Borely’s smile weakened a little, and Terico turned to note the stern look on Jujor’s face. It was actually a bit frightening.
It was another moment that made Terico wonder about who Jujor truly was. The old man hadn’t done anything bad so far, but would his true colors show once more of the Elpis was obtained? Terico felt wrong for second-guessing Jujor like this, but he wasn’t about to let anyone ruin his plans for revenge against Delkol.
There was no certainty that Areo and Borely were truly on Terico’s side in all this, either. He had to remind himself that there were no guarantees at this point.
Anyone can turn against you, Terico thought. And anyone can die at any given moment.
It was evening by the time they reached the small island that contained the city of Vursa. The port was full of ships, but there wasn’t anybody in them. The piers were completely deserted as well.
Terico had thought Istal was a quiet city, especially when compared to the hectic marketplaces of Merze—but Vursa was even quieter. With the sun already set and a chilly breeze passing by, Terico almost felt like he was walking into a graveyard.
Once Borely tied up the boat to the dock, Jujor led the way into the city. Terico was bombarded with sights he had never imagined. His eigni professor back in Edellerston had said Vursa was a colorful city, but Terico thought that just meant some of the buildings would be blue, some green, some yellow, and so forth. Instead, every building was painted a hundred different colors, and it was only upon closer inspection of individual structures that the sheer intricacy of the artwork was revealed.
Terico walked toward a two-story building with large oval windows, and looked over the many mosaics and murals on the walls. Running along the steps to the doorway were stylized curves of at least a dozen different colors, and it took a few seconds for Terico to realize this was lettering in the ancient eigni language. All around the windows and door and running across the bottom and top of the building were delicate mosaics of red, yellow, blue, and black—a mixture of strange, shadowy flowers with crashing waves and rays of sunlight. Amidst the rest of the walls were larger depictions of golden glowing ships sailing a violent sea, a tired-looking eigni man wreathed in flames, a group of scrolls with intricate red-inked maps of various eigni islands, and a group of eigni gathered atop a tall rocky hill to wave orange and purple flags in the air.
Terico didn’t know what any of these particular images referred to, but they were all very realistic-looking. And the more Terico looked at the walls, the more pictures he found hidden amidst the rest of the imagery.
The paths they walked on were also covered in images and patterns, but much of this was faded. Some portions appeared to have been repainted in recent years, while other areas seemed to be in the middle of having new artwork drawn over the older material.
But everywhere Terico looked, there were hundreds of new paintings to see. Whether they were homes, shops, or governmental structures, every building was covered in immaculate artwork. Some buildings had paintings of individual eigni—presumably the people who lived in those houses. Terico could tell which buildings were shops, on the other hand, because their imagery primarily depicted the wares they sold. The painting styles varied from house to house, perhaps telling something about the people who lived in them. Terico wondered how all this affected the way eigni interacted with one another.
Down near the port, many of the shops depicted boats, ship parts, fish, and fishing gear. But there were also those covered with paintings of clothes, advertising the many unique styles the eigni wore. Others had paintings of the peculiar meals the eigni ate, most of which Terico couldn’t identify at all. Some he wasn’t even sure if they were a meat or vegetable.
Terico didn’t know too much about the eigni save what he knew of Professor Kanto, a rather blunt man who would rarely stray from the material he intended to teach each day. It was presumed by Terico and most of the other students that eigni were generally this way—strict and to-the-point—but the incredulous devotion to the arts on display here gave Terico a very different notion of them.
“This. Is. Amazing,” Borely said, emphasizing each word. “Even the tiles on their roofs are painted with different things.”
Terico looked up to the steep roof of one of the upcoming buildings, and saw a large image of a wide stringed instrument he didn’t recognize. As he walked closer to the building, Terico realized that all of the tiles had small, individual paintings of various instruments painted on them. Somehow the tiles were arranged to make it appear to be one giant image from far away.
“It’s all very nice,” Areo said, “but where are all the eigni?”
Terico had been so caught up in the artwork that he hadn’t noticed the complete lack of people living in this city. “Maybe they’re all at their homes.” He walked up to a nearby house and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and knocking on a few other doors didn’t warrant any results either. Each of the doors were locked, and Terico couldn’t see anyone through the windows.
“Something has happened here,” Jujor said. “We’ll keep looking and see if we can find anyone.”
They continued down the main city path, and Terico did his best to look for anything out of the ordinary. Closer to the center of the city, the buildings became a couple stories larger, and many of them were embellished with grand sculptures. They were mostly statues of large fish, sharks, and other creatures of the sea, and each was covered in patterns of many colors, just like the buildings. The sight of the city in general was a bit dizzying, and Terico wondered if he would really find anything hidden amidst this chaos of clashing and complementing colors.
It didn’t take long for them to make their way around the entire city, to Terico’s surprise. Vursa was much smaller than he thought it would be.
“So, nobody here at all,” he said. “Do you think the Brotherhood came here?”
“All the buildings are intact,” Jujor said. “I didn’t find any signs of an attack at all...”
“Perhaps the eigni were threatened?” Borely said. “They may have chosen to leave rather than fight.”
“The eigni do generally try to keep out of wars,” Jujor said, “but I rather doubt they’d just give up their whole city like that. And I don’t see anyone here in their place.”
“Should we just look for what we came here for?” Terico asked.
“We’ll head underground,” Jujor said. “I bet the eigni went to their underwater structures. We’re more likely to find what we’re looking for there, anyways.”
“Oh, they do live underwater then,” Terico said.
“Not all,” Jujor said, “but many do. Their buildings are held up with the power of orange Nexi stones. Very few non-eigni have stepped foot below sea level here, but I know a good way down.”
He led them to an out-of-the-way side road between tall buildings, then turned past a few more.
“Why would you know a secret way to the underwater part of this city?” Terico asked.
“Because I know everything,” Jujor muttered.
“Really?” Borely said. “Can you tell me my future?”
“Swimming with the fishes if you keep asking dumb questions,” Jujor said.
Terico was a little concerned with Jujor’s agitation, but it was understandable if the old man was worried. This city certainly didn’t feel welcoming, and there was no telling what they would find down below.
Jujor walked to one of several sheds attached to the back of a building, and slid open the latch to the second doorway. Inside was a long, spiraling staircase, though unlike the ones in Emoser Helena, this was made of white stone, and lit by dim red Nexi every dozen or so steps. These steps weren’t painted, which Terico figured was because most people probably didn’t access this stairway.
For several seconds, Areo looked back toward the dock in the distance. Terico looked as well, but couldn’t see anything but the tiny ships and buildings.
“Something there?” Jujor ask
ed.
“I hear an airship,” Areo said.
“Let’s get going then,” Jujor said. “If the Brotherhood is involved, we don’t want them aware of our presence.”
After several minutes of walking down the tight staircase, Terico came in sight of water. The red-lit walls around them transitioned to transparent glass, and suddenly they were surrounded by the dark water of the sea. Terico reached out his hand to touch the glass, but it was farther away than it appeared, placing it just out of his reach. How the eigni constructed such a long tube like this, he couldn’t guess. He hadn’t known there were people capable of engineering such a marvelous feat.
They walked on down the stairway for some time—perhaps another ten minutes or so. It wasn’t nearly as long as the staircases going down to Emoser Helena, but it was still very long, and very surrounded by some near-infinite kilograms of water.
Once at the end of the stairway, the four reached a passageway that opened up into a hall that rose seven or eight meters tall. The floor was made of the same soft white stone as the stairs, and had red Nexi every few meters grafted into the floor to light the way. The tall glass walls curved up to the rounded-off ceiling, so all around them was water. Terico saw a school of bright teal fish pass by overhead, and couldn’t help but smile for a moment.
This was the sort of magic, the wonder of exploring new places, that had always called Terico to adventure while growing up. He had always looked forward to the day he could leave Edellerston and see the world. To have adventures with Turan he could never have just in the nearby caverns. The way life turned out couldn’t have been any more different than Terico imagined, but he could at least recognize some of the joys this journey could bring. He could not dwell on the feeling long, knowing that some danger had befallen all the eigni of this city—but it was something to be traveling down this underwater tunnel, heading to a city few outsiders had ever stepped foot in.
The hall expanded into a series of glass-encircled pathways. These led to tens of giant glass domes filled with buildings similar to those found above ground, save for the lack of intricate paintings. These structures were cleaner, simpler, and more tightly organized.
Some of the domes seemed to house entire neighborhoods, while a few looked almost as large as the entire city above ground. Altogether, Vursa was clearly larger than Merze, and drastically larger than Istal. Terico entered one of the nearest domes, in awe of how high the glass walls stretched above the rooftops of the homes and shops. He could make out some of the orange Nexi stones embedded in the glass, glowing bright and giving the structure the strength needed to keep the city from caving in with water.
“Here’s some eigni,” Areo said. She pointed down the path, and Terico had to squint to make out some of the light blue figures in the distance.
He hurried down to them and raised a hand to the nearest one—a bald man in his fifties or so, wearing bright red trousers, and a sleeveless shirt that seemed to be made of green and black bandages.
“Hello,” Terico said. “Sorry to bother you, but—”
The eigni walked on past Terico. The man didn’t respond in any way, or even look at Terico.
Terico jogged back a few steps and stood in front of the man. “Wait, I just had a couple questions.”
Though the eigni was staring straight at Terico, it seemed as if he didn’t actually realize Terico was there. Yet he managed to walk around Terico and continued on his way down the straight path.
“Long day at work?” Borely said, raising an eyebrow.
“Let’s try someone else, I guess,” Jujor said, clearly confused by the eigni’s actions.
They walked down to a black-haired eigni in his early twenties, who wore some kind of one-piece suit made of randomly-sized patches. He was sitting on the front steps of his house, staring up at the distant waters.
“Can we ask you something?” Terico asked.
No response.
“Are you all right?” Jujor asked.
No response.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” Borely asked.
No response.
Areo bent down to one knee and grabbed the man by his shoulders. She shook him vigorously for several seconds, but the eigni simply remained sitting on the step.
Areo stood back up and folded her arms tight. “He held himself up just fine, and he’s clearly breathing...”
Terico walked over to an elderly woman in a yellow blouse and white trousers, but she didn’t respond to any of his inquiries either. Instead she kept on walking, oblivious to Terico’s calls for her assistance.
Shortly afterward he spotted two boys and a girl heading to a nearby house, and hurried over to stand in front of the doorway, blocking their path. The yellow-haired children wore matching green shirts and black skirts, and were probably siblings, Terico took it. They simply stood there, waiting for Terico to step aside. When they didn’t respond to anything he said, he picked up the nearest child and asked him to say anything.
The boy, probably five or six, just looked at Terico, entirely blank-faced—a sharp contrast to Terico’s exasperation with the situation.
“They’re all mindless,” Jujor said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if what we’re looking for is involved with this.”
Perhaps it was possible for someone with an Elpis fragment to do something like this, though Terico had no idea why someone would turn the citizens of an entire city into mindless drones. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, other than walking or sitting around.
“We’ll have to find it,” Terico said, “and reverse this spell that’s been cast over everyone.”
“Hey, over here, quick!” came a child’s voice from a ways behind him.
Terico turned around a found a young eigni boy with short white hair. He looked about ten years old, and wore small orange shorts and a black turtleneck shirt without sleeves.
“Hurry!” the boy said. “Come hide here.”
More anxious to speak with a real eigni than worried about the ambiguous danger the child referred to, Terico jogged over to the boy, quickly followed by Areo, Borely, and Jujor. The boy led them down a path between homes and around to the back of a shop, where several piles of wooden crates had accumulated.
“What’s happening here?” Terico asked the boy.
“There was an official up ahead,” the boy said. “You can’t let them find you. If you see anyone wearing dark red robes, stay far away from them.”
“Eigni council members wear red robes,” Jujor said.
“Yes,” the boy said. “They’ve done something terrible to the city. I think I’m the only one that was able to fend off their spell. It turns everyone mindless... makes them do whatever the council wishes. Everyone’s under the government’s control now.”
“How did this happen?” Terico asked.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to find out myself, but the council members keep finding me. They’re all armed with daggers, so you have to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful,” Terico said, “but we need to know everything we can about what’s happened here.”
“Let’s start with who we even are,” Jujor said. He introduced himself, then Terico, Areo, and Borely, and explained that they were concerned with the Brotherhood being involved with what happened in Vursa.
“My name is Kitoh,” the boy said. “I don’t know about anyone other than the council being involved in this. And I don’t know how they’ve turned everyone mindless.”
“Do you know where these red-robed eigni meet?” Terico asked.
“In the largest dome, there’s the grand council room,” Kitoh said. “There are a lot of council members guarding the way, though.”
Borely punched a fist into his palm. “That’s where we come in, kid.”
“If it’s well-guarded, that’s probably where we need to head, anyways,” Terico said.
“We don’t know if we’ll actually find what we’re looking for, thoug
h,” Jujor said. “The eigni naturally have a strong connection with Nexi power, so there are many possibilities for what has happened here.”
“We’ll have to find out,” Terico said. He hoped they would find the Elpis fragment there, but regardless, he intended to help the people of this city. The situation in Vursa seemed nearly as terrible as the one he witnessed in Edellerston, and he didn’t want to see that grisly scene ever repeated again.
The group followed Kitoh down the glass tunnels leading to the largest dome of the underwater city. Upon reaching the dome, they made their way between buildings, careful to watch for any eigni wearing the dark red robes of the eigni government. Eventually Kitoh stopped them a ways from what he pointed out to be the building the city’s grand council regularly met in. It was a giant silver building with a red dome on top, and was surrounded with a white brick fence at least five meters tall. At the nearest entrance stood eight eigni men in red robes.
Terico unsheathed the long, thin sword he had taken from Febraz’s tent.
“Be careful,” Jujor said. “I’d prefer we don’t start killing off the leaders of the eigni’s largest city.”
“We can’t just let them control the people like this,” Terico said.
“Let’s see if we can figure out precisely what’s going on first,” Jujor said. “Don’t you find it strange, for example, that the council members are the ones that are armed? Normally they’d leave this sort of work to trained guards.”
It was a good point, and it did make the whole situation a level stranger. If the council was controlling all the eigni, wouldn’t they force guards to protect their base of operations? And for that matter, why wouldn’t they have all the civilians perform some kind of work for them? Everyone was just mindless for some reason. Perhaps the Elpis was tampered with, and this was just how everything ended up somehow.
“Right then,” Borely said. “We’ll just have to knock them out cold then.” He took out some metal knuckle gloves from his pockets and slipped them on over his fists. The metal covered both his knuckles and his palm, giving him something to grip on to. Terico noticed a small orange Nexi stone embedded in the palm of each of the fighting gloves—a setup that could prove quite lethal when activated.
Elpis Page 15
