by B. J. Keeton
“Exactly,” Ceril continued. “Apparently, there are some structures that are whole and useable. Just not many. He said that they're waiting on some kind of messiah to come and rebuild their cities and restore their culture to the greatness it once had. I think there are more cities like this all over the Instance.”
Saryn was next: “Why take us then?”
“They saw our breathers.”
“What?”
Ceril reached out and tapped her nose. “You know, that thing you're wearing that filters the air and makes you not vomit every three steps you take?”
“Yes,” Saryn said, “I know what they are, obviously. But why did they kidnap us for them?”
Ceril cleared his throat. He ran his left hand through his hair and scratched the top of his head. Finally finding the right words, he said, “They think we're their messiahs, or at least that one of us is.”
Saryn and Chuckie blinked at Ceril. A few moments passed as they absorbed what he said, and then Chuckie said, “Well, that don’t sound too bad, does it? Bein some kind of god to all them flying, purple people.”
“Ignoring that,” Ceril said. “Obviously, we're not their messiahs. We're not their saviors. We're not anything to these people. But they think their prophecy is being fulfilled because the messiah will have magic like their Ancestors. So instead of killing us where we stood, they took who they could grab and started to bring us back here.”
“And then we killed them. Don't forget that,” Saryn said.
Ceril nodded. “I haven't forgotten, and they haven't, either. We're to go before their priest and plead our case. It will be up to him whether we are innocent or not and how we will be punished.”
Saryn sighed. “What do we do now?”
“We wait,” Ceril said. “I was told that the best thing we can do is wait and lay low. It may have taken them a while to come and find us again, but they did. And that time, they were prepared; you saw how little damage our weapons or struggling did after we killed the first two. We're essentially their prisoners now from what I understand, and the only reason we're alive right now is because they think our arrival might be prophesied.” Ceril blinked and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Then, as if answering some unasked question, “I just don't know.”
Chuckie got up and walked to the entrance to their roofless chamber. “The guards are gone,” he said. “Why'd they not leave a guard, boss?”
“Because we don't need one. We can't leave.”
“But last night…”
“They were showing us who was in control. It’s not like we can leave. As much as this,” Ceril indicated the ruins where they had spent the night, “is our cell, it’s not like we can go anywhere. I convinced him, I think, that we don’t have to be penned in.”
“What do you mean?”
“About what?”
Chuckie said, “About us being penned in. I don’t know what you’re talking about. So we’re free to roam?”
“Yeah. We’re basically in a gigantic valley right now. There are mountains on every side of us.”
Chuckie nodded, obviously not seeing where Ceril was going with his explanation. Ceril noticed.
“There are no paths in and out. Their Ancestors hollowed this valley out of the center of this mountain range, and the only way in and out—if I understood right—is to fly.”
Chuckie's eyes brightened. “Well, let's just Conjure us up some wings and fly the hell out of here!”
“It's not that easy, Chuckie,” said Ceril. “The Jaronya fly naturally. We don’t. I know I’ve never Conjured wings or flown before, and even if we were able to get off the ground, we don't know the air, the currents, anything.”
Saryn chimed in. “We're not even dressed for it. Given the altitude of some of the rim around us,” she indicated with her hand the height of the mountains to the west, “we would freeze to death if we didn't suffocate from lack of oxygen first.”
Chuckie was unfazed. “Well, we can keep using our breathers. There's oxygen. We can harden the nanites around us to protect from the cold, too. No freezing. And then we fly out of here.”
“Where do you get all your excess nanites from?” Ceril asked Chuckie. “Because my sleeve has a limited supply, and if I Conjured up a set of wings powerful enough to lift me and my gear off the ground, then I'm not going to have enough left for a full-body suit to protect me from the wind and cold. Do you?”
Chuckie was silent.
“I didn't think so. Not to mention,” Ceril continued, “that the Jaronya have scouts just flying around looking for us. As easily as we were taken both times before, I think I’d rather they look at me with off-center reverence as kill me outright for not being what they hope I am.”
Saryn said, “So for now, what? We just sit here?”
“I think we have full access to the,” Ceril coughed, “city.” He stood at the edge of their pen and surveyed the ruins. Something about them had been nagging him ever since the sun came up and he finally got a good look at them. Cernt, he thought. These ruins look just like what the Untouchable did to Cernt Academy. He opened his mouth to tell his team what he had just realized, and then clenched his jaws together tightly. Saryn didn’t need to know about that right now. There was too much else going on for her to deal with. So Roman and the others were right. There is a connection to the Untouchable here.
“So we can explore and get into a little trouble?” Chuckie said, breaking Ceril’s train of thought.
“We can explore,” Ceril confirmed. “But let's try to avoid the trouble part, all right?”
Chuckie nodded. Saryn and Ceril shared a glance, and then all three stood up and made their way out of their cell. All of them shared the unspoken thought that if they had the time, they might as well do something instead of sitting around waiting to die.
***
They spent the first few minutes walking in silence. Saryn was the first to break it. “This place was probably awfully beautiful in its time.” Dull purple stones lined the spaces between buildings, and Saryn could tell their color had once been much more brilliant. The stones barely made a road anymore, but enough remained that walking around wasn’t a problem. Purple weeds and grasses broke through whatever cracks they could find. “I still don’t get it, though,” she said.
“Get what?” Ceril asked. He slowed down so Chuckie could take point while he talked to Saryn.
“How our breathers made them think we were their messiahs. I've been thinking about it, and I don't really get how having these things,” she pointed at her mouth and nose, “could make anyone think that we're going to be the ones who will save or restore their people. I just don't get it.”
“I'm not quite sure I do, either,” Ceril said. “That was one of the things I kept asking and the only response I could get from him was The Ancestors left behind instructions.”
“Maybe those instructions’ll help us find a connection to the Untouchable, right, boss?” Chuckie said without looking backward.
Ceril smiled, thankful that Chuckie could not see it. Despite his attitude problem, Chuckie was a good soldier. He stayed on course and saw his objective through to the end. Ceril respected that, even if he did not always appreciate it on a regular basis.
“Yeah, Chuckie,” he said, “There's a good chance we can kill two birds with this one.”
Ceril noticed that Saryn cringed a bit when Chuckie said “kill two birds,” but she covered it quickly.
“But,” Saryn said, “where are these instructions?” She tripped as her foot hit an uneven space between the stones in their path. “Ugh!” Saryn was able to catch herself before cracking her knees or head on the stones. “I'm fine,” she said and dusted herself off before anyone could ask. She continued her conversation without missing a beat. “Wouldn't these instructions be hidden away somewhere?”
Ceril's eyes got wide for a split second and then returned to normal as he smiled at her. “They’re not. Not really.”
�
��What do you mean, Ternia?”
“Okay, so the Jaronya worship their Ancestors, right?”
Saryn nodded.
“And the priest of the Ancestors somehow communes with or controls whatever the Ancestors left behind?”
“So he's the one with the book,” Saryn said.
“It’s not a book,” Ceril said. “The Jaronya who talked to me mentioned that the Ancestors left their instructions for everyone to read, not just these priests. Initially, the instructions were on the buildings and structures around the city. I’m not saying there are no books, but there weren’t books to begin with. Over time, most of the original text has probably been destroyed or lost.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Saryn said. “I'm not really seeing that as a good thing for us, though.”
“It's not,” Ceril continued, “in general. But from what the Jaronya told me, the Ancestors were the kind of builders and educators who wanted information prominent at all times, not just when someone felt like reading it privately.”
Chuckie looked back over his shoulder and said, “So you're saying that these Ancestors, instead of writing books or creating data feeds, just took whatever they had to say and then plastered it all over the place? Like advertisements?”
“Very similar, yes,” Ceril said. “Though I don’t think they were advertisements exactly. Carving messages on monuments or buildings isn’t unheard of on Erlon. I mean, there are many places in Yagh and Ferran that did it until very recently. If this civilization was once connected to Erlon, those instructions really are going to hold the key to our mission. That’s where we’ll find mentions of the Untouchable, if there are any.”
“What makes you think that? Why don’t we just wait until we see this priest and ask him about it?” asked Chuckie.
“The major part of the research I’ve done for years was figuring out how Ferran, Yagh, Bester, and Ternia were connected through myth. You see, those particular countries are unique on Erlon in that they all have Instancing capabilities and are considered civilized. The uncivilized parts of Erlon don’t have Instance portals anywhere near them.”
“So what?”
“I’m getting to that, Chuckie. What’s even more interesting, is that each of those countries has legends and stories about heroes and gods with different names. What really struck me is that all those heroes, all those gods, did kind of the same stuff. This one brought a guy back from the dead, that one killed a dragon with nothing but his bare hands.”
“Again, I ask, so what?”
“The more I traced them down, I realized that the stories that were similar all originated at roughly the same time within each culture, give or take a few hundred years. More than that,” Ceril continued, “the names of the characters in these myths were vaguely similar—not exact, but similar. The only ones that traced through mostly unchanged were technomage names.”
“Like Vennar,” Saryn said.
Just hearing the name made Ceril’s shoulders tense up. He had not been able to deal with what Roman and Bryt had told him about his grandfather. Not yet. Gramps of all people was a Charon—an ancient Charon—who had stories and myths written about him in every single place Ceril had studied so far. Damien Vennar, Ceril thought. It just sounded so wrong.
“Just like Vennar,” Ceril said. “He’s probably the most frequently mentioned person in the myths, actually. Lots of stories in Yagh talk about him like he’s a villain—”
“I know,” Saryn said. “I grew up with them.”
“—but a lot of them from Ferran or Ternia have him being a pretty decent guy. Bester’s legends don’t mention him much, actually.”
“What does all this have to do with us, though, boss?”
“I’m getting there, Chuckie. Basically, you can infer that all the civilizations on Erlon were, at some point in the past, much more similar than they are today. They wouldn’t be able to have stories and myths that parallel otherwise. If we can find some of the myths from Jaronya, that connection might be here, too. We know that they know about Charons—they have Flameblades, after all. So if they have something written about the Charons, or about,” he swallowed, “Vennar or one of the other technomages, there’s a good chance we’ll find something written about the Untouchable, too. I mean, the guy responsible for all the violence on Erlon for the past few years appears to be playing off the old stories and legends.”
“What if the old Untouchable were from here?” Saryn asked. “What if he were one of these Ancestors?”
Ceril thought about it, thought about Cernt Academy. “It makes sense,” he said. “We have no idea how long this Instance has been around, and we know even less about the Untouchable, the old one or the…terrorist one…”
“You okay, boss?” Chuckie asked.
“Yeah,” Ceril said. He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry about that. Just thinking about something. Look, there’s no guarantee this priest of the Ancestors is going to cooperate with us—”
“Then we take the books or whatever from him when we see him!”
“No, Chuckie. We don't,” Ceril said. “We ask him if we can see the instructions and explain our mission.”
Saryn frowned. “He's not going to let you see them, you know.”
“Why not?” Chuckie asked.
“Why would he?” Saryn countered. “If he's built a life on being the only person with enough knowledge and favor to be able to read and interpret them, there's no way he's going to give that up.”
“Even if he thinks we're the messiahs?” Chuckie said.
“Especially then. If we’re seen as their messiahs, it means he loses the power he's held over the people for so long. He would be our servant, literally, instead of our servant in an abstract sense.”
“I think we're going to have a bad time these next few days,” Ceril said, and he ran his fingers through his hair.
“You really have all this figured out, don't you, boss?” Chuckie said.
“Okay, Ternia, let’s say that you somehow pry these instructions from the priest’s purple fingers. You get your hands on them, your eyes on them, whatever.”
“Okay.”
“Can you read them?” Saryn asked.
Ceril kept walking and bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he finally said, not looking at either Chuckie or Saryn. “I doubt it.”
“Then why do you even want to find it?” Chuckie asked.
“Because I have hope that the language it’s written in will be based on something I've seen before.”
“You have hope?” Chuckie sneered.
“Yes, Chuckie, I do,” Ceril said, doing his best to keep his voice as calm as possible, which was an easier task to think about doing than actually following through with when dealing with Chuckie. “Roman and the other professors would not have sent us to make connections between the Instances if there were no connections to be made.”
Chuckie harrumphed. “We'll see.”
“Yes, we will,” Ceril said. “I'd like to have something to be able to defend ourselves with before we go before their leader, and we have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Should we split up?” Saryn suggested.
“No, absolutely not. We’re already split without Harlo and Swinton, and I’m not taking any more chances. I'm pretty sure we're safe for the moment, but I would rather we don't take any unnecessary risks. And since they took our weapons…”
“They didn't take our nanites, though. We can still Conjure,” Chuckie said.
“Maybe. It depends. I can’t summon my Flameblade, but that’s a little different. And besides, Conjuring is what got us in this mess to begin with. We need the breathers still, but let's try not to Conjure anything else that might draw undue attention. And using nanotech to blast one of them out of the sky is probably a bad way to plead our case that we're not here to hurt anyone.”
“Point taken,” Chuckie said.
Saryn said, “Have any idea where to start, Ternia?”
“Yeah,
I do. The angel I was talking to earlier pointed out an obelisk to me. He made it out like some of these instructions were written on it, but that they were reserved for the priest. I say that’s our best bet to start.”
“Now you tell us,” Chuckie said. “Lead the way, boss.” He bowed slightly in deferment.
Ceril glared at him. It wasn’t worth the wasted time.
Saryn just nodded and fell into step beside Chuckie.
Chapter Twenty-one
Damien Vennar liked what they had done with the place. The last few centuries of renovations had left the interior of Ennd's Academy almost unrecognizable, but most of the changes were nice. He was not sure that he would have gone for the same decor; the steel-gray was unpleasantly sterile, but the beige sandstone was enough to offset that feeling.
The dining hall was behind him, and he was not sure where he was headed now. Once upon a time, the dining hall had been connected to the primary research laboratories, but that was no longer the case. He was amazed that there were no other people nearby, but he was glad for it.
Other people would complicate things, and he felt a twinge of sadness as he thought of Swarley Dann's corpse wrapped in vines on the botanical terrace. He was not sad for Swarley, though; the boy was an acceptable casualty. Years of doing his job and playing the role he carved out for himself had hardened Damien to casual loss of life. One thing he had learned through the years was that some people just got in the way of his plans and had to be removed before they became even greater complications. Swarley had come out of class early and become a complication. Damien did not regret taking a life to fulfill a mission.
Yet, he felt ashamed. He was ashamed because Swarley had been one of his grandson's best friends. He was ashamed because he had taken advantage of one of Ceril's relationships to further his own plans. When he killed one of his grandson's only friends, he had crossed a line.
He did not regret crossing it; he was just ashamed that he did. But if he were in the same situation again, he would do the same thing. Still, he was ashamed of what this news might do to Ceril if he ever found out.
