The Clear Water Psalms

Lady Beatrix regarded with a reserved bewilderment the words of the man who stood at the entrance to her palace. The man who was known as the Phantom Sovereign. The man who pursued “happiness,” and the man who lived in “freedom.” The criminal, and the sinner.

Lady Beatrix let out a cold, contemptuous laugh. Not that I intended to betray my mistress, morally or otherwise, but I thought her laugh seemed more similar to a bluff, too hesitant and shaky to come off as legitimate. Though she sneered at the Phantom Sovereign, glaring down at him from her throne, her eyes seemed to hide a sense of fear. Or, rather, if even I could see that, her eyes weren’t hiding it very well at all.

My mistress stood and began to approach the Phantom Sovereign, who remained steadfast and silent. She stepped down the stairs that radiated down from her throne, she strutted along the carpet that was laid out to the deck that overlooked the grand foyer, where two stairways on either side unrolled down to the ground floor. She descended the left-hand path, and with that, she was face-to-face with the Phantom Sovereign.

A five-tiered chandelier of diamonds and gold cast a brilliant light on the twosome. The lady, dressed in gold and crimson, who scowled with a wrathful look on her face, and the Phantom Sovereign, clad in rusty iron armour, whose empty eye sockets beheld her graciously.

“Fair evening to you, my dear.”

“Die.”

Such was the first exchange between my mistress and the undead man whose armour glistened with beads of rain. The irony of telling a dead person to die again was not lost on me. He closed the double doors behind him and strolled onwards.

“I pray that you may forgive me for my lack of notice. Unfortunately, the circumstances of my arrival here were all too regrettable. Still, it is good to see you. As always, your hospitality is greatly appreciated, my dear Beatrix.”

The Phantom Sovereign looked to me, who had been watching from the base of the stairs.

“Fair evening to you as well. I offer you all of my gratitude for keeping the lady in better company than I.”

“Get away from here, you rotten knave.”

The Phantom Sovereign was inspecting a suit of armour posed on the side of the arched entrance to the music room, which passed under the deck that oversaw the foyer. He paused for a while, before speaking.

“Still the pessimist as usual, I see.”

His words felt somewhat disconnected from the conversation, but upon second thought, it was more like he was skipping past the formalities, or informalities, as they were, to what I supposed was the essence of the debate that was to occur. The Phantom Sovereign seemed to know Lady Beatrix well enough to not waste any breath making meaningless points. He spoke again, while also turning up the visor on the suit of armour he was inspecting, peering inside.

“Hm, hm! Yes, so, it is as I say. Free yourself. That was what I had said. Let us continue from there. Free yourself; You have no right to suffer as you do. No right at all.”

Such were the words of the Phantom Sovereign. The sovereign, the one who ruled himself. He proceeded through the arched entrance to the music room. Lady Beatrix followed suit.

“Free myself? No right to suffer? What, did your brain get left below when you came back from the grave? Nobody can free themselves, and furthermore, nobody can rule themselves.”

The Phantom Sovereign stepped up to the platform at the end of the room and sat on the stool before the grand piano. He readjusted his armour and removed his iron gauntlets. And so, the Phantom Sovereign lifted his fingers over the piano and began to fluently play a gentle serenade.

“Nobody can free themselves, and nobody can rule themselves... And yet, is the one who rules themselves not you?”

Moonlight shone through the stained glass ceiling, a rainbow of darkness descending on the Phantom Sovereign as if he were a broken angel sinking down from the sky. Shadows rippled through the prismatic moonlight as raindrops hit the stained glass dome. Ethereal high notes resonated through the empty halls of the palace. He opened his mouth to speak once more.

“And yet, and yet, and yet. And yet, all in spite of your hatred of others’ pity, the ‘you’ who you are now, she is somebody who is truly pitiable. For that, I sigh. The one whose sight is so blinded by darkness that they cannot see their own self; That one is you, my dear Beatrix.”

I looked to my mistress. Her face was pained, seeming as if she would start crying. To the words of the Phantom Sovereign, she had no reasonable retort. In a quiet voice, no more than a whisper, my mistress mumbled to herself.

“No, no...”

The rhythm of the Phantom Sovereign’s music quickened. Melancholy materialised in melody. Tempo twisted itself into tragedy. Bones slammed down on the keys of the piano like a storm crashing upon stone. Surely, the climax of this night was now underway. Or so I had thought.

Just then, the ceiling dome shattered, and shards of stained glass crashed to the ground, twinkling in the moonlight, followed by a downpour of rain. There, floating down from the destruction, was a woman whose inky hair ran loose in the storm, whose black dress waved wildly in the blustering winds, darker than the night behind her.

The Phantom Sovereign slowly arose from his stool.

“Well, it seems as if that regrettable circumstance has caught up to me.”

The woman, the broken angel who hovered amidst the falling rain, laughed- The kind of laugh befitting of a lunatic. She licked the rain from her lips and sighed.

“Now, now, silly skeleton. That’s no way to address your master, is it?”

Something about this stormy night keeps causing weirder and weirder people to break into this palace.