"Where are you bringing me again?" Tyrael half-heartedly asked for the sixth or seventh time. He stomped through the thick jungle-growth behind his nephew who seemed to almost glide through it all.
"Someplace old and dusty." Was Rathma's reply. The last time he asked, it had been 'Somewhere dark but not dangerous' and before that 'Probably not a tomb'. Tyrael was starting to figure out his nephew's sense of humor. Sort of. (The Horadrim did not believe the Nephalem had one. Tyrael knew it was simply very, very dry.)
They continued their trek. Idly, Tyrael hoped the nephalem hadn't become sick of his presence and planned his imminent demise. (This would be very silly, he told himself. And Rathma was not terribly inclined towards silliness.)
"Here." He nearly ran into the nephalem when he stopped up short. Glancing around, Tyrael didn't see anything particularly out of the ordinary. Just jungle foliage thick enough that he couldn't see anything but green.
It soon became clear that Tyrael didn't see whatever it was that Rathma was showing him. With a barely-discernible roll of his eyes, he grabbed the former angel's wrist and continued on. Tyrael was about to ask again where they were headed, when the ground seemed to abruptly open up around him. Suddenly, he could see the entry-way among the mud and rocks and roots. It had been hidden from his vision - perhaps because he was still an angel at heart?
Rathma did not pause to marvel at the entrance, nor allow Tyrael to do so. They descended rather briskly. The passage was dark and cool, but Rathma seemed completely at ease. Thus, Tyrael decided to be at ease. (Honestly if Rathma were going to harm him in some way he'd had ample opportunity by now.)
"Hold up." Rathma uttered. "Close your eyes for a moment."
Confused, Tyrael obeyed, squeezing his eyes shut - and something flashed. When he opened his eyes again, the way was lit by several spectral lights of some kind. Before them was a stone staircase that was cracked and crumbling in places.
"The way can be treacherous for those with less-sure footing." Rathma glanced back at him, bringing his hands down, and Tyrael frowned at him. Okay, so Tyrael was not the most graceful mortal to ever mortal. He still chalked it up to getting used to a heavy flesh body. Rathma seemed to think he was simply a clumsy person.
Rathma smirked, and ever-so-brief quirk of the lips. They continued on.
Down, down they went, in a gentle spiral. The temperature dropped, but did not become uncomfortable. Tyrael marvelled that wherever-this-was still managed to be navigable, if dangerous to tread in. Judging from the cobwebs and the staleness of the air, it had been around a while.
The sound of their footsteps was starting to become deafening in the silence, but right when Tyrael was about to speak up, they reached a landing. Darkness yawned around them.
"Shield your eyes once more." Rathma was raising his hands, magic flickering about them, and Tyrael hastily brought up an arm to protect himself. There was yet another flash, this one warmer, more inviting.
When Tyrael looked this time, he was surprised to find what almost looked like a house before him. In a state of immense disrepair, and lit only by the glowing-orange braziers lining the walls, but a home nonetheless. Rathma confidently strode inward, and Tyrael followed.
The furniture was mostly cracked or warped, or otherwise unusable. Old shelves had collapsed, spilling their contents about the floor. Broken glass, jars, old-old ingredients for whatever spell-work Rathma used to do were scattered about. Tyrael thought there might have been a fireplace against the one wall, if the pile of bricks was anything to go by.
They were in a main living area of sorts, full of cobwebs and dust and dirt. Tyrael wished he could've seen it all before age had claimed so much of it.
"Is this place...yours?" Tyrael ran a hand over an old wooden table. The grooves had begun to force themselves apart, creating space for more dust to collect.
"Yes." Rathma stepped around some rubble where the ceiling had apparently given in and littered the place with dirt and rock. "One who lives must live somewhere."
"But you have not lived here for some time." His hand came away really quite filthy, and Tyrael wiped it on his tabard. He turned his attention towards one of the fallen shelves. Some books - those that had survived - had been stacked up beside the splintered wood. Others were spread out, and evidently Rathma had been trying to piece some of them back together.
Just how often had he been visiting this place?
"I have not exactly been alive for some time. I had no reason to come here once the Necropolis was built." The Nephalem's voice echoed around the home from wherever he'd disappeared to. "No reason but memory I suppose."
"But you live now." Tyrael followed after his nephew."Do you plan on making this place habitable again?" He side-eyed one of the less-stable looking walls. If he had to guess the place must've been much bigger at one point. There looked to be several caved-in doorways, and Tyrael wondered what they had led to.
"Oh I don't know." Rathma was leaned against another doorway, this one miraculously intact. The hallway around him looked as though he'd been working to repair it, however. "I suppose I could. Or find some place new." The Nephalem turned to enter another room, and Tyrael followed.
A breath of excitement left the former angel as he realized where they were. It was a study, filled with stacks of books and collections of scrolls. A veritable treasure-trove of information and history.
In contrast to the rest of the home, this room's structure seemed untouched. It looked as though Rathma had focussed on this room in particular, and Tyrael could understand why.
There must have been so much preserved here.
Excitedly, Tyrael looked to Rathma where he'd propped his hip against an old desk. The nephalem simply gestured at the room around him.
"I didn't bring you here to look at me. I brought you here for this." Pushing himself up, Rathma shuffled through some papers. "I would like to have it all preserved and copied, but the undertaking has become too great for me alone. Simply going through it all has been taking weeks."
"I am...honoured." Mindful of his steps, Tyrael entered fully, and began perusing one of the shelves still full of books. He pulled one free gingerly, as though it would disintegrate if touched. He heard Rathma's huffy snicker behind him.
"Be not afraid to touch. You've a lot of reading before you, best to be comfortable with them." Tyrael turned to his nephew once more, a confused frown on his face.
"Not that I do not wish to partake in all this," He nodded at the tomes before him, "But why bring me here now?"
Rathma gave him a considering look. "You asked, when we were in Corvus, if any other places of Nephalem History still stood." Then he raised his hand at the room as a whole. "And here we are."
Tyrael could only blink in surprise. He did not expect Rathma to have remembered something so small like that. The old nephalem was still full of surprises it seemed.
Privately very pleased with his current lot in life, Tyrael turned back to the book in his hands, and got to work. The history would not recount itself.