(Terminus of Sacrosanct Part 1 of 2)
"It must be convincing…"
The Eternity Reaches
I stand high above my kingdom, on the highest reaches of the tallest spire of the grandest mountain. It is night, or so I've made it appear. I look out the field of stars and blackness beyond me, a multicolored canvas of wonder. I shuffle forward, letting my foot dangle off the edge of the cliffside—and I let go, and step into nothing. The light inside my emerald is faint. I am more tired than I've ever been. My time spent here and my responsibilities have drained me so. I have enough strength to get home because it could be no other way… I feel myself fading.
"Give me the strength…" I plead to powers whose bones are older than my own. "Give me…" I feel a pull, from far beyond. The voices are distant, and old. The words they recite are dry, but they are from the dawn of time, when the world paid more attention to words… I—I try me ever-best not to listen. A little hedge-magic, nothing more… I have a castle waiting for me… I have a home… There… I will recover… regain my lost power… There… I will become myself again…
I feel it again: a demanding tug. I resist it. The voices wrap around me. I am weaker than… I… I seek to find my way, but the pull becomes inexorable… I struggle… I fail… and finally… I fall… And I think. No. As the darkness rises. No. As the pain takes what little is left. No. And then… there is nothing. No. But the circle… and the dark. 'It begins', I think to myself. Deep beneath the ground, in the room lit by candles. And I do not know why I think that… but it is the final thing that occurs to me… Before the darkness falls… It begins.
##WARLOCKE##
Eluviesta, 9:15 Dragon, Northern Free Marches.
"Boy! It is time." My father says to me, dressed in brown robes. He is a bald, fleshy man with opportunistic eyes, like those of a merchant, or a thief. For a moment, I'm wary, I don't remember him. I don't remember him as my father—I don't remember having a father to speak of. But, in the effort obey and keep myself from getting the beating I know I will for questioning him, I go along… quietly… speaking only when spoken to.
"It's midnight. So, I guess it is." I reply, looking up to him, his height far outstripping mine.
We walk down the corridors of the manor, slowly continuing our journey to our destination. "Time. Ahh… No one has even attempted what we will achieve tonight, Adrian. To summon and imprison the god of death, itself." He opens the door leading to the basement. "This will be a triumph for the Order. Eh, Adrian?"
"Yes father." I respond, without thinking, continuing to light our way through the house and to our other guests who already wait below.
"Father?" He questions
"…Magister." I correct lowly.
His tone becomes graveled and frustrated. "After tonight I'd like to see Aurelian and his friends try to make fun of me!" He shakes his head. "They will make no more jokes, Adrian, when Falon'Din is at my command…" We walk a bit further, down the long underground corridor, until we find ourselves at a large, wooden, metal-reinforced door. I push it open and we enter the ceremony chamber. Markings and candles had already been prepared in advance. There were at least twenty others, not including myself and father. And one of the men approached him.
"Everything is prepared for the ceremony, Magister."
"Good. To your places, then." For a moment, I see him. His eyes shift and dark around. He is scared. He thinks of the effrontery of his action: To capture a god… to bind the Guider of Souls. For a moment he hesitates. But only for a moment.He sobers, and he continues. "Let us begin." And so, he does… "I give you a coin made from a stone." He tosses the coin to the middle of the painted circle. "I give you a song I stole from the dirt. I give you a knife from under the hills. And a stick I drove through a dead man's eye." He pulls both from his robes and lays the stick, with a blackened tip of dried blood firm on the stone floor. "I give you a claw I ripped from a rat. I give you a name, and the name is lost. I give you the blood…" I cringe as I watch him drag the knife across his forearm, blood dripping from the thin wound. "…from out of my vein. And a feather I pulled from the last gryphon's wing." The words of the spell toll inside my head, and likely my fathers and everyone else in here, as well. I realize that we couldn't stop now. Not even if we wanted to, and I feel my father thinks the same. He continues his chant, beads of sweat beginning to roll down his face. "I call you with names! I summon with poison and summon with pain! Open the way to us, and I shall open the gates!" My eyes go wide as I see the circle come alight with golden flame… it was working, and I was afraid. "Come." My father finishes, letting the others carry the chant now. 'Come', I hear at least once from everyone, and likely many times more than I was able to hear. Father kneels. "I summon you in the names of the Old Gods: Dumat, Toth, Zazikel, Andoral, Urthemial, Razikale, Lusacan! We Summon!" I had heard that there was chanting in rites like this, but I never quite put-together the why of it. Now though, I knew. At least in this… we were bluffing him-Falon'din. Exhorting him with names of powers even he might bow to, or maybe just those he himself knew, once upon a time. "Mythal calls you. Elgar'nan calls you. Dirthamen calls you." He does not tarry, nary a breath in-between his words. "From the dark they call you… into the dark they call you!" He finally takes a second to let the air fill his lungs. "Coin and Song, Knife and Stick… Claw and Name, Blood and Feather!" He pauses, seeing what I see. A figure, dances in the fire… behind the fire. White and pale. "Here in the darkness… Here in the darkness… Here in the darkness… Here in the darkness… We summon you, together!" He breathes in deeply, readying himself for the final word. "COME!" And he is here…
The fire ceases, and all that is left is the collapsed body of what looks like a man. Dressed almost entirely in white. I cannot see his face. He is helmed, and it is simple, but undeniably beautiful, black and silver, with a metal piece to guard his mouth and nose. From his neck is tied an emerald, a great thing, looking to weigh nearly as much as river-stone. I see an orb, that rolled out of his robe-pocket and onto the floor. I've seen this orb before, I think I have… long ago, and nowhere as well.
One of the others laughs in surprise at himself. "We did it. I don't believe it. We did it!"
"No. We failed. This isn't Falon'Din at all. Damn it all." He curses with a low growl, before his eyes catch the large emerald still hung about the man's neck. "Even so…" He reaches down and plucks the gemstone from the neck of the unconscious man. The other hooded ones quickly follow suit. Taking both his helmet and orb from his person. His white and gold robes being peeled off of him not long after, leaving him naked, and alone. "…I think—at the end of the day—this will have been a very profitable evening's work." He says, before exiting the chamber.
#
I hear footsteps outside of both my glass prison and the wooden door just beyond it. A man stands ready at the door, watching me intently, with equal measure of curiosity and cautiousness… smart man, indeed. From my view, everything is distorted and blue, like looking through a bottle. The guardsman opens the door for the approaching figures. There are four. Two of pale complexion, and one of dark. One bald headed and ill-mannered. Another, dark headed and young—timid, too. The last, appears impassive, but is absorbed and curious. I do not recognize them. They are unfamiliar.
"Trapped." I say to myself, looking out as the door creeks open. "Observe."
"Welcome. As you see, the circle traps you incorporeally; The crystal cell imprisons your material aspect." The bald, and oldest of the three says, pulling his head close to the glass, trying to peek through the distortion and bluing. "You won't get out unless the circle is broken. And the circle will not be broken unless I order it." The man smiles at me… his captive… his quarry. "We will discuss the conditions of your release…" And he leaves, the door shutting behind him with a certain punctuality. And I am silent.
#
Solis, 9:25 Dragon, 10 years later…
Father erupts behind me, the door to my office in the manor having a percussive bang shudder between the four walls. "Bugger and blast him! I know he understands me!" His footsteps are only a pig's eyelash away from being stomps on the rugged floor. "Ten years in that glass dome and he hasn't said a word! Just stares at me with those creepy eyes of his! He hates us!"
I decide it is prudent to redirect the conversation before it becomes another hour-long rant on the 'olden-days' of magic, and how it was far superior to how things were carried out in this age. "Uh, Father, Magister." I stammer, catching myself. "I've found something that may just cast some light on our guest. In the Paginarum Fulvarum." I hand him the fat book. "Here, look at this picture…"
The older man dissects the text of the ancient elven gods. "Hmm… Yes, indeed."
"Son, you must think me a fool. Why do you think I ordered that none of the guards were to sleep? He had to be one of the gods… so which one? Not Falon'Din. We knew that. Elgar'nan, then? Anaris?" He quizzes me, looking at the drawing of the figure in the book, one that eerily matches the man we still keep in our cellar. "No. Somniar was the only one that fit. I was hoping that you'd work it out on your own one day, though. And you have. Well done, Adrian." He finishes and gives me the most genuine smile I'd ever seen, patting me on the shoulder as he did so. After our quick exchange, he turns to one of our oldest and most loyal associates, Johann Sykes. A man of dark complexion and eyes so brown they'd look black in broad daylight. "I know that the Order will be safe in your hands. If ever I forsake the material plane, hehhh. Eh, Master Sykes?"
He smiles. "Indubitably, Magister."
#
Umbralis, 9:30 Dragon, 5 years later…
A schism brings chaos to the Order…
Johann Sykes, second in command to the Order of Ancient Mysteries, disappears… In company with Édith Couture, the Magister's mistress. They've taken many of our greatest treasures with them, and a sizeable sum of our total funds. Magical war is declared.
#
A few days later…
The door to the kitchens opens and I am there, as father requested. I look on at him and I am confused for a moment… He holds a cat in his hands, and it purrs in his arms idly. And then I see the knife tucked under it, and horror dawns.
He lays the cat down on the kitchen table and grabs hold of its neck firmly, forming as tight a grip on the old ceremonial knife as his old hands will allow. It shakes a bit. The cat looks up at him, its neck being clenched tightly, knife raised high. "As this blood is shed, so spills your blood, Johann Sykes, adept of the 32nd, whose secret name is Arariten… Traitor and oath-breaker!" The knife comes down, piercing though the cat with ease, its last breathes are spent mewling in pain, before succumbing.
An hour or so later, myself and my father walk, toe-and-toe through the front yard of the manor-home. "The ritual proved useless. He must've stolen the protection stone. Verminous oaf!"
I look over to my father, he is hunched over in his age, cane in hand. "What about our, uh, prisoner?" Couldn't we make him do something to Sykes?"
His aged eyes look at me like I'm insane. "We can't make him 'do' anything, Adrian. All we can do is keep him there and hope.'
I nod to myself, considering his reasoning. "We could always try and raise the death-god again?"
"Cretin." He responds deadpan at my joke.
And then I see her, standing out front our front door. She is of sandy-blonde hair and warm brown eyes. And my father seems to notice my gaze locked, and moving only slightly—only when she herself moved. I'd shifted from our conversation for the final time and he knew that. He patted me on the arm with a knowing smile and a, 'go get your woman, boy', and hobbled off. "Elaine." I say to myself, walking over to where she stood at the massive doors of the house. We had known each other since we were just kids. When the nasty business was done with father… and I had nowhere else to go, I went to her. And here I am… still going back.
#
Frumentum, 9:36 Dragon, 6 years later…
6 years later, Édith Couture, walked out on Sykes, and took the protection stone with her…
The Magister is elated, the most excited he'd been in almost a decade, knowing that nearly a decade's worth of curses would take Sykes to the grave—gruesomely.
And that was exactly what happened… Sykes falls to the ground, realizing, suddenly, that he cannot breathe, and that his bitch of a mistress has stolen his most prized treasure. He heaves, waiting for his breath to return. It never does. Soon, his head turns a sickening shade of purple and explodes, his brains leak out of his mouth and his eyes, once locked securely into his skull, now stick to the ceiling. The rest… is indistinguishable…
Not that Adrian would much care about his father's affairs. He was… indisposed. Elaine, his wife of four years, had died. Anthrax the doctors told him. She was twenty-six…
In his grief, he'd even thought to kill himself… but knew that it would only insult her to know that he'd taken his own life, should he meet her in a life beyond. But… his belief in a higher power had been irreprovably damaged.
#
Cassus, 9:47 Dragon, 11 years later…
"Father, do you think this is wise? At your age?" I ask, standing just beyond the threshold to the old ceremony chamber.
"My age?!" he coughs with a roughness that is more than concerning… and I fear I might lose my father this day if he pushes himself too hard. His heart is weak and his lungs have lost their tension. His lips have curled inward and most of his teeth are either gone or rotting. The whites of his eyes have turned an aged yellow, like fermented beer. "Don't be so bloody insolent! Open the damn door!"
I nod solemnly, and do as I'm told… always as I'm told.
Father, as expected, barges in with righteous fury, pointing his black cane at the prisoner as if it was a sword, still alive… even today. "You! It's your fault! You!" he exclaims as the man seems to just ever-so-slightly lift his head to acknowledge the Magister. "Damn you! You aren't the God of Death. But you live forever. You haven't aged a day since we caught you. You could've given me power beyond my wildest dreams!" He draws in air through his nose, and I hear the audible noise of clogging. And for the first time, I see tears fall down his face. Our prisoner had broken him. "I—" He stops, grabbing his chest in pain, but keeps on. "I didn't have to get so old. I shouldn't have had to get old!" The tears continue to flow freely, and I hear a noise—not one of breathing—in fact quite the opposite, the breath had stopped on its way up. His eyes go wide. He knows what's happening… and so I…
#
A few moments after.
Through the blue distortion through which I've looked for longer than I care to remember. I see the bald, fleshy man grab his chest in pain and in tears. I see his head tilt down, and his guardsman and son embrace him. I watch my captor grow old and die. No satisfaction. Still here. Waiting.
#
Parvulis, 9:55 Dragon, 8 years later…
"Adrian, darling, I still don't understand why you keep him down there…" says Anders, once one of the gardener boys who worked the plants and made sure the front yard was landscaped to perfection, as the Magister always liked. Now? Anders is Adrian's lover, and only real confidant.
"What else can I do?" Adrian asks back.
"And what if the authorities found out? That's kidnapping! Just because you live out from the cities doesn't mean you're exempt from the law. Especially with a family name as prominent as yours."
"Don't be foolish Anders. I've already told you… He's been down there for forty years, without eating, without… sleeping." Adrian says, noting the commonality between himself and his captive. "I don't think he can even breathe in that glass cage." Adrian turns to Anders who drinks white wine from a small glass. "He's a being of unknowable power. So, what do I do? Say, 'sorry-it was all father's fault. Look me up the next time you're incarcerated on the mortal plane.'? Look, I've seen things you'd never believe. Things that still scare me shitless. Nightmare things. We're safer just leaving him down there. I'll be dead long before he ever gets out. Then… it'll be someone else's problem."
"If you say so. Besides, I guess you've been kickin' a lot longer than I have." He pauses, taking a sip from his glass. "Hey! Fancy a game of Wicked Grace?"
"Not now. Sorry. I'm too tired." Adrian lies.
#
An hour later…
I walk down to the old door. The one that leads to that old place. The one that leads to the nightmare things. The ceremony room. I knock and I am promptly let in by one of the two guards I still have stationed here at this time of day. The other two should shift-in in about two hours or so. I'm greeted with same blued glass I've seen since I was a child. The same piece of glass my father threw his entire life away for… and likely threw mine in the pot, too, just for posterity's sake.
I sit down, the first time I've done this, and realize I'm not sure how to start a conversation with him. "Hello." I say, stiffly and awkwardly. I let the word hand in the air for a few moments before continuing on. "You don't have to be in there, you know. The deal's still the same one that my father offered you. Power. Immortality. A promise you won't seek revenge." No response, and I begin to grow frustrated, I don't even think he's looked my way. "Well? I know you can understand me! Say something!"
in here, I can see them. "…No."
#
Molioris, 9:70 Dragon, 15 years later…
Adrian stands on the hill that is not but a half mile from his manor, looking at down at my father's grave that says, 'Not dead, just sleeping'. his hair now possessing a noticeable amount of grey in it. That night, as the sun departed from the sky. He sat in my office, working dutifully on the memoir about his father, and editing his letters. One night, he grew so frustrated with the task he took a knife to his father's portrait and slashed it in two. Adrian will no longer read books on magic. Except for one. The Fulvarum Paginarum. And he only reads one page of that book… The page with the picture of his prisoner saying, 'Here is said the Kinge of Dremes'. Over… and over…
#
Nubulis, 9:72 Dragon, 2 years later…
Adrian has lost most of the strength in his knees, and fears to walk on them. He has Anders, his personal assistant and continued lover, commissions a wagon-maker to make a special chair with wooden wheels attached for Adrian. One day, Anders wheels in the greyed and aged Adrian into the cellar as requested. "Why won't you talk to me?" he says, looking through the distorted blue semi-globe. "You could tell us so much. So many things…"
#
Verimensis, 9:78 Dragon, 6 years later…
Adrian's eyes have mostly gone dull, and even young Anders has begun to lose his golden locks, opting for a shorter cut than he'd once sport, in his youth. Along with his eyes, Adrian's personality has soured in these six years, he's nearly run-out of strategies with the captive, he can think of no other way to goad him into granting his wish. Now… he treats him less like a captive, and more like a wall he can talk to should he have complaints for the day… of which there were many these days. "I haven't had a decent night's sleep for sixty years! Is that your fault?! Is it?!"
#
Pluitanis, 9:82 Dragon, 4 years later…
Adrian is now seventy-seven years old. The crown of his head is completely bald, leaving only the sides with old ghosts and wisps of grayed hair. He is frustrated, and he doesn't know how to even approach the prisoner anymore, he'd been here as long Adrian can remember… he doesn't even remember the ceremony any more. "I could… uh… torture you, you know. I could. Don't think that I couldn't… I've killed people before now." He bluffs, as he was so accustomed to doing in his younger years. Still, no answer.
#
Matrinalis, 9:88 Dragon, 6 years later…
Song Choice: Hearts of Stone – Marcin Przybyłowicz
From within the same glass cage, I still wait. And he has come… as he has so many times before, but this time, his hair is gone completely. And despite his humble and timid origins as a boy… now I see a great resemblance to his father before him. He scowls at me through through the blue-glass dome that has separated us for nearly a century. "I hate you. You're… nothing special. You know that?" He gives-out a raspy cough. "You nothing at all. You're a naked man in a glass box. You're nothing at all."
"Soon." I say, and I imagine he's surprised, my voice is graveled and unused, not for over twenty years.
I hear the once boy, now old man before me speak again. "Ehh… pointless. Quite pointless. Take me up to my office, Anders." He looks lost. "I, uh, have work to do… don't I?"
"Of course you do, Adrian, love. Of course you do." Anders replies turning the wheel of the chair to shift the chair in the opposite direction, accidently dragging it through the black-chalk circle. And just like that… the wooden wheel breaks the circle… finally.
"Don't humor me, Anders. I hate it when you humor me!"
I imagine my power is touching the two guards by now or soon enough… and the two begin talking to one another. "Boy, the old man's stroppy today." There is no reply, as the other guardsman's eyes are falling and quickly. He's thinking about his childhood. And the beaches of the Orlesian Coast. And he is asleep.
"It begins."
I enter his small dream and view it. It looks to be right out of a painting. I grab a fistful of sand in my palm and clench it tight.
Sun… sea… sand… and waves… and… and… he hears a thud outside of his mind, and awakes with a start. "—uh! Maker! What was that?"
I lay down, still as death itself.
"Look at him." One demands.
"You don't think he's dead, do you?" The other questions.
"I don't know what to think. What do we do now?" One of the two asked, dumbfounded.
The other is wide-eyed, not sure how to proceed. "They won't think it's our fault, will they? We didn't do nothing!"
One of the two turns on his heel towards the door. "Wait here-I'll get Anders!"
The other nods his head, thinking he's come to the correct conclusion. "Dead. I'll bet he's dead."
Not but three minutes later, Anders stands at the edge of the dome, examining both it, and me. "How long's he been like this? Unh. I suppose… I suppose we ought to take a look at him. He's never done anything like this before."
Anders lifts his hand and does some minor magic that Adrian had taught him years ago, warping the glass with a hole to walk through. And he, along with the other two guards stroll right on in.
I jolt up before they can react and take blow the pile of sand from my palm and into their faces. They fall down flat onto the stone floor, sound asleep. I rejoin myself and open the door back to my place of power. I am complete… I am home.
#
Thirty minutes later…
After over sixty years… Adrian feels the urge to sleep again. Fully ready to take advantage of such a thing, he lays down in his bed and shuts his eyes with a smile on his face. His mind fades away, and, unknowingly to him, the reality dissolves around him. And he feels his true self again… in dreams.
#
I feel myself, I am real, have my own memories. I feel my leather long-coat, and my I quickly pull out my metal flask and note—with surprise—that I does feel like metal. I look up and there he is. The caged man I saw in my dream… my memory. He'd done it again, thrown me into a false lifetime. I knew I should have thrown this damnable staff into the sea by now.
"Adrian Amell, I presume?"
"You presume?! You know exactly who I am, don't you? You can go ahead and dispense with the niceties, mate. Who are you anyway?"
"That… is a question more complex to answer than you would at first think." He turns his back to be, completely unafraid that I might stab him in the back. If there were any ordinary situation with any ordinary man, I'd put a knife in his back before his finished the first sentence of his speech. But this is no ordinary man, and no ordinary situation, and he knows that. "I am the Master of Dreams. The elves called me Somniar. Those of the Imperium titled me Onierus. The Chasind knew me as Airgetlám. The wizard cults of Antiva dubbed me Kai'kcul. And the Avvar children saw me as Ole Lukøje. In Rivain, I am known simply as The Sandman." He pauses, wondering how best to continue. "Since then, I have not gained another name."
"Okay, now that we've gotten to know each other so well… would you mind explaining what the fuck you've been doing with my head?!"
"Testing you. I needed to see if you were able to complete the task I have in store for you—for us both. It will require no small amount of constitution and willpower."
I laugh, halfway thinking I've lost my mind, that I'm not really hearing what I'm hearing. "Bullshit. You put yourself in prison for almost a hundred years just to test me? It doesn't make sense. Unless you're completely mad, that is."
"I assure you; I am anything but mad. And that 'me' that you saw was simply a weak projection of myself, I have no memory of my time in the cell, nor do bear any ill-will. Also, I've recently been made aware that you are looking for the Skeleton Key and that you are in the business of acquiring your former master's knowledge of the staff. Is this true?"
I'm on my guard, I think he stalling. Asking these stupid questions so he can punch me in the mouth while me hands are down. "Yeah, sure… what of it?"
"I propose an agreement: You help me with my task, the one you have spent centuries preparing for, unknowingly. In return, I help you learn the magical spells that will lead you to the Key."
'And what If I say, 'go fuck yourself, Cotton-Head?' What then?"
"Then you will never find the Key your master wished you to have, and this journey will have been for nothing."
I think, and look for a way out. On the off-chance he tells a lie, and I can learn the spells on my lonesome and find the Key, that's great. But as I said in another life… he's a being of unknowable power, I'm not sure if slighting him is wise for my sanity. I feel I'd be better off accepting the deal. "Fine… deal."
"Good. Come. We have work that needs doing."
He waves his hand and turns away from me. The room we stood in turns to smoke and my mind tumbles from my grasp…
I am gone…
Chapter 4 Ending Song: Mr. Sandman – The Chordettes