Growing more frustrated at being held up by her hair, Rella continued to claw at the iron wrist holding her up.
“Please! I can walk!”
With glacial slowness, Ruga lowered her until her feet were again flat on the floor. “I know this is new to you, and you have questions about everything you see here, but they can wait. Stop again, and Koma will move you instead of me. She will be far less gentle than I.” The hand withdrew, and Rella shook her hair out while rubbing the back of her head.
“What did I do? I don’t know any of you!”
Koma’s clipped intonation gave way to dripping, barely leashed outrage.
“I don’t think you realize what you’ve done, giving a Seal to a demon,” she almost growled at her. “What were you thinking ?”
“Don’t mind her,” Ingra interjected. “She was the [Oracle] during a crusade, had to let herself get killed by a demon abomination so that the next could lead the armies against the Bin’Drana Summoners. Tore her apart in front of all her loyal followers.” Rella gaped at the woman, mouth working soundlessly. “Sometimes we have to do unpleasant things, as you already know.”
“A decade of battle, only to die like an animal,” Koma grated, leering at Rella. “Do you know what it’s like to get your head ripped off by a demon? It’s not instant like you would think, especially when they do it slow. A succubus is the most vicious kind there is, and you gave her a Seal! ” “She trembled, enraged, muscles jumping and quivering.
“If I can see her story, so can you,” Rella objected, drawing a step away from the woman. “She was human once, before she Sinned.”
“Demons are not redeemable,” snapped the warrior woman. “They serve the Hells until their Sin is purged and they return to the Cycle. You are young and naïve.”
“And if it doesn’t work, you have a demon running rampant without a summoner’s geas,” added Ruga. “The death toll could be—”
“A lot less than letting Stormbreak fall,” Rella replied, heat entering her voice. “We can’t see past a choice not made, and you don’t know what she’ll choose!” Blooming anger starched her spine, letting her face the women’s stares.
The silent gazes persisted until the platform slowed to a stop, and Ingra broke the silence. “Enough, sisters,” she said, while her clothes settled into a slower pattern of formal suits that wouldn’t have been out of place at a bank or merchant’s guild. “The Mantle is hers until it passes on, and she’ll have to live with the consequences of that which she has set in motion. We brought her here because she cannot control the Sight.”
Koma’s hand drifted to the pommel of her sword, an absent-minded caress that Rella realized was a subconscious affectation. She looked at the young [Oracle], a cold smile spreading across her face. “There is a solution, if you want to skip a few years of training and stay sane under the deluge. But you will not enjoy it.”
Ruga gently placed a hand on her shoulder, guiding her down the walkway. On this level, there were no floating orbs, and only one path, the polished stones leading to a looming door, layered with what appeared to be thousands of overlapping protective enchantments, all linked to a central ward with a single circular disk serenely floating in midair. Her three escorts stepped forward, and Ruga let go of her shoulder as each of the three ancient [Oracles] placed a hand on the seal that floated in the center of the wards.
“This is the Armory.” Koma spoke softly, almost reverently. “You won’t be able to speak of what is stored within. These doors can only open in the right circumstances.”
“The world must reach a certain threshold of danger to everyone before we can come here directly, even in the dream.” Ingra’s dress finally stopped shifting, the woman losing her carefree irreverence as the enchantments began to disarm themselves. Her clothes settled into a simple tunic and breeches, utilitarian and subdued, with shades of brown split by a dark green crossbody sash. “We aren’t breaking any rules, not exactly…”
“But the price will weaken us considerably, so make it worth it.”
The last was almost a whisper from Ruga as lengths of chain wound through the seal began to move. The seal itself began to spin counterclockwise as if it were unwinding a screw to play out more chain, and heavy rumblings could be felt in the air.
“A bit overdone with the ominous presentation for something in a dream,” whispered Rella, subdued by the gravitas of the moment.
“This is no dream,” Koma replied stiffly. “It’s a reflection of the Halls in the waking world, and if there is need enough, you can unlock the door on that side just like here. How else would the Armory be useful at all, if there was no way to access it?” Koma spoke as if lecturing a child, telling her something that she should already have known. “You simply have not had need of it in your time.”
“I haven’t even heard of it, or seen anything about it in the memories…”
The wards finally stopped spinning, the chains falling slack with a piercing rattle that sounded too loud for the empty space around them. The doors began to groan loudly as gigantic hidden mechanisms stirred to life, and they finally began to slide open.
“The existence of the Armory is not restricted knowledge, but throughout the history of Anfealt, it has only been opened a handful of times in the waking world. If you had no reason to look, you wouldn’t know.” Koma gripped the hilt of her sword so tightly her gauntlet creaked under the strain, her own memories darkening her gaze. “You won’t need to actually go there on the waking side unless you have to call a crusade, and if that happens, you will know how to find it.”
“We must hurry,” murmured Ruga urgently as the doors slid open with agonizing slowness. “She’s been here too long already.”
The three older women stepped through the doorway, a wide-eyed Rella close behind. The grand hall they entered next put every building the fledgling [Oracle] had ever seen to shame, in both the waking and dreaming worlds. She couldn’t see the roof; the columns that might hold one up disappeared into a misty cloudbank shot through with grim, jagged lightning. They were made of a bone-white stone mottled with grey and black striations, and so thick were they that Rella thought ten men might not be able to link hands around one. Hundreds of paces separated one from the next, and what lay between slackened Rella’s jaw and stopped her in her tracks.
“What…?”
“I told you, this is the Armory.” Koma’s voice was soft, subdued, reverent. Rella stepped forward, toward a seemingly endless field of weaponry, some in styles she couldn’t recognize, stretching farther than her eyes could see. “Anfealt is the Forge of Stories; this is where we remember the tools of those whose Stories resonate throughout time.”
The women took Rella along a winding path through the racks, and she felt like she might snap her neck as her eyes skipped from weapon to weapon:
A massive double-edged sword, seemingly crafted of a single piece of flint twice her height, with a dark substance staining its terrible edge. The bloodthirst that radiated from the blade was palpable from dozens of strides away;
A spear, its haft made of a white wood that seemed to glow against the backdrop of stone. Its head was fashioned of some intensely red metal that somehow hurt her eyes to look at;
A humble blacksmith’s hammer atop a simple pedestal. It seemed so pedestrian, and yet arranged in a circle around it were seven sets of armor that seemed as solid and strong as the columns that braced the sky;
A single-edged sword with a slightly curved blade in an ebony rack, its scabbard racked below it. A braided tassel hung from the grip, and the corded hilt bore an intricate diamond design. The blade thinned into invisibility at its edge, to a sharpness that beggared the mind.
Swords, shields, spears; hammers, maces, flails. Longbows and crossbows, knives and more. Weapons of every stripe Rella could imagine, and some she couldn’t, were scattered around the columns, defying her attempts to organize them in her mind.
The women led her past a gap in the scattered weap
onry, a space between the columns where the floor sat bare for hundreds of paces. Ruga and her sisters refused to look toward the center as they skirted the edge, but Rella couldn’t help herself. Her eyes were drawn to an enchanted dais in the center of the cleared space. A Seal formed of seven glowing rings of energy encircled a massive black stone block that spun slowly in place, hovering inside the sphere of nullification magics held together by the seal. Her feet slowed as she looked at it, the dread material seeming to pull her in.
Ruga took her by the chin and forcibly turned her head away before she realized she had stepped toward it. “We don’t go there, girl. Only Mother can open it, and that’s enough negatite to kill you and wound the Mantle in the doing.”
Icy fingers of fear suddenly worked their way into her guts, and she took a shuddering step back, eager now to be away. “Negatite?” she whispered, stunned. “B-but that block…it must be six tons! Dark guilds pay a king’s ransom for grams of it!”
“Aye,” Ingra replied, her clothes flashing to a black dress and veil in funereal black. “And ten times the amount in the waking world would not be a tenth of that block. And what it holds inside is even more terrible.”
“What could require that much negatite to seal away!?”
“We don’t know,” admitted Koma, for once without anger in her voice. “It came after my time, and all of us within the Mantle agreed it was best to forget, so Mother sealed even the memory away.”
“Who is this ‘Mother’, and why are you all afraid she’ll wake up?”
“That would be me,” came a vaguely amused voice from ahead.
As one, Ruga and her sisters dropped to their knees. Koma jerked Rella to the ground so hard she barely had time to put her hands out to catch herself, and her knees hardly fared better. Unlike the three who kept their gazes to the floor, Rella beheld the woman. She stood next to a pedestal which bore a small orb on a cloth-covered tray. Slippers of pale cream adorned her feet, below a dress of such a rich blue that it was as if the sky itself was wrapped around her body. Indeed, clouds appeared to move across its surface as her eyes drifted up. A belt fashioned of flattened silver chain draped across her hips, resting beneath a narrow waist and a matronly bosom.
Her face was stern and regal in appearance, framed by midnight-black hair which cascaded below her shoulders, but it was her eyes that entranced the young girl. They seemed as if they held the myriad stars of the universe within them, and pierced her soul with an all-seeing, all-knowing gaze.
Her presence burned, impressing itself on the world, and drove doubled lances of pain into Rella’s skull.
“Don’t look so close,” she advised. “Your sisters do not avert their eyes for fear of me, but of losing themselves within the Mantle.”
A sob tore its way out of her throat, and Rella jerked her gaze away. “Who—what—are you?”
“I was the First,” came the flat reply. “I stood alone, with no others to share my burden. Whatever trials you may face as you come to control the Sight will earn no sympathy from me.”
She wilted under that proclamation, excuses dying in her mouth unspoken. “I am trying,” she whispered. “I’m willing to pay whatever price must be paid. I can’t afford to take years to train myself.”
“A dangerous thing to say, without knowing the price first.” Looking down, Rella could hear the swish of fabric as the woman took several steps. Her shadow on the floor seemed to circle the pedestal she’d glimpsed earlier. “Do not think I am angry, child. I am merely…displeased with your sisters for playing such games with you, while more important matters must be attended to.”
“She risks a demon unbound!” Koma interjected without raising her head, knuckles white.
“There are always demons, child. Devils. Angels. Worldwalkers and fallen gods, dark cultists, war and strife and death—and life burgeons unending despite that. Anfealt endures! Does the anvil fear the might of the smith? It is indifferent, as is the world and the Mantle itself. The purpose of the [Oracle] is two-fold. We witness! That none may fall forgotten! We do not judge, we only preserve!”
The first [Oracle] didn’t raise her voice—she didn’t need to—and yet it carried in echoes back from the distant columns. It rebounded from the emptiness above, pressing down on the kneeling women. She stood silent for a long moment, then continued.
“We preserve the stories, and we safeguard free will. For without free will, choice is no more. Stories are made, piece by piece, by the choices mortals make, and without the ability to choose, the story ends. They brought you here, child, to offer you a choice. At this rate, the visions will kill you or drive you mad before you come into your full power.”
“How do I stop that from happening? How do I buy myself the time to learn?”
“You pay the price,” she replied. “Come and look at the pedestal; there, you will find what your sisters were bringing you to see.” The woman stepped out of Rella’s view, sparing her the intensity of looking upon the first [Oracle]. She stood, keeping her eyes on the simple, carved post. It lacked ornamentation, and had been chiseled into a square, the toolmarks still rough on its surface. It was capped with a plain linen cloth above which floated the small orb she’d glimpsed before. It was formed of some type of glass, or perhaps crystal, and within it swirled the same lights she’d beheld in the first [Oracle]’s eyes.
“Long ago, a young god from another world came to Anfealt, seeking wisdom and knowledge as he travelled the stars. You do not have years to spend in meditation at your temple, so claim the eye he traded for lost knowledge. It will filter the chaos from your Sight, allowing you to withstand the weight of the knowing. Make your choice, and remember our purpose.”
The woman faded away as she spoke the last words, leaving the younger [Oracles] alone once more.
Rella reached out tentatively, stopping just short of touching the orb. “Do I…eat it? Or just grab it?”
The other women had risen by this point, and closed in behind her; she felt the familiar hand as Ruga once again seized her by the hair to hold her still. It was Koma who spoke then, her voice drained of the anger she’d aimed at Rella before.
“You know the answer to that. And I am sorry for being rude before. Mother is right, and there are more important things than demons while those damned collars still taint the waking world.”
“Is this what you choose?” Ingra asked with a sorrowful expression. “Koma will be as quick and merciful as she can, but you already know it will be bad.”
Rella’s heart beat faster and faster, determination fortifying her spirit against the dread which sought to claim it. “Will it stop hurting after, or will it stay bad?”
“It will likely be sore for months,” Ruga answered, “but the worst will pass in a few moments. The danger will be the shock. If you can hold onto yourself through that, you will recover. And the visions will be much more bearable.”
Rella let out a quick breath. “Do it, then, before I—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence before Ruga’s grip tightened on her head and chin, fixing her in place. For a fleeting moment she saw the tips of Koma’s gauntleted fingers, and then her world became whiteness and pain. She screamed in agony, muscles twitching and jumping as she tried to thrash her way out of Ruga’s grip.
She felt one of the women—it must have been Ingra—wrap her arms around her, murmuring softly, “Shh…shh, we have you…just a few more moments…”
The words in her ear brought the young [Oracle] precious little comfort as she felt something cold and solid press into the void where her right eye had been moments before. The coldness spread backward, through meat and bone, before suddenly intensifying, a frozen snap she could almost hear causing her body to convulse. Another cry rose from her throat before her jaw snapped shut and a hot, coppery taste flooded her mouth, causing her to gag and choke. Ruga and Ingra lowered her to the floor, where Koma’s iron grip squeezed her jaw.
“Breathe , girl!” she commanded.
Rella obeyed with an explosive gasp, flopping over onto her side and coughing up blood. For a moment she thought she had truly gone blind, until a soft linen cloth wiped her face. It withdrew, soiled with blood, and another was offered in its place. Sobbing, she took it and pushed herself up to sit, using her own tears to wash her face as best she could.
She sat for a long time, or so it seemed to her. The other women stood a silent vigil, their respect keeping them from offering weak platitudes or false sorrow. She finally spoke, her voice a raspy whisper.
“How do I get out? I want to leave, but I don’t know how…”
“Leaving is as simple as willing it. There are no locks keeping us in, and we can only take things out when there is need or a price has been paid. You have paid the price and can leave as soon as you wish to.”
It was Ingra who spoke, as she helped Rella back to her feet. Her gentle touch at odds with her earlier brusqueness, she pushed Rella’s hair aside, wiping another smudge of blood off her face while inspecting the new eye. “It is rather striking,” she commented. “I hope your would-be champion likes it. But now, I think you are out of time.”
“You cannot stay much longer, or it will begin to damage your mind, eye of a god or not,” added Ruga.
“Only a few minutes will have passed in the waking world,” said Koma.
“I know,” she told them, the pain fading and part of the Sight beginning to return. “I have one more bit of business to take care of before I wake.” She held up her left hand, the flickering image of an eye coming to life on her palm. “The seal is activating. I guess I’ll know soon enough if you were right, Koma.”
With a burst of will guided by her newly-improved Sight, Rella stepped through the dream to another place. Smokey images of walls still dripping with blood formed around the blurred, yet familiar shape cradling two forms on the floor. The demon wept, and the Seal on the back of Zizzy’s hand flashed brilliant white.
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