Centuries.

It had been centuries since Agnes had been able to touch her.

Centuries of crawling through stone walls in hopeless circles of being crushed, torn to pieces, only to appear again like a cockroach. Every inch of the twisted tower she'd wasted her immortality in was now painted in her memory, her brain carved to match its pathways in a way that left her utterly dull. She was a ghost haunting her own massacre, and yet every single time she gasped back to life, even when blood covered her vision crimson and death kissed her cold lips, the dangling promise of her scent kept her getting back up.

She could feel herself rot. She could see the way the tower had deteriorated. Vines had overtaken the stairs. Roses had grown over the windows. Anges' body fertilized it. She simply walked forward. Her sword screeched against the walls as she dragged it along to keep track of the way along. She used to try stealth, for a good twenty years or so. It didn't work, so now she simply let evil track her. It wasn't as if her entrance would ever be a surprise.

Sunshine from the outside blurred her vision as she passed through a hallway that had been torn apart for quite a while now. From the crack she could see her prison up in the clouds. She stopped only for a moment, her hand went to her chest in the way of an abstract prayer. Her mind buzzed with tangled words. She never could formulate much this early in a resurrection, but she knew what she felt. What had to be done.

My love.

A single thought that kept the pieces she was walking like a working woman. She felt a soft tap from above the rocky ceiling. Or so she hoped, sometimes communication so far apart felt like talking to a heart under the floorboards, but Agnes would never make out if she allowed herself to question her sanity.

Hours must have passed. Maybe more than that.

She found herself in a high point, nearly torn by then. She sat cross legged and exhausted in front of a makeshift fireplace and the corpse of a dragon, the grandson of the first dragon she'd ever fought here. Another one would replace it next time. As always. The taps kept speaking to her. She could so vaguely make out the morse code of it, but she knew what concern sounded like through every language.

A small kobold, barely much more than a salamander with wings, screeched at her.

"Oh, do not—" Agnes hissed and held its muzzle shut. She shifted to place it on her lap, trying to coerce the small creature into cooperating. "Shh. Shh. There we go, you..." She wanted to say something to calm it, but her mind was too bloodied to be sweet. "...Please. Please be quiet. I need to hear her. I need to.." She didn't recognize the way her voice sounded for a moment. She let go.

The kobold screeched again, let out the word please right back at her like a parrot. Agnes never was any good with children.

"...You can fly, can't you? Even so small? Can you reach the top floor?"Can you take me to her? Can you save her? Can you save us?"Just...hold this." She shoved a letter into the creature's mouth. Its wings fluttered, and it finally took off. Hopefully to her. Maybe just to chew it into nothingness. Anges could feel her ribs throb, just a few more floors to reach her and yet she knew otherwise.

She would always be her knight.