"Strange," Stephen said, surprised. "We were running all the way until we reached the door before the evil spirit caught Derlin and drained him. He should have been somewhere nearby."
He walked in first, an ornate golden-hilted dagger appearing in his hand.
The chamber within was a great hall — consistent in style with the corridor outside, deep black stone slabs for the walls and floor, eight columns of the same colour, a high-domed ceiling from which hung metal rods, each one ending in a candelabra carved in the shape of a different creature.
On either side of the chamber ran rows of stone chairs — eight on the left, nine on the right. This too matched the Fourth Epoch style: the same asymmetry, the same quality of deliberate disorder.
It was fortunate that neither of them was particularly bothered by things not lining up.
"Your Majesty — the evil spirit keeps to the far end. There's a wall there that looks like it's been stained with fresh blood, and it seems to conceal a space behind it. The spirit world doesn't reach through to it, and sprinkling blood had no effect either."
Stephen paused. "Actually... now that I think about it — the evil spirit appeared right after I sprinkled the blood."
"Try to draw it out."
Bernadette walked slowly toward the far end of the chamber as she spoke.
"Right."
Stephen began squeezing his wound, scattering drops of blood across the floor.
"This doesn't look like a tomb."
After a moment's observation, Bernadette arrived at a conclusion. "Or rather — it may have been built to the specifications of a tomb, but the purpose of its construction was not burial."
This was far more like an underground conference room hidden deep beneath the earth.
"It's here!"
A semi-transparent figure surged suddenly out of the first stone chair on the right. It was a man in black armour, face invisible, radiating a dense, oppressive malice.
The moment it appeared, it flung itself without hesitation at Stephen.
"Distort!"
Stephen tried to distort its intention and movement, pressing forward rather than retreating, as the golden dagger flared with a blade of golden light more than a metre long, stabbing hard at the evil spirit.
But the next instant he was lurching about like a man who'd lost all sense of direction, throwing himself straight into the spirit's embrace of his own accord. At the same moment the evil spirit's eyes flickered red, and the blood from Stephen's small cut wound erupted in a jet — draining his entire arm of colour in moments from the sudden massive blood loss.
And then, from within the evil spirit's body, a spear pierced through. Long, ancient in its design, dripping dark red from tip to hilt — every inch of it burning with dull crimson light.
The spirit's movements locked. Cracks spiderwebbed across its semi-transparent body, each one suffused with that same dark red light, and a piercing shriek rang through the chamber.
Stephen seized the moment, driving the golden blade deep into the spirit's head in the final, decisive blow.
"AAAAAH!!!"
BOOM.
The evil spirit exploded, shattering into countless dark red fragments that dissolved rapidly into nothing. A palm-sized black crest clattered to the ground, rolling and ringing until it came to rest at Stephen's feet.
Stephen looked down, and then something struck him — and he gave a helpless, slightly tearful smile. "Your Majesty... I think I just killed... one of my own ancestors."
Bernadette was also at a loss for a moment, though she said evenly: "He died long ago. What remained here was only an evil spirit — no consciousness, no reason left."
Even as she spoke, she opened the Eye of Prying, letting the chamber's every surface layer and overlap in her sight like shifting colour planes, cross-checking that none of the other stone chairs concealed a spirit.
"It's safe."
She nodded to Stephen, then continued her survey of the Fourth Epoch tomb chamber.
"Did none of your family ever mention this place to you?"
"Never."
Stephen shook his head. "My knowledge of the Gloucester family goes back only as far as the War of the Violated Oath — further back than that, there's nothing on record."
He picked up the crest and looked around with curious eyes. "I never imagined the Gloucester family had this kind of depth — traceable all the way to the Fourth Epoch!"
"There's another possibility: this may have nothing to do with your family at all, and the crest design is simply a coincidence." Bernadette said, then explained: "Based on the scale and arrangement of this chamber, whoever the tomb was built for was a person of extraordinarily high status — in the Fourth Epoch, that means an angel family at minimum."
Stephen looked startled. "Don't tell me I actually am a Solomon descendant?"
"Perhaps."
Bernadette moved to the far wall — the one that looked as though it had been soaked in blood — and gave a light wave. Pale-green tendrils of vine erupted along the surface, probing from every angle, trying to force their way through the stone — and left not the slightest mark.
It wasn't that the wall was especially hard. Something had been layered onto it — a power that blocked intrusion.
She stared at the wall for a few seconds, then spread her fingers. The crimson-stained Lance of Longinus condensed once again in her palm, already radiating a devastating presence before it was even thrown.
"Do you mind if I destroy your family tomb?"
She glanced sideways at Stephen. "I find it hard to believe the Moses Ascetic Order went to the trouble of coming here just out of idle curiosity."
Stephen spread his hands. "I already killed an ancestor with my own hands — what's a tomb at this point? Besides..." He tilted his head. "Maybe none of this has anything to do with me at all."
"Very well."
A beat later, the Lance's aura surged again. Bernadette drew her arm back, ready to throw — and then an awkward, laboured voice suddenly filled the chamber:
"I mind."
!!!
Stephen moved in a flash, positioning himself in front of Bernadette, as she levelled the Lance of Longinus toward the direction of the voice.
Clack.
A twisted figure shambled out of the corner's shadow — almost skeletal in appearance, bone wrapped in desiccated skin, unnerving to look at.
"Solicitor Derlin?"
Stephen recognised the man immediately — though every instinct sharpened further.
The figure calling itself "Derlin" worked its jaw to produce a stiff, croaking sound: "Oh, he's been dead a long time — drained dry. I'm merely using his body. Your blood gave me the means to operate him — my thanks for that."
"My blood? Or the 'solicitor's' blood?"
The withered face tried to arrange itself into something like amusement, without much success. "Neither. The bloodline of His Imperial Majesty Tudor — how could I ever forget that? No — it was that."
Stephen blinked. "Tudor? You mean the Tudor of the Tudor Kingdom? You're saying I'm a Tudor descendant?"
"Indeed. If my guess is correct, you carry the bloodline of children born before He made His forced pathway switch to Red Priest — when He was still the Prince Who Slew His Way Up the Sequences."
A forced switch to Red Priest?
Bernadette kept her voice steady despite the surprise in her chest. "And who are you?"
To be continued…
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