>>6334051You follow Bragia’s body as it leaves the square, crosses the grass and reaches the dark entrance of the tower. The inside is all geometric shades and painted-over corners, but there is a honeycomb-shaped spiral stairway that leads to the top.
Merope proceeds.
You glance to look at the Stilladìa, who is leaning against her beloved, sharing a silent embrace. The hurt and the pain, the sorrow and anger and triumph—it has all been dusted off, leaving just a white-haired girl whose crimson eyes look down and between whose horns dances a single star.
Merope climbs the stairs, raking her nails against the wall, leaving deep white gouges where they touch the material, whatever it might be. She growls from the deep of Bragia’s throat.
<span class="mu-s">You grow overbold. How long have I thirsted to pay you back for the indecency you subjected us to. Poor Alcyone is asleep still, but it shall be I, the youngest, to avenge her as well. To punish your arrogance.</span>
You watch Merope reach the topmost room. There, the source of the flame sits inside a huge golden chalice, light seeping out and dancing on the walls and out of the balcony. It reminds you of sunlight scattered over the waves of the Mar da Candéa.
Inside the chalice lays the sketched figure of the girl you saw running away. Her contours are shaky, her limbs look like drawn stretches of a paintbrush.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">You have come.</span></span>
<span class="mu-s">I have come!</span>
Merope gleefully declares, raising her arm, her nails elongating into talons. The tower rumbles from its foundation, the walls creak, like a ship amidst stormy sea. The air seems to grow thin, like it did in Merope’s lair, back when Bragia still owned her body and came to claim her head.
<span class="mu-i">I have come,</span>, you read twinkle inside Bragia’s green eye, answering Ansàrra’s question, which had been directed at her.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">As expected.</span></span>
That green eye quivers.
Merope advances, curling Bragia’s beautiful face into a snarl of triumph, of millennial hate, a snake coiled around her black heart for centuries and finally ready to strike.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">This Night is near its end.</span></span>
Merope hits the girl sketched in black.
The bell tolls once more.
And then you see the outside, and the inside, and the outside too.
[cont.]
