The first thing that brought Lucy from the darkness was the music.
It tugged at her lashes, her eyelids fluttering open as the notes caressed gently against her ears like gentle fingers, coaxing her to sit upright.
She did so hesitantly, her head thrumming with a pulsing ache, a metallic taste upon her tongue tinged with a slight sweetness; a sweetness of magic.
With trembling fingers she wiped away the remaining nectar of dreams that still stained her lips, glancing around her and finding herself surrounded by deep blue walls, the floor beneath her an icy ivory.
She was in another place entirely, the space around her devoid of any resemblance to the shop she had stood within only moments before, the crowds, the shopkeepers, the Baron-- all having disappeared.
In their stead was but an empty hall that stretched on before her-- no, not empty, Lucy realized finally coming to stand upon slightly unsteady feet. For on either side of her stood figures, still and silent, facing inwards from their respective alcoves within the walls.
Statues, she thought suddenly, stepping nearer to the nearest figure and stretching out her fingers to brush along the smooth and frigid hand that seemed to reach out towards her in kind. As though the figure might whisk her away to some grand adventure at any moment.
Yet it was the statue's face that made her breath catch in the back of her throat. For looming above her, lips pulled into a familiar and wretched grin that taunted her without words, was the carnival master.
Azrael, Oz had called him. An elegant, if not dramatic sort of name that hung heavy within her mind as she gazed upon the ivory form that stood nearly seven feet tall before her. And indeed the depiction of him was perhaps as dramatic as he was.
Poised as though caught midway through a dance, his stone robes flowing out around him and with his mask of bone pushed out of the way of his face, the carnival master reached out towards her. Inviting her to join in upon his waltz.
Yet the longer she fixated herself upon his gaze, she found that he was not looking at her, but rather something just over her shoulder.
Turning around, she saw that Azrael's hand was reaching not towards her, but to a figure on the opposite side of the hallway; faceless and without any recognizable features other than what made it human, it too stood with a hand reaching towards Azrael. Grasping almost desperately at thin air-- two hands that would never touch.
The two told a story together, and as Lucy walked down the hall she saw Azrael and the faceless statue come together. Marble faces inches from one another, arms locked in an embrace, pale fingers intertwined. Bodies poised in an eternal dance of love and passion.
There was something tragic about it, as though each statue was but an imprint of a memory having long passed. And the further down the hall she walked, she saw the final
Azrael kneeling upon the floor, his head bowed, mouth open in a silent cry of anguish. The faceless lover standing before him, overshadowed by a third statue-- this one carved of black marble, its face a leering skull that peered from beneath a dark hood, a bony hand upon the lover's shoulder.
Death.
Lucy's heart seemed to skip a beat then, the story of the carnival's origins returning to her memory. A new understanding coming to her as the statues laid out the tale before her in a new and intimate way. Indeed, could Azrael have been the fallen god whose lover was stolen from him by death?
Looking at the figures before her once more, she allowed her eyes to brush over every detail, her gaze drawn to the carnival master's form. First to his eyes, then down to his chest where a peculiar dip in the stone caught her attention.
It was a hollowed out portion of the marble, the space circular in shape and being no bigger than her fist and within... A heart of frosted black glass.
The heart of Life is in the dead's dreams
The riddle came to mind immediately and in that moment Lucy had no doubt that she could be mistaken about its meaning.
Reaching within the statue's chest, her hand closed around the heart, hearing the slightest noise of something shifting behind the glass. And though she could not see through its walls, she knew what lay within.
"What are you going to do with it now?" The figure of Azrael seemed to ask, still taunting. Still insufferable.
Lucy drew in a breath, the words spilling from her lips aloud. "I'm going to break your heart."
With every ounce of strength within her, she hurled the heart at the floor whereupon it shattered into a thousand shards, the crash nearly deafening in the silent space. And yet amidst the fragments of glass there lay something more; a slender skeleton key, carved from the same ivory marble as the statue had been. The key of Life.
It was frigid against the tips of Lucy's fingers as she picked it up, the very hall around her seeming to shudder slightly at its retrieval, the edges of her vision fading slightly as it appeared as though the dream was coming to an end.
And there she heard it; a voice, calling to her from the darkness. Frantic and pitched as though whoever had spoken the words was perched on the edge of tears.
"Lucy?"
It was the final thing she heard before the hallway and statues vanished, a light flooding her vision as her eyes opened for the second time, her gaze coming to rest immediately upon the worried expression of the Baron.
Her head was cradled within his arms, his hands giving a far softer touch than what a stranger's should be as he nestled her cheek against his chest. The wild beating of his heart seeming to pulse against her ear.
And in her hand... Something icy that pressed into the flesh of her palm.
The first key to the world of the living.
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YOU ARE READING
The Mortal And The Wicked-- ONC 2023
幻想ONC 2023 Shortlister His features had haunted her for years; a boy with silver eyes peering out from beneath a mask of bone. His body cloaked in darkness, a wicked grin upon his lips that spoke of treachery-- a smile that had broken countless hearts...
