Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy)

by Caleb Wachter

  Even though I was fully aware that there were at least three hundred chambers similar to this one in the cavern, it seemed like I knew with absolute certainty that this was the one where I had tried to kill the dreamer, who had been called ‘Mistress Tyreva’ by her companion.

  “Can we come in?” asked Pi’Vari hesitantly. Apparently the excitement of the moment was enough to crack even his well-maintained veneer of indifference.

  “I think so,” I replied. “There isn’t anything active in here; just imprints and echoes.”

  My companions entered the room slowly, led by Pi’Vari. It was unusual seeing him lead at all, but the chance to discover something of this magnitude was apparently more than he could bear.

  As soon as he stepped inside, my herald’s expression turned to confusion, while both Aemir and Dancer were merely wary of the whole affair. Dancer began to circle the room slowly, while Aemir moved to my side.

  “Expecting something else?” I asked, uncertain what to make of Pi’Vari’s confusion.

  “I honestly did not know what to expect,” he replied simply and, for perhaps the first time since I had met him, I completely believed him.

  I turned back to the altar. “Can you read any of this?” I asked hopefully.

  Pi’Vari knelt down next to the man-shaped slab of stone and scrutinized a few sections of the odd glyphs. He slowly moved around the altar, never breaking eye contact with the glyphs and symbols.

  When he had made his way around to where he had begun, he stood and motioned for me to look closely where he was pointing. “You see this symbol?” he asked as he pointed to a roughly man-shaped glyph. It was unremarkable except for the fact that while all of the other symbols on the altar were green, the bulk of this one was black.

  I nodded, once again glad to have his encyclopedic knowledge at my disposal.

  “It repeats itself at least twenty times, and is quite obviously central to the rest of the passages,” he explained. “If I had to guess,” he mused, “then I would say this is the symbol of the god who was interred here.”

  “Blood here,” said Dancer, who was kneeling near the wall almost directly opposite the entryway. “Not fresh, not old,” he remarked casually as he sniffed it before continuing his survey of the room.

  Returning my attention to the altar, I reached out and rubbed the man-shaped glyph with my thumb, trying to clear away the dust. After I moved my hand I saw a fleck of green in the center of the figure’s head.

  I stood and wiped the dust from my thumb before saying, “This is what attacked Coldetz.”

  Pi’Vari nodded. “It is a reasonable assumption,” he agreed.

  I pointed to the slab’s surface. “I saw the altar, and this entire room, in the mind of the person who was controlling whatever the symbol represents.”

  Aemir leaned warily toward the altar and examined the symbols. “Can you translate any of this, Pi’Vari?”

  Pi’Vari shrugged. “Some of the symbols are familiar, but most of them are not. It would take a team of archeo-linguists and hieroglyphic experts weeks of dedicated study to decipher the entire thing,” he said with a hint of pride.

  “We don’t have weeks or teams of experts,” I said sharply. “What can you read?”

  Pi’Vari pointed to the human-shaped glyph with the green spot on its head. “The main one means ‘great man,’ ‘giant,’ or something of the like.”

  “It says ‘Colossus’,” I said with finality.

  Pi’Vari shot me a look and arched an eyebrow. “Yes, Jezran,” he replied in surprise as he turned back to face the altar, “I believe it does.”

  Chapter IX: Reflections and Foreboding

  I decided it was time for another spell, this time in the hopes of finding some information about our enemies. I sent my companions out of the room and relaxed my mind. This spell was a bit more complicated than the Third Eye spell I had used minutes earlier, but the rewards were almost certainly worth it.

  I closed my eyes and emptied my mind before calling the various forms and structures into my mind’s eye which would allow me to peek into the past of this room. To view a specific event or time, I needed to have something from that event. Usually a physical object, aligned with a period of time designated by the caster was the ideal method to bring about a seeing into the past, but I had no such objects other than those in the room.

  What I did have was a memory. It wasn’t a perfect representation of what had actually happened here, but memories never are. Still, if I could accurately recall the conversation between Mistress Tyreva and her dark-skinned companion, then that would probably be enough to replay the moments immediately after my attempted assassination.

  When the spell was assembled in my mind, I reached carefully through my memory and found what I was looking for. This spell would allow me to essentially view the scene from a third person perspective, unlike the dream spell which had skewed perceptions towards those of the dreamer.

  I funneled the necessary power from deep within myself and I was acutely aware of the heat the effort generated. My hands felt like they were being held near a lit candle, and my thighs burned like I had just sat down on a blistering motorcycle seat left out in the afternoon sun.

  The spell went off and I opened my eyes at once. Time seemed to accelerate backwards, and for a brief instant I saw my companions enter the room in reverse. I needed to consciously anchor the spell once the scene I wanted to see appeared or the magic would be wasted.

  As time inside the dome seemed to rewind in front of my eyes, it was only due to a sort of sixth sense that I was able to be certain that anything was happening at all, which I suppose is part of why I (or, more accurately, Jezran) was so highly regarded as a specialist in the field of divination and augury. I felt the moment approach, and I willed the flow of time to slow until two shapes seemed to coalesce in the room and the event I had sought replayed before me.

  “Who could do this, Mistress?” asked the dark-skinned man standing next to the slab. “The castle has no remaining mages and their walls were certain to fall, if not tonight then the next.” Whatever familiarity I had felt for the man in the dream world was gone, further bolstering my assessment that it was merely the result of this Mistress Tyreva’s own familiarity with the man.

  “They are not alone,” the woman replied. Her black hair was framed by a circlet of equally black, glossy metal with green gemstones embedded across its surface, surrounding one large, intricately carved emerald in the form of an eye, probably a cat’s eye as large as a deck of cards on her forehead. “The enemy has found the castle…they must aim to deny us that which we require,” she whispered before a violent spasm nearly threw her from the altar. The man held her shoulders and gently returned her to her previous position. “We are too late,” she finished weakly.

  “Can you bring down the gate?” the man asked earnestly, but there was something else in his voice. “We’ve come too far to give up now, Tyreva,” he pleaded, and I knew then that what I heard in his voice was love for this woman.

  Mistress Tyreva turned to the man and nodded her head. “I will try,” she replied. From this vantage point, I could tell that she was taxed to the limit already but there was a determination in her that could likely move mountains.

  She seemed to calm herself in an apparent effort to summon her magical energy for another spell when suddenly she screamed—a bloodcurdling, terrible sound—as a green flash of light erupted beneath her prone body. She was thrown from the altar across the room where she struck against the wall with a sickening crunch. It was that moment when I had unloaded my dream world version of a double barreled shotgun into her head, and I winced at the memory of the act.

  “Tyreva!” the man screamed and ran to where her limp body had come to rest.

  The figures became blurry as they moved further away, so I followed the man and knelt next to his image as he cradled the woman in his arms. Her head had been the first part of her body to strike the wall, and there
was blood pouring profusely from her nose. The ornate circlet which had adorned her head was smashed into a handful of pieces, and the large emerald appeared to have shattered into tiny fragments as well.

  “Tyreva…no!” he cried. “You can’t die! The people need you…” he sobbed. “I need you,” he said softly through quivering lips, and I got the distinct impression that this was not a man who was used to crying.

  Her body was completely limp, but her lips moved silently. The man and I moved as one to lean closer and hear what she was saying.

  “You,” she breathed, “are what the people need. You came to us for this very purpose.”

  “Tyreva, please don’t go,” he said, caressing her face as tears ran down his cheeks, “I’m not ready. There’s so much more you can teach me!” I only now noticed how physically fit this man was, and I was immediately envious. He was at least six foot four and two hundred fifty pounds of chiseled muscle, with massive hands that would have made Jack Dempsey envious.

  The barest hint of a smile tugged at her lips as she whispered, “We are never ready, but you have learned all you will need.” She drew a wet, gurgling breath and a tear ran down her cheek. “I owe you a great debt which I fear I can no longer repay,” she managed to say clearly, despite her quickly failing body.

  The man nodded wordlessly as tears continued to pour from his eyes, and I felt a deep sympathy for him in that moment. I knew that I had killed her, and that I had been justified in doing so, but being confronted with the reality of that decision gave me an unexpected pang of regret.

  “You gave me a new life and no matter the cost, I will avenge you,” he whispered as he held her forehead to his. “Nothing in this world will stop me, I promise you,” he hissed fiercely, and his rage was palpable even through the echo of time. “I will rip the beating hearts from their chests and erase every trace of their existence from this place after I burn your name into their skulls!”

  “I believe you will,” she whispered, and the life went out of her eyes.

  The scary part was that I did too.

  The spell ended abruptly in a flash of deep, blue light, which was strange since I hadn’t dismissed it. It took me a few moments to re-orient myself, but when I had done so I stepped outside of the dome.

  “So,” Pi’Vari prompted, “did you kill her?”

  I glared at him, but I decided he needed to know. “Yes, Pi’Vari, I killed her,” I spat.

  My herald nodded. “Good riddance,” he said a little too smugly for my liking.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. I cocked my fist and punched him as hard as I could in the nose with a winging overhand right. I knew I didn’t have enough strength to actually hurt him, so I didn’t have to hold anything back.

  He didn’t see it coming and even if he had, my herald was never much for unarmed combat. Give him a bow and he could turn you into a pincushion from fifty yards, but in close quarters he wasn’t very adept.

  The blow snapped Pi’Vari’s head back, but I was disappointed that his nose didn’t break—and even more disappointed when my wrist exploded in pain. He struggled to maintain his balance and would have succeeded if I hadn’t quickly kicked his legs out from under him.

  As he fell I stood over him and grabbed his collar, pulling his face closer to my own. I was once again disgusted by just how weak my ‘new’ body was, despite my own efforts at remedying that particular defect, but I pulled him up enough to get the desired effect. He was holding his nose in one hand, while the other had braced his fall to the ground.

  “You will either change your tune, or you will learn to show a little restraint as to when—and where—you play it,” I growled at him through clenched teeth. “These people are our enemies, but they are still people and deserve our respect! Do you understand me?”

  Pi’Vari had regained his composure and removed his hand from his nose. “You overstep your bounds, Jezran. You are not yet Master of House Wiegraf,” he hissed. “As such, your authority over me is more limited than you appear to believe!”

  “Is it?” I asked in a threatening tone. “Believe me, Pi’Vari, the last thing you want is for me to start playing by your rules. I never lose a game once I’ve taken a liking to it,” I warned. There were literally thousands of people on internet forums back home who would attest to that, if asked.

  Pi’Vari looked like he was about to retort, but he bit his tongue and inclined his head slightly.

  I stood back and watched as he got to his feet. Aemir was a respectful distance away, but it was clear that he was prepared to cut Pi’Vari down if he decided to try anything. Dancer, on the other hand, was leaning up against the curve of the dome on one leg, with the other foot pulled up under his buttocks. He appeared to be getting a kick out of my little outburst, which was pretty uncharacteristic of me…at least, it was since I’d come to their world.

  “Now,” I said in a commanding voice, “let’s finish checking these domes. Mistress Tyreva, the woman who controlled the Colossus, wasn’t alone and it sounded like the man who was with her was a protégé of some kind. It’s possible that he also gained access to one of these domes.”

  “Did you at least discover his name?” asked Pi’Vari with the barest hint of defiance in his voice.

  I shook my head, ignoring the barb. “No, I didn’t get his name, either in the dream world or here.”

  We spread out and quickly enough, Dancer found another disturbed dome, but this one hardly resembled a dome any longer. It had been blasted apart by some kind of massive force, casting bits and pieces of it all across the cavern in a fan-shaped pattern. Someone—or something—immensely powerful had torn this thing apart, and I had little doubt as to who was responsible.

  The pieces bearing the sigil weren’t nearby, so we focused instead on what had previously been in the middle of the dome. Unlike the previous chamber, there was no altar. Instead, there was an upright sarcophagus which resembled a nine foot tall iron maiden like I used to see in gothic movies. There were no spikes inside it, but there were also no holes or hinges of any kind. The front section appeared to have been pivoted away by simple, brute, force.

  “The altar in the other dome,” I began, thinking out loud more than anything, “looked to be how this Mistress Tyreva connected with the Colossus. Shouldn’t her protégé, or whoever unsealed this one, need to return to this place to control whatever was unleashed?”

  “It is possible,” Pi’Vari said coldly, obviously still smarting from earlier. “We do not yet know enough of their magic to make a final determination.”

  The entire object was made of what appeared to be iron, with rusty red colored streaks along its surface. I found nothing of interest either inside or outside the ominous case, so I continued around to where my herald was examining the front section.

  My herald hesitated a moment too long, which drew my attention. “What is it, Pi’Vari?” I prompted.

  “I may have been wrong about this place,” he replied evenly, “I do not believe this is a burial site for actual gods.”

  Now my curiosity was piqued. Infuriating as he was, I had come to place a lot of weight behind Pi’Vari’s observations. Only rarely had he been completely wrong since lending his talents to my group.

  I slowly circled around behind the sarcophagus as I asked, “What do you think it is, then?”

  “It is likely a burial site of a kind…but its purpose might be more historical than spiritual—like a museum,” he explained. “I do not believe these are the actual remains of gods; I believe this is a collection of their dormant vessels.”

  That got my attention. “Are you saying that each of these domes contains a sleeping avatar?” I blurted.

  “No,” he replied tersely, “they are not ‘sleeping.’ When their respective inhabitants perished, their connection was severed and these vessels—or avatars, as you say—became dormant. They cannot ‘awaken’ in the traditional sense, as the beings which originally inhabited them no longer exist.”

>   “So…” I began, my mind racing with possibilities, “what purpose might someone have for collecting these empty vessels?” I had a few answers in mind, but none of them were terribly comforting.

  “It is yet another mystery, Jezran,” he said with a little more emphasis on my name than usual.

  I suddenly remembered the large emerald Tyreva had worn on her circlet which resembled a large cat’s eye, and decided to see if Pi’Vari knew anything about it.

  “Are you familiar with an emerald green sigil,” I asked brusquely, “in the shape of an eye, probably feline in shape?”

  “Indeed,” Pi’Vari replied absently, “it represents fear in most primitive cultures.”

  “I mean more specifically,” I pressed, “are you familiar with any beings who would use it as their sigil?”

  There was a pause before he replied, “Yes, Jezran,” he replied somewhat tersely, “it is the symbol of Narcath, Mother of Nightmares and Queen of Terror. She, or more precisely, ‘it’ is one of the few targeted beings who escaped persecution during the Twelfth Gods War.”

  When I came around to where he was, I found him kneeling and examining what looked to be a large patch of rust on the front of the lid.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked, seeing his gaze locked on the large patch of rust, which I now realized was a sigil.

  Pi’Vari shrugged. “I may know this one as well,” he said, gesturing to the symbol on the front of the sarcophagus.

  I looked closely and saw that there were two objects represented, crossing each other at their respective mid-points like blades on a coat of arms. The first appeared to be a barbed hook, like the kind used for moving bales of hay but quite a bit more savage-looking with a blade sticking out one side of the grip. The second was unmistakably a short, wide blade; probably a meat cleaver of some kind with a large chip notched out of it a third of the way back from the tip.