A Heart of Stone

Demon King Antigonus began their conversation with a laugh.

“I’m not sure what you are saying, Menuan,” he smiled. “My heart has yet to petrify. After all, I am still alive.”

“I can see that,” Lavenza nodded. “I am humbly asking your permission for me to claim your heart when you have petrified.”

“Lavenza?” Richard’s eyes rose to her. “What is this about?”

“Hmm,” the Demon King raised his arm as if to rub his chin, but forgot that his fingers could no longer bend. “May I ask you three questions regarding this matter, Menuan?”

“If that is your request, so be it,” Lavenza shrugged, “but be warned I will not entertain the fourth.”

“Very well,” the Demon King barked another laugh. “Then first. Why do you need my heart?”

“For a ritual,” she answered.

The Demon King waited for an explanation that never came. The silence between the apostate and the king grew palpable.

“I suppose I should be more careful with my questions,” Antigonus mused. “Then answer me this, Menuan. How did you enter this city while the other Menuan failed?”

“Other Menuan?” Tamarin said. “Lavenza, what is he talking about?”

“What does he mean by how you entered the city?” Faye asked.

Lavenza sighed. The old king was more perceptive than she remembered.

“Menuans are servants of the Endire,” she explained. “We were bathed in its light from a young age. To allow us into the heart of the Abyss is a dangerous affair. And so, there is a power here that rests with the king, a power that allows him to petrify the undeserving who cross into the threshold of the city.”

“You should have been petrified the moment you stepped upon the grounds,” Antigonus frowned. “Well, I would have only petrified a part of you, as I did to the old woman.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t be satisfied if I said I am more powerful than you,” Lavenza replied, “that your powers have waned and have allowed me passage.”

“No,” Antigonus smiled, “for the old woman had more strength than me in my youthful days. Had it simply been a contest of strength, I would not have been able to repel her.”

“Hold on,” Tamarin came to Lavenza. “The old woman? Do you mean the Menuan headmistress? The one who attacked you? Lavenza, what is going on? Why is that fucking bitch here in the Abyss?”

“Perhaps you should ask Richard, who remains poisoned by her words,” Lavenza muttered.

“Richard?” Tamarin gasped at her groveling leader. “You knew about this?”

“She…visited us just the other day,” he answered. “She was one who led us here.”

“I knew it was suspicious how you had acquired the directions to this place,” Faye muttered, “and how you rushed us through the city to get here.”

“And you kept this from us? Why?” Tamarin demanded.

“She said there was a cure for the petrification here. She said that Lavenza knew about everything,” Richard stammered. “She knows, Tamarin. She knows a way to stop us all from petrifying. I couldn’t just ignore it, don’t you see? The quest demands that we save Aparthia!”

“I don’t care if Lavenza knows how to bring down the sister moons,” Tamarin screamed. “Richard, she tried to kill her. She tried to kill Lavenza and Deme. What were you thinking listening to a madwoman?"

"You would have done the same in my position!"

"You are so fucking full of shit!" she screeched.

“Everyone!”

The demon’s voice announced itself in the audience chamber. Antigonus was right to remain prideful of his own powers. The echo brought Tamarin to her knees. Deme covered her ears in fright.

“Everyone. Please. Let us,” he said, “cool our heads. I have little time before I petrify, and I would like my questions answered. Lavenza, if you would please?”

The apostate lifted her staff into the air. Three shades rose from within its suspended body and cloaked Lavenza in an aurora of blood, sea, and earth.

“The remaining magics of the Endire on Aparthia,” she said. “Grixys. Pelagia. Aphelion. They shield me from the petrification of the Abyss.”

Lavenza saw in Antigonus’s eyes that he was not yet convinced.

“And what’s more,” she added. She reached into her robes and offered to him the petals of a decayed flower. Deme’s eyes widened. “I’ve used what remains of this flower as protection.”

“Is that...?”

“Only the withered remains we found in the caverns, child,” Lavenza whispered. “Nothing more.”

“Rafta,” Antigonus muttered. “Fully withered. I suppose that is enough to survive even the City of Stone. Understood, Menuan. I have only one more question.”

“Of course.”

“What if I were to say no?” Antigonus asked. “What if I refuse to grant you permission?”

Lavenza exhaled. Another easy question.

“Then I will do nothing,” she bowed. “I do not intend to take what has not been given.”

“Hmm,” the Demon King stared past Lavenza. “Then I will grant my permission, but on one more condition.”

“State it, king.”

“I shall speak with the child,” Antigonus said.

“…Only if she allows,” Lavenza replied. “Deme, the Demon King wishes to speak with you.”

“He’s not scary?”

“Trust me,” Lavenza smiled. “He is not. Think of him as an old man who wishes to speak with his grandchild one last time.”

Deme left the comfort of Lavenza’s robes and stepped forward. She twiddled her thumbs between her hands and stared into the Demon King’s gaze only a few glimpses at a time.

“What is your name, child?” Antigonus asked.

“Deme,” she answered.

“Deme,” the Demon King pondered the name. “Do you know who I am?”

“They say you’re the Demon King,” Deme said.

“Indeed, that’s right,” Antigonus smiled. “Tell me, Deme. Why have you come here? I suspect, like the others here, you have a reason to be in the Abyss?”

“I’m,” Deme paused, “I’m in search of Rafta, the Withering Flower.”

“Rafta, is it?” Antigonus looked surprise. “Why might a child be after such a thing?”

“To finish my father’s armor,” Deme answered. “He was a blacksmith, and he was wished to see his armor reforged with it.”

“A noble purpose,” Antigonus said. “If I may, child, may I see this armor?”

Deme nodded. She dropped her knapsack to the floor and fetched her father’s cuirass from within. Demon King Antigonus nodded for her to come forward. Slowly, Deme crossed the threshold, up the steps to the throne, and held the cuirass before the king.

“I would have loved to touch this piece,” Antigonus breathed. “Alas, my stone hands feel nothing, but my eyes can tell that this was expertly done. A lovely armor, child. You have done your father proud to have preserved it for this long.”

“Your praise humbles me,” Deme lowered her head.

Antigonus looked at Deme, then back at Lavenza. Somewhere, perhaps in the heart that Lavenza meant to take, Antigonus deduced her purpose. He saw that even despite his sullen state, arms and legs incapacitated by the petrification, Lavenza appeared ready at any moment to strike him down, either by a spell on the precipice of her lips or in the staff that hummed with brilliant energy.

“The petrification shall consume me soon,” Antigonus sighed. “When it does, you may take my heart, Menuan. Do with it as you like.”

“Thank you,” Lavenza said.

“As for the rest of you,” Antigonus surveyed his chambers. “I’m sorry, but you will find no salvation for the petrification here. You may remain here as long as you would like. When you are finished, there is a passage at the end of the city. It is a lift. It will return you to Aparthia.”

“My liege.”

The troll from the entranceway, Castorp, strolled into the audience chamber with heavy thuds.

“Pardon my interruption,” he said in a low, wavering way. “I sense that the time is close.”

“Castorp, my friend,” Antigonus smiled. “There is no need for apologies now. We only do what must be done.”

“Yes, my lord,” the troll nodded.

“My friends,” Demon King Antigonus announced. “Castorp here intends to sculpt my final passage into the Abyss. I ask that you wait outside the throne room.”

“If I may be so bold,” Tamarin approached. “Might I ask to stay here, Demon King?”

“I ask for the same privilege,” said Faye. “I have never answered to a king or queen before, but I imagine a king would like to be surrounded by his subjects at the very end.”

“You may,” Antigonus smiled. “But Menuan. I would see you gone from my chambers, along with the human and the child. Castorp will present to you my heart. He will not let you down.”

“As you wish,” Lavenza replied. “Let’s go Deme. Richard. Farewell, Antigonus. Eco Severin.”

“Farewell,” Deme repeated.

“Go now child,” smiled the king, “may you meet our progeny and thrive among them.”

Deme turned her head quizzically at the king’s suggestion but said no more. Lavenza hauled the despondent Richard by the collar out of the throne room. Still in the chamber, Faye and Tamarin knelt before Demon King Antigonus with heads lowered.

Castorp raised his chisel and mallet over the king’s crown. Lavenza shielded Deme’s eyes and looked away herself. What came next was not for them to see.

Once outside, the entranceway into the audience chamber pulled closed. There came a faint ring, the echo of hardened steel set upon stone. It was a kind, solitary note, with a quiet rhythm, like water rippling from the touch of autumn leaves. And then, like the arrival of winter and the stillness of a frozen lake, the echo diminished into silence, and all of the City of Stone fell completely still.