SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem: Origins
Part 1
Resurrection of the Mad Goddess
by Lotus
Disclaimers: Yep, you knew it was coming. Ahem. I hereby disclaim what I never had a claim to in the first place, and I beg Silicon Knights on my hands and knees not to sue me, making a complete idiot of myself in the process. Oh, and one minor note: from this point on, the fanfic will contain some OOC, as I will begin to focus on the original characters. Sorry.
Chapter 3 Words to PaperMy time is near. I know it. I can feel it. The air itself whispers to me, and I feel its bonds tugging at my mind even now.
But I cannot. Not yet. There is more that needs to be done–questions that even I cannot answer. Things that the children-and the spirits-need to discover for themselves.
I must wait. When last I was called, I was unable to help those who called me-unable even to save their fragile lives. If I cannot help those who still have some hope, what will be the purpose of this waiting?
I cannot know. Perhaps I will never know. All I can do is wait.
"I didn't expect to see you again so soon." Dr. Roivas did not face the two who stood before him.
"We didn't expect to see you either."
"Particularly not so soon."
"We had hoped it would be later."
"Where have you been all this time?" Even looking into their faces-into their empty eyes-was painful.
"Wandering..."
"Just like you..."
"Like me?"
"Yes. All spirits wander, when their bodies pass on. At least for a while."
"But we stayed on, much longer than we should have."
"We knew that the task we had started was not yet completed."
There was an awkward silence between the three spirits, as though, even through all these years, there was nothing left to be said.
"We have to go." The first specter said.
"Alex still needs us. Otherwise she will fall prey..."
"Yes." Edward Roivas nodded. "I understand."
"We will see each other again soon."
"At least we hope so."
The two of them disappeared, leaving only the thinnest ripple in Reality to indicate their change in position.
It was odd, the doctor thought. When one died, the body was left behind. Everything that caused emotion-every nerve and hormone and chemical-was shed with the flesh.
Then why did he still feel the throttling grip of sorrow all around him?
For her first night away from her dorm, it wasn't too bad. It was warm outside, and she had found a fairly out-of-the-way spot to sleep, where no one would wake her up and ask her why she wasn't at school.
As Alex drifted off to an uneasy sleep, pictures began to fill her mind, pictures in normal color instead of the grey her world had been bathed in, pictures so clear they seemed more than real.
Colin, lying face-down on the earth, bleeding, struggling to breathe, face contorted in pain. His right arm was severed cleanly from the shoulder, the Runes of half-finished Spells scattered around him, the earth alongside him torn asunder as though from some tremor.
Standing above him, Jenny, in utter shock, looking in disbelief at her hands, shaking, speechless, eyes unfocused. Blue haze surrounded her, more uncast Runes faded on the ground.
Someone was laughing...
A memory this time, a long-forgotten memory, one that she had worked hard to forget. Mother and Father, lying in a black ebony box, their burial attire unable to hide their torn skin and ruptured bones. Grandpa, closing his eyes as he closed the coffin...
Then, another memory, some fifteen years later. Grandpa's body, in the same ebony box, covered with a shroud so the mourners would not see what had been done to him...her own eyes closing as she lowered the lid, shutting his body away in the dust...
Someone laughing...mocking her...someone waiting there, just on the edge of perception, waiting to pounce on her should she falter...
She awoke with a start, breathing hard, trying not to think about the images that had passed through her mind. She tried to shut her eyes and return to sleep, but the dreams were too vivid–closing her eyes made them reappear.
"People have become so preoccupied with dreams." The voice beside her spoke. "I never understood it. It's as if they think that, if they could only decode their dreams, they would know anything and everything about themselves."
"What do you think?" Alex stared up at the deep gray sky. "What do you think dreams are?"
"I'm in no position to guess. I never dream. But...my closest guess would be that human dreams are the projection of the human's subconscious. They reveal their desires, their fears, their sorrows. The mind is a painter, the sleeping eye its canvas. A troubled mind will paint a darker picture."
Alex did not reply, only rolling over and trying to go back to sleep.
"Colin, stop casting Spells on it. You don't know what it'll do."
"Stop complaining. I know what I'm doing." Colin didn't look up from the page, as the astral Runes Bankorok, Aretak, and Mantorok faded from sight.
"No you don't. You only picked up the thing a few hours ago, and now you're all 'Oh, look at me, I know everything.' Now stop casting Spells on it before you blow it up."
"I'm not going to blow it up. Maybe I need to use a higher Circle..."
"You don't know that it won't! For all you know, it very well might do that!" Jenny shuddered suddenly. "Colin, it's blinking at me again."
"It can't blink *at* you." Colin again pointed at the page. "Bankorok Pargon Aretak Pargon Mantorok." the Runes materialized, permeating the air with Magick, and the 'ink' ribbons squirmed like snakes
"It's staring at me. I swear that thing is staring at me. It's like it's trying to worm a confession out of me. " She shuddered again.
"Maybe you're just paranoid. Tier Pargon Aretak Pargon Mantorok." Again, the spectral ribbons writhed on the page, trying to pull themselves free, but nothing else happened. "I think I'm getting closer. The ink's reacting." He motioned for the spirits to come closer, then demonstrated the Spell again.
"I got the same reaction with the Bind, Summon and Reveal Spells, but none of them had a permanent effect." Colin studied the living page. "It doesn't make sense."
"It's as though the page itself absorbs the Spells." Dr. Roivas looked over his shoulder. "That may be why there is no permanent effect."
"How can you tell it absorbs them?"
Jen spoke up from the corner. "Because if it didn't, we'd all be up to our elbows in Zombies by this point."
"Ha, ha, ha. If you don't mind, I'm trying to do something important here. If you don't feel like helping, at least do something useful like trying to find Alex."
"I have no idea where to look! For all we know she could be riding the metro into West Virginia by now."
"She couldn't get on the metro, Jenny, she doesn't have any money with her." Colin gave the page another once-over, then his face brightened. "I've got it!" He smiled. "So simple. Why didn't I think of it?"
"What do you plan to do?" The doctor asked as Colin leafed through the Book, searching for the Runes. "If the Spells you cast do nothing--"
"I'll use all of them." The boy replied.
"What?" Many voices in unison answered him.
"All of them. I'll use all the runes for all the Spells that worked. I can't believe I didn't think of this before."
"You have no idea what that will do." Maximilian warned him. "I have attempted such Spells. The Runes refuse to be combined in more than one way."
"What was I just telling you?" Jenny pushed her way forward. "If you have to tinker with Magick, experiment on something else."
He ignored her, a prisoner of his own curiosity. "Tier Aretak--"
The black energy on the page twisted, desperate to get free.
"Bankorok Redgormor Narokath Magormor--"
It began to react violently, first spreading all across the page like spilled ink, then frantically writhing away.
"Pargon."
The spoken Runes, lit in colorless white, materialized in the air, spiraling into a formless sphere of nebulous confusion.
"Don't move, Colin." Jenny whispered. "Whatever you do, just don't move..."
Sitting dead still in the center of the Rune's amorphous orb, the boy hardly dared turn his eyes to the page. What had seemed like black ink had taken on a life of it's own, forming half-intelligible words, then snaking across the page, then breaking totally free of it's confines and joining in the Rune's mindless gyration.
In the midst of the confusion, an invisible hand wrote, in the same spiky, poised writing as was in the rest of the Tome, the beginning of a sentence.
But our chronicle does not end here...
It had just occurred to her. She needed money.
Alex got up and stretched her aching arms and shoulders. Sleeping on the dirt had been a bad idea. She'd just have to stay awake until she found somewhere decent to sleep. Besides, she was a mess-her clothes torn and muddy and covered with grass stains, her hair tangled, her skin cut and bruised from her fall. She needed a good nights sleep and a shower. Both of those implied staying a night at a hotel, which meant she would need money.
She checked her surroundings. If she wasn't mistaken, there was a bank about a half a mile from here. She'd stop there, then check into a hotel for the night.
Then what?
When she had jumped out the window, her only thought had been to put as much distance as possible between herself and her friends. She hadn't thought about what she was going to do afterwards. The only thing that seemed very productive was interrogating her double, and, frankly, her double was rather uncooperative.
She'd figure that out once she'd checked in.
Not checking to see whether her double had followed her, Alex stepped out onto the sidewalk, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.
Her mind wandered as she walked, pondering the mystery of her double's identity. She spoke as though more familiar with the world beyond the Veil than the one within it. She didn't seem to identify with Alex or with humanity at large. She acted as though she was something far beyond a human...
Once again, someone was laughing at her, but it was a different voice this time. The laughter in her dreams had been high in pitch, feminine, almost rhythmic. This was different–a masculine voice and a cold, harsh laugh, and a voice she very distinctly recognized.
She turned her head, ready for almost anything after the events of the day. But she was not ready for who met her eyes.
Few noticed the page of the Tome hurriedly writing itself anymore. All eyes were turned to a woman, not quite ghostly but not corporeal, standing regally beside the Tome.
She was rather small, and dressed in robes that were too long for her and trailed on the ground, but she bore herself in an almost queenly manner. As she turned her head, hollow eyes settling on each of the rooms occupants one by one, one could almost feel her scanning the minds of all those present as a reader scans a book. Eventually, her gaze came to rest on Colin, who, for once in his life, was absolutely petrified.
"You are the one who cast the Spell, are you not?" Her contralto voice was firm and even, like that of a judge.
He nodded, not daring to look away but fearful of meeting her eyes.
"Well," Her authoritative tone relaxed a bit. "I suppose I must commend you. You either must be very knowledgeable or very foolhardy to do that."
"I think I'd go with foolhardy, ma'am." Colin's voice became so subdued it was almost a murmur.
"Hmm. Indeed. But it is of no consequence. Do you know what it is that is here before you, boy?" She gestured at the Tome.
Again Colin nodded.
"Do you know who I am?"
This time he shook his head.
Facing the occupants of the room, the woman addressed her reply to everyone present.
"My name is Minerva, and I was once--a very, very long time ago–a mortal, just like you." She indicated Colin and Jenny. "I was a Roman, when Rome was ruled by the first King Tarquin. And I was born-" her face turned stern and angry- "with a Gift that I hated beyond all things."
"What was that?"
"The Gift. Do you not know of it?"
Shaking of heads, all in unison.
"The Gift," Minerva replied. "Is the ability to see beyond our Reality–the ability to see what is waiting beyond Reality's fragile Veil. It was almost tangible to me." She ran her hand along the wall. "I would see what I had always thought to be real in simple gray, as merely a pattern on the unending Veil. Then, just beyond it, beyond the gray..." She shuddered.
"The Ancients?"
"Yes, the Ancients and worse. I could hear them, as well. I could hear them plan out their triumph over one another and the humanity that banished them away behind the Veil over and over again. And they were gaining power. They would soon find away to accomplish their ends."
"Pious Augustus..." Jenny mused.
"Excuse me?" Minerva turned to her.
"Pious Augustus. The Liche. Did you know him?"
The ghostly woman shook her head. "No. The Liche was after my time. But I did know that, sooner or later, humanity would be forced to confront the Ancients face-to-face. I alone could not halt their advance. But those who came after me had to be warned. I needed some way to inform them of what they were facing, and of the efforts of those who came before them, or I would have to entrust it to human memory and tradition." Her voice turned sarcastic. "And we all know how reliable that is.
"I studied the Magickal arts long and hard, but there was no Spell yet invented to preserve oneself beyond death. Therefore, I had to trust the task to...a messenger, of sorts."
She held out one spectral hand, and the Tome snapped shut and hovered obediently toward her.
"I built, in secret, an Enchanted Tome, that, as the efforts of humanity succeeded or failed, would chronicle them. Therefore, any who found it would know what they were up against, and what hade been done before their time. It would also record the means by which one might perform Magick, and so give humanity a greater weapon against the Ancients."
"You built this Book?" Colin looked at it. "But how did you--"
Minerva raised a hand for silence. "Before the Tome was made, I searched out what would become known as the Forbidden City. I filled it with Mantorok's emissaries, to deter any human who chanced upon it from exploring it, and destroyed all of the entrances except for one, far out in the desert."
"Why did you not destroy all of them?"
"Because it could not be done. The Forbidden City must have at least one entrance to the rest of the world, or it will break off and rupture Reality in a way that could not be repaired. I also researched all I could of Magick, and recorded the Spells that would be humankind's weapon against the Ancients. I would have done more, would have learned more of Magick and the Runes, but..." She glanced sideways at the Tome. "...I did not foresee the cost of constructing this Book."
"The cost?"
"Yes. For the Enchantment on the Tome to be complete and permanent, it needed something more lasting than merely Magick. It needed living human flesh and bone.
"It needed to come from a living human, so I could not use the bones of the dead. And I would not use the flesh of others. Therefore...I did not have a choice. I Bound myself to the Tome and prayed that I could complete it ere the Binding faded. The flesh and bone that make up the Tome are mine own."
Everyone stared at the young lady, then at the Tome, gazing fixedly at them, then back to Minerva, waiting in morbid fascination for more.
"However, the Binding, which was the only thing keeping me alive, did not hold as long as I hoped it would, and eventually I felt it's Magick begin to wane. I could not record perhaps the most important thing of all, and the incantations to complete the Tome were cast with my dying breath. The words I never wrote dwelt, incomplete and unfinished, on the final page of the Tome, where you–and others--discovered them."
Jenny looked up. Again, there was that look–the subtlest change in Dr. Roivas' expression–but now, again, it was gone. "What was it you wanted to say?"
"Shortly after I began my work on the Tome, I was granted a vision. I foresaw that, far, far into the future, after the fall of the Ancients at the hands of humans–after our first victory against them-they would rise again from their own ashes.
"And--" She continued, noting the disbelief that settled on the faces of those present, "not only would they rise again, but the Guardian of Light would be powerless to stop them..."
Alex had expected almost anything when she turned her head, except for what she saw.
'What she saw', in question, was what had once been a human but was now a skeletal husk in dark armor.
"Pious Augustus..."
"At the risk of sounding terribly cliché, we meet again, Alexandra." The Liche responded. "Pondering the delicious irony of it all?"
"Irony of what?" If Alex was unnerved by the warlock's words, her tone of voice did not betray it.
"I am amazed, Alex. You seem like a fairly intelligent young lady, and yet you do not know? I gave you far more credit than you were due."
"Spare me your invective, Pious. What are you here for?"
"I? I am not here for anything, Alexandra. I am no longer of this world. I was merely curious as to whether you had pieced together this puzzle. Obviously you have not."
"'Guess this.' 'Figure this out.' Every single one of you is avoiding me and it's pissing me off." She stopped dead in the center of the sidewalk in spite of the other pedestrian's curious glances. "I want to know what's going on."
The Liche did not look her in the eye. "I almost told you outright. Don't you remember? My death was only the beginning..."
Alex struggled to keep her voice level. "I considered it merely a threat."
"No, no. I do not make empty threats, Roivas."
He had fallen to bragging. Alex turned away.
"The Darkness still comes, Roivas. The Darkness still comes and you can do nothing about it..."
She started. "What? What do you mean?"
"It is simple enough to see. Do you doubt it? You have only to look at her to know what I mean..."
Alex turned to the other her, who was standing silently beside her. There was a look in her eyes that Alex had not noticed before...Anxious...greedy...hungry...
Predatory...
"What are you saying, Pious?"
But the ghost of the Liche was gone.
"The Keeper of the Light...you mean Alex, right?" Jenny avoided Minerva's gaze as she avoided the others.
"I do. Had she not run away, she might have been able to explain all this to you-you might have been able to do something. As it is, we have no way of knowing where she is or where she is going."
"What exactly is happening to Alex, anyway?" Colin finally relaxed. "She was completely panicked when we saw her last."
"I do not know, and I have no way of finding out. Although..."
"Although what?"
"There may be some who would know."
"They are...?" The boy looked up expectantly.
Minerva ignored him for the moment. "Edward," she turned to address the doctor "where are the others? The other two, the ones I saw before?"
"They are with Alexandra." The doctor's response was unusually short. Something seemed to be troubling him.
"Their chapter is not in the Book."
"It was, at one point. But Alex never recovered it."
"Hmm. A pity. It would have answered many of her questions." She turned again to Colin. "There are two others who knew of me, and who might possibly know what is happening to the Keeper. But...I cannot explain who they are here. You would be better served by finding their page."
"But their page would still be in the Roivas Manor, wouldn't it?" Colin leafed through the book, searching for the space where the page would be.
"Yes. It would be hidden, but it would be there."
"But if we're going to find it, doesn't that mean we'd have to go all the way up to Rhode Island?" Jenny asked. "We can't just leave Alex here while we're hours away, God only knows what would happen to her!"
"One of us can go," Colin suggested. "That way, someone could still stay here and look for Alex. We wouldn't have to leave her alone."
"There's also the small matter of getting there, Colin. Do you have enough money for a plane ticket? I don't, not unless I want to take it out of my college savings, and my mom will skin me alive if I do that."
"Don't you think this is just a bit more important than your college funds?"
Minerva cleared her throat impatiently. "I agree with the boy. One of you should stay here."
"I'll go." Jenny volunteered.
"That works with me." Colin flipped the book back to the last page. "That way I'll still be able to take a look at this thing."
"I'll be taking it with me, Colin." Jenny corrected him. "Otherwise I won't be able to read the page. And you wouldn't be poking around at the Tome. You're trying to find Alex, remember?" She scooped up the Tome and dropped it into a suitcase.
"I thought you didn't have the money for a plane ticket."
"I'm driving, smart guy." Jenny put her car keys in her pocket, then grabbed a few changes of clothes and put them in her suitcase on top of the Tome.
"Don't forget your phone."
"I've got it. I'll let you know when I've found the page." With that, the girl picked up her suitcase and walked out the door.
End Chapter 3