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Chapter 32 - Chiaroscuro
🕑 Added 2024-05-24 20:44:07 +0000 UTCI got tired of waiting for Saturday. Enjoy the spontaneity.
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As they stepped into the lift, Vincent had to suppress a grin as he remembered the ridiculous ride from earlier. He still didn’t know why he found that situation so damn funny. Floor after floor slowly passed by the carriage as the wheels bounced along the vertical tracks. Then walls rose abruptly on all sides and the elevator began to slow. It came to a stop even though there were no gates to be seen, just a glyph in the wall the size of Vincent's palm. Arlock approached it, held out his hand, reached through the bars and pressed a ring against the glyph. Something beneath the carriage opened and then the elevator began to move again. Once they passed the glyph, a horizontal set of doors closed above them, with a notch in their middle to accommodate the cables.
The elevator continued to descend in a world of nondescript brick and mortar walls, illuminated only by the crystal lantern hanging from the middle of the cage. But soon, it began to slow again and an arch rose into view. Scrawled across its top were Falian letters which he assumed translated to “Runite Vault”.
He was immediately struck by how quiet the place was as they stepped out into a curving corridor filled with a blue light. The noise of their movements sounded like intrusions on the solitude of the breathless vaults. He followed his escorts down the corridor, passing several locked doors.
There was something else...something odd about the way the air moved against his skin. It felt as if it were “exploring” him. Wind from unseen sources seemed to lick at his arms and ears and he began to perceive an ebbing and beating in the currents.
“I will ask,” Arlock said, “that you touch nothing in the vault. Many of the artifacts, though they are protected, are dangerous.”
“How close together are they?” Vincent asked, his voice sounding like a siren in the hallways. Arlock gave him a strange look, puzzled by the question. “I mean how much clearance do we have? I can't completely control the wings and tail.”
“You will be safe,” Thal’rin said, “many of the most dangerous objects are guarded by wards or they are behind glass. Though we always think it is safer to exercise caution.”
They came upon a large alcove hosting a considerable stone door. It was circular in shape and large enough to pass a landrider. A seam descended from the top, curved around a disk of nondescript polished blue crystal, then disappeared into the ground. Arlock raised his ring to the crystal, then tapped out a sequence in various locations along the door. It rumbled to life and both halves parted from each other, revealing darkness.
He stepped in, pulled a lever in the wall and the chamber filled with the sound of rumbling chains. Holes in the ceiling of the vault were illuminated as crystal lanterns descended from them, casting their sodium-colored lighting all throughout the chamber. The Runite vault was the size of a football stadium and high enough that the ceiling was difficult to see. Pillars of carved stone rose in intervals throughout the chasm, like stone trees rising to meet the vaulted arches. Vincent felt as if he stood in the bottom of some enormous cistern of great ancience.
The air inside the chamber was both still and stale, yet he could still feel something subtly beating against his skin. It felt like shockwaves of some unseen vibration as they traveled through the vault's secrets. To his left, there were numerous suits of armor. Some seemed to contort to impossible angles. Others appeared to have melted as though they'd been through some sort of inferno. To his right, there was an assortment of items and artifacts displayed in glass cases with banners tied to them. Warnings perhaps?
They passed a cage with the skeleton of a fearsome-looking beast that had mouths instead of eyes. Upon closer inspection, he saw the skeleton was actually formed of stone, sculpted perhaps. Just as he was turning away, he started and stared back at the beast. He thought he saw it turn its head toward him. He flinched and muttered a profanity.
“Did you see the skeleton move?” Arlock asked.
“Yeah,” Vincent said, looking back at it.
“We ignore it. The statue does not actually move, but the lore which built it is dark. It will play tricks on your spirit.”
They continued to walk past bookshelves filled with skulls, displays showing assorted blades and weapons, glass cases that were completely empty, yet heavily protected by wards. There was a terrarium filled with nothing but a thin layer of sand. Vincent could see tiny little footprints appearing and fading as if something walked there unseen. Occasionally something would tap the glass, then continue to walk.
“Be careful of the opening in the ground up ahead,” Arlock said, “normally it 'prefers' to stay out of our path. But it appears to be in our way. Simply step around it.”
“You have a hole that moves?” Vincent asked.
“It is a path-eater,” Salish said from behind, “they are very rare phenomena, and nobody knows where they come from or what causes them. But if you fall in one, you will fall for days, only to be thrown back out of the same hole you fell into–assuming you haven't been battered to death. Normally they last no more than a couple of days before they vanish. But this one has been in the vault since Diac Kelian's time.”
They came upon the “path-eater”. It was a four-foot wide, perfectly circular pit in the ground with clean edges and a drop into sheer darkness. It was as if somebody had bored straight into the stone and extracted a huge plug, leaving this yawning plunge. Vincent felt a tinge of vertigo.
“And...it doesn't 'eat' any of your cursed objects by appearing under them?” he asked, keeping his distance from the hole. He shuddered to imagine falling into it and never being found again.
“For a reason that eludes us,” Arlock said, “it will only appear on flat, unoccupied ground.”
As they delved deeper into the vault, winding through small canyons of artifacts, Vincent could feel the pulse getting stronger. The air thrummed with its energy. He looked to his left and right and saw that neither of his companions seemed to be reacting to it. But the ebbing only intensified as they neared the source. The forest of cabinets and bookshelves opened up into a clearing.
There was a wide recess in the ground ahead of them, shaped like a twenty-foot-wide dinner plate. In the middle of the recess, a shadowy figure knelt frozen in stone, pounding the ground with her fist. Her other hand was raised toward her face, but both it and her head were covered by a bag, so Vincent couldn’t see what it was doing. He immediately knew she was the source of the strange emanations he felt in the air.
“Ayrlon,” Arlock said, adopting a respectful, somehow poetic cadence, his voice echoing throughout the vault. “We have no idea who made her or where she came from, but for ages she has been the teller of omens. She falls to the ground and pounds at the foundations of Falius in sorrow, sobbing her grief into her hand. Through her fingers a single tear escapes, shed for the horrors its light foretells.” He gave Thal'rin a look and at the High Channeler's nod, he went over to remove the bag.
Vincent was immediately assaulted by an ambiance so bright, he held up his hands to shield his eyes from it. However, he saw that the backs of his fingers were outlined in flickering shadows. Everything became bathed in pulsing blackness, the stone around them, Thal'rin, Arlock, Salish, Vincent's snout, his arms and legs, even the edges of his eyes at his peripherals. All objects within Ayrlon's vicinity were caught in the strange ebony ambiance of the shimmering white jewel that winked from between her fingers.
It seemed like a lone star floating in the blackness of space, pulsing silently. The uncanny black radiance seemed to fight the emanations provided by light sources in the chamber, turning the Runite Vault into a chiaroscuro of light and dark. It felt as if the polarity of Vincent’s vision had been flipped. Somebody had taken Falius and run it through a color filter in Photoshop.
“It is a contradiction,” Thal'rin said, his yellow irises floating in the flickering dark, voice solemn. “A light that sheds only darkness around it. Or perhaps it represents light that exists in spite of darkness.”
“It's...yeah,” Vincent said lamely, “it certainly doesn't make any sense.”
“Indeed,” Arlock said, “How are we able to see the tear when its reflection implies darkness?”
The emanations were so dark, Vincent's shadow was brighter by comparison. He waved his arm over the ground and his arms shadows became bright spots in the darkness. He took a hesitant step closer to Ayrlon, feeling the emanations beating against him, slapping against his skin.
“Admoran is being assaulted by unknown evils.” Thal'rin stepped in beside him. “Villages report strange behavior in their beasts when those storms pass over them, grotesque transformations, villagers gone missing. Meldohv, Rydic, and even Sinyu Syredels are all preparing for refugees. Of course, there is no word about what Jalhara will do, perhaps the storms have yet to venture near The Skein.”
The black storms, the monsters they had spawned, Vincent's amnesia, his missing memories. Yet the storms felt like bait. They felt like the ancient evil the Saedharu was going to fight. Dark wizard, primordial force, or Lovecraftian entity, whatever was behind the storms, it was screwing with him.
“Why does it send vibrations through the air?” he asked, forcing himself to remain in the present. “This thing, I mean.”
“We do not know,” Arlock said, “but it is a phenomenon that has been documented whenever Ayrlon weeps.” So they did feel it after all.
“What are your thoughts now that you have seen it?” Thal'rin asked.
“I...don't know what you're wanting me to say. Light shouldn't react like this. It's eerie? Ominous? I don't mean any disrespect, but I don't understand the point of bringing me down here.”
“If I were in your position,” Thal’rin said, “I would wish to see the reason these creatures are claiming me to be this...figure of contradiction. I owe it to you. It may be the closest thing you get to a prophecy that we have. It is a courtesy. If that light represents your presence, then you deserve to see it for yourself.”
“It means nothing to me.”
“But it means something to us. And that makes it relevant.”
Vincent did not like the sound of that one bit.
“It's fascinating, but I don't know what to make of it,” he said, “part of me wants to see what would happen if you focused the light through a prism. We've discovered a long time ago that light has different wavelengths and that's what determines its color. I would like to know if that's true with this 'anti-light'. But beyond that...” He shook his head. “This...it's culture shock.”
“Culture shock?” Thal'rin repeated, “Is this another one of your idioms?”
Vincent could not find the words to articulate what he was trying to say at first.
“My people, at least where I come from–the country I come from, we're less likely to believe in prophecies and omens. So, we don't use this mindset. I would be more interested in testing this thing, figuring out how it works, maybe even see if we could replicate it. But I don't understand why this–” He gestured toward Ayrlon. “–refers to me, or at least why you think it does. It's just so far removed from how I've been trained to think.”
“You misunderstand Vincent,” Thal'rin said, “nothing has been confirmed as prophecy. We are still trying to figure out what this light means. There is ambiguity here. The Saedharu could be one of many possibilities.”
“I don’t know what world you hail from, Vincent Cordell,” Arlock said, “but if your people had an artifact that consistently, reliably forewarned them of disaster, would you not heed it, even if its origins and workings were mysterious?”
Vincent shrugged, “Maybe we would. Or maybe we’d assume that the device is being operated by the same entity that’s causing the disasters. I don't believe in omens, and I don't believe anybody can see into the future unless they are directly manipulating it. But...that's just me.”
“It has been proposed before,” Salish said, “an intelligence behind Ayrlon's Tear, I mean.”
Vincent didn’t like that light. It disturbed him. The way it painted all shapes with shadows made him paranoid. His mind conjured images of thrashing limbs and breaking bones.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” he said.
“Are you well?” Thal’rin asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s giving me a headache.”
When they headed back the way they came, Vincent felt the ebbing and pulsing lose its strength. They turned the corner where the path-eater had been only to find that it had moved. Blank, unblemished stone was left in its place. He shuddered when he thought of that pit reappearing right under his feet. They passed the cage with the skeleton, who, once again, appeared to move its gaze as he looked away from it. They eventually exited onto the blue hallway and waited for Arlock to seal the vault. Then they walked around to the lift and ascended. The pulsing vanished.
When they reached the top of The Deep Archives, Vincent awkwardly asked Arlock if they had any facilities he could use. He wondered if the question would be recorded in Falian history, discussed about in their debates a thousand years from now, or if people would brag about being descendants of the tuhli master who was actually there when the Saedharu asked where he could go take a piss. As amused as he was at the thought, he was thankful there was nobody in there watching, taking notes. After he was finished, he exited the chamber to find Salish waiting for him in the hallway.
“May I grasp your ears?” Salish asked.
Vincent gawked at the avian creature.
“Sorry...it means 'May I speak with you?”
“Sure...”
“I don’t know if you are the Saedharu. In fact, I find it preposterous. Even though I’m the one that...I’m the one that proposed it.”
“I'm glad you didn't follow me in there to tell me that,” Vincent said.
“But you are different. You could be from another world, I don’t know. Lord Thal’rin believes you are, and he isn’t daft. If you are immune to the Bane as people claim, then maybe...”
Vincent didn’t know how to respond.
“I was perhaps wondering if I could chronicle your life?” Salish said.
“What? No?”
“I meant, your life back on your world,” Salish clarified. Then he began to speak too quickly for Vincent to shut him down. “Regardless of whether or not you are the Saedharu, your immunity to the Bane alone makes you significant. I want to find out more about you, more about the...um...about the world you come from.”
“Uhh...”
“T-think of it this way: your denial stems from the fact that you believe us to be fictional, is this correct?”
“Y-yeah.” The kid was a quick learner.
“Yet, if you wanted to fight this 'fiction', then wouldn’t your best recourse of action be to recall the life you had before you came here? I’m a historian! Collecting facts and analyzing them is my path! I could chronicle lore from your world and cross-reference it with previous statements you have given me in order to ensure consistency, if not accuracy. What you would get out of this is 'memory'. I would pry you for information about your world, your race, your lore, and force you to think critically about your previous life. I have been trained to do interviews, to scrutinize facts and to confront contradictions. You would remember who you are and where you came from, then hold onto that. I would–”
“–Whoa, slow down for a moment,” Vincent said with raised hands.
“Was...I talking too much?” Salish asked.
“A little bit.”
“Oh! Uh...sorry.”
“It’s fine. So, you want to interview me about Earth? About my life?”
“That is the idea, yes.”
“What...what did you have in mind? And how would you do this?”
“Well, I could visit the High Channeler's home and ask you questions,” Salish said, “or we could meet somewhere else. Naturally, I would record your answers, for posterity’s sake. But I would need to have both Master Arlock’s and High Channeler Thal'rin’s permission to do any of this.”
The idea was intriguing, though Vincent doubted it would work. The voids in his memory were impenetrable. Salish didn’t need to know that, though. His proposition was worth considering either way. Maybe an outside voice, even if it came from a dream, would help trigger his recollections. Maybe this was his mind’s way of recovering from his amnesia, an alternative to the storms.
“Well...you make a good argument,” Vincent admitted, somewhat impressed by the Salish’s insight. “I’ll have to think about it. But if we do this, I'm not going to talk about my life. If you want to ask about my world, like what kind of music we like, our technology, that's fine. I'd be willing to do that. But I'm not going to help you write my biography and give you details about my personal life.”
“But to talk about your life would serve to–“
“–Listen man,” Vincent said, “I can tell you're smart, eager, and enthusiastic. But you’re pushing too hard. I like my privacy. You’re going to have to respect that, otherwise–and I do mean this in the kindest way possible– otherwise, I'm going to tell you to fuck off.”
Salish blinked. “I...I understand.”
“Thanks.”
Perhaps that had been a bit harsh. Nevertheless, Vincent left a stunned Salish and headed toward Thal'rin. A few masters stopped to gawk at him as he passed them by. He resisted the temptation to shout “BOO!” at them and see if they scattered.
“Vincent Cordell,” Arlock said when he caught up to them, “I regret that we were unable to help you further today.”
“Don't worry about it.”
“Well, shall we be going now?” Thal'rin asked.
“Yeah...sure,” Vincent said.
It was difficult to tell how much time had passed when they stepped outside. Though Meldohv Syredel was not a dark city, the mountainous geode in which it was housed, blocked much of the sky. Its violet ambiance also confused Vincent's senses. Only a glance up at the opening gave any indication as to the time of day. However, if he were to guess, he would say that it was a little past one or two, going by Earth hours.
“A messenger came to see me earlier while I was meeting with one of The Thirteen,” Thal'rin said after they mounted his landrider, “Luin Orth is waiting at my home. He wishes to speak with you. I was going to offer you a chance to see more of our city, but it sounded urgent.”
“Urgent?”
“He had questions to ask you about some items found in the depths of Lorix's Eye.” Vincent's stomach leapt.
