It is a lonely and far and dark place, the world about her, that has the soft drip, drip, dripping and dampness only humidity can provide. Everything smells of salt and the sea. Sighing of waves far away, outside a door, somewhere further within the recesses of this underground network of caves serving as Terrastella's Dungeon that go on unending, reach curled ears slowly, softly. In the darkness she opens eyes of holly and sage, eyes so young and so wise and so old that even the old oaks strains to find their secrets when she gazes upon them. No, cut that, gazed. Dalmatia has been here for three years, two months, thirteen days and nineteen hours.
Every agonizing second at first went too slow. She kept track of them all. Then, they went too fast. Swirling around as Charybdis, always hungering after her next breath, her next moment alive. Time devoured it all.
But time did not take away her crime, nor her memory,
It could never make her forget.
Anger and betrayal simmer under the surface, crawling as termites in her skin, pulling her away from the light. Now, as another evening is coming to a close, Dalmatia listens to the gentle dripping in her cell. Stalactites are leering teeth, an open mouth, waiting to swallow her like the rest of the accused in this darkness. Oh, but the light of Terrastella, the once-vicarious does not give in, does not waver under Caligo's darkness. She has been a part of it too long to let it take her now.
Another day will come to pass, and she will continue to rot, she is sure. Truths far less important and potent have been hidden for lesser crimes. Whatever the monarchy chooses now, she only knows this: she is loyal to the Halcyon, and she is loyal to Vespera. Goddess help whatever soul crosses her path once she finds her way out again.
Marisol’s heart hurts. It is tight as a fist in her chest; the beating is constricting, blood is failing to move through her body. The wind is beating and beating and beating at the rocks. It is a bitter thing, cold and sharp with salt, howling off the water with a tongue sharp like a wolf’s. Marisol’s eyes are stinging as she picks her way down the cliffs, and she is not sure whether it is the cold, or the breeze, or the way everything in her smarts like an open wound.
She hates this place with all her heart.
She hates the darkness and the dampness of it; she hates the eerie silence, cut open only by the ocean wind, the sound of breathing; she hates the way it makes her feel, headachey and sinus-stuffed, like crying, because despite her stone eyes and steel skin, this is the part of her that has been left soft.
The part that cries about injustice. The part that stings at even a faint touch. The part that knows the word unfair and weeps for it, drained by the dark eyes of the prisoners and the cold faces of the dungeonmasters, destroyed by the knowledge that he is part of this: the salt-rusted cell bars, the lonely, desperate criminals, the fact that they spend their days locked up here with nowhere to look but out.
The fact that she has left her own Vicarius in the cliffsie, presumably to rot.
Marisol swallows thickly. Her jaw aches, a dull pain. The path is slippery and narrow, pockmarked with sea-smooth pebbles, hardly wide enough to keep a body balanced—but she walks it with practiced confidence, nimble, careful, a path she walks often and never without a heavy dose of dread. Her heart is sinking and sinking. She is rooted to the rock, paralyzed even as her body manages to move, even as she slinks out of the gray sunlight into the cold, dank prison.
She inhales. The smell of seaweed. Of sweat, of the incoming tides. It is dark in here, dimly-lit as always, and the guards have learned not to acknowledge her arrivals, so Marisol merely brushes past them with a curt nod and sidles her way deeper into the prison.
Toward the cell of the woman she’s not sure belongs here anymore.
Dalmatia is older now, but still beautiful. in a way Marisol does not see on many other people. Time has turned her green eyes dull as stones, her hair is matted now by years of salt and wind; when Marisol sees her, her large, curled ears are almost always pinned back, which, under the circumstances, is… understandable. But she is still pretty. Elegant, dark, with fine bone structure.
The kind of woman who shouldn’t be in here.
Marisol takes a key off the ring. The guards turn to look at her, and they stare with silent, judging eyes.
Footsteps echo as phantoms upon wet stone, keys jingling lets her know first that someone is there, and second that they are just outside her door. What of the guards, the fighter wonders, looking out from beneath heavy brows to consider what this could possibly signify. When Marisol enters, it is a woman grown who greets her, not the green cadet she remembers, not the child of whom Dalmatia helped to train when she was younger. This is not the girl who was in the world when the darkness came to claim its prize of the silver Pegasus.
But the ghost of her past and the face before her are the same, if not older. She, too, is likely older, likely much aged with the salt that crusts her hair and tangles along her neck. Even the braids and buns cannot be well kept when nothing to help groom it is given. At last, Dalmatia arches a brow, but she steps forward all the same.
Slow, movements are so slow and careful, looking more like a limp, like she is in desperate need of a walk, of exercise, of something more than these four walls.
Perhaps it is all a ruse, a means to seem weaker than she is. Perhaps the woman actually feels the weight of her bones, no matter how light, having been heavier since her disappearance in the world above. Now, all she hears is her own hooves as they hit the stone floor. They are soft and quiet, they are the tapping of a mouse's feet, just barely heard alongside their combined breathing.
Before Dalmatia brushes against the girl-no-longer, she stops at last. Only then does the ex-Vicarious raise her head and ruffle her wings. The other brow arches now, mirrors of one another, as she looks into the woman's eyes and remembers how they once were. Things were tense and crumbling, but they were different, times were better. Almost anything would be better than these four walls. It seems enough time passes like this for the world to have died and been reborn, but the fighter is not the first to make a move, to back down nor advance. Patience is a cornerstone of her being, a foundation that grounds her still.
At last, at last, her chin tilts towards the open doorway behind the Queen. No words were ever necessary between the two. In the skies nor on the ground, they had had their own unspoken language before Dalmatia's disappearance from court, from life itself. Even in the years between when Marisol would come to look through the peephole just to be sure that her once-Vicarious was still standing, they could always talk without words. It is a language all their own, one the magpie still has not forgotten.
The guards are watching. Their eyes are narrow and dark, nothing more than stones in the wet, empty cavern. Marisol knows she is righteous; she knows, even if she weren’t, that she is their queen, and they have no right to stop her from doing this.
Key in the lock. Door opening.
They don’t stop it from happening. They don’t even try. And Marisol should know better, but some part of her is disappointed that these men, weapons slung on their back, brawnier and taller than she is, don’t even ask what it is that she is doing, or why. Some part of her is even afraid. What if it were someone else with the same confident walk? What if it were a silver-tongued liar with the right ring of keys? Would the guards stop them?
Or would they just watch, exactly like they’re doing now, as Terrastella’s longest prisoners and best-kept secrets steps from her cell?
Marisol’s chest is tight as she steps back. There is pressure building in her lungs, wave after wave of crashing saltwater sloshing around inside her chest. When Dalmatia steps into the narrow, wet hallway, Mari doesn’t know what to do, what to think, what to apologize, or even if she should. She is knocked completely senseless by the novelty of seeing the ex-Vicarius without a tattoo of bars between them; she is heartbroken and overwhelmed by the smell that follows her, seaweed and black mold and, somehow, the smell of time. The smell of months and years having been lost to her little cell, where the sun can hardly reach.
Something in her is grinding and shifting and slipping out of place. She feels unbalanced, paralyzed in the middle of a motion she can’t complete or even put a name to. They are standing so close that Marisol can see the frost of ocean-water on her prisoner’s eyelash, and all the knots in her dark hair, and the lines of salt that have crusted white down her neck and the slope of her shoulders. Again, Mari realizes with dread: time has passed. They are both old. Once this was a woman she looked at like a god, a person whose approval she craved with the intensity of an addiction. Once this was a woman strong with youth. Once she was unkillable, unforgettable, known for her power.
But time has passed. Marisol might be the only one her age who even remembers the ex-vicarius. Time has passed, and now they are evenly matched; she is nearly the age Dalmatia was when she was taken away. Now they stand and look at each other in bodies that both ache with stress and the weight of past years, standing at the same height, the same wingspan, looking at each other with the same tired eyes.
Now time is running out.
Marisol bites her lip. She tastes blood, or maybe it's just the sea, wafting up the cliffside in all its shades of salt and iron. In a voice that shakes and growls like a storm, she says:
Iron fills the air, a scent Dalmatia once thought of herself in her first days here; those were the days when the ex-Vicarioius came in dripping in blood and rage, dripping in wounds both her own and from others, dripping in the disappointment and sorrow of losing something so precious and so horrid all at once. Iron had filled this cell so long ago, but it has been years yet since she smelled it as she does again now, holly eyes falling down to the bitten lip, to her once-young charge's bleeding lip.
The woman sneers.
There is no arrogance or pride, simply a twitching of her lips, a small toughen up seeming to pass through her eyes even as her chin raises incrementally. If ghosts made Marisol bleed, then she can only imagine what the living can do. It almost disappoints her, almost makes the magpie-girl wonder if she'd really taught her so wrong.
But she knows better than that. Any weakness Marisol possesses is her own. Developed through her own lifetime and during the time when Dalmatia "disappeared" in the above world. It is disgusting and something that Dalmatia will not lay claim to. All of these thoughts circle and circle and circle, like the cool airs rising on a warm front, like water turning to sleeting sheets of ice. Then, it, too, freezes as three words are birthed. "Prudence is back." Marisol quakes as she says it, her teeth nearly chattering together, the stench of fear even more poignant than the iron.
Somewhere, Dalmatia hears screaming. Somewhere, Dalmatia hears a body fall. Somewhere, Dalmatia sees pools of blood and pain all blurring into the same red dream that plagues her over and over.
Holly eyes harden just as the line of her mouth does. Memories are pushed down. Bile is pushed down. Betrayal is pushed down. All that is left is this now: two slits upon her face to glare at the world, a squaring of already tight shoulders, and a growl like a rapid dog: "What the hell took you so long then?" It is a bark, hoarse from disuse, but still full of iron and expectations that she held for every cadet when she helped to train them.
Expectations that still fall heavy upon the Queen now when the once-light of Terrastella looks to her again. Dalmatia is a comet, and what a long shadow she casts when she steps forward. "What will you do now, then?"
Dalmatia’s face screws up in disappointment, and oh, it is an ugly thing.
It sends Marisol’s heart plummeting, sinking through her chest and then through her feet and then through the rock and all the way down to the sea, where she can feel it beating in time with the crash of the waves, all its little cuts stinging from the salt. Suddenly she is sick. Weak. The blood falls away, and her head is overcome by a long, dark rush, something deeper and warmer than sleep that she is very close to succumbing to.
But the ex-vicarius’ face grows so bitter it makes Marisol’s teeth itch: she grinds her teeth until her jaw seems to cement, and something hard and dark glitters in the cold gray of her eyes.
All at once her pulse comes back to her and it slams into her chest with a force she has not felt in weeks. Suddenly she is burning with heat. She is burning and burning with something indignant, something that could maybe be called rage, because Dalmatia has not been here: she has not seen the way their world has crumbled. The people they have lost. She does not know anything of the flood or that their goddess came down to greet them. Dalmatia does not know, she was not here—and yet she speaks like she is still the one in charge, like she has say over the Unit.
Her throat is rough, but she still swallows. Her nostrils flare, wide and pink, in suppressed frustration. What the hell took you so long then? Dalmatia asks in a voice that rings with derision, and Marisol gnashes her teeth and squares her shoulders and says carefully, coolly, almost with love: “You forget yourself, Dalmatia.”
The air that surrounds them has somehow become even more frigid. The cold wind sinks its teeth into her thin coat and shakes, shakes, shakes. Its needle-teeth are pinned to her shoulders, the rough scrape of salt pushing the chill even deeper into her muscles until she is almost shaking, half from the chill and half from the rage that is still building, building, building. I am Commander, Marisol thinks bitterly, and queen besides.
She wants to say: you have been gone many years, and probably for good reason.
She wants to say: I have not been your apprentice for a long, long time.
Instead she steadies her breath and says, “It seems… Cicero… is also back. I am going to find him firstly and interrogate him secondly. And then I will kill him.”
Then her dark lips are interrupted by a cold, awkward smile, more anticipation than any real satisfaction.
The silence is thick, permeating the chilly air about the women like a fog over their hearts. Both are lost to the hands of time, clocks ticking backwards as they remember so many, many horrible things. Holly eyes seem misty, but not with age, as Dalmatia thinks to the false claims that placed her behind these bars - it still burns her with rage every damn day. The scoundrels, the filthy, lying court that claimed insanity, claimed she would kill her own, claimed so many, many things that were complete and utter untruths.
Then, she wonders what she has missed, what has passed her by in her time below the surface.
Marisol never spoke of it every time her eyes flashed on the other side of the cell. Her mentor would hear the footsteps in and the footsteps out, nothing more, nothing less. That, in itself, was a torture, too. She'd seen how the girl grew into a woman, watched as age took its toll on the sharp curves of her face. It was a tragedy, it made her once-young heart bleed to know that she had not been there to watch Marisol lead a flight of her own and then go wherever the future would take her. Mari was, despite Dalmatia's silence, always one of her favorites, one of the best cadets she'd seen in years. Often times, the woman wonders where the others she's trained have gone, or if they're still alive at all.
Did another sovereign wage war with the water people who would devour them for breakfast after clipping their wings?
With a churning stomach she snarls, "It's about time you found your spine, girl," but it is not rage that colors her words. Buried under layers of gruffness, there is a hint of pride, a gleam in her eyes that is not wholly feral and cruel. For all the ridges of her exterior, Dalmatia is no tyrant, no crone bound to fits of anger and pettiness. She still wishes to see Terrastella and the Halcyon flourish as much as she did the first day - with or without the corrupt regime.
They are near chest to chest and the comet girl can smell the stress and strain on Marisol, its acrid stench hanging between them, her anger a snapping thing in Dalmatia's nose. With a twisted, grim line for a mouth like a reaper's scythe and the slivered moon, she whispers out "By the Goddess," and it is not a good sound, not a holy sound at all. There is no fear, only a promise of retribution. "I'll skin him myself, he's a long list of transgressions to pay for." Her voice is autumn leaves dying, her eyes are exploding stars.
Nothing good would ever come where Cicero is involved, of this Dalmatia is sure.
Down here, the air is thick and cold; it’s muggy with the smell of the incoming sea and the moss that grows in a thick carpet on the walls. The guards stand with their cold, sleepy eyes still trained on the rock at their feet. It all just feels... clinical. Sharp corners, dark and dank.
Marisol shivers, and it’s less from the chill than it is from the movie that crosses her mind of Dalmatia’s life since getting locked up—all those years down here with nothing to stare at but the always-damp walls, a bit of sun bleeding in from the outside. She hasn’t had room to stretch her wings, Mari realizes, for years and years. Barely had room to walk.
(For a moment she woners what she could have done to mitigate it. But when Dalmatia was imprisoned Marisol had only just become Commander, and other people had been in charge, and—Gods, all the evidence had pointed to her anyway. It’s still not looking great for the ex-vicarius’ guilt. But this is an unusual situation. Mari’s decided she has no choice.)
She braces for impact. For the aggressive flash in Dalmatia’s sage-green eyes, the curl of her lip in an unimpressed sneer. Mari’s shoulders tense as she watches Dalmatia’s mouth open in a snarl, but when the remark lands, it’s strained not by anger but by a fierce and battle-roughened kind of pleasure: It’s about time you found your spine, girl. And Marisol’s own lips split open in a flash of bright-white relief. It is so like Dalmatia that despite the situation, despite the circumstances, something deep inside Mari’s chest—the part of her that is still a child aching for the love of her superiors—is settled for the first time in years.
She dares to smile. Her head ducks to her chest, and the gray eyes flash up to meet Dalmatia’s green ones. “Well then,” Mari says—“we better go find him.”
The guards split around them, and she leads them out into the cold, gray light.
Time is slow and creeping while Marisol thinks, realization, sympathy, a new understanding of what prison life might be like dawning in those sea-dark eyes. She is drowning in the thought of confinement, of isolation, of never being able to touch the sky even when you can smell it on a stiff breeze and oh it should hurt. Dalmatia would wear on her mottled maw a sneer, a smirk, a fierce sort of scowl admitting that she's survived, she's made it after all these years left to rot.
But she does not.
The ex-vicarious does not even flinch when the new Commander comes back to the present and looks at her with a new sort of pity, a new sort of fierceness. But it is not a promise that she would not be returned. Dalmatia sees that and her mind rebels at the thought, hisses like a snake inside at the mere suggestion of having to return to this dungeon. It is more a grave for a winged beast than even the bottom of the sea would ever be. All this is hidden, all this does not show when she speaks to her once-pupil. When she bares her barbaric grin. Before, perhaps, she may have grunted or huffed in amusement. There is none of that now.
The water that ran down her spine and tapped along her hips for so many years left no room for laughter in her bones. It hollowed them out, washed them in salt, and turned her out into the world as something entirely new and different than the woman she'd been going into this prison.
Guards step back as Marison leads her into the light at last. Dalmatia does not care to answer, does not even notice that she does not. There is no need, not when her hip brushes against the queen's familiarly, just as it once had years and years ago on the way to the sparring rings.
Now, the blood that would coat Dalmatia would not be her pupil's from a hard day of training. Now, the knife that is twisted would not be made of wood.
It is a lonely and far and dark place, the world about her, that has the soft drip, drip, dripping and dampness only humidity can provide. Everything smells of salt and the sea. Sighing of waves far away, outside a door, somewhere further within the recesses of this underground network of caves serving as Terrastella's Dungeon that go on unending, reach curled ears slowly, softly. In the darkness she opens eyes of holly and sage, eyes so young and so wise and so old that even the old oaks strains to find their secrets when she gazes upon them. No, cut that, gazed. Dalmatia has been here for three years, two months, thirteen days and nineteen hours. 
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