Wow, I only have two notes to make about this chapter. The first is that it's by far the longest in this story, and the second is that the relevance of it (particularly concerning the fallen noble and the space shuttle) won't be known 'till the end.
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Chapter 4- Reaching for the stars: The keep of the fallen noble
The remainder of the day they traveled in silence, not arriving at the city's gates until dusk had waned into night. Darcia peered into the abandoned roads of the town; which now glowed gently in the silver light of the full moon. This effect made the scenery so incredibly picturesque that for a moment the ominous foreboding of before had subsided, replaced with an almost perfect serenity.
He looked around for a moment longer before falling to his knees and resting. A quick glance at Harmona confirmed that the scenery had the same effect on her, and he would have liked to embrace her as they both looked onward. Naturally, he didn't bother to try, knowing that Jagara would stop him. Instead he let out a forlorn sigh and returned to his feet. Harmona looked up at him, seeming to guess his thought, and smiled gently, though she too did nothing.
"We shouldn't be stopping, dears." Jagara said at length, her voice a welcome break from the awkward silence that had formed. "Now that we're here we may as well keep going." They nodded in agreement.
"Indeed, it's better to waste as little time as possible on such a pointless crusade." Darcia interjected crossly, wishing silently that Jagara were not there.
"How very boorish, darling!" She grabbed him firmly by the arm and began pulling him forward. He looked at Harmona desperately, but she seemed to find the entire scene comical. Eventually he decided it would be a waste of time to resist, and passively allowed himself to be tugged along.
The night carried on in a taciturn fashion, on occasion interrupted by the short bursts of conversation among the three travelers. The scenery, consisting primarily of abandoned homes and businesses, lay still as death and as beautiful in the moonlight as a precious gem. Death was the more appropriate metaphor, since the night streets were only bare of the babbling lushes and common criminals one would normally find on a city night was because for a century past every resident of the town had been dead.
Darcia found a solemn nostalgia in the idea, although he had no idea why. He had never set foot in this city before, and he made it a point to avoid subjects such as mortality. It was likely the morose aura that hovered about the ruins he found familiar, for it reminded him of the words his father had said at some obscure time before his murder:
"The Common man bears a terrible curse. He lives for but a moment, and it always ends before he learns of happiness. For us nobles, a more terrible fate lies. Our lives are long and full. We learn intimately of happiness, passion, and desire, but are forced to watch as they corrupt into sorrow, our lives themselves become terrible curses, and we are not blessed with death until we have drowned in despair."
This was the essence of his father's way of thinking. For that man, every light had a shadow, every day had a night, and there was absolutely no such thing as joy. Darcia had never understood him, for he felt the opposite: how could one not be happy in a world such as this? There was so much beauty to be found, all you needed to do was look.
"Do you lose yourself in thought often?" Harmona asked from behind him.
"What? No, I was just reminded of something." They now stood before the noble's castle, which stood as a prostrate shadow in the center of the city. On either side of its titanic doors was the carved face of a gargoyle, seeming to sneer in its grotesque fashion at the city around it. Under each face was a single word in a language Darcia wasn't familiar with: 'Emeth'.
"I see they wanted visitors to feel invited." Jagara said, staring at one of the gargoyles with disgust. "Well, here we are. Shall we plunder?"
The three of them pushed their shoulders against one of the doors, a sigh of stale air escaping from the room inside as it began to move. After a moment of mental preparation they entered, Jagara giggling excitedly as she took the lead. Absolute darkness greeted their entry, which only slightly surrendered to the beam of Darcia's flashlight. The room looked completely empty, either from lack of concern or of an earlier robbery, and they could find none of the pompous decorations or ornaments which were often favored by nobles.
"We'll find an ancient relic in a place like this?" Harmona frowned apprehensively at her sister, who seemed too taken aback to speak. The lackluster interior was obviously not what she had expected, and had obviously shattered her perfect confidence in their journey.
"Let's not think negatively, Harmona-dear. This is but one room in a large, unattractive castle." She said this with a mixture of hope and doubt, vehemently refusing to believe that she could possibly be wrong.
Unfortunately, further inspection of the building had proven no more fruitful. The first few chambers were inordinate pentagons, much like the first, each interconnected by a single, triangular hallway. Nothing changed between the rooms, save perhaps for the occasional bloodstain on a wall or the stench of a long rotted corpse, and if it weren't for the fact that they only traveled in one direction they might have feared becoming lost.
Finally, the monotonous procession of similar rooms was broken by a sudden fork in the last hallway. They now stood before two different paths, one of which was a wide hall adorned with gilded paint, and the other was abruptly ended with a second massive door.
"At last the plot thickens, so which was do we go, leader?" Darcia asked, although he knew he would be heading for the door. Something about it seemed irresistible to him, like it may contain some wonderful object, or answer a lingering question.
"I'd suggest we split up and explore both areas at once," Jagara began, glaring discreetly at Harmona. "But I imagine we would never stop arguing about how to do it. Why don't we go through the door? After all, it does seem to have a grip on you."
For a moment no one moved or spoke. Tension began to build in the group, and for a moment they exchanged glances. It was as if for just a second everyone had become aware of the blurred emotions Jagara felt toward Harmona, and then the realization subsided again before they could actually pay attention to it. The silence continued a while longer before they continued, and it could be noticed that Darcia had taken a place in their line between the two sisters.
Having at last buried the awkwardness of the past few minutes, it was a welcome relief to find that there may be something worthwhile in the coming room. While the door itself was plain as any other part of the castle, painted above it in bright gold was a small message:
By day, tread not beyond these doors. May the enlightened mind come in darkness, and see clearly the future of man.
"What do you think it means?" Harmona inquired, hesitating for a moment.
"No need to simply speculate." Darcia replied.
"That's right, we're here, why ask when you can see? I knew you had a spine, darling!" They opened the door, taking not of the partially melted appearance of its hinges. They looked as though they had melted and cooled countless times since they were originally erected, and threatened to snap under the stress of maintaining the door.
The inside of the room was smoldering, almost unbearably so, and the black paint of the floor had become wet, sticking to their feet as they walked. Their breaths came in strained gulps, as the humid air was thick and heavy.
"Why is it so-..?" Jagara began to complain, but ceased as she looked upward. The ceiling was replaced with a thick glass, which had greatly magnified the sky above them. The moon had become a great, crater filled spectacle, filling up almost the entire sky through the magnifying glass. They gazed in awestruck wonder, seeing the moon with more beautiful detail than ever before.
For all the beauty the room brought to the night, it was also unbearable hot. This was no doubt a side effect of using glass for the roof. The meaning of the posted message on the door was now blatantly obvious; at night, this room was an astronomer's dream, by day the heat would be lethal.
"It's pretty, I suppose, but it's not what we came for." Jagara interjected, pulling Darcia's face down to her own. He stared at her dejectedly for a moment before speaking.
"The hall on the other end is most likely the noble's private quarters. I doubt we'll find a ship capable of soaring through the heavens in such a place."
"I realize that! I just can't stand being wrong. Honestly, what a disappointment!-Wait! Wasn't it Oakum, that noble from the west, who sacked this town? I bet he's the one who took it. Damn! I guess it really is beyond my reach!" Jagara spouted this hysterically, the frown on her face turning into a grimace of disappointment. She began pacing the room, growling in frustration and frowning at the moon above. The others watched with bemused silence before Harmona turned to Darcia.
"This room, the ship, the engraving on the door, what do you make of all of this?"
"It seems to me that this man was obsessed with space."
"Why? What could be so important up there that he would leave his kingdom to crumble?"
"The future..." Darcia stared again at the moon, feeling a strange revoltion for it suddenly.
"The future, huh?" Harmona followed his gaze, seeming to understand what he meant.
"He probably gave up on finding it on earth, and, like most people, he began to search for hope in the unknown." He thought of his grandfather as he spoke, the timid old man who was now so afraid of death that he became obsessed with paradise. Was he destined to a similar fate? Would he one day become so entangled in the past that he would disregard everything else? The thought made him shudder, but he knew how feasible it was. It was just as his father had once said: 'single mindedness runs in our family's blood.'
Their trip to the fallen city had soon become a memory, and in the years that would follow, Darcia would often remember the thought that went through his head that day. In truth, aside from being able to see Harmona, he had agreed to come along that day because he got an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had begun to fear that his grandfather's madness might change him as well.