by Adam Elliott
One book, in particular, did catch his eye. It was a thick, dusty volume that bore a silver engraving on its leather cover, marking it as A Detailed Accounting of the 1,944 Departed Bloodlines.
The lore behind Babel's history had always fascinated Cayden, so he happily scooped up the book and took it with him to a nearby chair. He was immediately both overjoyed and disappointed. The book itself proved to have been written in a variety of different languages, which ruled out the idea of actually reading it. On the other hand, each page was topped with an illustration, as well as between two and five runes. For a book the topped off near two thousand pages, it could prove to be a bounty of possible words.
He flipped carefully through the pages, looking at each set of runes in turn. The auto-translate function did not often work properly on paper, but Cayden had spent enough time studying that he was fairly confident that he would recognize them if he spotted any runes he already knew.
Page after page he journeyed, each new spread presenting him with a pair of wonderful if sometimes unsettling illustrations. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the illustrations themselves; some were of barbaric warriors, others eastern looking mystics, while still others were not even remotely human. Demons filled pages as often as angels, as did a variety of predators and magical creatures. Cayden made a few casual guesses as he paged through his options but to no avail.
Cayden had begun to zone out around the eight hundred page mark. It was his only excuse for turning the page without recognizing either the English words or the picture they sat beneath.
The White Knight.
It took a full two pages before his absent mind made the connection and sent a surge of excitement running along the length of his spine. He nearly tore a page in the decrepit work in his haste to return, to be sure that what he saw wasn't just the fancy of a weary, addled mind.
The picture was unmistakable. A beautiful, blue-eyed woman clad all in white stood at the head of an army. She was not armored in the image, instead clad in nothing more than a plain white slip that covered her from shoulder to ankle. She held a sword in one arm and clutched a weeping young woman in the other, holding her tightly against her breast. Her chin was upturned and defiant as if daring whatever force was arrayed opposite of her on the battlefield to do its worst.
“Vincent!” He cried, at once realizing the book's importance.
“Yes, yes.” The mage replied, waving him away with his free hand. “See if there is-”
“Vincent!” Cayden's shout was more firm this time as he stood. “I need you to take a look at this now.”
“It can wait.”
It couldn't. Cayden lifted the book and stormed towards the other man. Vincent didn't look up; he didn't even appear to be aware that Cayden had drawn so close. When he was younger, Cayden had held an entire argument with his father regarding the location of the PlayStation controller while he'd been asleep. Vincent was no different, which meant that he would have to resort to tactics similar to those his father had used.
He reached out and slammed one of Vincent's books.
“What?” The man cried in sudden alarm. Surprise gave way to annoyance, and then to anger as he realized not only what, but who. “You dare?”
“Are you really going to shout at me like a Saturday morning cartoon villain?" Cayden retorted. Then, without waiting for a reply, he set his book down next to the one he'd just closed and pointed at the picture on the right-hand side. "Who is she?" Cayden then gestured to the book as a whole. "For that matter, who are any of them."
Ire flashed in Vincent's eyes, and for just a moment Cayden worried he'd gone too far. Then Vincent's nature got the better of him, the wizard turning his gaze to the page to source the meaning of Cayden's question.
“Well?” Cayden asked after Vincent had spent half a minute examining the text.
“Do you want to push your luck any further?" Vincent asked icily. It sent a chill down Cayden's spine, causing the young man to demure and dip his head in apology. "From your tone, I imagine this one would be The White Knight I have heard so much about."
“And the others?”
“Progenitors of the bloodlines I suspect, judging by the title.” Vincent ran a finger along the text. “This text is like a dialect of a dialect. Nearly illegible, even for me.”
Vincent flipped the book closed, studying the title and the spine of the volume. Unsatisfied, he opened the book once more and began to scan through page after page, frowning as he did so.
“What's wrong.”
“It is strange. I do not recall owning this particular bit of knowledge.”
“Could it possibly belong to Aaron?” Cayden inquired.
“That simpleton? I'd be lucky if he didn't eat a book mistaking the leather for jerky.” Vincent shook his head. “No.”
The wizard stood and began to weave his left hand through a series of complicated, arcane gestures while keeping his right hand on the book Cayden had brought him. Vincent's words rose to a crescendo and then... nothing. Nothing save for a deepening frown on the man's face.
“What was that?”
“My library contains 87,294 works. Including this one.”
“You have a spell to count your books?” Cayden didn't even know why he was surprised. “What is the problem?”
“My library should contain 87,294 works. Excluding this one.” Vincent's eyes narrowed. “Someone swapped out the books in a way that I wouldn't notice.”
“Isn't it more likely that someone took or damaged a book and didn't tell you?”
Vincent spat him with a stare of contempt, his silver eyes lingering on the young man until he finally relented. "Okay, so maybe not. But why?"
“Why indeed. Not to mention whom." The magic caster returned to his seat and began to review the new book in earnest. Cayden watched as the older man worked, flipping back and forth across pages and scribbling down notes to himself as he found this or that section of particular interest. It was a tedious procedure, one that seemed to take hours. Throughout, Cayden did not dare to move for fear that if he left the absent-minded wizard to his work, that he might very well forget Cayden's interest entirely.
After what felt like approximately three millennia, Vincent leaned back from the book and uttered a single word. "Fascinating."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
An hour later Aaron joined Cayden and Vincent, at the latter's request. Aaron was disheveled, the hems of his trousers splattered with mud that was evocative of the man's otherwise grubby appearance.
“So, what is this matter that is so crucial that I cannot even be given time to bathe?” Aaron grunted.
“You act as if anyone has a desire to see you like this.” Vincent was regretting calling Aaron in such a rush, a minute tic of frustration fluttering at his eye with each mud-stained footprint the sorcerer left behind on the library floor. "Take a look at this."
Aaron leaned down to survey the offered book. He stretched out a hand to run through the pages, then thought better of it as Vincent caught him with a disapproving stare. “Okay, I'll bite. What am I looking at.”
Vincent drew in a breath, preparing a scathing rebuke that the sorcerer could not see what he did. Then he thought better of it, cleared his frustration with a shake of his head, and gestured to the page. “This is Cayden's White Knight.”
“Hmm... I can see his interest.” Aaron snickered lightly.
Cayden blushed, and Vincent fumed. "That isn't the point you dolt."
“You really don't get jokes, do you, Vince." Cayden could see the scholar bristle at the nickname, about to rise to the bait before Aaron continued. "I'm not getting your point. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and we lost three men on patrol today. So if you could just get to the point."
“You were right.” Vincent replied flatly.
“About what?”
“About our charge.” The wizard inclined his head ever so slightly in Cayden's direction.
“You mean there are others.”
Aaron clapped his hands together, grinning from ear to ear. “You are sure?”
Vincent nodded. He'd made magical marks on several pages, and with nothing more than a gesture he flipped from one to another. "Of the bloodline of Azrael, I found the Namekeeper. Marut produced the Sorcerer. On this page, Maalik, The Keeper."
“Aaron.” Cayden said, turning his attention to the other man. “Could you please translate this into something that makes sense?”
For once, even Aaron was lost in the moment. If he heard Cayden, he didn't respond, instead frantically scanning the pages of text as Vincent presented them to him. "And there are no other legends connected to Tabbris?"
“None that I have been able to fin-”
“Guys!” Cayden shouted, slamming an empty inkwell down onto the table like a gavel. “Could you please?”
The sound was enough to shock them out of the moment, both Aaron and Vincent staring wide eyed at the young man before exchanging looks. In the end, it was Aaron who spoke.
“Just before the arrival of the bloodline families, what you call launch day, we were charged to aid your quest by the Great Emperor himself. He appeared to us in a vision, and instructed us on the steps we would need to take if a person arrived seeking The White Knight.” Aaron explained. “I had long suspected, but never confirmed that we were not the only ones to be given such a task.”
“What made you think that?”
Aaron turned the book, gesturing to the depiction of a winged man. He was shrouded in darkness, an enormous book held in the crook of one arm, a quill in the other. “This is the Namekeeper. Like The White Knight, he is one of thousands of myths. Beings of fiction, creatures of legend. If we were being tasked with guiding you to The White Knight, surely there were other myths just as real.”
“How many?” Cayden asked.
“Vincent?" Aaron deferred.
“Difficult to say.” The mage admitted. “This work lists such a legend for each of the 1,944 bloodlines, but I find that unlikely. Cayden claims that he has never heard of a unique ability like his mastery of runic magic. If two thousand possible candidates were running around out there, I think someone would have let it slip by now."
“How many?” Cayden asked.
“My best guess? Twenty-Seven. Some of the beings listed in this book are so rare as to almost be forgotten, while others, such as The Sorcerer are well known even today. If the Great Emperor is imbuing these myths with real power, it stands to reason he could have chosen as many or as few as he wanted to. One for each bloodline family seems like it would be a solid, thematic number.”
Twenty-Seven unique abilities. Cayden let the thought of it stew around in his mind as Aaron and Vincent continued their verbal high-fives.
If they were right, it made a little more sense. The idea that no one had spotted that little phrase of English on the roof of the boss room had seemed unlikely at the time, but if only a player with the Tabbris bloodline could even see it then that would lower the possibility dramatically.
But what of the other abilities? Was there someone running around in a top tier raiding guild with a fully developed unique ability that they'd kept under wraps all this time? “Do you think the other legends have been found?”
“Impossible to say.” Vincent admitted. “I might be able to devise a spell, but it would be months in the making for little gain.”
“I imagine at least some of the seekers may have died.”
That got Cayden's attention. “Seekers? You mean players like me?”
Aaron nodded grimly.
“Why would you think they are dead?”
“The Great Emperor does not make simple trials Cayden.” He frowned deeply and looked. “You would do well to remember that.”
* * *
It was a hard thing to forget, particularly with Aaron reminding Cayden at almost every turn.
With Vincent's help, he had managed to decipher enough of the named legends to expand his vocabulary to nearly three hundred words. The expanded knowledge came with the expected reward, the ability to string together multiple runes with a single casting. It also came with an even more lofty goal, an expectation of two thousand words. Considering the progression thus far he could guess that when he passed that mark, he'd be asked to find twenty, and then two hundred thousand runes. To access the full power of his class, he would apparently need to learn the entire language.
Aaron certainly seemed intent on making him try. The promise of a trial when he had learned two hundred words had been forgotten the moment it was reached, replaced by a new goal of perfecting his multi-rune casting ability.
That had barely taken Cayden a week.
Multi-rune casting was not appreciably different from the single word casting he had already become fluent in. It cost more MP and required slightly more mental focus to form the proper pronunciation of two runic words, but it did not compare to the difficulty he had endured when learning to control the runes in the first place.
It was, however, much more powerful. The ability to chain together words allowed for more complicated manipulation. By itself, the Earth rune was limited to summoning or directly altering earth in rather simple ways. But combined with other runes he could produce walls, armors, even weak summoned creatures such as an elemental. The overall cost and capabilities of a two-word phrase were close to third tier spells normally available to fortieth level casters, which put it in line with the progression he expected, with fifth tier spells coming available at two-thousand known words and so forth.
Such a jump in power was impressive but difficult to wield. A single two-rune cast could eat up as much as three-quarters of his MP, and after a week of practice, he was fairly sure that he was getting down to the practical limit of efficiency. The cost was fairly in line with what he knew of runic magic in general, that his spells typically cost about 25% more than an equivalent spell from a traditional caster. It still hurt though, limiting him for the moment to a single casting of his strongest spells roughly once every three to four minutes with his current MP regeneration. Not great for combat, other than as a finisher.
Of course, Aaron's reaction to Cayden's new found proficiency had been to declare that he wasn't ready. He needed more training, more preparation time. Aaron was already making noises about the possibility that he might insist Cayden reach his next milestone as if there were even two thousand words on the whole floor that would be possible for Cayden to learn.
Vincent was of a different mind. Pass or fail, Cayden should have taken the test weeks ago in his eyes. The wizard had made clear that the test itself was tied to Cayden's existing abilities, a level scaled quest in video game parlance, which made their current bout of training superfluous. It was a disagreement that fell on deaf ears. Aaron had decided against it, and the test could not even be attempted without the confirmation of both of his tutors.
And so Cayden waited in a sort of limbo. In the morning he trained in the cellar, further refining his mastery of language and discovering new and innovative ways to use the words in his vocabulary. His afternoons were spent in the library, pouring over manuscripts for scraps of text for a handful of new words each day. His evenings were his own. Some were spent in further practice. More often, he spent them like this, browsing the internet and keeping in touch with friends.
They had been making considerable progress in his absence, as Celia was always chipper to point out, much to his chagrin. She had taken well to Shifty after their first meeting, and the two spent most every day partied up as they ground their way through content under Silver's less than watchful eye.
In the time he'd been gone they'd worked their way up to the sixth floor, and tackled a pair of dungeons as part of pick up groups. Considering their progress, he was fairly sure the two out leveled him now, even with the boost he'd received from his special quest. If not, the upcoming trip to the seventh floor Celia spoke of in her most recent message would certainly bridge the gap.
Messages from Sarah ha
d proven more uplifting to Cayden's spirit. At least, they had. He had gotten so used to seeing a new message from her whenever he put on his glasses, that the absence of any over the last few days had been conspicuous. It had been odd enough that he'd kept his wearing glasses in the middle of the day, something he rarely did in Axfell so that he would see if one arrived.
Twilight fell without a reply. Dinner passed without one. Breakfast, lunch, then dinner all over again. He felt petty stewing over something so simple, but in many ways, she was the strongest connection to normal he had if such thing even existed in the tower. Frankly, it was a wonder that he'd gone as long as three days before finally checking in on her.
Cayden: Babel to Sarah. I know it was a bad pun, but was it really that bad?
Hopefully, that didn't seem too desperate. They'd both made it abundant to one another fairly early on that neither was really interested in the other that way, for a variety of the reasons. Even so, he too often fretted that she might interpret a word or an action as an advance. And freaking out because it had taken her a few days to get back to him felt a little high on that creepo list.
Seconds passed as he sat curled up against the wall of the simple apprentice quarters they had laid out for him. Then minutes. She wasn't going to reply, but that didn't keep his eyes from drifting to the empty messages icon every few minutes. Time for a distraction.
He fired up a movie, 1986's The Transformers (The Movie!) and within a few minutes he felt weary eyes beginning to sag. It seemed not even the magical energy of an 80's power ballad would be enough to keep him up into the late hours.
Ding!
The chime of a priority message startled him just as he began to nod off. The surprise was enough to jolt him upright, his heart suddenly racing in primitive preparation for a non-existent threat.
