Prologue

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Warden.”

“It’s no problem, Captain. The gala ended earlier than expected. What’s happened?”

“Didn’t the runner tell you?”

“The poor lass was so exhausted she could barely stand, let alone say it was an emergency.”

“Emergency might be a stretch, but something has happened with Inmate 2775.”

The warden paused. “That ‘Rose’ woman? What’s she done?”

The lift doors opened, and the captain gestured the warden inside. “She’s started singing.”

The doors closed as the narrow steel cage began its long descent hundreds of metres beneath the ground.

“Late last night,” the captain continued. “The officers on duty reported that she was humming; then, about 20 minutes ago, she started singing.”

“What song?”

“No idea, sir. It was some Elvish or Daemonic, maybe some sort of Gaelic, tune. None of the lads could make sense of it.”

“Is she still-?”

“No, sir, quietened down right after we sent for you.”

“Curious. Five years without one word and now this. What’s she up to? Say anything?”

“No, sir, I-”

“Not you, her. Did she say anything you could understand?”

1500 metres beneath the surface, the lift came to a stop.

“Just one word: time.”

“For what?”

The two men emerged from the lift and were greeted by 30 saluting soldiers.

“Not sure, but move everyone to Code Amber in case, sir.”

“Good. How many are on duty tonight?”

“650, including non-coms.”

“Captain, Warden, sirs, this way please.”

The two were escorted to the control room of the maximum-security wing of Tartarus, a wing with a grand total of 10 prisoners. Here, only the worst and most dangerous, the near uncontainable, criminals in the world were housed inside.

4 of them were awake, but only 1 was sat down on their bed, in the outfit they’d been captured in.

A black and white suit with a snow-white face mask adorned with a winding, red rose with a green stalk and thorns.

They tried to take them off to get her in the orange jumpsuit, but they were physically unable to do so.

‘Whether its witchcraft or moulded to her skin, it won’t budge,’ the arresting officer had said. ‘No weapons or contraband, and she complied with all our orders, sir.’

“Captain, did she ever give her name?”

“No, sir, just asked us to call her Rose.”

“She say anything?”

“Nothing, sir,” a security member answered.

“I’ll try talking to her.” The Warden walked over to the microphone connected to Rose’s cell. Rose, can you hear me?” The woman didn’t visibly react. “This is Sir Corsley Wight, Warden of Tartarus and her majesty’s Sword; I understand that you’ve been singing a lovely tune for us today.”

Rose titled her head slightly to look at the camera outside her cell.

“Are you in distress of any kind or finally willing to talk?”

Still, she said nothing.

“What song was it you were singing? One of your favourites? Maybe one from your hometown?” Still, nothing. “Why’d you stop singing when my men mentioned I was coming?”

“The gala.”

The whole room went silent at the sound of Rose’s sweet, gentle voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Today, the 55th Royal Gala to celebrate the end of the civil war,” Rose continued. “That’s what your men said you were at.”

Anxiously, the Warden asked, “Why does that matter?”

“Because.” Rose slowly stood up. The camera lens began to crack. “Today is the day it begins.”

Suddenly, with a great explosion of purple mana, the camera, the security office and the walls to Rose’s cell shattered.

The force was so great that that the entirety of Tartarus shook and residents on the surface thought that an earthquake had hit.

Through bloody eyes and agonising pain, Warden Corsley struggled to crawl across the ground, so littered with flesh, glass and debris as it was, to hit the general alarm.

Across all 100 levels, sirens rang, and entire blocks of prisoners were put into forceful lockdown.

On the outside, Tartarus looked the same, but a silent alarm had been sent to the nearby guilds, police stations and military bases.

Stretching, Rose emerged from her broken cell with a small skip in her step.

“5 years of waiting, finally over,” she said. Then, she turned on her heel and skipped down the corridor, towards her fellow 9 neighbours.

“Today’s the day?”

She ignored the first man and turned her attention to the woman in the cell beside his.

Wordlessly, Rose snapped her fingers and broke the woman’s cell wide open and tore her jumpsuit to shreds at the same time.

“Freedom!” The redhead cried out, taking her time to stretch and flex her limbs. “What should I do about clothes?”

“You can help yourself to that lot or wait 2 minutes.”

Then, Rose moved 2 cells down. A toned man with dreaded hair was inside, grinning, as she broke him out in the same way.

“Don’t know what you’ve got planned for their security but can’t wait to see it.”

Rose then freed 2 more, a short, stone-faced man who offered no words of thanks, and a slender woman with glasses and a snicker across her lips.

“So, what now?” The redhead asked.

“Hey!” One of the other inmates banged on the glass. “Let us out, too!”

“C’mon, please!” Another yelled.

“Rose, I have money, lots of it! I’ll give you it if-”

“Hey, boss, you going to take out our dampeners?” The tone man asked.

“No need to, not yet.” Rose laughed.

***

“Situation report!”

“Sir, we’ve lost all contact with the bottom 40 floors!”

“Cameras going down left and right!”

“Sir, medical says 161 inmate bracelets have flatlined, all presumed dead!”

“Floor 51 is calling for backup!”

“Deny it! Evacuate all staff from floors 40 up; seal the rest in maximum deadlock! Ready the Pipe.”

“The Pipe, sir?”

“Yes, dammit! Get it up and running now and drown the bitch!”

The Pipe - Tartarus’s last resort failsafe in the event of a cataclysmic level escape. When used, millions of gallons of water would pour from the grand River Pithe and down the lift shaft, stairs and vents, flooding all the levels beneath 1.

If the tunnel flooded successfully, 2000 people would drown.

If used, Tartarus would be inhospitable for years.

“The Queen and all her MPs can court-martial me after I stop Rose!”

From the day she arrived, the vice-captain had had a bad feeling about her.

When they’d arrested her, she didn’t even put up a fight. Even after they put the dampener spells on her, the vice-captain felt uneasy.

When they couldn’t remove her clothing, he wanted to execute her on the spot.

“Sir, shouldn’t we try and negotiate them into surrendering first?”

“Are you crazy or stupid?! The warden wouldn’t hit that alarm unless it was a lost situation. Once the Pipe’s ready, let it rip!”

***

With a few deep grunts, the muscular man managed to rip the last steel door off the vault entrance.

“Power failure perhaps?” The short man wondered, as all but he and Rose excitedly dashed into the one heavily guarded maximum-security vault.

All the evidence, personal effects and treasures belonging to every prisoner of Tartarus were kept inside.

“Ah!” The muscular man cried out in agony. “Look at what they did to my jacket! A machine wash?! Who did it? I’ll kill ‘em!”

“Yaya, my little darlings,” the redhead said, looking down at a case full of rings and bracelets. “Don’t worry, mummy’s here now. It’s all okay now.”

“Take everything you want,” Rose said.

“Not taking something for yourself, boss?”

“I only need one thing.” She extended her hand towards the deepest part of the vault. She clenched her hand, then yanked it back, telekinetically pulling a box with various ancient markets on it into her left hand.

“What…is that?”

Upon seeing the unease on her companions’ faces, Rose laughed.

“Oh, petal, have you not ever heard of Pandora’s Box?”

***

“Pipe’s armed and full, sir!”

“Release it now!”

***

“Oh my.” Rose was bemused by the rumbling sounds of the pipes, and the encroaching roar of the tsunami.

“Logic would dictate that we would almost certainly drown tonight, but.” The short man looked to his rescuer. “I have a sneaking suspicion that this is part of the plan.”

“How reliable, Onee-sama!”

“Onee-sama?” The muscular man snorted at the redhead’s comment.

“You dare-!”

“Children, calm yourselves,” the slender woman said.

Rose laughed. “Watch.”

The water, barrelling down towards them with the force of a volcanic explosion, burst onto the floor they were on and almost instantly consumed them.

And then - it stopped.

Waves formed and crashed against the air, the rippling sounds of the water still deafened their ears, but not a single drop landed upon their bodies.

Then, with a gentle flick of Rose’s wrist, the water went in reverse.

Hundreds of tonnes of water blasted Tartarus.

The building cracked and broke.

The ground split in 2 as water spurted from deep underground.

Those staff members who had escaped the earlier massacre found themselves plunged deep into the river, struggling for air, desperately swimming against a current with the force of a raging tornado.

Tartarus had fallen and the nearest reinforcements were still 6 minutes away.

“Wow.”

“…Boss.”

“As expected of Onee-sama!”

Beneath her mask, Rose smiled slightly. “Stephen.” The short man flinched a little. “Can you fix the main hub’s communications for me?”

***

For all the years Rose had been at Tartarus, rumours and stories had begun to spread among the prisoners.

Some heard tales of her many great, infamous deeds; others whispered about her beauty, and that she was planning a great escape.

One or two even said they’d heard her siren-like voice inside their head, asking questions and for news on the outside world.

“Oi! Rose!” The now angry man in maximum security bellowed, banging against his glass cell. “Why aren’t you coming back for us?! Oi!”

The others, still stuck in maximum security, shared his sentiments, but didn’t vocalise them for fear of upsetting Rose.

“Hello, citizens of Tartarus.” The internal speaker system crackled and sputtered into life.

“Rose?”

“Many of you, I’m sure, are quite confused by this evening’s turn of events, but you don’t need to concern yourselves with it.

“After all, you’ll all be dead soon enough.”

“What?!”

“Rose!”

“Oi! This isn’t what you promised, bitch!”

“For those of you who believe this is unfair, I assure you it is not,” Rose said without a hint of emotion in her voice. “To put it bluntly, you were all too boring. Those I have chosen to follow me are anything but. More to the point, I can’t afford to have our identities uncovered, so there can’t be witnesses.

“If I were you, I’d either kill yourself now or at least knock yourselves out. Drowning is such a painful way to die.”

With a slight laugh, the speakers died out and the sound of running water returned.

***

“What…happened here?”

S-ranked adventurers were used to seeing sights that defied all common sense, but the ruins of Tartarus and the cracked, flooded wetlands surrounding it filled them with great worry and confusion.

On the night of the 55th anniversary of the Civil War’s end, the Aerkban Kingdom saw the start of a new age, one filled with heroes and villains.