now and then, an apple would begin to turn black, its juicy flesh decaying as it withered on the branch. Cassandra felt she could weep with each of the lost apples, watching as they fell from the try to rot on the ground below.

The tree grew taller and taller, more and more apples growing red and bright along its branches. Every now and then, another would blacken and fall, but it was rare and the joy of the tree's existence was greater than such losses. At the highest branch, Cassandra saw two apples grow, bright and red with a third apple beginning to grow between them. This one too, had turned black, but unlike the others it did not wither. The skin of the apple was as dark as the darkest night, and yet she could see the seeds within it glowing with light. It grew larger, the fruit perfectly shaped and normal other than its dark color, and for some reason the vision told Cassandra that this was significant.

A moment later, the world spun around her, and Cassandra's vision ended.

***********************************

Cassandra gasped as the vision ended, her weak body barely functional as the hound drew the rest of her life from her. In that moment of confusion, Cassandra realized the dream meant something, but she could not understand it in her dazed state. Even so, as consciousness returned for the last time, she felt something unusual within her. She could feel the beast's tug at her life force, as if it was intimately a part of her now. Scared that she would die, Cassandra's mind reached out, tugging back, trying to reclaim her energy, her very life.

To her everlasting surprise, her tug turned into a torrent, like a child petulantly snatching an object from the hands of another. The hound howled mournfully as a rushing, burning tide of energy surged from it and into Cassandra, her body beginning to function again. Before her eyes the beast's flames flickered and died, and it burst into a cloud of glowing cinders that drifted down around her, each slowly extinguished as it settled on the stones.

In a dazed state of confusion, Cassandra sat upright, feeling her strength returning and a strange heat like a fever traveling through her body. She brushed soot and embers from her torn and burned dress before she began to crawl across the floor, reaching out for the tome and clutching it to her again. She heard pounding at the locked door as guards tried to enter to determine where the screaming had come from.

"Interesting. You have slain my hound. Who are you?" a male voice whispered behind Cassandra.

She gasped, rising to her feet, her eyes wide as she turned to see a man standing in the doorway to the hidden stairwell. He moved further into the room, sliding the secret door closed behind him, a smirk on his face. He wore tattered, studded leather armor and he had strange tattoos running up his bare arms.

"No matter. You have taken something that does not belong to you, and of course you have seen that which you should not. You must be eliminated," the man said menacingly. He reached to his belt, removing a whip and holding it out. The weapon ignited, fire trailing down its length.

Cassandra's mouth opened and closed, words failing her as terror rose up in her once more. She had no idea who the man was, or what was going on. All she knew was she needed to get the tome away from him, and that her body felt like it had been bathed in lava. The fever continued to rise in her, corresponding to her fear and terror, the burning sensation growing and centering in her spine.

The man grinned, seeing his victim trembling with terror. He lashed out with the whip, the flaming weapon striking the king's chair and severing it clean in half, leaving two charred halves and a flaming coat to fall to the floor. With a laugh the man used the weapon again, this time cutting a flaming divot out of the floor, the weapon so hot that it turned the stone almost to a liquid state.

As the man intentionally terrorized her, Cassandra felt her fear and terror give way to something else. Rage began to build in her, anger at the attacks and her impending death. She had come to find out what happened to her lover, and had stumbled on an assassin that most certainly had taken Jacob's life. The anger grew in her, a searing, burning sensation that she could hold back no longer.

The whip came up again, this time flicking out and towards Cassandra's neck. The attack was clearly meant to decapitate her, and she had run out of time. Her hand came up before her, and the weapon struck her arm, the flaming, magma-hot cord wrapping over and over around her wrist and stopping.

The pain was intense, the searing, burning feeling in her arm matched only by the fire of rage burning deep within her. She could see by the look on her attacker's face that the weapon should have severed her arm cleanly off, should even now be charring the very bones beneath her flesh. And yet it was not, the flaming hot whip hurt more than she had ever experienced before, but it was not burning through her flesh.

In that moment, Cassandra closed her eyes and let her rage rule her. Although she could not see, the flames of the hound that she absorbed rushed through her flesh, bursting from her back and burning through her dress. Flaming hot wings made up of dark ash with burning cinders in them burst forth, displayed behind her like the wings of some dark angel.

Her assailant's eyes widened with shock and he flicked his weapon, loosening it and letting it fall from Cassandra's wrist. As her eyes opened, she saw him backing up, a hint of fear in his voice now, "The masters will not allow another to interfere here! I do not know who you are or how you got here, but you will not take this place from them. It is their destiny! You must die!"

Confused at the words, unaware of her transformation, Cassandra just watched in horror as the man brought his whip up again, the weapon about to strike at her. Instinctively she brought her arms up before her, the flaming wings arcing forward to protect her from the weapon as she covered her head. The whip lashed out, the flames simply absorbing into the fires around Cassandra, the ash and soot of the wings on her back throwing out clouds of burning hot volcanic gas across the room as they fanned out.

The man was struck with the flaming fires and burned to a cinder in a heartbeat, the room behind him bursting into flames as the very stones glowed red from the heat. As Cassandra brought her arms up and away from her face, she cried out, finally seeing the magic that had manifested from her flesh.

Cassandra thrashed, the flaming wings on her back moving in time with her body, flinging flames around her and nearly knocking her off balance. The room was an inferno now, the shouts of the guards outside growing louder as searing heat built up on the other side of the door. Afraid, confused, tainted with magic she could not understand, and unable to process what was happening, Cassandra saw a window nearby and went to rush towards it to save herself from the fires.

Her wings flexed and flapped, moving with her will and hurling her forward. In utter shock, Cassandra saw the stained glass window rushing towards her. She clutched the tome to her chest as she was hurled through the glass by the strange magic on her back, shards of it flying out all around her as she plunged out of the inferno she had accidentally created behind her.

As she fell, Cassandra's flaming wings left a trail of dark smoke behind her, obscuring her from view. In an almost surreal moment, Cassandra watched the sunlight and the light of the flames behind her reflecting from the falling glass all around her, even as the Lake of Stars hurtled towards her far below.

She knew the impact would hurt, and she thrashed in the air, the wings behind her flapping and doing absolutely nothing to aid her descent other than creating some drag. Although they likely could support her weight, she had no idea how the magic worked, why they were there, or how to use them, and so like a young bird that never learned to fly, she fell from the sky, plunging into the cool blue water below.

The impact hurt more than she'd imagined, and she nearly blacked out as she was brutally bruised by the water. Worse still, the deep, cold water flowed over her back, extinguishing the wings on her shoulder blades and feeling like a thousands knives cutting into her spine. In a second, the magic was gone, and there was only Cassandra, the ragged tome clutched to her chest, and the dark water all around her.

For a moment, Cassandra thought about simply letting go, of letting the water claim her. The moments of terror she had just experienced were more than she could bear, and the questions that arose when she thought of how she had survived left a feeling of dread in her heart. The visions she'd seen confused her and scared her, and giving up seemed a sweet release.

Jacob must be avenged. Someone did murder him, and you need to find out who.

The thought galvanized her, and though it pained her terribly, Cassandra Arderne began to swim back towards the surface


She began to swim towards Selwynn Estate on the far side of the lake.

*Original work. All rights Reserved. Copyright 2014.