by Ty Beltramo
“Maybe that Patron guy is a Designer. Who knows? Anyway, I know someone I intend to ask about it.”
“Who?”
“You don’t want to know. It’ll rattle your conveniently simple worldview.”
“Elson, you’re a jerk.”
“I know. I hate myself.” I looked around. “Diomedes was here shortly before he was captured, probably shortly before he planned this whole thing. So what’s in here that Diomedes would have wanted us to see? I don’t think it was stuff about ancient wars and the origins of the Schism. That’s old news.”
Aello stopped at the raised platform in the center of the room. It was scorched and blackened, as if it had been struck by lightning. “Is this where you awoke?” She asked.
“Yep. That’s it. Seems like a long time ago.”
I wandered around the chamber, looking for anything that might help us figure out what was going on.
“There’s a name here,” she said, brushing away dust from the base of the platform. “It looks like an altar to the Jester, or whoever that opposite of Death would be.”
Something caught my eye. I walked over to a spot in the lower corner of one wall.
“Aello. Does this spot look like it has been cleaned?”
She left the platform and came over to the wall. She bent down and studied the surface. “Yes it does. And not too long ago, either.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
“It’s more history. Hard to follow.” She studied it for some time. “It’s quite cryptic. It refers to the secret of the astral, and monsters of the pit. There are references again to the Patron, who, it seems, stole some knowledge and trapped some creatures in the pit for eternity to protect mankind. None of it rings a bell to me,” she said. “You?”
“Well, the astral plane is an odd place. I’ve spent considerable time there. It does raise many questions but nothing comes to mind. The pit may be a reference to the Abyss. There are stories about ancient baddies being imprisoned there, and I’ve seen some.”
“Some what?” She asked.
“What?”
“You said you saw some. Some what?”
“Uh, nothing.”
“Elson. You’re keeping information from me.”
“Yes. But it’s not relevant.”
She began to get that sour face again. I could sense through the glamour her anger rising.
“Hey, my world is odd. When I talk about it, people begin to think I’m crazy. So I don’t talk about it.”
“Okay. Keep your secrets. But don’t preach to me about trust. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. What else does it say?”
“Let me see.” She sat on the floor and began working to find the boundaries of the narrative that had been cleaned. It was taking a while.
“So here we are. This is quite ingenious, don’t you think?” I said.
“Yes. Only the two of us, working together, would have been able to uncover anything meaningful here. I didn’t know about the place, and you can’t read.”
“Right. I wonder how Diomedes knew we’d work out our differences. He took a major risk, with you being prejudice and all.”
“You’re a jerk, Elson.”
“You said that already. Maybe he hoped we’d balance each other out, somehow.”
“There’s a song here,” she said.
“A song?”
“Well, verses. Perhaps a song, or a poem. I can’t quite translate the name of it. It’s something like the Fifth Side of the Square, or the Fifth Corner. I’m not an expert in this language, and poetry is hard enough in a language you do understand.” She worked at it for several minutes.
“It reads:
The air is a waterless place
A land laden with promise grave
My corpse breathes its life
A frame broken in death
By the treacherous union
As horizon’s fire holds its dire due
At the sight the element stands
And war will be waged for the one
The element is the essence of the one
The breath of the one is the essence of me
I have seen the Elysian Fields
I have seen the blue sky of my awakening
In dreams arising from the earth
Of my rising from my rest
I will drink full in the light of that day
“Really? It mentions the Elysian Fields? That’s a Greek myth, far younger than this place. Far younger than me.”
“The Greeks didn’t make it up. Besides, it really doesn’t say Elysian Fields, but that’s the best way I can translate the concept. It’s the same idea.”
She went on, past the song.
“This section also mentions something called ‘the Breath,’ like in the song. It seems that whatever it was, it caused quite a stir. It says the Breath didn’t understand the ways of the host of heaven, and was defenseless against them. Here, the Patron is shown taking the Breath from this host and locking it away from their reach. I wonder what it means.”
I drew a square of orange flame in the air and left it hanging there. “Do you see any fifth side?” I asked.
“No. But I wouldn’t dwell too much on it. It’s probably just a riddle, meant to get us thinking about some deep spiritual truths,” she said.
I shook my head. “Normally I’d agree. But look at this place. A mile below ground with no entrance or exit, except by one of our kind. This isn’t just a simple shrine. It was put here for a purpose. For a time.”
I moved the square over to the wall, next to the song. “Could the words you translated as ‘side’ or ‘block’ mean ‘element’ ?” I asked.
“Maybe. It means fundamental part, or essential part, I think. It could mean essence, or element. What are you getting at?”
“Look at the song. Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. The Elements. The four types of elements that have, for eons, been seen as composing the world. We have hosts of elementals who fall into one of those categories. They have even been pictured as the four sides of a perfect square. But here, we have a fifth element. A fifth side. What is the fifth element, according to this song?” I asked.
She studied the text. “Well, technically it could be three things in the song: breath, life, or the promise.” She said.
“I’ll add two more: essence and light. That makes five things the fifth element could be. Hmm. I don’t buy coincidences.” I smiled.
“They’re all the same,” she said. “The fifth element is the essence of breath, life, promise, and light.” She touched my square and it filled with a purple hue, like a sunrise. “The fifth side is the center of the square. It’s what the square is all about. Wow, very spiritual indeed. I wonder how it all fits.”
A fifth element. “I wonder. Do you think a fifth element means a fifth type of elemental?” I asked.
“You mean a spirit elemental? That’s crazy.”
“Why not? Whoever made this world made the elementals, too. And if they made spirits like us, why not a spirit elemental?”
I thought of Rolic and his Discipline of Life. Such a creature would not be news to Rolic. What would they do, I wondered, if they had access to such a being?
“Elementals have great authority over their element. A spirit elemental would be very powerful over any spirit, I’d think. Don’t you think we, being spirits, might have heard about that?” she said.
“Maybe. But doesn’t this story say that this breath thingy was defenseless against the host of heaven and hidden away? If that was long ago, we might have forgotten. That knowledge might have been lost, or hidden.”
“But why now?” Aello asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. This story has been out of circulation for eons, maybe longer. Why now?”
She was right. It didn’t add up. “Diomedes was here almost a year ago,” I said. “The course of recent events has had a very urgent flavor. This info didn’t bother him for a year.
Why act now? What could have happened that made the situation so urgent?”
Aello turned to me. “Whatever caused him to act was in the intelligence pipeline. I’m sure of it. Why else go to such extreme lengths to destroy it?”
“And why get us involved?” I knew at least part of the answer. It was the only thing left.
“Aeson,” I said. “He learned what Aeson was up to.”
“That I don’t doubt,” Aello said. “He watched Aeson and Chaos very diligently. But why destroy that information? Why not just tell Melanthios?”
“No. I think his discovery of Aeson’s plans made this information relevant. Or maybe Aeson’s plan made him realize how dangerous this information was. Tell me, what would have been Diomedes’ procedure for helping me out? How would he have done it?”
Aello began to pace. “Well, he would have come here and done an initial inspection. He would have scanned the contents to see if anything jumped out as essential. Then he would have recorded all these stories and taken them back to his stronghold for further analysis.”
“Would he have done it himself?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I doubt it. Unless he had a very good reason, he would have had a junior Engineer do a rough translation and a report, then he would have reviewed it to see if it warranted any further study.”
Now it made sense. “That’s how this information,” I pointed to the walls, “made it into the pipeline. Then, later, when he reviewed it and put it together with what he had recently discovered about Aeson’s plan, he flipped.”
Aello jumped in. “The only thing that explains Diomedes’ behavior is that these walls contain something that is both dangerous and useful either to aid or hinder Aeson.”
“Right,” I said. “He destroyed it to get it out of the pipeline and keep it from both sides. And then he led the two of us here,” I said. “More than that. He hid what Aeson was up to, took himself out of the loop by getting captured, and then led us here. So why not use the information himself?” I asked.
My blood, if I had any, would have started to freeze at what I was thinking. I said, “I think I know. Something Aeson said to me the other day. We were chatting about his giant killer spider, and he said that people feared little spiders because they had racial memories of olden days--I think he used the term ‘good old days’ or something like that--when huge spiders roamed the plains and fed on humans. Deep down in their psyche, people remember that, and still fear the little descendants of the monsters.”
“Yes. I’ve heard that too. What of it?”
“People fear zombies.”
“Of course.”
“No. Not ‘of course’. It makes no sense. They’re slow, stupid, weak, and easily killed. All they do is bite. They’re not even venomous. So why do people fear them? I’ll tell you. Because they were once real.”
“That’s absurd,” she said.
“Really? What’s the biggest limiting factor in our evolutionary activity?”
“Time. It take lots of time to change and enhance species,” she said.
“Sure. But why the time?”
“There’s no other way. We have to work within the reproductive cycles of the creatures of this world.”
“But what if there was another way? What if we once could animate the dead? You know, cook up something really creepy and make it go.”
“And you think that’s what this ‘Breath’ is? The knowledge to create life?”
“Someone had it once. Had to.”
She sat back, away from the wall. “That would explain Diomedes’ fear.”
“I think that also explains why he got himself captured,” I said.
“How so?”
“Chaos has something very creepy planned. We still don’t know what that is. This spirit elemental is a possible counter to whatever they’ve got going.
“Law enslaves elementals and uses them for their purposes. Something that seems to be an ancient tradition among your kind. Diomedes knows all this, and he knows one other thing, too,” I said. “He knows that someone known as the ‘Patron of Man’ doesn’t want this thing enslaved ever again. Law and Chaos both want this ‘Breath’ thing. The Patron wants it locked away. And it might be a tool to counter whatever Aeson is up to. So, what’s he to do? He finds himself in quite a tight spot. A tough decision to make,” I said.
Aello said, “Instead, he sends us on a mission, to here. Are you saying that Diomedes has deferred to us? That he wants us to make the decision? That doesn’t seem wise, Elson.”
If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that . . .
It was a good question though. Why would Diomedes choose us?
The image of a chessboard came to mind. Diomedes was playing chess with Aeson. He was using us to build some kind of trap.
But when did the pieces understand the player? We were running blind.
I grinned.
If there was one thing I had experience in, it was running blind. It made a little sense. However, the risks were much greater than I could believe Diomedes would accept.
Aello wasn’t convinced either.
“Why would he think we could do any better than he could? Besides, we don’t have a clue where this spirit elemental is. We couldn’t act on a decision, even if we could make one,” Aello said.
“Right. I imagine the answer is somewhere here, on these walls. Start looking . . .”
Before I had finished my sentence, I saw it. Below the song, near the base of the wall, was a small picture and a map. The picture was a diagram of five squares, each with diagonal lines creating an ‘X’ in their center, arranged in a pattern. Four of the squares were smaller and set off from each corner of the fifth square, which was much larger and in the center of the other four. I pointed to the picture. It was a very precise drawing.
“I’ve seen that before,” I said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You’ve seen this picture? Where?” Aello asked.
“Not the picture, the place. I’ve seen the place. I know where that thing is.” I paused. I’d said too much, again.
That place would be very hard to find for anyone who didn’t know exactly where to look. The world of the Builders was neatly layered between the Abyss and the astral plane. And it was big. Even if I told Aello everything I knew, she’d likely never find the site. That meant that the secret was safe, at least for now. Sharing more information made no sense.
Effectively, the move was now mine to make. While making decisions had never been hard for me, the ability to make good ones naturally eluded me. But I was faced with the inescapable truth that a decision had to be made right now.
I weighed what I knew. Aeson was up to no good. That was par for the course. Diomedes wanted to oppose him, presumably as the duty of a servant of Law. I’d seen how Law treated their servants. The idea of this spirit elemental being enslaved to their will made my heart ache. And then there was this Patron. I’d never met him, or her. But I sensed we saw things similarly, and his will was clear in the matter.
There was plenty of ambient energy here to work some minor destruction. I gathered a sufficient amount of it and leveled a wide beam of energy at the images on the wall.
Aello jumped back. “Elson, what are you doing? This is the key we’ve been looking for.”
I continued until the story of the Patron, the Breath, the song, and the picture had all been erased. Especially the map.
“Sorry, Aello. But this stops here. We don’t go any further.”
“What? Why? Diomedes trusted you. I trusted you.”
“That place can’t be found easily, unless you’ve been there or have these cave pictures, I’m guessing you’d never find it. I found it by accident.”
“I thought you said you didn’t believe in coincidences. That’s quite an accident: you stumbling upon the very place that is the key to all this, right before the information goes public. Explain that,” she said.
“Sorry. Can’t.” It did sound
like a setup. But I could figure that out later.
Aello got right into my face, but said quietly, “Elson, you tell me exactly where that place is.”
“Nope. I’m not telling.”
“This is too important. Diomedes wouldn’t have gone through what he has unless he needed us to take these steps. People have died, Elson, at your hand. Diomedes is certainly suffering to make this happen. You can’t turn on us now. You can’t turn on me now.”
Yes. People had died at my hand. More than she knew. More than she’d ever guess. I have done many things. I’ve tried to help the cause. This was the best I could do.
“Nothing personal, Aello. But I disagree. That thing is safe. Going after it would be too risky. There’s no way to keep it out of the wrong hands. Sorry.”
“Elson, don’t make me do this,” she said.
She was looking pretty mad. But it had to be this way.
“I don’t know why Diomedes deferred this decision to us,” I said, “but he did. I’m sure Diomedes has some contingency for this path. I’m siding with that Patron guy. I think Diomedes knew I would.” For the first time, I was choosing a side.
Without warning, Aello dropped a mountain of psychic energy onto my soul. I crumpled, surprised at the attack. Four lances of white hot thought thrust into my mind, bending my will to hers. She was good. I’d never seen four weapons brought to bear at once. She had the skill and the sheer strength to beat me hands down in this Psychic Duel. Then she’d be able to extract whatever cooperation she needed.
That ticked me off. Instinctively, I separated my thought shield into four plates and began the dance of deflecting each of her weapons. She split her weapons into eight. I split my shields into eight. I was holding my own, but I was totally defensive. As she struck again and again, I noticed that she was completely focused. She wasn’t kidding when she’d said that she was well trained in combat.
She was keeping me busy, pressing harder and harder. This was going to be tricky. I let down half my shields to begin forming my own weapon. It was simpler, designed to distract her more than anything. Then I could escape. As soon as my shields collapsed, she lunged in with more ferocity than I imagined she could. She could see victory materialize. But there was no joy in it.