The monks released Emily and stood back, and she stared at the Stoneshell fire in the center of the Stone Circle. She knew that its flames would not hurt her, but while she had stepped out of a fire many times in teleportation, she had never consciously stepped into one before. Slowly, she walked forward. Her newly smooth skin rubbed against itself in a new way, and the air tickled her in new places.
The statues of Castle Elid now formed their own stone circle inside the stone circle. The men, women, gargoyles, satyrs, and fawns, hewn of marble, granite, copper, bronze, and other materials, had all joined hands and now stood as stock still as if they were non-living statues. Emily wondered how different they would look once the ritual was complete.
Abbess Althea still stood at the edge of the stone circle, looking away, but now she was chanting rapidly and moving her hands in intricate patterns. The four female monks who had cleaned and painted Emily now walked in circles around her, chanting below their breath, but it was Abbess Althea's voice that filled her ears.
As she stepped toward the fire, she spied the faces of Dorian and Talyndra, far outside the circle. They stood with folded arms and pensive expressions. Both knew better than to interrupt an ongoing magic ritual, but Emily knew they disapproved of her decision to go ahead with it. The Bronzeband sat inert against her ankle.
But the Stoneshell was hot against her chest, glowing orange. It seemed to be pulling her toward the fire, growing stronger and more insistent the closer she came. The Azure Essence glowed against her skin, and the markings it made shifted and changed.
Emily stepped into the fire, and the whole world went white. Instantly, all was silent and still.
When the light receded, it revealed a barren, gray field under a sky the color of lead. The earth was cracked and dry, featureless for miles around, but for the occasional cloud of dust whipped up by a weak wind. The place felt burdened by an oppressive silence. There was no sign of the Stone Circle or of any of Emily's companions. She was alone.
Looking down, she saw that her skin was faintly translucent, though the Azure Essence runes still glowed bright blue. The Stoneshell still glowed orange, warming her chest, but the Bronzeband had blackened completely.
A clinking sound broke the silence, and Emily turned to its source. Standing a dozen yards away was a person in a full set of armor, visor down so that no part of their body was visible. The knight stood with gauntleted hands resting on the pommel of a greatsword planted in the cracked earth.
The knight's visor fixed on Emily, and they pulled the sword from the ground and began to walk towards her. The knight walked with an odd gait, almost stumbling forward on every step. Emily instinctively stepped back, inadequately shielding her body with one hand and summoning a fireball with the other.
The knight did not react to her threat, but continued walking towards her. Emily crouched low, attempting to dig her heels into the hard, dry earth.
A few feet in front of her, the knight stopped and planted the greatsword in the dirt before bringing a hand up to lift their visor.
Emily gasped, for the knight's helmet was empty.
The knight, or rather, the suit of armor, now raised a gauntlet and pointed behind her. Emily glanced over her shoulder and saw a skeletal tree, the landscape's sole feature. She looked back at the armor, which seemed to be leaning on the greatsword for support.
"Do you... want me to follow you?" Emily asked, her voice high and strange in this silent place.
The armor said nothing, but removed its sword from the earth and began to walk in the direction it had pointed. Emily took that for a yes and fell into step behind the strange being.
The armor walked jauntily, at a slow pace, clinking with every step, occasionally planting its sword down in the ground to rest. Emily felt a little sorry for it—this was no murderous knight, but a simple creature in an ill-functioning body. The greatsword, which might have seemed menacing in other hands, was little more than a walking stick.
So focused was Emily on the strange creature's plight that she did not immediately notice the shifts in the world around her. As they approached the skeletal tree, the earth softened and the air grew warmer. Even the sky seemed to lighten. Almost imperceptibly at first, green shoots began to appear around them, and soon Emily's nostrils were full of the smell of wildflowers.
The tree itself, which had looked so pathetic and broken when the armor had first pointed it out, had transformed into a living cherry tree in full and magnificent bloom, its petals drifting around them on the gentle breeze.
Beneath the tree, on a simple stone bench, sat a woman. She faced away from them, looking out over an enormous, calm, and deep blue ocean that stretched to the horizon. She had straight dark hair and wore a simple black gown.
The suit of armor suddenly stopped, planting its sword firmly in the verdant grass. Emily got the sense that it would walk no further, and so took the last few steps alone, stopping just behind the woman on the bench, who seemed not to have noticed either of them.
Emily was wondering how she should address the woman when, apropos of nothing, she stood and turned to Emily. Though her hair was pure black, her face was lined with age. Her eyes were hazel, the same shade as Emily's, and around her neck she wore a silver chain with a gray stone pendant in the shape of a seashell.
"Evangeline," Emily said.
The woman smiled kindly and nodded. "Emily. We meet at last." With this, she walked around the bench, arms raised, and wrapped Emily in a warm hug, the fibres of her gown soft against Emily's skin. Emily let herself fall into the hug.
They separated, and Evangeline looked Emily up and down. "You have come a long way and faced much hardship."
"Uh, yes," Emily said lamely, remembering that she was naked and vaguely moving her arms in front of her body.
"Do not be ashamed," Evangeline said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "We cannot control how we appear in this place."
Emily bit her lip. That was easy for someone in a dress to say. Nevertheless, she steeled herself. There was so much she wanted to ask Evangeline. "W-what is this place?" is the question she started with.
"This is the spirit realm, a place between life and death. We have been summoned here—I from the land of the dead, and you from the world of the living—because of the powerful spell you are performing. A spell that will undo the bonds upon the Stoneshell." There was a slight note of disapproval in Evangeline's voice.
"I just want to save the statues," said Emily.
Evangeline nodded. "It is a noble goal. But the curses placed upon the necklace were needed to contain its chaotic energy, to prevent it from consuming the world as it consumed me."
Emily's face paled. "What?!"
A sad smile crossed Evangeline's face. She glanced down at Emily's ankle. "I see you have become acquainted with the Nightmoss."
Emily followed her gaze. When she'd first arrived in the spirit realm, the Bronzeband had been blackened with Nightmoss. It was now entirely obscured, as Emily's entire calf was coated with the fuzzy, writhing substance. She had not succeeded in destroying it that morning—Dorian and Talyndra had been right.
"It was inevitable that you would," said Evangeline. "Once, Nightmoss grew only in the Trench of Trule, deep beneath the ocean. A small quantity clung to the stone that my Thurseus extracted to forge the Stoneshell. At those depths, under that immense pressure, the moss is quite harmless. Thurseus's mistake was imbuing it with magic. And my mistake was exposing it to the air."
Emily dropped into a crouch and began frantically tearing at the black coating around her calf. When it wouldn't budge, she summoned flames into her hands and tried to burn it off. The moss turned from black to orange and melted away, revealing a pale calf, the Azure Essence patterns gone.
"Oh, you can burn it off," Evangeline said. "But no matter how much you destroy, some always remains. It always grows back."
Looking up at Evangeline, Emily noticed for the first time that her gown was of the same color and consistency as the black moss.
"Yes," Evangeline said, picking at a sleeve, "this is also Nightmoss. Terribly useful when you're always burning clothes. The only trouble is that it doesn't stop spreading. In the world of the living, at least. And the more powerful the Stoneshell is, the faster it spreads."
Emily felt sick.
"I must apologize, Emily," Evangeline said. "I tried to eradicate it, I really did. Once I realized what a menace it was, I spent years retracing my steps through all of Thessolan, destroying the Nightmoss that I had so carelessly planted. After that, I spent even more years binding the Stoneshell, channeling wards through it to constrain its power. But I was never very good at that, and they would always wear off. And clearly I left some of the Nightmoss alive."
"W-what do we do now?" Emily asked.
Evangeline shrugged. "There's nothing we can do. The spell is in motion and cannot be interrupted. Any moment now, it will be complete. You will return to the world of the living, and I to the land of the dead. The Nightmoss will be unleashed, and all of Thessolan will be consumed."
Emily stared at her in disbelief. "Why didn't Abbess Althea warn me?"
"Much has been lost in the centuries since I died," Evangeline said. "Your abbeys pride themselves on their traditions and their libraries, but I have forgotten more magic than they ever knew."
"They're not my abbeys! I'm not even from here!" Emily screamed, surprising even herself with her sudden outburst. The emotionless, almost flippant tone that Evangeline had used to turn everything she thought she'd known about Thessolan upside-down was too much to bear. "I didn't ask for any of this! I just wanted to help! I just wanted... to go home..."
Emily fell to her knees, her body racked with sobs. Tears blurred her vision. How could all of her sacrifices, her selfless intentions, have led to such a horrific outcome?
A gentle hand touched her back, and Emily looked up at Evangeline through puffy eyes. "I had forgotten that you were from... somewhere else," she said. "That changes things. The world you come from is radically different from Thessolan—magic does not exist there. If you can return to that world, taking the Stoneshell with you, that may be enough to sever the link and render the Nightmoss inert."
Go home? The thought was at once painful and comforting. That had been her mission since she stepped out of the bathtub in Castle Elid, the very reason she'd braved the Labyrinthine Pool and then embarked on her journey with Aria. But Thessolan had changed her. She had tasted power and a destiny far greater than anything awaiting her in Greenville. To abandon all that...
"I don't know how," said Emily.
Evangeline smiled. "That you came to Thessolan at all shows that there exists a bridge between worlds. This place where we now stand bridges the far greater gap between the living and the dead. To find a bridge between the living and the living... I am certain you will succeed."
A loud metallic clatter sounded behind them. Emily turned to see the suit of armor lying in a jumbled heap, the greatsword fallen on top of it.
"The spell is near completion," said Evangeline, kneeling to grasp Emily's hands. "Soon, the Stoneshell will be unbound. Goodbye, Emily Stoneshell Bearer."
The world around them flicked violently between verdant green and barren gray. The ocean disappeared, and the cherry tree returned to a skeletal outline. Evangline herself began to fade. She squeezed Emily's hands and then was gone.