✨🥀💎💀🌹 Our souls won’t die alone (continued) ✨🥀💎💀🌹

*This chapter connects to my story “✨🥀💎💀🌹 Our souls won’t die alone [Part One] ✨🥀💎💀🌹”. Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33[2]”. Enjoy!*

Chapter Ten-A loved one will always be there for their dear six feet below

The five of them were led off into the Grand Hall, where Moon and Dani were locked up in one cage, Elisa was locked in a cage with two faerie adults who both somewhat looked like her, presumably her parents from how she nestled close to them.

Raven, however, was left to lie by Queen Cordelia’s throne, his body slumped on the ground like a cadaver. Oh, how he was beginning to look so terribly like a corpse, the rich dark green of his eyes beginning to look more and more dull by the minute.

Tueur noticed that he was the only one who still had his hands bounded behind his back. Everyone else had their hands free, but were either locked up like the girls or nearly dying like Raven.

The soldiers behind Tueur had placed their staffs on both sides of his shoulders, forcing him to kneel before Queen Cordelia on her tourmaline throne.

Queen Cordelia first smoothed down her coral pink ballgown with hints of vermillion, her white gloved hands brushing down her skirts a bit too roughly, like she wanted to plunge her hands into someone’s flesh and pull out their organs. All of her jewelry was aquamarine. Her necklace, her earrings, her many rings and bracelets, even her tiara. Her dark brown hair was in a half-up ponytail, spilling around her light brown skin in ringlets.

Just like Margaret, she was shimmering with vibrancy, like the manifestation of all the gemstones in the world appearing as a human, like one big, stained glass picture that went on and on and on.

But the vividly violent excitement in her cocoa brown eyes betrayed her true nature and she said in a lilting lullaby voice, like steady raindrops pattering down on the ground:

“I take that all of you were trying to kill me. How utterly cruel. After all I doing to keep the people of Rosesilk strong.”

She turned to look at Raven in mock pity, tsking as he convulsed on the ground, blood splatters running down his mouth.

“How unfortunate that he’s still alive. It’d be downright evil to let him live for one more second, wouldn’t it?” Queen Cordelia said, turning to look at Tueur with a smile that looked too gentle under her brutal eyes.

Tueur didn’t say anything. How could he? What did she want him to say? That he wished to break out of the bonds that held his wrists and tear her apart, limb by limb? That her existence served no purpose if it meant severing other people’s lives away? There were a million things that he could say to her, but what was the point? She wouldn’t listen anyway.

“I’m not doing this for no reason. I hope you know that. Margaret was just like this boy right here. Well, only when she began dabbling in potion making did she become like him. She used to be perfectly healthy before she tried to create potions that would stop the possibility of death entirely for everyone in Rosesilk. That means that nobody dies of old age and nobody gets killed by plants or objects that are specifically created just to kill them. Everyone lives. Forever.” Queen Cordelia spat out the last word as though it sickened her, as though it tasted like poison to her.

Tueur did vaguely remember there being talk of “everyone living forever” back when he was eight years old. He remembered being the only one in his town who didn’t understand why anyone would want to make themselves immortal. In his eyes, being mortal was a gift because it meant that once someone died, they got to find out the secrets of the afterlife, the deeper meaning of the world. He remembered being jealous of mortals because they would get to be free of the world’s restrictions in death and that they would get to become something greater than being immortal could ever be.

Of course, nobody understood Tueur’s point and when he watched the lilac-colored smoke settle over his town from his bedroom window, he felt sick to his stomach at the idea that there were mortals who didn’t appreciate death and immortals who wanted to push death from themselves even farther than it already was for them.

“You remember the day the Blessing Spell was put over the entirety of Rosesilk, do you not? Anyone who was outside would be given the chance to true, pure immortality…but Margaret did quite an awful job on the potion smoke spell! Instead of making them live longer, she made those who breathed it weaker! A slash of a sword or a poke from a needle could bring said person to bleed to death! The many members of the castle had to keep a close eye on Margaret to ensure that she wouldn’t fall down and break herself. I only killed her to stop her suffering. Anybody else in Rosesilk who is sick has her same illness, so they have to be put down, as well as anyone who tries to change my good rules and those trying to leave, for they will spread falsehoods. All I am trying to do is help and all of you don’t understand that! Why would you? You’re all young and reckless, with hardly a fully fledged idea of what’s good and right. Well…”

Queen Cordelia sat up from the throne, her smile twisted and contorted into something that looked like it stretched too far up her cheeks, so far that it looked like her skin would peel off.

“I’ll save this human boy from any everlasting suffering he may feel and then, I’ll slash all of you for being so ungrateful and selfish! Really, it’s unbelievable, how all of you act after the things that I do to help you, to-“

“Does it make you feel good to “put people down” as you call it?”

“Come again?”

Tueur had spoken in a controlled and quieting manner, enough so that Moon, Dani, Elisa and her parents, and Raven could hear it and cover their ears without dying, while also making sure that Queen Cordelia and her soldiers didn’t hear him. They didn’t know that he took the Heartstring Oath, so he focused on the energy within to level out his voice for making sure that only the group of people he was with would hear him and know to cover their ears before he really spoke.

“I said, does it make you feel good to choose who gets to die like you’re a God? Does it make you feel more than what you are? Does it give you a high to be in control? What’s so interesting is that you think the cure is death. You want to see them wither away into nothing, don’t you?”

Queen Cordelia stood still, looking at him with panic. Her feet were rooted to the ground, Tueur could sense that she and the soldiers couldn’t move.

“Margaret may have been the one who wanted to put the curse of immortality on everyone, but you don’t care about finding a cure. You don’t care about saving anyone. You just want to watch those that can’t fight back crumble under your feet. I can sense it in you, I can see it in your eyes. You enjoyed calling us ungrateful children just because we want the blood to stop, didn’t you? I know you did, you smiled so wide when you were telling us how much you want to “help”. Help? That’s a funny way to talk about killing entire territories and cherished loved ones.”

The way that speaking with the Heartstring Oath worked was that the venomous words would slowly creep up inside of those who heard it before cutting short their lives. It had rendered Queen Cordelia and her soldiers immobile, but Tueur wasn’t quite done yet.

“Death should feel like a tender embrace, not a jagged weapon. But you and those who follow you do not deserve that luxury.”

As Tueur said those words, he watched as the skin on Queen Cordelia’s body peeled away, listened to the screams of her and her soldiers. It was a fitting ending for those that had inflicted such torture on others and when Queen Cordelia and her soldiers became nothing but a pile of bones, Tueur channeled his energy into the roots below the castle and used those roots to climb up the cages, to intertwine around the iron bars until there was so much of them that the iron was no match for the branches, until the branches had weaved their way into the doors’ locks, opening them and setting the captives free.

Once they were free, Tueur saw Dani run up to him with her dagger, hastily sawing off the ropes once she was behind him. He would try to break out of them himself if it didn’t make his claws feel so weak. He only hoped that Dani would be quick enough, because the blue smoke magic coming from Moon’s hands wasn’t enough to heal Raven. In fact, since Tueur was closer to death than elves normally were, the only way he could heal others was with his own bones. The elves had to use parts of themselves to heal, but that normally meant magic with their hands.

It was effective for most people, but not for how Raven was bleeding profusely. Bones were good for extremely long-term healing and Raven needed that more than any other type of magic. If only Dani could just be a little bit faster, then Tueur could take out another bone from his body to heal Raven, do what Moon couldn’t do at all and wouldn’t she do if she could. Where Tueur could sense death, dying, and wickedness, Moon and other elves could sense fragility. In that moment, Tueur cursed himself for not putting the pieces together before, for not realizing sooner that Moon probably didn’t want to help Raven because she could sense that he could die from the slightest movement and that sheer mortality scared her. It must have given her mind of flowing waterfalls and blooming rainbow-colored flowers unpleasant, cobwebbed and cold thoughts, thoughts that she did not want to face, thoughts that she did not want to process, thoughts-

When Dani had finally cut the ropes away, Tueur ran towards Raven, his heart racing, tears at the edges of his eyes, hoping that he could save him in time, hoping-

Raven died before Tueur could hold him, his shaky, bloodied breaths crackling with tears, his green eyes full of choking fear.

…………………………………………………………………

A few months had passed by since the incident at the Iris’lani castle. The remaining four of the group brought out the bones of the Iris’lani sisters and the soldiers to prove their victory against the Queen. The bones were kept preserved in a long-abandoned abandoned mansion in Rosesilk’s town square that used to house wealthy elites and was refurbished to a house that all ages could visit, to teach and warn others of the different crimes of both Queens. Margaret for her misguided ideas to keep everyone immortal and Cordelia for her heartlessness of killing anyone “too feeble” to live. The soldiers may have not directly expressed their thoughts, but enough of them was said with who they chose to fight for.

Elisa was the only one in the group surprised to hear that Margaret died, as it never crossed her mind that people could kill their own siblings  and while she was a little upset upon hearing that, especially on hearing that Margaret was trying to make everyone undeniably and entirely immortal, as she understood that it would not be happiness for everyone, she was mostly happy that her parents were alive and she got to spend more of her life with them.

Moon and Tueur were both greatly scolded, but their parents were proud of them for ending Queen Cordelia’s reign and bringing peace to Rosesilk.

Speaking of Rosesilk, there had been no one stepping up to rule and so the town had been going on without a ruler for quite a while, everyone making choices for themselves. Maybe there would be a ruler someday, maybe there wouldn’t, but at least the citizens of Rosesilk weren’t being taken away to be killed. Just because there was no one left to give rules to them didn’t mean that they stopped being good, that they stopped helping one another, for the nature of helping others was always in them. The previous circumstances were reprehensible, but not the final results.

Not everyone was in good spirits, though.

Dani had informed Elizabeth, the young woman who was taking care of Raven, with a heavy heart of Raven’s death. She was holding Raven’s dead body in her arms as she said it and when Elizabeth saw Raven’s broken body held by Dani, her cries were so full of piercing grief that if anyone heard it, they felt ashamed to, as though they were not supposed to be listening to her crying.

Raven’s body was buried in the local Rosesilk cemetery, right next to the bodies of his parents, Scarlett and Kenneth. It was also where the bodies of Elisa’s territory and Dani’s family were buried, and so the graveyard was frequently visited by those who had lost their loved ones to Queen Cordelia and the humans who died from old age.

But there was one cold night, when all the daily errands were done, when the evening festivals had died down and everyone was sound asleep, the lights all turned off, where one townsperson was walking down the streets, walking carefully so as not to wake anyone up with his black boots crunching on the rocks, one claw enclosed tightly around a shovel handle.

Tueur kept replaying Raven’s death over and over again in his mind, going over all the things he should have done, could have done. The infuriating part was that no matter what, Raven ended up dying before Tueur could save him. Raven was going to die either way with the sickness he had, it was absolutely inevitable.

During those few months back, Tueur would take time to channel his energy deep into the Earth, deeper than the roots that were not so different from skeletons, deeper than anyone could ever imagine. It was a path that connected to the afterlife, going down into the Earth, then straight up into the sky.

After many tries, he found Raven’s ghost, wandering in the part of the afterlife between Heaven and Hell, in an expanse of a moonstone-colored world, where other souls lingered, not sad, but not happy, either.

Tueur directed his energy over to Raven, not sure if he would be able to catch his signal, but still trying anyway.

Raven had found it and from then on, the both of them began to communicate with each other. Tueur would tell Raven about what was happening in Rosesilk, Raven would tell him about his afterlife, about how he missed his parents but wasn’t sure if he wanted to see them just yet, about how he wished that he were still alive to experience how Rosesilk was flourishing, about how most of all, he wished to have conversations of life and miscellaneous things with the both of them being alive, about how he enjoyed talking to Tueur so much that he wished they could have been together for more time, that he wished he could have Tueur by his side.

So that was why Tueur was walking down the Rosesilk street to the cemetery in his onyx black long-sleeved shirt and pants, wearing a matching black cloak over it for warmth.

When he made it to the cemetery, he walked up to Raven’s cemetery, which read as: “Here there lies the body of a boy torn from the world too soon, Raven Mavelynn Sagewood. 1506-1522.”

Tueur then began digging up the grave, glad that it was too late at night for anyone else to be around, including those that tended to the graves from the morning to the almost-night.

When all the dirt covering Raven’s shining black coffin was made into a towering pile, Tueur jumped into the six foot hole and unlatched the locks that kept it sealed shut with his bony claws, opening the lid gently so as not to accidentally hit his own face with it.

Tueur was still holding onto the coffin lid when it was opened, so he had to crawl out of the space between the coffin lid and dirt wall so that he could get inside of Raven’s coffin.

Once he was sitting in Raven’s coffin, face to face with Raven’s rotten body, his skin all withered and discolored, Tueur took out the clear vial of Larimar-blue colored liquid, uncorking the vial and pouring into Raven’s cracked lips, hoping that the vampire potion would work, that Raven’s skin would flush and fill with color, just like when he was alive. One couldn’t simply buy a vampire potion, they had to make it with the right ingredients, and Tueur had been working so hard to make the vampire potion in secret.

After a few minutes, Raven’s skin began to meld and stitch together, his hair became full and fluffy once again. One thing that Tueur appreciated about the cemetery company was how they stitched together Raven’s chest, so that he didn’t look like a bloody mess.

But when Tueur put a claw where Raven’s heart was, he felt nothing. No heartbeat, no pulse. Nothing.

He didn’t want to give up, though. He couldn’t give up. He promised Raven that he’d bring him back to life and he’d fulfill that promise.

So Tueur bit deep into his own left wrist, watching the opal-colored blood spill before bringing it to Raven’s lips, hoping that the blood would be the thing to wake him up, that Raven wouldn’t decay in a coffin when he was only sixteen, that he’d be able to bring Raven out of the in-between place, that-

“You came for me. You…you saved me again.” Raven said, his eyes not green, but pure black, sclera and all.

Tueur nodded, putting a claw to his mouth, stifling his cries. He had wanted it to work, but seeing Raven actually look at him…talk to him…remember him…

Tueur felt as if his own heart was unraveling from the inside, the stress and fear leading up to that moment melting away. What was more was that he felt his throat loosen, as if the wires that were keeping it compressed and quiet were finally letting him speak, letting him say:

“And I’ll save you again a million more times, Raven. I’ll tear off parts of myself to let you live before you can have a chance to die a suffering death. I’ve made you into a vampire and I’ve given you my blood. You might be a more bloodthirsty vampire than others because you drank elf blood, not human blood, but you’re still the same Raven that everyone will cherish and hold dear, myself included.”

Tueur’s voice sounded different than it did when he spoke to Queen Cordelia back at the palace. It didn’t have a rasping, distorted quality to it, but instead sounded just like faerie bells and the melodic strums of a harp, ethereal and radiant.

Tueur hadn’t heard his own voice sound like that since two years ago and Raven, well, Raven hadn’t heard his voice sound like that at all.

“You’ve been speaking to me with your mind these past few days, but just now, you spoke with your voice. Your real voice, and I’m still here, talking to you. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but does that mean that I’m…that you…that-“

“Yes, Raven. It means that I truly, wholeheartedly, irrefutably, love you, and when I crawl out of the coffin with you, we will both take the Age Eternal Vow, so that our aging will stop at sixteen and we will be together forevermore…if that’s what you want.”

Raven smiled and put a claw to his cheek, saying:

“That’s one of the many reasons I wanted to be brought back to life.”

The both of them lingered on one another’s face, letting the moment settle into their flesh and bones, hardly believing that it was really real, that it was happening to them, that it wasn’t a blissful dream, that-

And then, they shared a kiss that was both soft like rose petals and cold like freshly polished bones, the first of many kisses they would share in their boundless eternity together.