Flash Fiction Challenge #1

This is a prompt from a Flash Fiction Challenge at Terrible Minds. I rolled a thirteen (swords & sorcery), a sixteen (magical realism), a two (a hidden compartment), and a six (a pool of blood). For my first time rolling the dice, I think this particular mashup of genres/items is very, very good. This is the story that I came up with using those three things. It had to be under 1,000 words. It's exactly 99.

It's also a sort of backstory to my novel, The Thief Lord. (Title in progress, of course.) It doesn't really give away much of the plot, but it sets the stage for my villain!

*****

“Lady Victoria? Lady Victoria, where are you going?” Rosanne asked, her steps hesitant. “What are we going to do down here?”

Victoria smiled, but did not slow her pace. “There’s something I want to show you, my dear!” she sang, waving her hand in the air. “And it’s only viewable in the dark!”

“But it’s dark outside!” Rosanne complained. “Why can’t we go out there? It’s nicer than this smelly section of the castle.”

“Because, Rosanne, it must be pitch-black, and there’s light outside. We have to go to the Darke Room.”

Rosanne shivered. “But, Miss, the Darke Room was sealed three hundred years ago. Nobody knows where it is!”

“Well, I do!” Victoria stopped in the middle of the hall, beside a heavy tapestry. “Shh!”

“But, Miss, I wasn’t making any--” 

“Sh!” Victoria insisted. She reached up and flung the tapestry back, revealing a sunken impression in the stone. Her yellow eyes sparked and her smile spread wider.

“Is that--”

“This, Rosanne,” Victoria crowed, “is the entrance to the Darke Room.”

“But it’s so...tiny.” Rosanne was right. The impression only came up to their waists.

“Then we duck.” Victoria pressed her hand against the stone and murmured a few words under her breath. Rosanne glanced up at her Lady nervously.

The stone began to glow, increasing in brightness as the seconds passed. Rosanne raised her hands to shield her eyes, and so she missed the rock vanishing.

When she lowered her hands, the cavern was open. 

“Duck,” Victoria instructed, leading the way into the cavern.

Rosanne followed her mistress, terrified. She knew that Victoria was a sorceress; she was the castle’s court magician, after all. She trusted Victoria, though. She’d been serving the sorceress for nearly three years now, and Lady Victoria had never mistreated her in all that time.

Rosanne stepped into a brightly-lit chamber, which was disorienting after the pitch-blackness of the tunnel. She straightened up, blinking rapidly. 

The Darke Room was round, and it wasn’t nearly as dark as Rosanne thought it should have been. There were candles arranged along the walls, and the floor was scrubbed clean. The only thing dark about the Darke Room was the fact that everything was carved out of black stone.

“Lady Victoria, what did you want to show me?” she asked, turning around. “Lady Victoria?” Her voice echoed from the walls, bouncing back to her. Victoria was nowhere to be found.

Rosanne, came a whisper. It filled the cavern until it was booming, and Rosanne clapped her hands over her ears.

“Lady Victoria!” she pleaded, near to tears. “Lady Victoria, where are you?”

Rosanne, Rosanne, Rosanne, the whispers came again. They drove the maid to the center of the room. She was shaking now, more terrified than ever.

“ROSANNE!”

Rosanne shrieked and squeezed her eyes shut. She heard approaching footsteps, but she didn’t open her eyes. Something hard hit her over the head, and everything was washed away.

***

Rosanne moaned and slowly opened her eyes. She found herself on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She tried to turn over, only to find that she was tied to the floor. She tugged at the ropes binding her arms, and kicked furiously at the ones binding her feet.

“Sh, Rosanne.” 

Rosanne turned her head and saw a familiar purple robe standing beside her. The black shoes that she shined every morning were right next to her face.

“Lady Victoria!” she cried, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Lady Victoria, what happened? Are you here to help me?”

Victoria cackled, a cruel and evil sound. Rosanne shrank back against the floor. She’d never heard her mistress make that sound before.

“Lady Victoria?” she pleaded, her voice warbling. “Mistress!”

Victoria leaned down, her red curls brushing Rosanne’s face. She kissed the top of her maid’s head, then smiled. “Sorry, Rosanne. But you’re the only one who’s stuck near me, and you’re the only one whose blood will work for this sacrifice.”

“What?” Rosanne began to scream, tugging wildly at her bonds. Victoria laughed, her voice rising and echoing off the cavern, filling the space with maniacal cackles. Rosanne screamed even louder. “Help! Help me! Help meeeeee!”

“Silence, toad!” Victoria snarled. She yanked Rosanne’s hair and pulled her head back, baring her neck. A quick slash from her hidden blade, and Victoria was standing over a gurgling corpse. The blood dribbled out of Rosanne’s neck, forming a pool of blood around Victoria’s shoes. She pranced through it, tracking bloody footprints all across the floor. She walked in a very deliberate pattern, tracing a pentagram out from Rosanne’s corpse. 

She was kneeling next to the body, beginning her incantations, when a chorus of shouts reached her ears. She leaped to her feet, glancing at the entrance to the cavern.

The King emerged from the tunnel, and behind him, twenty of his best guardsmen. They were all heavily armored, carrying broadswords. They quickly formed a square around the king. A few of them glanced at the body on the floor, and their faces drained of all color.

“Victoria Monsea,” the King began, taking large steps towards her, his guard following, “You have committed an act fouler than the waters of the Stivian River. You have opened the Darke Room, murdered Rosanne Gladen, and were in the middle of a Black Incantation. You are banished from this Kingdom, and from this World. Guards!”

The guards surged forward, intending to capture Victoria. She backed up, until she was against the wall, absolutely surrounded.

She cast a look of hatred toward the King. “Be warned,” she spat, “the day you find me will be the day you lose your army.” She snapped her fingers and vanished, leaving nothing but a foul cloud of sulfur behind her.

The King would lose more than half his army attempting to find her, but to no avail. It would take the Thief Lord to track her down, and she wouldn’t go without a fight.