The Threads of Destiny - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Rings and Guardians

“There are glyphs above it, like the ones in the keep,” Talia said as they began looking at the wall, seeing the best way to take it down. “I can feel the energy from it. I think they’re active.”

“It has to be to help reinforce the wall and keep it up,” Jasper said. “If they were scared enough to brick this up, then they’d want to make sure the wall stayed up.”

“Can we remove them?” Osric asked.

“Yes. That’s the downside of glyphs and why they’re not used much. If you alter the symbol, it loses its magic. While powerful, it’s one of the weaker enchantments designed by artificers can make, mostly because any change in the glyph renders it worthless. Remember the cuts down the one we saw in the keep? That is why they were depowered. They’re really only good when you can place them so the people they need to affect can’t get to the glyph itself.”

“Like here,” Grace said.

“Like here.”

“So, I guess go ahead and do whatever you have to do to depower it, then,” Osric said.

“Should I point out again how this door is not only bricked up, but has magical protection over it. On this side of the wall, meaning it’s targeted at keeping something in there in, not keep us out.”

Talia ignored her and, with a hand up from Osric, scraped some notches out of the glyph with her dagger.

“That should do it,” she said as Osric set her down.

Osric hadn’t felt anything, but if she said it was gone, then he’d believe her. The magic must have been doing the heavy lifting, because together, he and Rowan managed to knock the wall down fairly easily.

The air on the other side was stale and musty, opening up to a long hallway with rooms on either side all the way down. They carefully entered this second of the second floor. The rooms were small and completely unadorned.

“Meditation rooms. This close to the observation deck, this would have been for the priests here to meditate on their findings, or maybe work on their research. The writings weren’t clear,” Jasper said.

“Do you know what’s beyond this area?” Talia asked.

“No. There weren’t a lot of good descriptions. There was something about meditation rooms close to the platform where rituals to the gods would be held, so I assumed. Most of what I know is from the first floor, and that is still very limited.”

There was a doorway at the end of the hall that opened into a T-intersection, where they could either continue straight, along what Osric thought was the front of the temple, or turn right, deeper into the temple. Or they could have turned right if the second floor was completely. The hallway turned into a sheer drop-off about a hundred or so feet down, which roughly corresponded to the drop-off in the antechamber. It appeared like the entire second floor aside from the section closed to the front supports had collapsed in on itself, which didn’t bode well for them finding an alternate way down.

Rowan held up a hand, signaling for silence. “Did you hear that?”

They all strained to hear. At first, all Osric could hear was the occasional creaking. Then he heard it. A faint clicking sound, almost like an echoing skittering. It only lasted for a second, but as they started forward again, they could hear it. It was hard to pin down where it was coming from exactly, just that it was getting louder.

Suddenly, a flicker of movement caught Osric’s eye. A small creature had darted out of one of the meditation rooms and into the next, too quickly for him to make out what it was clearly.

“Did you see that?” Grace said from the back of their group.

Talia gasped. “Is that...it can’t be.”

“I think it was,” Jasper said.

“What was?” Osric asked.

“A skivver. I’ve read about them, but I thought they were all extinct.”

“What’s a skivver?”

“They used to be everywhere, at least in Aeloria, back in the early days of the kingdom. Most writings from that time mention them as a pest, and they were common enough that they get referenced a lot, but they were hunted to extinction because they would steal things from people’s homes. They were nocturnal and lived in burrows, caves, and under buildings. People hated them. Unfortunately for the skivver, they breed slower than mice or other creatures, so once the hunt started, it didn’t take long for the populations to dwindle. It’s been nearly a thousand years since the last sighting.”

A head popped out of the meditation room. It was bigger than Osric first thought, maybe the size of a cat. He might have accidentally mistaken it for one if it wasn’t for the elongated snout and very large ears and eyes. It didn’t seem afraid. More...curious. Just staring at them, its little nose twitching.

Osric took a cautious step forward.

“Careful,” Rowan warned. “We don’t know if it’s dangerous.”

“Yes, it seems deadly,” Grace said sarcastically.

Osric bent down, extending a hand. “Hey there, little one. It’s alright, we won’t hurt you.”

The skivver cocked its head, long ears wiggling back and forth. For a moment, it almost seemed tempted to approach. But as Osric took another step, it quickly scurried away, disappearing into a narrow crevice in the wall.

“Guess it’s still pretty skittish around humans,” Jasper mused. “Can’t say I blame it, given the history.”

“As fascinating as this is, we need to stay focused,” Rowan said. “I doubt that glyph was installed to protect them from that.”

“Probably not,” Osric said, straightening.

They continued on down the hallway, past the next junction, moving beyond the meditation rooms. Beyond the junction, the hallway opened up into an immense room, easily three hundred feet long and almost as wide. Lining each side of the chamber were six stone pedestals with stone steps to walk up, each bearing a large, upright stone ring.

“By the gods...” Talia said.

“We’ve seen these before,” Osric told the others. “The keep where we found the first part of the document, there was a room like this. Smaller, although not a lot smaller, but with the same pedestals and rings.”

“I believe these are teleportation stones,” Jasper said, moving forward to examine one of the rings more closely. “There are references to chambers like this in the major Calaphium outposts. The magic taken to create these was incredible, although the arts needed for it are long lost. Even the Conclave hasn’t managed to reproduce this.”

“You could travel from place to place between these?” Grace asked, showing a rare moment of honest awe.

“Yes. I never really understood how these worked, although after hearing Osric’s stories, I think they might have been some kind of controlled rupture, connecting two physical points. It would have been similar to the magic used to send your ring through time.”

“They created ruptures on purpose?” Osric asked.

“That’s a guess, but it makes sense. We know they did it at least once, with your ring, right? We’ve seen these ruptures aren’t just between realities, but in our own world. You saw me through one, and we’re in the same reality, and you saw this temple.”

“But they’re dead, right? The ones we saw before didn’t work either. Talia said the magic had all faded from them.”

“They appear to be,” Jasper said, running a hand along one of the rings.

“We found another room,” Osric said. “It wasn’t like this, long with a bunch of these stones. It was smaller, with workbenches and a single stone on a much smaller pedestal, but that ring was half melted. The ring, my ring, not the stone one, still had magic in it and, when I got close to the melted stone ring, a rupture appeared right before us. We could see through it, and I’m pretty sure now we were looking through time. It was the same room, but cleaner, not ruined, and there were men inside. The men were wearing black robes and working on something around the ring. Other men stormed in, shouting about them being ‘under arrest in the name of the council,’ and then a fight started and the rupture closed suddenly.”

“If I had to guess, the council probably meant the Council of Elders, the ruling body of the Calaphium. It’s strange though. It sounds like the people in there were working on learning the secrets of teleportation, but I hadn’t heard of anyone learning that magic outside of the Calaphium themselves.”

“So the Calaphium wanted to put a stop to those experiments?” Rowan asked.

“It’s possible. In the latter portion of Calaphium rule, they tightened their grip on magic use. All but the most basic spells were outlawed, with no explanation given to the populace. It was the whole reason the Brethren came into being, through resentment that the powers people once used were outlawed. It was what made their other stories about the Calaphium believable but … with what you’ve told me about the damage to the veil caused by magic use, and the claims that the Calaphium were caretakers of magic... Perhaps they had good reasons for their strict control.”

“So that keep was run by someone in the Brethren?” Talia asked.

“Maybe. I’m not sure if they’re the only ones who were fighting against the Calaphium at that time, as I’ve found a few references to others, but not enough to actually know if that’s accurate. Either way, they would have put a stop to any research like what you described.”

“That is where we saw the Glyphs before,” Talia said. “They were protecting, or at least blocking access from the teleportation room there, much like the one here.”

“Maybe they were worried about something coming through, using their own stones against them. A door works both ways, right?” Osric said.

“Maybe,” Jasper said, sounding unconvinced.

“No, that’s not right,” Grace said. “The one here wasn’t blocking this room, it was blocking this entire section. You said it was put in by these Brethren guys, and it probably happened after the temple fell down here, which probably means these teleportation things were already dead too, right? That wasn’t for protecting from teleporting, it had to be for something else.”

“She has a point,” Rowan said.

“Keep your eyes open … in case Grace is right.”

The next chamber was nearly as long as the one they’d just left. Instead of a line of stone rings on each wall, however, there was a line of statues, three on each side, each maybe nine feet tall.

They were intricately carved, and Osric wondered who they had been based on. They were wearing armor, or carved to look like they were wearing armor, all bearing the same sigil, not one Osric had seen before. Unlike most of the rest of this place, these statues did not bear the mark of time. It seemed as if they had just been installed, their edges and lines still crisp and visible.

A stark contrast with the rest of the ruins.

“Can you feel that?” Talia asked.

“Yes. The magic here is still alive. It’s practically … crackling.”

“That’s good, right?” Grace asked. “Because everything else aside from that glyph put in by these Brethren guys has been dead.”

“Maybe,” Jasper said.

Osric wished he’d sounded more convincing.

“What’s that on their chest?”

“It’s the sigil of the Calaphium.”

“Ohh, that’s different than the one on my ring.”

“Yes. Your ring bears the mark for a small group inside the Calaphium known as the Seers of Tomorrow. It was their job to use magic to look forward and see problems that might threaten the Calaphium. I’ve only seen a few references to them, and I never understood how that magic could have worked, but … knowing what I know now, I’m guessing they opened the veil into the future, to look through. I’d always wondered how the Calaphium had a whole order of diviners and missed their demise, but … apparently some didn’t. It would be interesting to learn what these Seers knew about the end, before it happened, and why the rest didn’t heed their warnings.”

“Maybe they …” Talia started, and then stopped as an audible cracking sound could be heard clearly through the room.

Osric listened as it happened again. It was as if two stones were rubbing against each other. He’d just had that thought when the statue nearest him moved.

Osric paused, looking hard at the statue. He was about to decide he’d imagined it when it moved again, turning its head to face him. Its large, soulless granite eyes narrowed as it stepped a massive foot off the pedestal, bringing up the large stone blade it carried in its hand.

“The statues!” Osric shouted, drawing his sword.

The two statues in front of them stepped off their pedestals while the other three behind them came to life and stepped down, blocking their retreat in that direction.

“We can’t fight them all! Run!” Rowan said, knocking an arrow and letting it fly at the nearest statue.

The arrow shattered against the stone, leaving hardly a scratch.

“Heathus protect us!” Jasper called out, grasping his amulet and stretching out his other hand.

A shimmering barrier sprang up in front of Grace just as a statue’s massive fist swung towards her. The blow glanced off the divine shield, sending Grace stumbling but unharmed.

Osric charged forward to meet the lead statue, his sword ringing as it struck stone, the force of the impact sending shockwaves up his arm. A stone fist impacted against his chest plate in return, sending him stumbling backward.

“Osric!” Talia cried out, her hands weaving a spell.

A glob of acid shot from her fingers, striking the statue square in the chest. The stone hissed and bubbled, but the construct kept coming.

Everyone finally started moving, running for the far door, ducking and weaving, trying to avoid the swinging stone swords and the statues’ grasping hands. Osric deflected another blow with his shield, the statue’s fist slamming into the metal with enough force to lift Osric off his feet and send him flying backward, hitting the ground hard.

Jasper, who was behind the others, running slower, grabbed Osric and pulled him to his feet, “On your feet, lad.”

Another green bolt shot past them, splashing against the knee joint of the nearest statue, causing it to stumble as some of the stone melted away. Osric didn’t need to be told twice, pulling Jasper along as he ran all out for the exit.

Osric could hear the massive footsteps close behind him and pulled Jasper with all his might, throwing the older cleric ahead of him through the doorway just as a stone fist slammed into the ground where the older man had been a moment before.

The tremor sent Osric stumbling after the cleric as a section of the floor crumbled and dropped away. Talia was standing just on the other side, and her hands were weaving even before Osric made it through. Almost as soon as he was clear, she thrust her palms upward, unleashing a crackling wave of electricity that struck the top of the doorframe. The stone exploded, raining down chunks of rock and debris. The doorway collapsed, sealing the gap between them and the charging statues.

The thunderous footsteps halted, replaced by the sound of shifting rubble as the animate guardians tried to break through the impromptu barricade.

Osric bent over, hands on his knees, gulping in lungfuls of air, his chest stinging from the impact of the statue’s fist, glancing as it was.

“We can’t get out that way now.”

“It was that or let ourselves be pulverized,” Talia said defensively.

“I’m not blaming you.” Osric straightened up. “It was the right call. But now we have to figure out how to get out of here.”

“If we can find a way down to the ground floor, we could use that elevator to come back up to the antechamber off the roof access,” Rowan said.

“What even was that?” Grace asked.

“Constructs of some sort. This close to the teleportation room, between it and the rest of the temple, perhaps it was meant to protect them from anything unwanted that might get through. If so, then we must be getting close to the stairs leading down to the first level.”

“If they’re intact,” Rowan said. “Otherwise, we’re stuck up here with no way out.”

“Why don’t we check first, before the doom and gloom,” Osric said. “Is anyone injured?”

They looked at themselves and each other, but miraculously, they had made it through that intact. They gathered themselves up and continued on. Osric had to imagine they were almost out of room, unless there was some part of the second floor that hadn’t collapsed along the other side.

He just hoped Rowan was wrong.