Inner Sanctum Underground | 1:40 PM | Third Day
Save for Fang, we all jumped like soone had shot at us when it happened, even if it turned out to be nothing particularly threatening. The stonework on the wall was shifting where it lay, grinding against itself as it was pulled aside by so chanism, revealing a door-sized opening to what looked like a dium-sized chamber beyond, before coming to a quick stop with a satisfying clunk.
Seth flailed, raising both his rifle and scepter awkwardly at the sa ti. "What the--"
"Oh man!" Fang said, starry-eyed as they clasped their hands together in front of them. "A secret passage!"
Are you fucking kidding ? I thought.
"Not again," Kamrusepa spoke dryly, rubbing her brow. "And here I was, hoping we were done with the exciting part of this endeavor."
"But where does it lead..." Fang mused, creeping closer with an eager expression.
"Let's not lose control of ourselves," Kam said, holding up a hand to stop them. "Even if there's nothing else alive down here, Hamilcar might've set up so sort of automated ambush. Ran, are you still following along?"
"I kinda tuned out when you wouldn't stop talking about how our lives are gonna be ruined, but yeah," she replied, sounding like she was concentrating.
"A door opened in front of us in the middle of the hallway," Kam continued. "Can you see it? Is there anything coming?"
"Yeah, I can see it," she said. "Actually, I divined sothing being there when you guys were getting close, but figured it was just so out-of-use room that'd been bricked over. There's stuff like that in most big buildings." She paused for a mont. "But no, there's nothing in there. Just 3x6 square ters of space and so inanimate crap lying around."
Our group relaxed a little. Fang took another step, pushing against Kam's outstretched arm, but the latter still seed to have concerns.
"Why did it open, then?" she asked.
"Fuck if I know," Ran told her. "It's not on the map, so it's not supposed to happen. Did you guys trigger a switch, or sothing like that? I don't have the eris to spare for a detailed scan."
"I didn't touch anything," Seth said, holding his hands up.
"Uh, neither," I contributed.
"What about you, Fang?" Kam asked, looking over her shoulder.
They considered this for a mont, scrunching up their face. "I an? It's pretty cramped in this hall, and I'm sure as heck too big for it. I might've brushed into sothing with my elbows or sothing."
"You might've," Kam echoed, unsatisfied with this ambiguous response.
"Yeah!" they said, nodding. "In a place like this, if you're gonna have a secret door, it's gonna be activated by pushing in a protruding brick or sothing, right? To go with the whole dungeon aesthetic." They frowned. "But then, I feel like I would've noticed that. I play so many echo gas, I feel like I'm always on the alert for secret wall switches." They considered this furtively, before suddenly raising their forefinger in the air. "Or oh, oh! Maybe we incidentally said so secret word or phrase that set it off? We were saying sothing about the Aetherbridge--"
"This is not helping," Kam said, irritated.
"How do you know you didn't trigger it, Kam?" Seth asked.
She scoffed. "Unlike you pack of lunks, I happen to be a normal size, so my body hasn't been in a state of disagreent with the architecture."
"That's a pretentious way of saying you're short," he replied flatly.
She glared at him. "The an human height for won worldwide is 160 centiters, which I happen to match almost precisely, thank you very much."
"Besides," he added, "you could've stepped on sothing,"
"Stepped on sothing?" She looked at him with incredulity. "What kind of idiot would make a secret door you can open by walking on the floor?"
"I'm, uh, not sure this is really worth arguing about," I said quietly.
"No kidding," Ran replied in agreent. "I'm sorry I asked."
"Why don't you simply ask Lady Anna about the issue, Ran?" Kamrusepa asked. "If anyone would know, it would be her."
"I would, but she's preoccupied with so tricky part of the work at the mont," Ran told her, her tone hesitant. "Anyway, it might just be a proximity activation, and it's only ant to fool people when the place is under actual siege."
Kam glanced at Seth for a mont, looking hesitant. "I suppose."
"And you're sure it's safe, right...?" Fang asked.
"Yep," she replied. "There's no eris in there, and nothing else that looks dangerous."
"Okay!" They clapped their hands together, and pushed past Kam's arm. "Let's take a look!"
Kam clicked her tongue. "Cause and danger aside, should we really be getting sidetracked in a situation like this? I know everyone's getting into the spirit of celebration now that we've dealt with the imdiate threat, but we're still in a hostile environnt. Anything could occur."
"Kam, it's a secret room," Fang turned to say, as if the implications were obvious. "If we don't look and see, it'll haunt us for the rest of our lives!" They gestured towards it. "Besides, this place looks tiny, y'know? It'll only take a sec."
Kamrusepa sighed, her expression irritated.
And so, we followed Fang into the chamber. It was, as they said, relatively tiny - maybe the size of the front room in a single-person apartnt - and nothing stuck out as instantly spectacular. There were so bookshelves on either side against the stone walls, and a set of four benches facing a wooden book-stand at the far end. The only thing that struck was that the room was actually lit, an arcane lamp hanging from a chain overhead.
Still, sothing about it felt unsettling to . I couldn't quite put it into words. Nothing looked strange; the furniture was the sa pseudo-classical stuff found all over the sanctuary, it slled musty and slightly damp in the way the whole underground did. But for so reason, my mind recalled the sensation I'd felt when we'd co upon Durvasa's horribly maid corpse. There sothing recognizable had been disfigured radically in a way that was threatening and wrong.
"Looks like kinda a cross between a library and a chapel," Seth comnted, glancing around. "Maybe like, a schoolhouse?"
I glanced at the benches. They were a little short. They could've been ant for children, but it was hard to say.
"Rather small for a schoolhouse, to say nothing of the placent," Kam replied. "Though it's clearly intended for performative reading of so manner."
"Maybe it's so sort of secret archive for the Order...?" I suggested.
"I've never heard of an archive designed for an audience," she said, raising an eyebrow. "But I confess I'm sowhat stumped in terms of better suggestions."
"I'm gonna take a peek at these books," Fang said, pointing to the side.
"I'm gonna sit down," Seth intoned with a tired sigh as he stepped towards one of the benches. "This walk has been taking more out of than I thought. ...ugh, dusty," he added, as he plopped down on the seat.
This must not be a place people co often, then, I noted to myself.
While Kam watched the entrance, I kept moving towards the back of the room alone, my eyes wandering for anything that stuck out.
I spotted only one thing I hadn't on my initial look, and that was a glass display cabinet in place of a bookshelf at the far end of the right wall. It was conspicuously almost empty, to the point that I suspected that it had been cleared out at so point not too far in the past (there were trace outlines of dust and disturbance in the green fabric lining its interior that seed to corroborate this) but one object remained.
It was a statuette, maybe a foot tall, depicting two figures in a scene that looked like it was probably from mythology, though it wasn't anything I personally recognized. A man, tall and long-bearded, was thrusting what looked to be a spear into the air triumphantly over a dozen collapsed robed figures, all of whom clutched hamrs. Only one of them actually had an exposed face - with long hair indicating they were supposed to be a woman - but it was featureless and smooth, clearly indicating them to be so sort of inhuman creature.
Looking at it tickled sothing in the back of my head, and it took almost a full minute to realize why that was the case. I'd seen the male figure earlier in the weekend. It'd been when Neferuaten had taken us to visit the n's entrance to the sanctuary, and there was a statue of him instead of a mural; though the beard had been absent in the prior instance, the face was extrely similar. I'd assud him to be one of the founders of the Order, but she'd told us he actually pertained to sothing completely different.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringent.
Still, I hadn't thought it would be this different. Was this from so other immortality myth I hadn't heard of?
"...huh," I heard Fang say, their tone confused.
I turned to face them. They were still standing at the bookshelf, and seed to have been reviewing a few, having now accumulated a modest pile on a nearby bench.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I, um." They let their mouth hang open for a second, seeming to be processing sothing. "I can't read any of these?"
Kamrusepa snorted. "I thought you were a true polyglot, Fang. I didn't know there were languages you couldn't speak."
"Hey, I only speak the six big ones!" they protested, but didn't seem like they had their heart in the banter, their eyes flicking back to the page. "Uh, but seriously, no. That's not the problem."
"Then what is the problem?" Kam inquired. "Are they written in invisible ink, perhaps?"
"No," they replied. "...but I an, I guess that's not far off?"
She frowned. "What do you an?"
"It's like-- I an, just co take a look," Fang said. "See for yourself."
Kam gave an irritated shrug and stepped over, and I did as well, my brow raised curiously. Fang helpfully flipped the book they held around and presented it for us to see, and--
...I understood instantly why they'd struggled to put it into words.
My first thought was that it was in code, but from what I knew, code generally either used pre-existing script simply arranged in a manner that ca across as nonsense, or sotis very simple symbology or iconography that wouldn't be too difficult for people to learn - and when it did, it tended to be for fairly simple ssages anyway. This, however, was sothing very different. The pages were covered by a not only very complicated but completely inscrutable and alien script, made up of tightly-packed curled lines that seed to flow into one another in a manner evocative of cursive, but more extensive.
I think I ntioned this before, but I was by no ans a language expert; it'd been a struggle for to even get to the stage of speaking the three I did reasonably eloquently. Still, though, I felt more than confident in my ability to at least recognize them on sight. I knew the different styles of script from the Six Parties and the Duumvirate, and even those from the Lower Planes. I even had passing familiarity with so historical ones.
This, though, I'd never seen anything like this at all. If it was code, they'd gone above and beyond.
"Well, that's... Odd," Kam said, biting her lip. "They're all like this? Front to cover?"
"Yep," Fang replied, flipping through the pages to demonstrate. "Weird as hell, huh? Again, like. See for yourself."
I took them up on it, reaching for a random book on the shelf. Even as I did so, however, I noticed sothing I hadn't at a greater distance and which almost made the act redundant; the spines of the books, and specifically the titles. All of them were written in the nonsense-script, seemingly without exception. And I noticed that there actually seed to be quite a variety, at that: Thick old tos with leather jackets, smaller affairs with laminated vellum covers, even slim ones that might've been for children. If this was so archive for the Order's secrets, that made less than zero sense.
There weren't many that belonged to the latter category compared to the others, but I picked one out from the bottom shelf. It was, in fact, a children's book, illustrated in pastel watercolors. The front cover depicted an elaborately-styled title in multi-colored text frad by blower buds - text that, of course, I couldn't read - and what looked like a... Siase twin? They were a two-headed figure, with four arms and four legs, smiling brightly and making a cheerful pose.
I frowned.
I flipped through the pages, and found the plot was simple enough for to understand in spite of the text. It started off with a main character, the aforentioned... Person, or maybe two people, frolicking and playing with animals in a field. But then a lightning bolt ca down and struck them, apparently splitting them into two 'normal' people, causing the half left behind to cry. After this, the plot consisted of them searching various locations and speaking to various wild creatures in a bid to track their literal other half down, before finally succeeding and recombining at the end of the story, the final page being a depiction of a party held in celebration of this.
I looked closely at the final page. The animals who had appeared up until that point were crowded around a cake-covered table, their hands thrown joyfully into the air and their eyes drawn as little upward-facing triangles, while the protagonist embraced themselves with all their arms.
It felt almost ridiculous to pick at the specifics of the content when everything about this was so bizarre to begin with, but still, sothing about even this felt strange. Of course, stories about an unusual protagonist with so kind of fantastical problem coming to accept themselves were common in children's books... But normally that would manifest in concepts along the lines of 'The Bear With The Really Small Feet', where the story would be about the bear learning that it was actually good to have small feet because it made him great at ballet or sothing. Comparatively, the imagery in this case felt unnecessarily mundane and physical, and the tone off, sohow. The main character had no internal arc - they were happy about their state from the start instead of resenting it, and the only conflict ca from trying to restore the status quo.
So... What was the moral supposed to be, exactly?
"This is very odd," Kamrusepa repeated as she flipped through her own chosen book, frowning deeply. "This one uses Ysaran words occasionally in normal script, so it can't simply be code for existing writing, or those words would be converted, too. This sort of formatting only crops up in-- Well, in genuinely translated works."
"I know, right?" Fang said. "I noticed that, too."
"Could it just be a really ancient language...?" I asked, not even convinced of the notion myself.
"This one I'm reading looks to be a school textbook," she said, showing to demonstrate. Indeed, the page depicted what was clearly an annotated periodic table. "Why would you produce a modern book in a long-dead language?"
"I an... You wouldn't," I said. "Not normally. But maybe it's soone's personal project? You know-- People start getting really strange hobbies when they pass a couple centuries."
"Could even be a completely made up language," Fang suggested. "I an, nerds love making up languages."
Kam didn't seem satisfied with this answer either, exhaling audibly through her nose. She shook her head. "I don't want to get caught up in speculating about this right now. There'll be plenty of ti to ask Anna or Linos - or Zeno, if he's woken up from his hiding spot, assuming whatever state he's left his true form in is capable of speech - when we get back. I'm sure there's a relatively simple explanation."
"This is a really frustrating conversation to listen to without being able to see what the hell you're talking about," Ran said.
"Uh, sorry," I said. "I didn't know you were still listening."
"I'm being a bit more vigilant this ti since you don't have anyone to watch over you if shit hits the fan," she replied. "But it's not good for my eris reserves, so seriously. Hurry back."
"See?" Kam said, a hand on her hip. "Let's grab a few of these books and get going."
"We leaving already?" Seth said, sounding weary. "I was just getting settled in."
"You'll have plenty of ti to settle in when we get back," Kam told him.
"Yeah," he replied, trying to push himself up. "I guess so."
We left the strange chamber, stepping back into the hallway, and curiously, the door closed behind us a short ti later. Seth took this as evidence that the theory about it being proximity-activated was right after all. On the other hand, I was overco by the feeling that sothing was going completely over our heads, and a disquiet lingered within . I kept looking back to the book I'd taken with , feeling both the strange urge to flick the illustrations again, but also a sense of unease, like I was carrying sothing dangerous.
Who cares, anyway? A part of thought. It's nothing to do with who the last remaining culprit is. Besides getting out of here, that's all that matters.
But even though I was aware of that, the experience almost stuck in my mind more than the spectacular affair that was our encounter in Hamilcar.
However, it quickly turned out that I was alone in that probable error of priorities. While a less shaless person might've at least waited a few minutes, no sooner had we taken twenty steps than Kamrusepa dived right back into her attempt to trick Seth into revealing sothing.
She was at least a little devious about it, though. Instead of directly returning where she'd left off, she acted like a step in the conversation had already happened - or at least, been assud - and left him to try and put it together.
"So as I was saying a minute ago," she said. "We had to go through so of the sa business with Ophelia. She was feeling rather uneasy as we approached the jump, so we ended up prodding Su to tell one of her jokes to distract her." She glanced slyly at as part of the performance, which made feel awkward from two separate directions at once. "Which, well, it certainly did."
Seth looked at her with a puzzled expression, rubbing his eyes. "Uh. Sorry, what?"
"Oh, I was just saying that you weren't the only person who had to babysit a little bit through that affair," she went on. "Though it probably sounds like you had a harder ti with Theo. Ophelia is one thing, but Theo can't even look out the windows on the tram line in the upper city without getting queasy. It sounded like you had rather a difficult ti on your hands."
Seth blinked a few tis. "...yeah," he replied. "I an-- I dunno what he said, but it wasn't a big deal or anything."
"Of course," she said, and then smirked at like she was a genius who'd just uncovered sothing scandalously damning.
I wasn't so sure about that. It was true that we had no idea what Theodoros's reaction had been to the Aetherbridge - and that there was a possibility their group hadn't rode it at all, but had arrived at the sanctuary via so other ans, as Fang apparently had - and that Kam had fabricated a story she'd 'heard' about that experience, and then baited Seth into 'pretending' to confirm it.
But was he really pretending? The trouble with inventing a believable story was that, well, it could easily have really happened. Theo was morbidly afraid of heights. Seth was a little protective of him. It was hardly so fantasy scenario.
There was no contradiction, just inference that happened to line up correctly.
I furrowed my brow, trying to rember if there was anything I'd heard from Theo that could be used to extrapolate an actual contradiction. I rembered, during the first day of our tour, him saying in passing that he hadn't eaten anything in a while, but that felt awkward to use, and not definitive anyway - even if I tried saying that I'd heard they'd had a al in the Empyrean Bastion to cheer him or sothing, he could've just been being lodramatic.
I cursed myself for not being able to co up with anything. Still, it was unambiguous this did cast a little more suspicion on Seth. Though I didn't know where that left us right now. Sacnicte would've been the person to pick at to try to confirm the story he'd told about him and Ezekiel... But of course, she was dead. And I couldn't even ask about his presentation that Ezekiel had destroyed in the hopes of finding so link there, because I didn't rember seeing how it had actually gone.
I shook my head. What would it an if he really was lying, anyway? If the boys hadn't traveled using the Aetherbridge, it stood to reason they probably had so separate dealings with the Order that we'd been excluded from, and they'd chosen to keep it a secret. But why would that be predicated on gender, of all things?
Leaving out Ezekiel, Bardiya, Seth and Theodoros were/had been close - closer than most of the girls in our glass, excepting Ran and I - but not at the exclusion of everyone else. Seth was probably better friends than Ptolema than either of those two, and Theo and I had... So sort of bond that he at least considered substantial. And I knew Bardiya had so sort of acquaintance with Ophelia.
So... Why?
With that question still in my mind, we soon returned back to the hallway leading into the security center. To my relief, I saw Anna at work and Ran beside her, watching for us expectantly - I saw her sigh in relief as we appeared. As many precautions as you could take, it was always possible to subvert arcane communications and impersonate others, so I'd had a tiny fear of us returning to find an ambush and everyone dead.
All things considered, though... Things had worked out.
User Comments
0 comments from readers