by B.J. Keeton
Chapter Twenty-three
To the shock of his teammates, Chuckie was the one who found the inscription.
He said, “That what you’re looking for, boss?” and pointed to a shattered tower not far away.
Ceril focused on the tower. “Yeah, I think it is, Chuckie. Good work.” The three of them moved more quickly toward the ruins, which weren’t an obelisk like Ceril had originally thought.
“Can you read it?” Saryn asked as they stood at the base of the tower. The building itself was broken at an angle, as though the weight of its upper section was just too much for the base to support any longer. If Ceril hadn't known better, he would have said that it had been cut away, given the angle and cleanness of the edge. The writing was inscribed at the highest point, and during Meshin’s heyday, it must have circled the whole tower when it was still intact.
“I don't know,” Ceril said honestly. He couldn't read it, but it wasn't because he did not know the language. He couldn't read it because it was simply out of range, too high up. “Can you, Saryn?”
“No,” she said. “It's too far away. I can't even make out any characters.”
“Me, either,” Chuckie added.
The nanites in Ceril’s nose and mouth surged. Tendrils expanded from his nostrils into his eyes, which once again went solid black with the magnification Conjuring. Saryn did the same, while Chuckie focused his attention on keeping watch while they were occupied.
“Stupid angelmen taking my guns,” Chuckie muttered. “Lotta good I’m going to do if something tries to attack us.”
Ceril and Saryn ignored him.
“What is it?” Chuckie asked, after the two of them stood gawking upward for a few minutes.
“Well,” Ceril said, not breaking his gaze from the writing on the tower, “I can read it. Or some of it. I think.”
“Really?” Chuckie said.
“Yeah, really. It's kind of weird, actually. I shouldn’t be able to read it, though. No one should.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s written in…Ancient Erlonian. I guess that’s what I’d call it.”
“Okay, I’d think that’s a good thing.”
“But that’s just it, Chuckie. There is no Ancient Erlonian language. We all speak Common now, but we haven’t forever. Common dates back only as far as the original Untouchable’s era, but before that, there is no indication of a universal alphabet or language.” Ceril pointed at the peak of the tower. “Up there, I see characters from the Yaghian, Ternian, and Ferran sites I studied.” He paused a moment. “You may have just made a huge discovery, Chuckie.”
“How's that?” Chuckie asked, and Ceril wondered if the guy were really that dense if it was just for show.
“Because,” Ceril explained, “those three written languages have nearly nothing in common with each other, but here, at least based on what I can see on the building, there are characters and syntax from all three regions utilized in a single script. It’s not like they’re being used separately, either. It’s a single, unified script that uses all three sets of characters and grammars.”
Chuckie still looked at him blankly, and Ceril said, “This might be the original source of the other languages. This Instance might even be older than Erlon itself.”
Now Saryn looked at Ceril blankly, too. “Really?” she asked “Just from that fragment?”
Ceril nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s way too early to tell, and I'm not even sure what the symbols technically mean when put together like this, but that's my initial theory, yeah.”
Somewhere around them, one of the Jaronya screeched.
Without a word, Saryn, Chuckie, and Ceril each ducked behind nearby walls. They watched silently as a well-dressed Jaronya in purple and green robes dropped from the sky and stood unmoving in the spot where the three of them had just stood. Ceril saw Chuckie open his hand and ignite a small sphere of flame in his palm.
“Easy there, Chuckie,” said Ceril.
“I'm not gonna burn nothin. Yet. I just want to be prepared if he does anything stupid.”
Saryn whispered to Ceril, “Should you talk to it? I mean, you're the only one who can. Maybe you can figure out what it wants.”
She was right. Ceril sighed and began the intricate conversion of his Conjured breather into the translator that covered not just his mouth, but also his ears and the better part of his face. He felt like an idiot when it was on, but it worked, and that's what mattered. Unfortunately, it also helped cement their identities as the Jaronya messiahs. If he wanted to figure out how to get his team out of this, he had to take on that role.
Ceril took a deep breath as he finished Conjuring and heard Saryn give him a quiet “Good luck!” as he stood up and walked toward the Jaronya. Ceril noted that this one was dressed far more regally than the others he had seen. The Jaronya who had come to him in their makeshift cell was better dressed than the tatter-clad kidnappers, but this one wore a robe that Ceril could only assume would be reserved for either royalty or clergy. It would have been on Erlon, anyway. He doubted this was the priest who led the Jaronya, but there was little doubt he was decently high in the chain of command. He was probably a deacon or apprentice of some kind.
“What are you doing here?” the Jaronya asked.
Ceril stopped walking immediately. The last Jaronya he had spoken with had been…different. His previous conversation had felt stilted; he had to work for it to be a conversation at times. The angel in front of him, however, spoke with ease.
Ceril answered him honestly, “Trying to find a way home.”
“I see,” the Jaronya said. “Where is your home?”
“It's complicated,” Ceril said after thinking a moment. “I'm from a world called Erlon and an area named Ternia. I most recently lived on a ship called the Inkwell Sigil.”
“What are you doing here?” the Jaronya asked again.
“I don't understand,” Ceril said.
“How will your examination of the Text help you get home?”
Ceril looked up at the tower. “The Text?”
“It is our scripture, the word of the Ancestors. You were trying to read the instructions they left us as we await their return.”
Ceril glanced backward at Saryn and Chuckie. They were ignorant of the conversation, but he gave them a thumbs-up to let them know they were on the right track. Saryn smiled in return, and Chuckie just scowled.
“I recognize the symbols, the words,” Ceril said. “But they don't make much sense to me.”
“They should not. The Text is only decipherable by those chosen by the Ancestors.”
“I…” Ceril said cautiously. “I am not so sure of that.” The Jaronya didn’t react to his counter, so Ceril continued. “I recognize many of the symbols, like I said. They make up three distinct written languages on my world. We call them Yaghian, Ternian, and Ferran, but I've never seen them put together like this.”
“Mmm,” the angel grunted.
“Can you tell me what this fragment says?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I am not as convinced as some that you are here to raise our people to enlightenment. There is only basic evidence that you and your friends are the messiahs we have waited for. However, I have seen no real proof, nothing to convince me.”
Ceril stole a glance back at Chuckie and Saryn.
The Jaronya continued, “You are ignorant of the Ancestors in nearly every way. While it yet may be proven that you are here to act in their name, I do not yet believe you have the right to understand the Text.”
Ceril gritted his teeth. He wanted to scream at the angel in front of him, force him somehow to interpret the language on the tower, not because it would prove that he was the messiah, but it would help him get home, back to Erlon, back to Ennd’s, and back to Gramps. But at the same time relief swept over him. Finally, there was someone here who may have some sense, and Ceril could see the potential in not everyone seeing them as mes
siahs.
“Thank you,” Ceril said. “I never claimed to be your messiah. I never claimed to be anything. If I got the story right from the Jaronya—”
“You will not speak our name. You are not worthy.” His voice boomed, though his body was stock-still. Ceril noted the power in its tone.
“Right. Well, the one of you who came and told us about the Ancestors made it clear that the two who attacked us thought we were some kind of prophesy coming true.”
The Jaronya seemed to ignore him and said, “Why did you kill two of our brothers?”
Ceril was silent.
After a minute of silence, the Jaronya asked again.
“We had no choice,” Ceril said.
“There is always a choice,” the Jaronya said. In his mind, Ceril heard Roman speaking the same words as he left the Sigil. Is there always a choice, though? Ceril thought. He would have to choose his next words very carefully.
“Yes, there is,” Ceril said. “But we had no choice but to kill them. They attacked us, kidnapped us. We were being taken somewhere we knew nothing about by creatures we had never seen before. We shot them when we were sure that there was no other way to escape. We thought it was our life or theirs, and maybe it wasn’t that black and white. I'm sorry, but we were not going to take that risk.”
The Jaronya was silent and then sneered at Ceril. Black, scaled wings began forming behind the Jaronya. Ceril didn’t even notice that the Jaronya had no wings. It had come from above, shrieked, and caused him and his team to run for cover, and in that time, its wings must have disappeared. They were now building themselves rapidly from its back.
What? Ceril thought, It's Conjuring wings! Conjuring! Like a Charon!
Ceril looked at Saryn and Chuckie, not noticing that they were already moving to his side. When the wings were complete, the angel lifted off the ground. It hovered at eye level. Its gaze never left Ceril. The ball of fire in Chuckie’s hand grew larger, but no hotter. He could supercharge the nanites in a split-second.
As if deciding that conflict was not the best course, the Jaronya beat its wings and rose until it was even with the writing at the top of the tower. It hovered there, and Ceril knew that it was reading the fragmentary text.
“You are to meet at the Temple within the hour. The high priest will see you and serve judgment on you for your crimes. The topic of your divinity will come into question and will be decided by the One chosen by the Ancestors. Do not be late.” Gracefully, the angel twisted in midair and sped away. The three Charons watched it head toward the large, central spire.
“That was weird, boss,” Chuckie said.
“Tell me about it, Chuckie.”
“Did he just Conjure wings?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he did.”
“What did he say?” Saryn asked.
Ceril glanced up at the writing well above their head as he recalled the nanites from the translator. He wrenched his neck with both hands until it popped, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “He said we weren't his messiah, Saryn.”
“Well that's a relief,” she said.
“In some ways,” said Ceril.
“What do you mean? I thought we wanted these winged freaks to stop looking at us like gods?” Chuckie realized that he was still holding Conjured fire in his hand and extinguished it. He wiped his smoking hands on his fatigues.
“We do. I think. This one was mad, too. He said we didn't have the right to read what the Ancestors left behind. He seemed angry we were even looking at what he called the Text—which, by the way, is their religious scripture—and said we had to go before the high priest within the hour to have our debt settled and pay for our crimes.”
“Sounds like a real hootenanny.”
Saryn said, “Where do we have to go?”
“The Temple,” Ceril told her, “which, if I had to guess, is in the middle of this mess. There.” Ceril pointed in the direction the Jaronya had flown. A single, complete tower rose above the ruins. It was tall enough that it could be seen from any point in the synthetic caldera.
Saryn responded with sarcasm, “Gee, Ternia, how'd you ever figure that one out? Was it that fancy machine you strapped to your head?”
“As a matter of fact, it was. Seriously, though, if these things want us there within an hour, I suggest we head out. I don't know if it'll be possible to make it that quickly since we don’t know our way around the city, but at least we have a waypoint. We can see where we’re going.”
Saryn and Chuckie tightened the straps on their packs and set out for the center of the ruined city.
As they walked, Saryn said, “I thought that Conjuring was just something the Charons could do.”
“Me, too,” Ceril said. “I've been to a few different Instances and not one of their populations could Conjure. Or at least, they never did in front of us.”
“But that didn't mean they couldn't.”
“I see that. I just don't get it.”
“Me, neither,” said Saryn. “My research took me off the ship, too. And each time I left, I was told that I could wear my nanite sleeve, but if I did, I was not allowed to Conjure anything. Especially if I was anywhere on Erlon.”
“You had one up on me, then. They barely let me practice with the sleeve.”
“You know how to use them pretty good, anyway, boss.”
“Not as well as I’d like. I think part of it comes from having a Flameblade, though. Bryt taught me how to use it, how to really treat it like it was part of me, and I guess that kind of helps with the sleeve, too. As far as Conjuring on Erlon, I know they keep technomages a secret—or try to—but I thought it was to protect people, not to hide the truth. I wasn’t terribly worried when I saw the Jaronya scouts and guard have Flameblades. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t worried. Stranger things have happened. But seeing that their wings are Conjured, too, makes me think something's up.”
“If these Jaronya have the technology to Conjure,” Saryn asked, “then why haven't they fixed their city with it? Or better, why did they not prevent it from being destroyed in the first place?”
Chuckie chimed in, “Maybe they couldn't.”
“What do you mean?” Saryn asked.
“Well, these things seem awfully oppressed. We've seen em wear rags, and we’ve seen some that are better dressed than Headmaster Squalt. There's some kind of control going on, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Okay,” Ceril said, “And?”
“Well, what if, like a long time ago, these things were trained out of Conjuring? To, you know, control them better.”
“That's not an entirely stupid idea, Chuckie,” said Ceril.
“Yep, didn't figure it was.”
“I mean it. That makes a lot of sense, actually. And from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t put it past this high priest to do just what you said. Come to think of it, the first one I spoke with said that they didn’t have the magic their Ancestors did. He said magic. He also said they didn’t want it. What if that means the Jaronya aren’t like us? What if they have the ability to Conjure naturally, not through the use of nanites and sleeves and all that?”
“That would mean their high priest, if Chuckie is right, isn’t exactly a standup kind of guy,” Saryn said. “Which doesn’t comfort me, Ternia. If the high priest is all about control, and we killed two of his flock—no wing pun intended—wouldn't that mean we’re walking to the firing squad right now?”
Ceril nodded. “Seems so, doesn’t it?”
“What does that mean for us, then?” Chuckie asked. “What do we do?”
“Well, we don't have a whole lot of choices, Chuckie,” said Ceril. “I think the best thing we can do is keep going, meet with this high priest, and figure out just what is going on. Find out who the Jaronya are, why they can Conjure, and if there is any way their Conjuring can help us find our way back to an Instance we know.”
“And try not to let them execute us. Don't forget that,” said Chuckie.
“Yea
h, that's important, too,” Ceril said. “We certainly don't want them to kill—”
His words were cut off as the ground gave way beneath him. Chuckie's reflexes were sharp enough to leap away as soon as he saw his companion begin to fall. Saryn lost her balance, but managed to stay away from the maw. Ceril, however, never had a chance to move out of the way: the ground crumbled directly beneath him, and he plummeted into darkness and out of sight of his companions.