Quick intro - this smackdown is based on the instructions in the External link on the right. I'll post them more fully at the end of the story.

The two quotes I had to use are in bold type. The story is set to the sub-genres of Fairytale Fantasy and Romantic Fantasy, and takes some inspiration from the song linked in the YouTube video on the right. It also incorporates the double picture on the right of the lady and her monstrous friend, and the odd city below it. 

Where the Roses Grow

The silence of stone surrounded her as she sat, contemplative, on her tower.

It was quiet now. The school party that had babbled past beneath her an hour or so before had long since gone, although she still reflected on the snippets of conversation that had drifted to the top of the scaffold where she worked. The reflections of sound now mere echoes in her mind, but she still chewed over them as she worked.

“... and once people would flock to the Hall of Gold to ask their boons of the Living Gods.”

"In the olden days, when wishing still worked…”

“...and the Gods failed and became the mere wisps of cloud and spectral non-entity we see in the sky today.”

She looked hard at one of the Golden Ones, his statue crouched in contemplative muse on its plinth, and stared into the stone eyes. Human-like, the form was massively muscled and cold to the touch despite the humidity of the day. Like the other statues of the once-gods around him, there was not a trace of paint on its surface, not a trace of disrepair or damage to his carvings or fine lines. The rest of the Hall was a riot of colour and life, but not the once-gods, not him. He was definitely a ‘he’ though, although whether was due to his placement next to the infinitely feminine Arabesque, or just due to some innate masculinity, Anja was not entirely sure. But, she had sensed it almost immediately as she’d studied the lines of his face, the contours of his skin and the curious expression on his face. Although not handsome, as few of the Golden Ones could ever be not being of the Fain as they were, he had a certain indefatigable strength and presence.

Where he was compellingly ugly, the Arabesque was coldly beautiful. Even as a statue, her beauty was palpable, as if a female of the Fain's allure been amplified until it shone. Ethereal, haughty, stunningly pretty and desirous of both man and woman alike, her cold stone eyes seemed to suit her more than real ones ever could.

Anja shuddered despite herself, shaking her head to try and dispel the daydreams and whimsy. The movement disturbed the pendant hanging around her neck and her expression hardened as she reached for the stone heart: obsidian dark, unforgiving and empty. Just like her own. She tugged on the chain, marking her neck with the pressure, revelling in the pain as a release of sorts from the hollowness within. Her hand dropped back to her lap, back to the fine brush she’d been using to clean the statue, trying to make some sense of the architectural anomaly he posed. He and a few others.

The plinths were present all around the great Hall of Gold; some were empty, some were filled. Some, like this one, crouched on a double plinth, together with the Arabesque: together, but alone, facing a different way to the beautiful female he shared a slab of stone with. Both watched as only stone can watch, seeing everything, reacting to nothing with glacial patience. Many of the others had imps standing on them or rested nonchalantly against handsomely decorated animals or beasts of legend and myth.

But not these two.

She was studying Amyru, whose name had been crudely carved in the dusty walls below his plinth, the Arabesque and a few others who sat in colourless anonymity around the Great Hall, brooding, silent, uninformative.

Anja blew out her cheeks in frustration. “Draw me a life line here Amyru, please? I’ve got nothing to lose any more. All I have is my dwindling sponsorship, and a lump of stone. A few days is all I have left with you and Arabesque, then I go back to the hushed halls of the University. You’re all I have. I can’t live like that again, with nothing but books and silence for company. There’s nothing else to live for now, not since she died. I feel like I'm losing the fight, I...”

She bit her lip, hard, clamping down on the darkness within her and reached once more for her dusting brush to lean in towards the stone face of the once god before her, tears welling as they did all to often for her liking.

As she did, her eyes caught once more on his name and she frowned, looking hard at the crudely carved letters. “What’s that?” she murmured and bent down to look more closely. With her brush and a soft wooden chisel, she gently probed at the stone next to the letters and gasped as a loose section of dust and mortar fell away to reveal precisely carved lettering in the stonework of the wall.

A few hours later as the suns were dipping toward the horizon in a riotous splendour of green and yellow, Anja descended the last few rungs of the ladder to the floor of the hall and echoed her footsteps across the marble floors. Shadows were dipping steeply from the walls, casting ebon dark in pools flowing with stygian slowness away from the light, and she paused at the doors to cast a look back at the day’s surprise.

She had uncovered the first line of an inscription. Painstaking work had left her with stiff shoulders from hunching over the low engraved section of wall, dust covering her hair and hands and an unaccustomed sense of pleasure.

"I wish you were a raven and would fly away, then I should have a little peace."

“Finally, something to work with, but what else lies in the shadows in here? What tales of past and legend?” She sighed and turned back to the partially opened door, only to be shoved violently back into the Hall. As she fell to the floor, a knife blade pressed to her back and she stilled instantly.

“Hello pretty. All alone?” The knife traced a path down the nape of her neck. The cold metal raised goosebumps on her bare skin and she trembled as the blade was lovingly handled down over her curves. A rough hand gathered a handful of flesh and squeezed painfully.

- Close your eyes. Stay facing the floor. Do not look up, whatever you hear. Trust me - A voice whispered into her mind and she jumped in shock prompting a wicked cackle from the handler of the knife.

“No need to worry little one, I’ll be gentle with you. As long as you remember I’m the one in charge, we’ll get along ju-”

A massive boom drowned out the rest of the assailant’s words and the ground shook with the impact of something massive hitting the stone floor. As the thief startled, Anja curled tight into a ball and clamped her eyes closed. There was a whisper of movement, a wet gurgle and a decapitated head rolled past the quivering form of the girl lying terror stricken on the flagstones.

- You can look now -

The voice, tinged with a strange melancholy whispered into her mind again and she opened her eyes to stare straight into those of the man who had assaulted her. She skittered backwards, knuckles pressed to her open mouth as if to try and prevent the scream that bubbled frantically inside her, demanding to be let out in gibbering anguish to anyone in earshot. The mugger’s eyes were frozen wide in death, shock etched indelibly on his features.

She looked around her. Nothing. Nothing other than the shadows reaching with sun dying fingers towards her: no sound, no movement, nothing other than the iron rich stench of death and blood. And fear.

End of Part 1...