💗- A memory about a good deed they did

The White Room

Beneath the broken donjon of the Witch-Knights of Caembion, Jenetia Krole stalked abandoned hallways in search. Far below, she could sense the faintest trace of something disturbingly familiar.  On a level buried so deep that it did not appear on the schematics, and accessible only with the Magister-Baron’s personal override cipher, the Knight-Commander came at last to a door. It was made of unmarked white metal, utterly unlike any other she had encountered in the keep. The doorway, too, was devoid of the twisting sigils otherwise ubiquitous in dedicating the transitive quality of a threshold to the dark patron of House Caembion. Krole reached out to touch it, feeling a strange reverberation in the metal even through her gauntlet. It was not physical, but ethereal, echoing in the space where her soul should have sat. It brought a sense of vertigo, and Krole withdrew her hand.  Bracing herself, she keyed in the override cipher and the door fell away into the ground. Beyond was a small room of the same white metal with an identical door, forming an airlock. Krole had to re-enter the cipher twice to convince the security system to open the second door while the first remained open.  Raising her blade into a guard stance, Krole advanced slowly. Passing through the portal, the white metal flared out to form a cell that was ostensibly hemispherical, but was revealed by unnatural senses to form a sphere beneath the false floor of pale stone. At the centre was a cot, a desk heaped with a pile of well-thumbed books, and a girl with a look more of curiosity than fear as she beheld the armoured knight enter with blade bared.  “Who are you?” she asked.  Krole raised her eyebrow and pointed at the girl, reflecting the question. There was an unmistakable resemblance to the Magister-Baron she had carved out of his burning throne after his accursed Knight-engine had been laid low.  The girl shrugged. “No-one, really. You can call me Sione, if you like.” Most humans struggled to look Krole in the eye, but Sione met the Witchbane’s gaze without a hint of discomfort. Another effect of the strange alloy lining the walls, perhaps. “Did my father send you?” she asked, nodding at the greatblade angled at her heart.  After a moment’s pause, Krole lowered her blade. The girl was a pariah, that much was clear from the nature of the room. Sione ought to be shipped to the nearest Tithe node for processing, but it occurred to Krole that, if there was a surviving Knight and a Throne Mechanicum that would have her, there might be another future for her.  The Knight-Commander stowed the Sword of Oblivion over her shoulder, reaching out one hand to the last scion of House Caembion and gesturing to the doorway with the other. A Proloquor was needed to explain to Sione that her father was dead, and she was free.

(Peer into my muse’s memories: ❤️ 💛 💚 💜 💔 ❣ 💕 💞 💓 💗 💖 💝 💘 💟)