Crimson Court

Sunset veils the city of Aldwynn in darkness. Its high stone walls cast deep-set shadows in the waning throes of golden hour. Hundreds of crows blot out the cascading sun. Summoned by tolling city bells that herald the coming dusk, they roost upon shingle rooftops like restless children awaiting supper. Light gives way to dark, and consorts of mischief and misery claim the streets as a rambling of hooded figures. Shops warily shutter their windows, families bolt their entrances, and silence befalls the city.

Within her musty hovel, Jocasta wraps a wine-daubed cloth around her calloused finger before gingerly brushing it over her newborn’s pursed lips. Ada reaches out with soft nubby fingers, an idle kick shaking her within her mother’s embrace. She suckles the droplets of wine, pawing the larger hand with ebbing fervor. Jocasta gently rocks her coal-haired cherub, caressing her sinless skin with envy in her eyes. Sleep courts Ada as her mother sings a lullaby under the dim flicker of candlelight.

"Phillipe Phillipe refused to sleep,

Oh what mischief do you reap?

Sing your sins to the Crimson Court,

And to dreams, you will cavort. "

Jocasta swaddles her ruddy-cheeked daughter in a quilt, gently lowering her into a makeshift bed under the floorboards. She muzzles Ada with the wine-doused cloth, tying it from her mouth to nape. Ada hardly stirs, taken by a lush dream. Jocasta stares down at her longingly, and sets the floorboard back into place; one among a hundred others just as old and weathered concealing her child.

With a measure of relief, she opens the armoire and examines a maroon robe. She thumbs over the scars in her stitchwork; an amateur attempt to mend the disquiet in her mind from when she plunged a knife into its wearer. She had since discovered other sutures of varying handiwork; signatures in a history of ownership as it passed from one victim to the next. Jocasta wraps herself in it, left wondering whether the cloak was originally maroon.

She unbars the door to an audience of crows who watch with glinting orange eyes as the dying grasps of sunlight crest their heads. They wait with crooked necks as she descends a crumbling stone stairway onto the ghostly streets below. She walks among the denizens of the night, scattering like roaches as eerie howls echo through the city. Looming far beyond the snaking corridor of ramshackle houses stands the symbol of the Ailtire; the Black Citadel. What was once a monument to their indisputable power now feels ethereal and distant, the ragged Chalice flags of the Ailtire replaced by the banners of the Old Coalition.

Passing an alley, Jocasta hears familiar screams snuffed by rapid stabbings— She carries on, through the desolate market streets, around the corner of the Cracked Chalice, towards an open courtyard, and away from the memory of what she too is capable of. That night still feels like a morose dream. She catches her breath beneath ropes of fluttering laundry abandoned by those who never made it home.

At the center of the courtyard stands a fountain statue. The stone figure of an Ailtire slits his wrist with a sword. Red liquid seeps down the blade, overflowing the goblet of a kneeling man as it spills into the fountain base. A symbol of their gift to Aldwynn, indulged now by three men who drink ravenously from it. With gurgling pleas, their amorphous faces gaze upon the figure with reverence. Their stomachs swell beyond capacity, fluid filled sacs sloshing as they spew water from their swollen mouths back into their trough.

Jocasta watches from between two houses, as the clatter of armored footsteps approaches. An armed group pry the flailing men away from the fountain during a routine patrol. Each of them wears a painted pauldron unifying them as the Old Coalition, a militia that arose out of the War of Generations; a conflict that saw the elderly take up arms against the Aldwynnian Church who ostracized them for their age. They stare down Jocasta with suspicion, while she watches with disdain; thugs and hooligans who persecuted the religious practices of true-blooded Aldwynnians. Citizens were driven to atone in desperate ways because of them, leaving more than a few drowned corpses around the monument. Jocasta empathized with their plight, spurned by the birth of Ada to find sanctuary from their inevitable fate. Hell.

Jocasta circles around the commotion, gauging the fading light of the sky, then the statue’s shadow, following its shade into the downward slope of a winding back alley until she reaches a dead end. From within the folds of her cloak, she pulls out an ivory key meant to open the rusted sewer gate ahead. She cautiously approaches, doubting the gossip that had guided her this far. But creaking wood betrays the presence of another.

Clothing lines twang and all around her, dark bodies drop from their perch. The furtive silhouettes of feral-eyed children encircle her, crawling on their spindly arms like maned wolves. Crusted hair and cloth mats their fetid skin in a film of blood— their own, or their victims, Jocasta can’t tell. They snarl with foaming mouths, prowling ever closer. Jocasta stumbles back into the gate, fidgeting with the lock.

A mess of rags dashes past her drawing blood with a razor. Jocasta winces with a jolt, fumbling the key as it plunges into the shallow stream of sewage drifting under the gate. With eyes wide she falls to her knees, groping through the bars to fish out the key. Her knees soak from the ebbing stream of runoff as she scrapes at the ground. The ragged child holds up his blade, licking the crimson off its chipped edge.

Two of them leap in unison, arms splayed out to latch onto her like talons digging into flesh. Their momentum slams her forehead into the crossbar of the gate with a resonating clang. Her vision sparks in a flurry of stars as the children claw and bite at her form. She feels the shape of the key hit her fingertips and scoops it up amongst substances that squelch between her fingers. Jocasta staggers to her feet, the combined weight of the lithe children lighter than she thought. With a twist, she manages to fling one off. She grabs the other by the scruff of their nape and throws them into the stone arch of the sewer entrance. He drops into a slump.

Jocasta grabs hold of the gate bars, inserting the key as chunks of red slough off it. The key rattles in place as she flits her attention to and fro with fomenting panic. The children snarl bearing teeth, galloping towards her. A click of relief, and she deftly slips beyond the gate, locking it behind her. The sound of rattling iron bars begin to fade— the only measure of distance as she runs into the abyss, blind as a newborn.