ICO: Castle in the Mist (46 page)

What’s going on?

A wind blew through the hall, making the Mark on his chest flutter. His hair got in his eyes. Ico blinked, forcing them to focus.

Someone was crouched amongst the sarcophagi on the landing halfway up the wall in front of him. He took a step closer to see who it was, then realized he was looking at a statue. The figure was bent over as though in lamentation, forehead pressed to the ground. Its arms might have been part of the stone landing, they were pressed so low, and the slender arch of the back made Ico realize who it was.

It’s Yorda! She’s been turned to stone!

The enchantment woven around him by the sarcophagi and their light broke in an instant. Ico launched into motion, running toward her when he saw shadowy shapes rise around her, drifting up like shimmering waves of heat, like shadows forming in a sudden flash of light.

Ico went a few steps farther and then stopped, looking up at the landing. The shades did not move. They merely looked down at him with their dully glowing eyes.

Ico was breathing hard. The shades held their ground. Ico’s heart threatened to burst from his chest. Still, the shades did not move.

Ico steadied his grip on the sword.

“What’s happened to her?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I know who she is now. I know what she means to you.”

The shades continued to stare.

“B-but Yorda didn’t want what happened to you. She never wanted you to suffer…”

Ico’s knees buckled beneath him.

Have I come this far only to lose my nerve? No. It’s these sarcophagi that are doing this to me. It’s those eerie glowing enchantments. They’re happy. They enjoy my pain, enjoy the grief of my fellow Sacrifices. That’s the source of those vibrations I’m feeling.

The visions Ico had seen when he looked into the blade came back to him in a rush of memory. It was as though the sword were cutting through his confusion. He saw the eyes of the Sacrifices shining with happiness. The joy of their lives in the village. The brilliance of their existence.

These creatures I’m facing aren’t shapeless things of smoke. They’re not dark souls come boiling out of whirling pools of black. These are the Sacrifices. These are children. The descendants of Ozuma. My brothers and sisters.

They are me.

Suddenly, a howl of rage escaped Ico’s lips. His throat trembled and his voice echoed off the walls of the vast hall.

Ico lifted his sword and charged. He ran up the steps. He wasn’t charging at the dark creatures, he was charging at the sarcophagi. He was going to destroy their pale glowing curses.

He split the first stone sarcophagus he reached in two with a single swing of the sword. On the backswing he destroyed the one beside it.
Look how fragile they are, look how weak!

Ico screamed as he ran from sarcophagus to sarcophagus, swinging his sword. As they broke under the sword, their shattered pieces shone brightly, and when Ico cut the lines of their enchantments, they howled like steam escaping a kettle. The coffins crumbled, lost their lives, and fell to cold fragments of stone.

The shadow creatures began to move. Large ones with horns were gathering around Ico, bobbing up and down as they trailed him. They advanced and retreated, formed a line and pulled away. Winged creatures flew in circles over his head. The moment he thought they might land on his shoulders they would peel away or swoop low by his face and flap their wings at him.

Yet they did not hinder his progress. They were just trying to be as close as possible to the sarcophagi when they were destroyed, to be as close as possible to the light of the sword. They wanted to relish the dying screams of the stones.

Up at the highest level, with the chaos of destruction all around him, Ico slipped from the ladder. Yet he did not fall. One of the shades grabbed his collar with its long claws, and he hung in midair, kicking his legs.

Then he was back on the landing. The creature with long crooked horns, much taller than Ico, was standing next to him, looking at him with its white eyes.

He helped me.

Ico steadied his grip on the sword, thinking. The shades thronged around him in a circle. They were swinging their hands, stomping their feet, their eyes burning with the same rage that filled his.

Joy filled Ico’s heart.

More strength filled his arms. The brilliance of the blade drowned out the light of the glyphs on the remaining sarcophagi. Ico gave another shout and brought his sword down on the sarcophagus in front of him. Then with one stroke, the stone sarcophagus split in two. Its keening fell silent, and it crumbled to lifeless stone.

He was a cyclone, a thunderbolt, the power of the maelstrom. Incredible energy moved through Ico’s limbs. Each time the sword crushed another sarcophagus, each time its enchantment lifted, he grew stronger. Ico ran through the hall, bounding up stairs and ladders, then leapt to the next to begin again. He ran across narrow landings, the cacophony of the destruction erasing the whispers of the enchantments.

Ico destroyed the last sarcophagus. Shoulders heaving, he stood. His eyes flashed, watching each of the cursed fragments fly to its final rest. Until his prey was motionless, he would not remove his gaze, like a hunter who would not lower his bloodied sword.

Silence filled the hall. Ico’s breathing gradually quieted. Like a child laid down to sleep, his inhalations grew farther and farther apart until he breathed so quietly he could hardly hear them at all.

The shadowy creatures had moved around Yorda once again. Ico stood at the bottom of the stairs below, looking up at them.

“Let’s finish this.”

Ico held the sword high above his head, and from behind the shades, part of the wall forming the hall began to rumble. Fine dust accumulated over the years drifted slowly from between the stones. The next moment, the wall collapsed with a great cloud of dust and rubble. The way was open through it—a stone staircase.

Ico’s eyes traveled up the staircase, past the shadowy creatures, past the shape of Yorda frozen in grief, all the way to the true throne room of the queen.

The ceiling of the throne room was shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to judge its height. A wall covered with carvings stood in the center, coming to a peak at its top, where two swords hung over a graven crest. This was the seal of the royal house. He wondered why such a thing would be here—what did the royal bloodline mean to the queen? Was this perhaps some lingering trace of pride or attachment?

Directly beneath the crest in the center of a raised platform sat the queen’s throne.

No one was here. Ico could sense no presence. The throne was empty.

Out in the room, four of the stone idols stood, two to each side and slightly in front of the throne. These were slightly taller than the ones that guarded the doors, and their patterns were different. Ico walked between them quietly, holding his sword ready.

He walked up to the throne. Its design was similar to the one that had sat in the room where he had been separated from Yorda, but it was carved from a different stone. That throne had been made of the same gray stone as the walls around him, but this one—the true seat of the master of the Castle in the Mist—was carved from a block of smooth obsidian.

The back of the throne was like a slab of stone, covered with carvings. He saw dragons, two-headed creatures spewing flame, ringing the edge of the throne.
No—that’s not flame they’re spewing. It’s jet black mist.

A faint carving stood out in relief at the center of the throne’s back. Ico took another step closer, and its lines came into focus: a perfect circle, surrounded by swaying flames, set in a sky of countless stars.

The scene of an eclipse.

The sun was a mirror reflecting the power of the Dark God, instead of the light that was the source of all life. Light consumed by darkness.

Ico gingerly set his hand on the throne.
Cold.
He lifted his fingers and saw the silhouette of his own horned head cast across the seat.

Readying himself, Ico stepped back from the throne. He looked up at the crest above his head and turned to step down off the platform when a voice called out to him from behind.

“Is this your decision, then?”

Ico spun around.

The queen was sitting, leaning back in her throne, lustrous black hair and long black sleeves spread wide. Her arms perched upon the armrests. The many folds of black lace covering her held the shape of her body, but at the same time they seemed empty. If it were not for her pale white face and the tips of her fingers extending from her sleeves, it would have looked as though her gown sat the throne alone.

“Foolish boy,” the queen said, her voice strangely gentle, coaxing. “In the end we find that a Sacrifice child has no more wit than his forebears. I offered you my protection, I offered you my strength, and you turned your back on me. As I assume you have turned your eyes away from the true enemy you were meant to fight.”

Ico stared at the queen’s pale face. For the first time he realized that nowhere could he see any resemblance to Yorda.

Because her face is just a mask,
Ico thought.
Those fingers I can see are not real. All that is here is a dark void.
Hadn’t the queen said so herself many times? She had already lost her true female form. Destroying this thing on the throne would only be destroying a mask.

“You lied to me,” Ico said, his shrill voice echoing in the darkness of the throne room. “You said you would let me go free if I wanted to take Yorda with me. But I saw Yorda turned to stone. You lied.”

“Ah,” the queen muttered, her fingers twitching. “But I have not lied. The Yorda you saw in the room of the sarcophagi is the way you wanted her. Were you to take her hand and separate her from her loving mother, that is what she would become. I’ve merely prepared her for you.”

The queen’s black veil trembled with mirth.

“I have not done anything so foolish as to lie—though perhaps there was more of the truth I could have told you, Sacrifice.”

Ico felt the blood rush to his face and his body grew hot. The sword in his hand began to glow with a brilliant light. In response, the Mark on his chest began to swirl with white energy.

“Regardless, the time for us to share words has long since passed,” the queen said, slowly rising from her throne. “Turn that sword on me and I will destroy you!”

The queen quickly spread her hands. Ico jumped back, opening the distance between them, readying his sword.

“So pitiful, so foolish. How could a wretched little creature such as yourself hope to defeat me? How could such lofty dreams have found root in your heart and spread their branches through you? Sacrifice, it is clear that my duty here is to right the terrible mistake your shallow heart has made.”

“You can’t trick me again!”

As Ico charged with his sword, the queen’s hands moved gracefully, tracing the shape of a glyph in the air. Fingers of bone thrust forward, and wind spilled forth with a howl.

Ico was blown back. The wind was freezing cold, enough to take his breath away, and it robbed the sword from his hands and sent it flying.

He fell on his back hard, but was again on his feet in a moment. Just as he regained his footing, the sword landed by one of the idols standing to the right—a considerable distance away from Ico.

He launched himself into the air, diving headfirst for the sword. A second blast of wind billowed out from the throne, striking him at the very moment he grabbed the sword. Once again, the sword was ripped from his hand. It flew end over end, then clanged against the stone wall at the side of the room and fell point first to the floor like a twig tossed by a winter gale.

The queen was playing with the sword as though it were a child’s toy, the purifying strength radiating from it seemingly powerless.

The queen was now standing on the throne. Her hands were raised to summon another gale. Without even time to find where the sword had fallen, Ico quickly ducked behind one of the idols. The wind would have blinded him. It was an icy blast, carrying a thousand poison needles, ten thousand sharp, bared fangs, and limitless hatred.

When the idol caught the brunt of the queen’s cursed wind, the patterns on it glowed and sparked like lightning. It was the same as the effect Ico had seen when he used the sword to part the idols by the door. When the wind had passed, the idol’s light faded once again. Only the sword and the mark on Ico’s chest remained bright.

I have to retrieve the sword. Where is it? Where did she send it flying to this time?
He found it almost directly across the room. Ico waited for the queen to raise her hands again and darted behind the idols on the left-hand side.

One of his leather sandals, faithful companions this entire time, finally gave out, splitting as he ran. His left foot felt suddenly lighter, and the sandal shot off, lying with its sole facing toward the throne, directly between the two pairs of statues.

The queen’s wind picked it up, and Ico held his hand up over his face to protect himself from the cold. When he pulled his hand aside, he almost yelped.

His leather sandal had been turned to stone, the severed thong that had held it to his leg crumbling at the end where it had broken.

I have to stay out of that wind!

But what had happened before? The wind had hit him and he was fine.
Maybe that was the power of the sword. If I can get the sword, then I can face her.

“Are you running, Sacrifice?”

The queen’s black robes trembled with derision and laughter. “Run. Run until you are exhausted. Run until your legs grow weak. In my castle we have all the time in the world!”

Ico kicked off his remaining sandal.

I have to get that sword back. It’s my only chance.

The queen was moving her hands almost as though she were dancing. She drew glyphs in the air, fingers leaving black trails that lingered in his eyes.
I have to wait for my chance. When she’s ready to send out her next blast, I have to pick my moment and run to the sword.