At the very least she was wary of provoking him. Neither of which sat well with Hal.
“How many more times are you going to hulk out like that, huh?” she continued.
Hal was about to answer but her use of the phrase “hulk out” brought him up short. That wasn’t a common phrase. Not here. It was back on Earth, however. And judging by the curious glances Ashera and Elora shot the Dragoon, they didn’t get the reference.
Only further confusing the Beastborne.
He shook his head and answered, “I didn’t know at what level of Strain I would lose control. Now I do. While it doesn’t stop me from pushing past that point, I’m not going to willingly do it unless there’s a good reason.”
“And I would say rescuing the pair of you was a good reason,” Ashera added. “Without such… unconventional means, the both of you would have been beset upon by many monsters. And while the method was perhaps unorthodox, nobody is permanently harmed. And nobody died. I would call that a win.”
The Dragoon laced her fingers behind her head. She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “I guess you’ve got a point.” Mira looked over Hal closer, dropping her arms and leaning into his personal space. “Beastborne, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Still sounds fake.”
“It’s still not.”
“You sure?”
Hal rolled his eyes. “Positive.”
After a long moment of her violet eyes boring into Hal’s, she nodded to herself. “Okay.”
That was it. The matter was settled for the Dragoon.
The rest of the party eyed each other and looked to Mira’s back as she peered out into the hallway. None of them fully understood her motivations. And after her little outburst, Hal wondered if there was more to her than met the eye.
Could there be more people like him on Aldim? People who were pulled from a life on Earth? Now wasn’t the time to probe the woman’s past but it definitely painted her in a different light.
She was very clearly an elf, there was no doubting that. Which seemed impossible if she came from Earth. Why wouldn’t she be a human still? It wasn’t like there were elves back home. And he didn’t get any choice as to what race he was. He was brought over as himself.
So many questions.
Together again, they struck out toward the elevators.
The worrying cracks widened into foot-wide segments as they walked, revealing the black stone behind the silver-carved walls. It seemed the structural damage Hal caused by drilling into the wall was more extensive than he thought.
The damage only became more apparent as they neared the metallic doors outside the elevator rooms. The doors hung askew within the broken stone framing. No longer functioning, the doors wouldn’t budge an inch no matter how hard they tried.
All but one set of doors were completely caved in.
Each of them had to squeeze through the gap to enter. Vorax barely fit, he was a decent-sized treasure chest by that point and didn’t seem capable of sucking in his boxy frame.
With Hal pushing from behind, and both Elora and Mira pulling from the other side, they managed to get the mimic through. Vorax, to his credit, didn’t complain. Though he clearly didn’t like anybody but Hal touching him.
The damage looked much worse from the outside. Looking around the room, there were only a few hairline fractures in the carved murals on the stone walls. The doors had taken the brunt of the damage.
Hal was met with a choice. Press on deeper into the bowels of this place, or ascend and return to the room of shadows and emeralds. The answers he so deeply needed.
A smile on his face, Hal stepped into the magical drifting light and tilted his head back, lifting his gaze. He ascended through the hole in the ceiling and continued to rise, counting the floors as he went. With a brief explanation from Ashera, Mira and Elora followed suit.
They were finally going to get some answers.
74
“We knew you would return,” croaked the familiar shadowy voice.
“Answers you once sought, you seek again,” whispered another shadow. Their voices were barely distinguishable but he felt a connection to them now. A thin thread that told him which speaker this was.
It must be my increased affinity to shadow, he thought to himself. Using the extra-sensory input channeling the essence gave him, he could tell what his ears struggled to differentiate on his first visit.
“Pray, forgive us our earlier indiscretions,” said a softer shadow-voice. “We thought you were another. Our children trapped in this plane of torturous existence know not the difference and we were… similarly fooled. We see your heart now. See the stain on it that speaks to a difference we had not noticed before.”
Their voices hit him as soon as he stepped back into that low-ceilinged room. Nothing had changed since he came through here last.
The eight-foot-tall emeralds, each filled with a shadowy creature, were still wedged into the corners. As were the dark wooden bookshelves that filled the spaces between the emeralds on the left and right-hand walls.
“We should not be here,” Noth warned as she came in, gliding unseen ahead of the others. “It is-”
“I know, Noth. I feel it too, but they have answers but we need some answers. You have seen how massive this place is. How many floors did we pass coming back up to this room? How many more are there still?
“We are blind. If their answers can stop one more person getting hurt, it will be worth it,” Hal said, he didn’t want to be there any more than she did. The place felt wrong. The air tingled.
The Reaper shot Hal a worried look but said no more.
“What’d we miss?” asked Mira, stepping into the room and looking at Hal. Her wide violet eyes found the emeralds and whistled appreciatively.
Elora followed behind, her eyes scanned the room. If she thought the emeralds were remarkable in any way, she didn’t show it.
Motioning to the emeralds, Hal said, “These creatures are imprisoned here, by the Founder most likely, and they claim to have answers.”
Mira raised a brow. “Ask them what the winning lottery numbers are.”
Hal ignored that.
“We seek the same ends, Usurper,” said one shadow.
“Our goals align,” said another.
“You wish to know what this place is? We shall tell you. You wish to break Rinbast’s hold on this place? This too, we shall tell you how to do. All threads converge on but a single point,” said another.
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” Hal replied.
“It’s really weird that you’re talking to yourself,” Mira pointed out. When a few pairs of eyes turned her way she mimed zipping her mouth shut.
“As we said, our goals align. You wish to reclaim this lost place? To revitalize the Manatree’s withered roots? Doing so will free us. Send us back to the plane we belong. This place… it is a prison. We wish to be here no more than you.”
“Who trapped you here?” Hal asked, though it was obvious enough.
“This, you already know. Rinbast trapped us here long ago, then used our power to pull more of our children from the Shadesholm to quell an uprising of his own making. Our children you have already met, they confuse you for another.”
Hal looked to Noth. The Reaper’s earlier wariness was gone, replaced by a look of concern and confusion. Hal wasn’t sure whether or not he believed them but if their aims were one and the same, he should at least hear them out.
If Rinbast was using these shadows to increase his own power, then that meant the shadows - who clearly did not want to be here - were prisoners. And that meant they had a common enemy in Rinbast.
He could work with that.
Freeing the shadows back to their home realm would rob Rinbast of another weapon. That was all the motivation he needed.
A shadow pressed two six-fingered hands against the inside of the emerald it was trapped within like it was no more than a thin pane of glass. “We speak the truth only,”
it insisted, taking Hal’s thoughtfulness for doubt.
Hal relayed what the shadows told him to the group.
“Then they know how we can complete the Contract,” Mira said. “If it means we can get out of here sooner instead of wandering this murder complex, I say we take them up on the offer. I mean, how often are we going to get this chance?”
“She’s right,” Elora said with a frown. “Our list of allies is short, but not if we need to free them first.”
“We do not ask to be freed outright,” a shadow spoke, pressing its twisting form of shifting smoke to the emerald’s interior. “Your act of restoring the Manatree will destroy us and all of our children, sending us back whence we came. You need only weaken the wards of this room.”
“And how do I do that?” Hal asked.
“Damage them, how you do this matters not. Our prisons are impervious to anything you have access to. We cannot break free without the Manatree’s power to cleanse extraplanar entities such as ourselves,” said one shadow.
Another, this one on Hal’s left, took up the explanation, “And this room is shielded to the Manatree’s effects unless you weaken the wards.”
“How can we be sure they speak the truth?” Ashera asked, tapping a finger to her bottom lip. “None of us can hear them save yourself, so ask them a question only you would know the answer to. Something that would be difficult to know.”
Elora stepped forward. “Where is Hal from?” asked the Ranger, addressing the shadowy creature. She looked to the rest. “Hal has not spoken much about his home, even to us. I only heard its name once but I recall it keenly for it is a strange name. Let us see if these shadows truly know anything.”
“An interesting question, do you approve?”
Hal nodded. “Answer it.”
“Your name is Hal Williams, and you are from Seattle in a region known as Washington set within the country called America.”
Their words unsettled him a little but he kept the emotion from his face, forced his voice to be level and cool. “Anybody could know tha-“
“We are not finished,” said one of the shadows.
“You were summoned by a god,” answered yet another.
“But the summoning failed. His death was the result of a man whose name you do not know, but we do. The man with the glowing eyes and a red hood stricken with stardust. Ask any being old enough if they know who Midarian is and watch as they pale in fear. This gift of future amusement, we give to you. Not so much a parlor trick now, is it?”
Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep the look of shock from his face. His friends saw it and every gaze turned his way. Vorax shuffled up to his ankle and hopped about defensively, keeping Hal at its back as it circled him with tiny hops.
Soothing images and sensations were sent back to the mimic. “I’m okay, Vorax.” To the others, he said, “They’re telling the truth. At least, they know who I am and how I came here.”
“And, what did they say?” Mira asked, shifting her weight to her left leg.
“The truth,” Hal said. He had no reason to hide it, and so he told them what the shadows had said.
Hal didn’t miss the way Mira’s eyes lit up. She was quick to recover and from then on made sure to look anywhere but at Hal.
“You still have not asked us the question we originally offered,” added the shadow with its six-fingered hands pressed to the inside of the emerald. “Ask us what this place is.”
“Why do I need to ask you?” Hal voiced aloud.
“We are bound by magic most powerful, its wording is… very specific. We may provide answers only when questioned, nothing more. An insurance policy, by a man that had seen too much horror to leave a loophole for the likes of us.”
They were disturbingly forthcoming. It didn’t sit well with Hal. It was too easy. Mira wandered over to one of the bookshelves and took one of the tomes into her hand while Hal relayed the shadow’s words.
Lightning danced along the Dragoon’s body as soon as she opened the book, driving her across the room in a flash of light and a thunderous clap. She slammed against the opposite wall, also filled with tomes, causing the protective magic to fire again.
Mira let out a scream as she arced over their heads, grazing the ceiling. Disoriented with the sudden danger of his new friend and the rush of adrenaline in his veins, Hal propelled himself off the floor with shadow-treant-limbs black as night.
The force of the Dragoon colliding with Hal’s open arms toppled him to the ground. They skidded across the polished floor until Hal fetched up against the bookshelf. Fearing that he only made matters worse, Hal pushed Mira forward hoping to separate her from the protective magic and scrambled after her.
Seconds later he realized, as did everybody else, that no defensive magic assaulted him like it had Mira.
Hal looked to the shining mark floating off his arm.
“Thanks,” Mira said through chattering teeth. Her fauxhawk now vaguely resembled a copper-colored dandelion, every hair standing on end. Subtle currents of electricity arced across her body as she struggled to her feet.
A thump echoed in the stillness of the room following the excitement. Hal looked over his shoulder at the book that fell free from the shelf he crashed into. It was opened. Hal crawled over to it, recognizing the rolling letters of a language he knew well, and some of the strange words he knew even better.
The words were not typical English. They were a cipher. Something he cooked up as a lonely kid trying to distract himself from the fact that he was too shy to socialize with other kids his age.
He never showed anybody the key. And as the years progressed he would occasionally touch it up, improve it in ways. While he recognized the patterns, showing him that the basis of this cipher was indeed his own, it had at some point diverged from the tweaks he was familiar with.
Only one in every three words – at best – could be understood. But the significance of it stole the warmth from his blood.
Without thinking he reached out and took down another book. Then another. A dozen books, all taken at random, and each of them contained the same cipher.
Hal fell back onto the seat of his pants and let the latest book fall from his numb fingertips. There was no mistaking it. This was his cipher but grown from what he remembered. Advanced in ways he could only begin to discern.
That alone disturbed him. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if he had time he could decipher the words written within. Some of the alterations he even recognized as half-baked ideas he once toyed with but were now brought to their full conclusion.
“What is this place?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“The Great Shelter. One of many scattered across Aldim in preparation for a calamity that even Rinbast could not hope to combat. The last hope for a broken and battered world,” a soft, almost kind shadow voice told him.
75
“Is that why you want to leave?” Hal asked. “Because of this calamity?”
“No, we seek to return to Shadesholm. This realm is not ours. We care not for its troubles. We see into your heart, Hal. Though you share much with Rinbast, you are different. We beseech you to free us. It will cost you nothing you were not already willing to spend.”
“But first I must deface the wardings,” Hal said.
“Correct. With their protections weakened, once you restore the Manatree’s strength, its influence will seep into this room and return us to our home.”
“What’s all this about wardings now?” Mira asked, trying in vain to smooth her hair. A few arcs of electricity zapped from strand to strand.
“They need me to damage the glyphs in this room or else the Manatree won’t be able to reach in here and send them back,” Hal explained, motioning to the silver-etched lines all around the room.
“How do we know that wouldn’t set them free?” Elora asked. “This could all be a trick.”
Hal didn’t think so. The shadows were correct about one thing, their go
als were aligned. Hal wanted to get the Manatree covering this area again and complete the Coffin Contract. The shadows wanted the Manatree up and running again in order to be sent home.
They would gain nothing if Hal failed and so they had every reason to be as honest and helpful as possible. But he couldn’t help agreeing with Elora. All of this could be a con to get him to destroy the wardings. If their prison was destroyed and they were able to get out, it wouldn’t matter what they told him.
He wouldn’t live long enough to find out whether they were telling the truth or not.
“You seem to know a great deal about Rinbast,” Hal said.
“Regrettably, one comes to know their captor quite well over many decades.”
“I will do as you ask, but I need you to answer a question first.”
“Then ask,” said one shadow.
“What is another minute more when already we have been away from our beloved home for what feels like eons?” asked another.
Hal licked his lips nervously and looked back at Elora and Ashera. They had lost a Manaseed to save his life. If these things knew enough about Rinbast, and the man was arrogant enough to believe they would never divulge his secrets… maybe there was another Manaseed somewhere.
One that he could acquire.
“Before I help free you, if you would like to see Rinbast truly hurt, I need to know where I can find another Manaseed. One out of Rinbast’s control,” Hal said.
Your Persuasion has risen to Level 6.
+1% Persuasion success (+6%).
+0.5% Antagonistic persuasion success (+3.0%).
The shadows were silent for a long time. When they spoke, their voices were as one. “Know you who we are?”
Hal shook his head.
“We are Shadow Sages. Our knowledge is not of this realm, and Rinbast was always too canny to let much slip. But we know of which you seek. That of which even Rinbast could not prise from our minds.
Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Page 63