The Vault of Kings

by Matt Taylor

  Thren smiled. “I’ll await the day then. Thank you for coming, I’ll make sure that nothing happens to our town while you are away.”

  “Focus Samara, let your inner life enter into your head and focus on what feels different when that happens.”

  Samara strained and took another deep breath.

  “Good, Sylas, what did you feel when you moved the energy into your head? It won’t be the same for Samara, the feeling is different to everyone, but maybe you can help her to be able to recognize the change based on your experience.”

  Sylas remembered the feeling that he had when first moving his life energy into his head.

  “It felt like I could sense every part of my body. I could feel everything, my blood moving, my lungs breathing, even down to the most inner parts of the body that you never think about. It was overwhelming, but at the same time, it just felt energizing! Like I was powerful and knew exactly what my capabilities and limitations were.”

  Uthren and Sylas had been trying to help Samara open her second mind for quite some time now. Torren decided that he was going to wait for Geode to return for any combat training, and in the meantime, do a bit of hunting to stock up on their meat supply.

  “The feeling can be great like in the case of Sylas, but it can also be small, almost unnoticeable to others,” Uthren explained. “For myself, I’m somewhere in between. When I’m ready to open my second mind, I get slightly colder than normal, as if a chill runs up my spine. It’s hard to recognize at first when it is a more subtle feeling, but after you open it the first time, it will become recognizable and much easier to do it from then on.”

  Samara tuned out Sylas and Uthrens voices. Although they were trying to help, they were mostly distracting her. She continued moving her energy from her head back down to her torso, then up again, trying desperately to notice a difference. She moved the energy to her head again, pushing all of it straight into her brain with no success. Just when she was about to give up, she felt something. It wasn’t much of a ‘feeling’ as it was just a sense of peace.

  Everything just seemed that it was going to be alright. It felt almost as if there was an ancestral spirit whispering into her ear that she was doing fine, and all was right. All of the cares of the world seemed to fade away, their meaning and significance blurred away by a peaceful calm. Deciding that this was as good a sign as any that she had felt all morning, Samara imagined her soul leaving her body and felt as if a piece of her soul was lifted from her tabernacle and then hovered above her. She gasped and opened her eyes, noticing that instead of just one plane of vision, she was met with an additional view she had never seen before, one from the perspective of a ghostly apparition floating directly above herself.

  “Well done, Samara! You’ve done it!” Uthren exclaimed, “You have successfully completed the most difficult part of performing Magick for beginners and opened your second mind.”

  Samara looked to her left and with her physical eyes, was able to see the surroundings that sat to her left, but her new spiritual eyes saw her physical body turn to the left. She then willed her second mind to look to the right, and she saw the river gently flowing beside her. She could see and perceive the sight of two different directions all at the same time!

  Samara then turned her head to look behind herself and willed her second mind to look forward at her physical body. To her surprise, she didn’t see anything floating behind her, although the eyes of her second mind met the gaze of her physical eyes just fine.

  “Don’t confuse yourself too much, Samara,” Uthren said with a chuckle. “You can’t see your ethereal body that is created when you open your second mind, no one can. It’s completely invisible to anyone and everything. Your second mind can see anything that your regular eyes would be able to see, though.”

  “This is crazy, I don’t know how I’m able to comprehend all of this at the same time…”

  Samara noticed that she observed the world slightly differently with her second mind than what she was used to. She felt more noble, proud, holy, and justified. Her desires and alignments were still her own, but there was an influence tugging at her that pulled her towards these new desires.

  “Light is very… confident.” She said, trying to come up with the word that seemed to fit her feelings correctly.

  “Yes,” Uthren responded. “When you have opened your second mind and are connected to the element of Light, you have great desires to do good and banish evil. Sometimes these desires can be a bit over the top though, you need to try and calm the desires down to a reasonable level. If Light were able to use Magick on its own, it would be completely overzealous and probably end up doing more harm than good. It’s the balance that you create that makes it truly good.”

  “I want to try to cast a healing spell like Sylas did,” she said excitedly.

  Uthren pulled his knife out of his pocket, and after unsheathing it gently slid it across his hand, drawing several small beads of blood across his palm.

  “Just as I instructed Sylas, you must bring into alignment the desires of both your first and second minds. When they are both in unison with your end goal, place your hand over mine and will it to be done.”

  Sylas watched as Samara concentrated on most likely the same process he had to use to convince the Light within herself that she did not need to enact holy vengeance upon the knife, but just to heal what was wounded. He observed as she moved her hand and placed it upon Uthren’s. After just a moment, the glow from her hands spread into Uthrens hand as the wound was sealed shut. She pulled her hand away and grinned at her success.

  “Very good Samara, now you have both successfully cast your first Light spell.”

  “I want to learn more!” She exclaimed, “teach me something else, I don’t want to close my second mind yet.”

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm Samara, but before we get into any more basic spells, I want to help both you and Sylas to become efficient at opening your second mind swiftly. It won’t do you any good to know how to cast spells in battle if you will be overtaken while trying to focus on opening your second mind. It needs to become something that you can do in an instant, without even having to think about it.”

  Uthren quickly made the symbol of Light with his hands, and his eyes and hands immediately started glowing.

  “The mark of a true master is when they can enter and exit stages of Magick in a moment’s notice. I don’t expect either of you to be this fast for quite some time, but I do expect you to become much quicker before I teach you any more spells.”

  Uthren released the Magick, and the Light faded out of existence. With a smile, he added, “This way, you will have motivation.”

  Disappointed that they were not going to learn anything new, but excited at the challenge of getting faster at opening their second minds, Samara and Sylas looked at each other. Sylas knew that Samara was quite competitive, as was he. He smiled and said with an air of confidence, “Then let us begin.”

  Torren wiped the blood from his knife on the tall grass beside him. “Three rabbits isn’t too bad if I do say so myself.” He said out loud.

  He wrapped the meat he had just skinned inside of a cloth and put it in his bag along with the fur skins. “At least it will satisfy until Geode gets back.”

  He remembered catching a glimpse of Geode fighting off the two men with his staff, and how awesome he looked while doing it. While Samara and Sylas are off learning their silly Magick, I’ll be learning the cool stuff. He thought to himself.

  He jabbed at the air several times with his knife, stabbing his invisible opponents with ease. He was somewhat disappointed that he couldn’t seem to even get the first step of performing Magick down, but he didn’t let it get to him. His father was one of the best fighters in Shilvrst, and he had a legacy to uphold.

  I’ll be the greatest swordsman ever! No one will be able to cross blades with me and live to tell the tale. He took another swing, slicing the head off his last imaginary opponent and
then shoved the knife into its holster. Master Torren, they will call me, it has a nice ring to it.

  Making sure that he wasn’t leaving anything behind, Torren turned back towards the river, and with daydreams of epic battles with legendary victories made his way back to camp. Upon arriving, he noticed both Sylas and Samara sitting with Uthren near the river bank. Approaching Uthren, Torren asked if they were still planning on packing up and heading out this evening.

  “I imagine that Geode will be back before dark, but either way, we’ll probably stay one more night. He has been traveling all last night and all day today and will need to rest.

  Torren nodded, “I was able to kill some rabbits, so I was just wondering if I should prepare them for travel or if we were going to stay one more night.”

  “That’s excellent thinking Torren, why don’t you prepare them for travel while we finish up here. We have enough to satisfy us until we leave.”

  Torren agreed and walked towards his tent to retrieve the items that he needed to prepare the meat for travel.

  “Alright, you two, I think that we’ve made good progress today,” Uthren said. “Your speed at tapping into your inner life and opening your second mind has increased substantially. Although it’s not as fast as it could be, for our needs right now, I think it will suffice. Let’s rest for a while and help Torren get things ready for Geodes return tonight, and for our voyage in the morning.”

  It was several hours after dark before Geode finally returned. Sylas was beginning to worry that he might not come back at all. What if more of the black hand found him before he was able to make it back to Shilvrst? Or what if the town was being destroyed as he arrived, and he tried to help but was killed in battle? Ominous thoughts continued to peruse through his mind until Geode finally arrived.

  He and Uthren talked privately for a while, after which Geode returned exhaustedly to his tent, and Uthren recounted the news to Samara, Torren, and himself.

  “Shilvrst is still in one piece, and preparations have been made to ensure that any attempt to attack the town will not be a surprise. You need not worry about your family’s safety for the time being.”

  All three of them let out sighs of relief, the tension had been building during Uthren and Geodes private conversation. It was hard to tell whether the fact that they had decided to discuss things privately was a good or bad sign.

  “However,” Uthren added, “there are some things that we need to discuss about the possible connection between Maelos, the Stone of Darkness, and your visions, Sylas. I’ve been doing some pondering, and with some confirmation from Geode on what has happened in Shilvrst since we’ve been gone, I believe that we can safely assume that Maelos has some kind of telepathic connection between the Stone of Darkness, and vicariously you. You said that when you first found the stone in the Ancient Crypt that you touched something and were transported somewhere else correct?”

  Icy chills from his memories of the plane of darkness that he entered while in the crypt shot through his body as Sylas nodded slowly.

  “I believe that Aracorn was much more of an accomplished dark mage than the Council of Light, and I gave him credit for. I now believe that when you touched the stone that was embedded in the skull inside the crypt, you might have triggered a darkness dimension that was conjured by Aracorn to hide the stone, most likely under the command of Maelos himself.”

  “A darkness dimension?” Samara said with a puzzled look, the light of the campfire they sat around reflecting off her face.

  “Yes, we didn’t think that Aracorn was skilled enough to perform Magick as complicated as that… but it’s possible that while he was not overly skilled in his offensive Darkness Magick, that he may very well have been exceedingly skilled in utility spells.”

  “What are Utility Spells?” Samara asked, tightening the blanket she had wrapped around her.

  “Utility spells are things like what you and Sylas have been learning. Healing is not something that can be used offensively in battle but are more useful in practice. For example, an offensive spell that you have seen is like what Goede did, where the vines came forth from that tree and incapacitated the man who was fighting Torren. One that you have not seen him use that’s much more utility-based would be something like when he talks to animals or uses divination.”

  “He can talk to animals?” Torren shouted, about falling off of the tree stump he had been sitting on.

  “Yes,” Uthren responded with a smile. “And it’s more useful than you think. An innocent squirrel or bluebird can be much greater of a spy than any human. The point is, however, that some spells are used almost exclusively for utility purposes rather than for offensive or defensive combat. Darkness Dimension is one of those spells. It’s extremely advanced, and while I don’t know everything about it, I do know that it can be used to transport the user into another dimension that’s not of this world but in a world of shadows. It can be used to store objects or to escape to a plane where others cannot find or harm you. When Sylas first described his encounter in the crypt, it surprised me because this is a spell that’s reserved for the very elite. And although Aracorn was a powerful dark mage, I didn’t think that this was something he was capable of. Needless to say, I think that Aracorn and Maelos must have found the stone and then, for some evil purpose that I’m not aware of, must have placed the stone inside of that darkness dimension for safekeeping so that no one else would be able to find it.”

  “How would he know that the stone left the darkness dimension after I got it, though?”

  “That part is not as clear to me… They must have discovered a way to…”

  Uthren stopped talking, and his face grew pale. Even in the darkness of the night with only the campfire as a light, Sylas could tell that something was wrong.

  “Discovered a way to what?” Sylas asked hesitantly, not sure if he really wanted to receive the answer or not.

  Uthren shook his head, “Sorry, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It has been mentioned in Magick lore that the possibility of gaining immortality through Darkness Magick was possible, though it was mostly just theory at the time that I heard of it.”

  Torren put his hand on his chin, feeling the stubble that had grown during the last several days. “Immortality… that doesn’t seem possible, not to mention that seems way more powerful than throwing a fireball at someone, or talking to animals or healing a wound.”

  “Ultimately, the elements are only as useful or powerful as the mage that wields them.” Uthren explained, “most mages will tell you that the elements are equally balanced, some with greater power and less utility, and others with more utility than power. Others, however, truly believe that a master of Darkness is the most powerful that a mage can aspire to become, without the use of combinations that is. The amount and quality of Darkness utility spells that have been discovered throughout the ages is mind boggling compared to other elements. Darkness seems to almost guide the user to new discoveries. Anyway, the idea is that by using Darkness, you are able to take a part of your soul and bind it to another object of dark nature, thus when you die, you can be reincarnated from this object, obtaining a sudo-immortality. The idea is that as long as you have a piece of your soul bound to an object, you cannot truly die.”

  The camp fell silent for a time, each of them trying to digest the information that had just been given them. The crickets and other insects, along with the flowing river in the distance and the crackling of the campfire, provided the only competition to the silence that surrounded them until Uthren spoke again.

  “If Maelos has truly unlocked the secret to Living Darkness… then I think that’s how he knows when the stone has moved somewhere. A piece of him was probably in the stone, but it might have been transferred into Sylas during his fiasco in the crypt.”

  Sylas looked up at Uthren, not liking at all what he was hearing. “How?”

  “I don’t know, but I think that when you entered into the darkness dimension and found the s
tone that somehow part of the soul that was bound to the stone must have been transferred from it to you. That would explain why Maelos is able to know where the stone is, but why he seems to only be aware of it during one of your visions, I’m not sure. It may be that only a piece of it was transferred somehow. If the entirety of the bound soul were still in the stone, he would most likely be able to know at a moment’s notice where the location of the stone was, but if part of it has separated and entered into you, then that connection might be somewhat broken. This is all speculation of course, but one thing is certain, you and Maelos have some kind of connection that’s triggered when those visions happen. We need to be sure to try and suppress those as much as we can in order to not let him know of the current location of the stone.”

  Uthren put his hands on his knees and rose to his feet. “We’ve gone into more detail than I wanted to. The point is that every time that you have your visions, we should assume that at that very moment, Maelos is aware of our exact location and need to be ready to move and watch for danger whenever that happens. Until we can get that under complete control, we can never assume that we are hidden from his view. Now, get some rest everyone, we’ll leave the first thing in the morning towards Gelendor.”

  chapter 7

  Dark Visions

  Several days had passed since Geode returned from Shilvrst, and Sylas was exhausted. Sleeping in a tent, in what was beginning to be colder weather, on the ground with just a thin blanket beneath him for padding was not working out well for him. His back ached from the hard ground, and his lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll.

  He missed his bed… and even though at home, his meals consisted mostly of some form of potato, he missed his mother’s cooking.

  His feet were sore from the many miles that they had trekked, and the blisters on the bottoms of his feet weren’t helping.