No, looking further into it, it wasn't horror that etched itself onto her face.
It was glee.
She slumped back against the stone wall of the tower, chuckling under her breath.
"Our Visionary has started his journey! His Fate! His Fate! It approaches…"
Artemis stepped back as he saw this. This was the madness she had exhibited before the fight with the Castellan. She had pushed herself into his blade, forgetting that it might harm her. When she was like this, even pain was inconsequential.
Ruffliette suddenly reached into her yellow cloak, pulling out and opening the black booklet, gazing at the coruscating Sign on its interior cover. Her fingers dug into its cover, trembling.
A yellow sheen shimmered over her eyes, her maniacal smile relaxing gradually.
She let out an exhausted sigh, clutching at her face. Sweat beaded on her skin, which seemed irreversibly pale and sickly. There was terror etched into her expression, and Artemis, who had drawn his blade in preparation, suddenly faltered.
Was this really how a 'violent' girl looked?
Could he kill someone like this? For what reason?
What was she troubled by?
A shiver ran down his entire body.
There wasn't any time to think about that!
He felt the floor shift underneath him. Quickly, a large crack spread out underneath them, extending into a grand web of shattering stone. Rumbling sounds occurred far underneath them, booming through the air.
The tower was going to collapse!
Artemis rushed forward, wrapping his arms around Ruffliette as the stone platform crumbled underneath them. They were consumed by gravity, watching as the architecture met the embrace of the air alongside them.
They began a free-fall into the dark abyss below the palace.
The tower which had once collapsed as a whole had shattered, the wear of age festering with the tension of the fight between Artemis and Lord Vaultracht.
But they didn't find death within its depths.
The bright-pink spores of bloom burst into the air as the two landed in a sea of flowers. Petals which had been thrown up into the air during their descent gradually rained down upon them, the light of the sky above Lars-Eleme casting the field in a faint glow.
They found themselves in a cavern underneath the palace.
His breathing had become heavy, his eyes widened. Even more than the fight against the Castellan, he had never experienced such a terrifying feeling. Being at the mercy of gravity, and hoping that he wouldn't be crushed by stone...
Large tufts of stone fell into the soil beside them, but it seems that once again, he had finally encountered whatever little luck he deserved. Not only had they survived the fall, but had narrowly avoided being crushed by the remnant tower.
Artemis let out a heavy sigh, tilting his head to the side as he glanced around him.
In the center of the great abyss that the stone pathways swirled down towards, a grand and magnificent white-barked tree shot up into the heavens, obscuring the sky above with its magnificent cobalt leaves. The way that the glistening blue petals fell off their boughs into the air was intoxicating.
And no matter which direction he glanced in the cavern, he could not see the end of it, coated in a thin, nascent fog.
Yet still, it was beautiful.
He had forgotten this feeling of freedom. It was present everywhere in the Blackbaast.
In that land of darkness, much of the light was sourced from the plant life. Trees, flowers, brush, even invasive weeds gave off faint luminescence. But he had spent too much time in solitude to view it. This was the first time in two years he had seen such a sight.
To think that the vile, putrid city was holding such a vast treasure in its depths.
He glanced over towards Ruffliette, who had been similarly stricken with awe. Her previous terrified-disposition had disappeared once again, returning to her normal, calm demeanor. She had already pulled out the familiar black booklet, scrawling in notes as she carefully observed the flora around her.
Was this craziness just a trait of hers? Was it really nothing to be worried about? She would switch her moods far too often for Artemis to keep up with her.
For all of her faults, was she really just a clumsy adventurer who never truly weighed the danger of things? If she had really meant him harm, why did she ascertain his motives when they had first met, instead of sliding her blade against his throat from behind?
Was he wrong for thinking her an enemy, as Lark had instructed him to?
Had his solitude ruined who he was?
She wasn't violent. She was just troubled. And he knew all about that.
He extended a hand to her as he stood up, which she graciously accepted, looking up at him curiously.
"Thank you…" she whispered underneath her breath. For someone who was used to the bustle of society, this might have been missed so very easily. But for a man who had encountered nothing but silence in his recent life, he had a keen trait for listening.
A gentle smile met his face.
Ruffliette wasn't really a danger at all, he thought.
The grand under-sprawl gradually dissipated as they continued through the cavern. The black stone, the final state of the strange liquid jutted out in thick, sharp spikes around them, leading out to a large stone grove littered with the ruin of time.
And amidst the eventual carnage of the landscape, the ground became littered with aged corpses. They had pitch-black skin and strange, misshapen eyes. In death, their hands grasped tightly to their weapons, whose superior craftsmanship had resisted the weathering of age.
This was a battlefield… a battlefield of Lords…
A shiver ran down Artemis's spine, but even his unnerving instincts couldn't tear his gaze away from the sight.
Of course, there was the lurking sense that whatever could have killed so many powerful beings would foster generations into their current age, meaning that the cavern was particularly dangerous, but he continued to bask in the reverence alongside Ruffliette.
"These beings were present in many of the portraits that littered the city. While the Castellan barely resembled them after so long, these are perfect specimens…" Ruffliette's lips curled up into a faint, exuberant smile. Her hands clutched the black notebook, eager to record her findings.
But Artemis's mind was racing.
Wherever he went where Lords had once walked, the liquid was also present. Was it the case that they were intrinsically linked?
If it really was the case that the Lords were the origin of the black liquid, and not the humans or monsters, then how had it begun to infect them? Was it deliberate or by accident?
More than that, the cavern underneath Lars-Eleme was untouched. Yet at its foremost edge, the way that the Lord's territory seemed to violently encroach on it spoke volumes.
The corpses of the Lords surrounding him was also becoming a key part of his theory. The way that they were dismembered, it reminded him of how the skeletal creatures he had first met had mangled his leg.
Artemis had begun to believe that the city had fallen because of the monsters that now populated it. Those monsters had derived themselves from the cavern underneath the city, and for whatever reason, had attacked the Lords.
But these Lords, imbibed with pride, had not gone lightly into death. They had fought tooth-and-nail against the monsters, as if fighting a war. A war for survival, just like he was now waging himself against the remnants within the city.
But what was the purpose of the black liquid? If it truly derived itself from the Lords, was it used to fight against these monsters?
The Lords had a key hatred for humans, so much so that they imprisoned a great number of them. But these humans had become infected by the black liquid…
Artemis's eyes widened.
The way the liquid hardens, turns itself to stone…
And the physicality of the Lords, which is like black armour in place of skin…
Were they trying to turn the human prisoners into pseudo-Lords!?
It had all clicked into place.
That was the reason for the laboratory-like rooms within the prison tower!
It wasn't truly a prison, the humans weren't truly prisoners. They were test subjects. They were the product of an attempt to make more soldiers for their war!
And Lord Vaultracht, who had determined himself to guarding the tower as penance, even in his greatest loneliness, did so with the hope that the experiments would foster results that would save his people.
But after so many years, without word from his people, he had lost hope, and lost purpose in his mission.
And so he had Artemis end his suffering…
But how had this black liquid infected the monsters, if it was meant for the humans? Was it the case that it was too-effective, much to the despair of the Lords? Rather than creating a weapon that they could wield against their enemies, they had directly empowered them?
Now, these hordes of monsters who were already overpowering the Lords were made to be just like them, beasts of war, of attrition and strength.
And Lars-Eleme had lost all hope of victory.
These remnant Spirits left behind by war, Lords likely, inhabited the armour they once used in life, bound by a seal of blood, eternally devoted to hunting down the endless waves of creatures that had overtaken Lars-Eleme.
Of course, this was all just speculation. He hadn't spoken much to Lord Vaultracht about the matter, which had definitely been a wasted opportunity. If he really wanted to gage the history of the city, he shouldn't have just asked the name of it. This was just to determine whether he still had hope of returning hope, but it definitely could have been phrased better…
His hands were still shaking from the fight, much less the collapse of the tower that could have killed them. Not just from overuse, both of his physicality and the Spirit Bond, but also of having to kill someone he had seen himself in. It was ruining.
And it certainly wasn't worth what he had gotten out of it.
He definitely should have asked for more than a single answer.
Wait, I haven't been into the city. I couldn't have explored it and pulled clues from its ruins.
But there's someone else who has, someone obsessed with knowledge…
He glanced back towards Ruffliette, smiling faintly.
Perhaps it was time for the crazed woman to come in handy.
"Do you know what happened to the Lords, Ruffliette? This place's history?"
She glanced over towards him.
"Huh? Ah, yes, I already know the history of this city." Ruffliette reply calmly. "It's all chronicled in my journal."