Yorda approached. She knelt by his body. She extended her fingers and touched his cheek as she had when they first met.
The boy’s face was dirty with blood and dust. His eyes were closed.
All around them the Castle in the Mist shook with a low rumbling noise Yorda felt in her body. The sound of the deep, vital foundations collapsing. Yorda looked up at the royal crest over the throne. The vibrations increased until Yorda could see the stones shaking.
The carving of the crest split in two. Along with the pair of carved swords, it fell to the floor behind the throne with a loud crash.
Yorda put one hand on the floor to support herself as the castle shook anew. She could hear the castle screaming through her hand.
There isn’t much time.
Yorda reached out and picked up the boy in both her arms.
Pillars crumbled, floor tiles buckled. Yorda continued on, ignoring the swirling dust and the collapsing walls. She advanced with steady feet through the groaning, screeching, lamenting castle. She passed through a corridor and it collapsed behind her. As she crossed a hall, she saw its floor give way, crumbling down into the earth. A chunk of rock grazed Yorda’s heel. She did not stop. Through the next room and the next, destruction and collapse followed close behind her. But Yorda did not look back. Over swaying steps and collapsing bridges, down secret stairs that only Yorda knew, they reached the underground pier. Yorda stepped across the wet sand, making for the water. The ground rumbled under her feet. The shock waves were growing more violent. When she stepped on the pier, one of the rotting pilings gave way and the pier collapsed, leaving nothing but a few scattered boards floating on the water.
Yorda smiled.
Still carrying the boy, she stepped into the water. The vibrations in the castle above sent ripples across the surface of the water. Yorda lifted her arms, keeping the boy’s face above the lapping waves.
Pushing her way forward, she reached one of the planks from the shattered pier. She laid the boy atop it. He was still asleep. Blood oozed from where his right horn attached to his scalp. The blood dripped down onto the board, staining it red.
Yorda kept moving forward, pushing the boy along on the board. The water rose until it was just below her chin, and then higher until she could go no farther.
Summoning all her strength, Yorda pushed the board forward as hard as she could. As though it heard her unspoken plea, the current shifted, carrying the plank out through the grotto toward the open sea. Yorda watched it go.
The final dying cries of the castle reverberated through the grotto. Yorda whispered something as the boy drifted away, though even had he been awake it would have been impossible to hear her over the clamor of the collapsing castle. He had never been able to understand her language, in any case.
“Goodbye,” she said.
Then, pushing back through the water, she quietly turned back toward the castle.
One of the pillars gave way. When it fell, the one next to it cracked and buckled, as though victim of a fast-spreading plague, followed by the next and the next.
In the Western Arena, the viewing stands crumbled first. Rubble buried the platform where knights had once fought for their lives and for honor. Finally the arena itself collapsed under the weight of the rubble, dragging the walls down with it and burying the queen’s observing throne.
The large reflectors to the east and west shone brilliantly, standing through the quakes. As their bases shook and the earth split, they fell to the ground, facing up toward the sky. At the same time, the two spheres above the main gate collapsed into dust.
The branches of the willow trees in the courtyard swayed like a maiden’s hair, brushing against the inner walls of the castle as they began to crumble. Gravestones toppled and split or were swallowed into the ground as coffins were spat out onto the grass.
Waves passed along the water filling the underground jail, and the copper pipes running through the castle boomed with echoing noise, sounding like bells tolling the doom of the castle. Water sprayed from cracks in the pipes, flowing down into the earth.
Gray dust rose up, mingling with the white mist that floated around the castle grounds. Wrapped in its veil, the towers of the castle leaned and toppled. They fell to the inside and to the outside, new rubble falling upon old.
By the giant waterfall, the chains of the eight hanging cages split one by one, and the cages plunged into the water far below. The water increased in volume, sending up a terrific spray notable for its absence of rainbows. Their purpose voided, the cages sank below the water.
Towers in the east, west, and main keep collapsed, as though the castle had been nothing more than a painting upon a folding screen that was now being put away by giant hands.
The last thing remaining was the main gate, the only path to the outside world, and the Tower of Winds that had stood so long and seen so much darkness.
We are ending. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Then the main gate and the Tower of Winds leaned and began to topple beneath the scarlet sky of evening, above the indigo blue of the waves. When the Tower of Winds fell, the statue of Ozuma still stood at the end of the old stone bridge, looking up at it. As the outer wall of the tower came crumbling down, the half of the stone bridge closest to it gave way under the weight of the rubble. The anchorage of the other side crumbled, and the rest of the bridge was pulled down by the collapsing castle, bowing down into the waves far below.
Yet the stone Ozuma did not shatter, did not crumble, did not break. The only thing he'd lost in his long years of penitence had been a single horn. When the bridge collapsed behind him, and the stone parapet began to topple, the statue faced up toward the top of the tower, and stone from its walls fell down on his face.
Legs still attached to a piece of the stone, the statue of Ozuma plummeted toward the sea, the Tower of Winds and the Castle in the Mist following behind him. Ozuma, the wandering knight, the horned challenger, protector of the land. Once again, his black cloak fluttered in the wind, as he led the castle’s charge toward oblivion. The charge from which no one would return. A charge toward freedom.
The sky and sea watched all. Between them, the castle gently crumbled away to stone and grass, and the mist rose from the land.
At the same moment, far off in the capital, an unseen surge of energy stirred through the hall where the priests had gathered for their vespers, blowing the hoods from their heads. The nobles lost their crowns to a sudden gale, while the soldiers’ helmets flew from their heads and rolled across the ground.
In the center of the capital, in the great temple to the Sun God, every bell began to ring though there was no one there to sound them. The people of the capital looked fearfully at one another and up toward the sky, listening to the sound of the bells. Though no command was given, nor any decree issued, one by one, the people dropped to their knees and began to pray.
In the forgotten walled city to the north of the Forbidden Mountains the long curse was at an end, and time began to move once again. The stone bodies of the people began to crumble, and the wind whipped up their dust into the sky. After enduring an eternity of silence, their souls were finally free.
As the stones of the city returned to the flow of time, they withered to dust in an instant.
Yet among them, there was a single breath of life. A sheen returned to the hair of Arrow Wind’s coat. His mane rippled, and he snorted. Freed from his stone prison, the horse stomped his hooves and looked around for the little hunter who had ridden him into this place.
Turning his nose into the wind, he searched for the scent of home. The sun was low in the sky. He needed to find his young but brave rider and make sure he was all right.
Arrow Wind kicked with his hooves and broke into a gallop straight across the empty plains where the walled city had once stood.