85 - Reliquary [Cherno]

“Your Relic - hopefully Relics plural in the future - will be the sole proof of your apostlehood, should you need to prove it for access to church facilities. In such cases, your identity will not be recorded either, as I will embed a warning with my personal seal into the Relic. Only those willing to flagrantly betray the church and invoke my wrath would dare to go against it. It is not foolproof, but it is as close to anonymity as a graft-apostle can come. Before you ask, yes, I shall be able to trace your location and even whether you are alive using my seal; however, I will take care to ensure the connection goes both ways. In this manner, you will be aware if I ever use it to trace you, and you shall be able to use it to purposely alert me to your location regardless of where in the world you may be. I do not expect that you will ever use it, from what little Firminus has told me of you thus far, but it may be useful someday.”

They arrived at a three-meter-tall, vault-like door made of five wedge-shaped pieces with a small diamond-shaped hole on the lowermost segment, roughly at chest height. Fidelia held out her puppet-like, mechanical hand. and a wicked, tapered spike emerged from her palm-heel. With a seamless motion, she buried all thirty centimeters of that thorn into the keyhole. The great door came alive the moment she inserted it, mechanisms click-clacking on the inside as its segments receded. Beyond was a circular platform in a circular chamber, with strange grooved patterns densely carved into the black stone walls, extending upwards to cover even the arched ceiling. The stone exposed within the grooves emitted a faint, white glow. It took a moment to realize it was floating on water, and after that moment, the door had already shut and Fidelia had formed a sign with her hand. Krahe felt an impulse of Thauma, and the water-lift careened downward, slowly revolving.

The descent was a truly otherworldly experience, between the rumbling of the water and the eldritch, undefinable imagery that emerged amidst the swirling carvings. Peering upwards, the shaft appeared as though a tunnel to the world of the living, the surface long gone from sight. Revolving. Revolving. Revolving. The temperature dropping. Krahe was sure that they had to be at least a hundred meters below ground.

Finally, the platform came to a halt, and another five-section door awaited. Upon its opening, they entered into an intermediary chamber with yet another great door, the chamber carved into dark stone just like the shaft, but devoid of those patterns. It was an airlock of some sort, Krahe wagered; it was dry, unlike the elevator shaft, and lit by glowing stones in the walls. Finally, past the airlock awaited a rectangular hallway, seemingly carved directly into stone and featureless save for the lights. Its very end was in sight, where yet another door awaited, this one different from the others. Not only was it a monolithic slab with a recessed central dial instead of a single keyhole, it was protected by a statue of Zavesh. The upper half of the man-god presided over the door, looking down on anyone approaching. The whole statue was rendered in dark metal and designed so that the vault door was inside his ribcage, with his arms crossed in front of it for further protection.

Fidelia uttered some incomprehensible code-phrase when they reached the door, prompting the statue of Zavesh to unfurl its arms and pry open its own ribcage. There were no visible joints or animating machinery, yet it moved seamlessly. The process of opening the vault door itself was so esoteric and Fidelia moved her hands so rapidly that Krahe could barely parse what was going on. All she was certain of was that it was some strange cross between a puzzle box and a combination lock using individual concealed keyholes as digits. A good two minutes of continuous, breakneck manipulation later, the dial shut itself and the door slowly rose into the ceiling, leaving no visible seam.

Beyond was no great vault, but a six-sided room with three robed motionless figures on raised platforms, one straight ahead from the entryway and two off to the sides. At first they looked like statues, but Krahe realized they were flesh-blood-and-metal people, sitting without breath or motion. Their hooded robes concealed all but their faces, and one of them had what looked like a rebreather permanently attached over his mouth, tubes going into his robes. Another was a giant lizard with a metal jaw, and a third looked wholly mechanical, a metal mask where a face ought to be.

Eldritch sigils were carved into the floor, running from the monks to the center of the chamber, where they formed a circle. A five-segmented door just like those to the elevator awaited behind the mummy right across from the entryway.

“Move into the center of the room and make your apostolic oath; speak it not aloud, but in your soul’s voice. Take your time to think it through if need be,” Fidelia instructed. Krahe felt the vault door close behind the four of them.

“May I ask who or what these three individuals are?”

“They are saints who have chosen to enter a state of deep meditation to gain a better understanding of the connection between the soul and the body. They are here as watchmen, holding vigil over the whole of the Central Temple so that they may defend the reliquary from would-be attackers, or even the Central Temple itself should it come to that. They shall serve as witnesses to your apostolic oath, and in concert with the impartial machinery of this chamber, they will judge the depth of your conviction, for not even saints are infallible in their judgment.”

Lacking a response to such an open explanation and admission of fallibility, Krahe did as had been asked of her, hobbling over to that spot. She lowered herself into a seated position, wrangling her legs so they would cross despite not being able to feel them at all.