1

Izumi went to sleep with caution that night, one ear open. Keeping in mind the many similar premises from the movies and video games of her past, as well as yesterday’s dramatic wake-up, she expected more tragic developments to befall this daring expedition soon. Nevertheless, the nightly hours passed in peace and quiet, and not even the faintest sense of foreboding hampered the mercenaries’ rest. The surrounding buildings shielded the campsite from winds and the land was still. As could be surmised by the lack of footprints in the vicinity, neither frostwargs, titans, or other menaces would come near the ruins, perhaps due to its altitude and remoteness, or for other unknown reasons. The explorers appeared therefore a good deal safer now, than they had been out in the fields.

Fatigue from the thrilling ride and the tiresome ascent eventually won over and Izumi fell into deep slumber sometime in the dead of the night. She had not been given a watch shift on this night either, and by the time she next opened her eyes, at the stirring of her fellow explorers in the tent, it was already morning.

Getting dressed, Izumi crawled outside, stretched her stiff back and arms, drew a few deep lungful of the crisp, cold mountain air, feeling unusually alive.

“Captain’s log, day...um, two hundred something, maybe? I've lost count. The weather is lovely! Minus fifteen degrees centigrade, I’d say. A bit breezy. Nobody’s died horribly yet. I will work hard today too. But first things first: Ohrm!”

Clapping twice, as if on a shrine visit, Izumi faced the sunrise, bowed her head and invoked the Rune of Restoration. Her body didn’t degrade quite fast enough to necessitate daily healing, but neither was there any reason not to take advantage of the spell, to start the day free of pain, sores, and drowsiness. Then, relaxed and alert again, she rotated her shoulders and psyched herself up.

“Alright! Let’s go play Indiana Jones.”

“Who are you talking to?” Waramoti asked, wobbling out of the tent, dizzily rubbing his eyes.

Before exploring ancient treasuries, Izumi had the less glamorous job of aiding the men of clan Alelard prepare breakfast again. After the pot of porridge was emptied, the expedition crew went on to split into teams of three or four men each, as previously planned, for the purpose of searching through the abandoned city.

As the leaders, Gronan and Marcus remained behind at the central Shrine, where the mission control was established. Aft, as the chief engineer, stayed with them, to keep on standby in case any unexpected technical trouble occurred. Ames and Selver set up their shop at the same hall, surrounded by large chests and containers, ready to receive any discovered artifacts of worth. Neither would all the men of Alelard participate in the search, busy setting up a proper field kitchen and preparing the components for lunch.

The rest of them, seven teams in total, spread out and began to go through the houses, starting from the southern limits near the entrance. Due to his considerable age, Acquiescas probably should have stayed at the camp too, but there was obviously no way he could sit still when faced with the discovery of a lifetime.

According to Marcus, the teams were decided by drawing lots and were completely random. But Izumi couldn’t avoid noting that she, Waramoti, and Faalan were separated and sent in completely different directions. It was unlikely that their conversation last night was overheard, but neither were they entirely beyond suspicion, it seemed.

Izumi ended up grouped with the highlander huntsman, Taun Pinrhost. Technically, it was only a 2-person party, but Taun’s dog, Onslow, was somehow still considered a full-fledged crew member of his own, and naturally followed along.

Taun proved a friendly fellow, chatty but polite, and he seemed more like someone magically abducted from the outskirts of 19h century Glasgow, than a native dweller of this fantasy world. He freely admitted that he had not the faintest idea of what archaeology was about, or what they were looking for in these ruins, but thought it was a rather awe-inspiring experience anyhow.

On their first meeting, Onslow had bared its fangs at Izumi, and while the animal had grown more used to the woman’s presence in the following days, it still avoided her company, giving her wary glances from under its bushy brows whenever she did anything sudden. Ever it kept its master between the two of them, at times when it wasn’t running somewhere far ahead unseen, and strictly refused to be petted. Izumi was quite disheartened by this, loving both dogs and cats, but at least Onslow wouldn’t bite or bark.

This peculiar trio made their leisurely way through the halls and corridors of the buildings in the south-western quarter of the city, as if on a simple Sunday afternoon stroll, talking about various unrelated things on the side and making very little historical discoveries. Izumi did do her best to keep her eyes open, but there was ultimately very little there to see.

Most of the buildings were simply empty.

There were no mummified corpses of ancient people. No discarded weapons or armors. No treasure chests in the corners. No deadly traps or puzzles. No monsters lying in wait. Nothing video gamey at all.

The architecture was a disorienting mixture of ancient Mayan and Nepalese impressions. There were long walls meticulously covered in little stone tiles of beautiful colors, azure, jade, canary, ocra, creating a variety of enormous mosaic illustrations. The imagery tended to be cartoonishly simple and vague, like pixel art, where exaggerated humanoid forms were barely recognizable as such, lacking distinct faces. Most of the artworks were only geometrical shapes, circles, waves, stars, planets, or else depicted natural forms, leopards, birds, plants, mountains, teaching very little about the lost city’s past.

The lack of bodies or any other signs of battle suggested that whatever had happened to the Precursors, it was unlikely anything very violent or chaotic. Wherever the houses had suffered damage, it was clearly for natural causes, such as piled up ice causing weakened parts of walls or ceiling to cave in. The theory that the Dharves’ ancestors had risen up against their masters and overthrown them could probably be ruled out.

Like the outrageous legend claimed, it was as if the ancients had merely disappeared into thin air one day, together with all their personal belongings.

But if that was the case, why did the Dharves leave?

What had made them abandon this breathtaking city, where nothing appeared to have threatened them? Had they run out of food? Had the climate changed for the worse, making the city uninhabitable? This seemed the most probable of all available explanations.

Judging by the lack of communications via the linkstone, the others didn’t fare much better with their search. Then, near noon, Marcus’s voice carried through with an unexpected message,

“Faalan, is your mom available, per chance?”

“I couldn’t tell you that,” Faalan’s voice responded.

“I can speak for myself, thank you...” Izumi interjected, annoyed and embarrassed. “Though I’m nobody’s mom!”

“Great, come drop by at the base camp when you can. I’ve a little job for you.”

“Er, sure…I’ll come over right away.”

“Excellent.”

The bizarre communication ended short.

Wondering what that was all about, Izumi parted ways with Taun and headed back towards the central avenue, and the mission control. From the Shrine, Marcus predictably redirected the woman to the field kitchen set up under the canopy of the neighboring building, but not for lunch preparations, surprisingly.

Instead, the bear-like head cook Joort awaited Izumi there with a large metal cylinder in his hold. It resembled a tank shell with a handle—or a big thermos bottle.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“That’s mulled wine there,” Joort answered, holding out the container. “Something we cooked up to help everybody keep warm out there. Why don’t you go and share it with the fellowship. There should be enough in it for everybody.”

“You called me over just for that?” Izumi cocked her head, twisting her brows. “Why me, anyway?”

“Because getting a hot drink from the hands of a fair lady will be that much more effective, of course,” the man told her. “And we ain’t got too many waitresses around, as you may be able to tell.”

“That’s…”

“A reason as good as any? Or what? You’ve got better things to do? Stumbled upon a load of treasures yet?”

“Well, no, not really, I suppose…” Izumi admitted.

“Thought so,” the cook nodded. “Come on. It ain’t gonna kill you. Take it before it goes cold.”

Lacking good counterarguments, Izumi ended up taking the thermos bottle. It was quite heavy, with a volume of closer to ten liters. Having to haul it around the enormous city felt like a lot of work.

“Ah, darn it. I’m too old for this,” Izumi grumbled, starting her refreshment delivery from the south end of the city. She sought out the first teams by following their tracks in the snow. “Where are you, little piggies?”

Phos, Trod, and Weller were going through a large, cylindrical building complex that resembled a condominium in the southeast, with numerous small apartments on each ring-like floor. All floors had a shared cooking space and a hangout in the middle, and toilets by the stairway, which were basically just holes pierced in seats of bare soapstone.

The individual apartments had no doors or locks, making exploration straightforward, but neither was there much to discover. The rooms were highly ascetic in layout and decor. There was a bed or two shaped of stone, with ancient, withered pelts and straw mats for cushion. Small drawers and stools, and some rudimentary wardrobes. The frosty climate had effectively preserved the furniture, keeping the wood from rotting and crumbling, but what limited sunlight entered through the little windows had burned them black over the millennium.

These apartments held no secrets, nor much in terms of valuables.

Phos was a jewelry expert, and Trod an art curator, from the same clan as the catalogers at the Shrine, and they were both openly dissatisfied with their findings so far. Wooden or iron-made forks and spoons, food bowls and plates of clay, mugs and tankards of brass. Well preserved, but practically worthless. It appeared that the ancient people didn’t like to wear much jewelry or other accessories. What clothing was left had been turned by time into heaps of blackened soot, impossible to identify.

“I reckon this is where the slaves used to live,” Trod said, scanning the walls in the light of his lantern, but finding them bare. “Of course, they were all dirt poor. Just my fucking luck.”

“By slaves, you mean our ancestors?” Phos asked, looking at the common area in the middle of the floor.

“Aw, shit,” Trod swore.

The thought of one’s great-grandparent living in such conditions wasn’t too pleasant.

The building might have been cozier once, but after the long abandonment, darkness hung in the rooms thick, and the frost gave the place a sickening blue tinge.

“Coming here was a mistake,” Weller said, gazing around the quiet hallway with visible unease. “There’s nothing in here. Just death and oblivion.”

“Geez. Don’t be such a downer,” Trod scolded him. “We ain’t seen half of the city yet. It can’t all be this bad.”

“That’s right,” Phos agreed. “Our team just got the shit end of the stick. As always.”

“Excuse me? Does anybody want a drink?” Izumi asked, standing in the doorway, unwilling to interrupt, yet eager to move on.

From there, Izumi headed back across the central lane, following a different set of tracks. The next team, with Miklas, Ritol, and Helmich, were exploring the buildings in the southwestern quarter. Their fortune was, if possible, even worse.

These great buildings also had numerous rooms along narrow corridors, although in strictly straight lines instead of circles. The rooms didn’t appear to be meant for people to live in, however, lacking personal belongings or much anything in terms of furnishings. They were but empty boxes of stone. In the top floor of one such building, they found a peculiar, long hall, otherwise bare, but with rows of shallow stone beds from wall to wall, carved hollow with a deep depression in the middle.

What had been their purpose? Storage? Unraveling the past by so few clues was beyond these explorers. Miklas and Ritol were the heavy weapon and armor specialists of the crew, and not too educated in terms of history or architecture. Or any other cultural subject, for that matter.

“I know what this place is,” Miklas nevertheless declared with confidence in his voice, as he gazed around the barren hall. He wouldn’t take off his bulky armor even for a simple investigation, though instead of a helmet, he had a dark beanie to cover his bald, too small to even reach his ears.

“You do?” Helmich asked him. As one of the medical personnel of the crew, Helmich’s educational level, as well as common sense, were likely higher than the average. Which was sooner a curse than a blessing in such a company. “I’m really surprised, Mik. Do tell, ‘cos I haven’t got the faintest.”

“It’s a lavatory,” the other man declared.

“It’s—what? No? No, it’s not. I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely not that!”

“Yes, it is,” Miklas repeated with conviction.

“What part about this looks like a lavatory to you?” Helmich questioned his deduction. “It’s in the attic! There’s not even water!”

“It looks just like the one we have back home.”

“...Er, where have you been going? Do I even want to know?”

“Oh, I thought it was the men’s room,” Ritol interjected from further back. “I already pissed in one of the sinks too.”

“Yeah, that’s what a lavatory is, smartass!” Helmich told him. “And no, this place is not it!”

“Why don’t you use the Common Speech then?” Ritol replied, offended. “I don’t know any elvish!”

“Divines have mercy on me,” the medic bemoaned.

“By the way,” Izumi told the two brawnier warriors, “why won’t you take off your armors? Isn’t it exhausting like that?”

Ritol’s knee-length hauberk was slightly lighter than Miklas’s plate armor, but it still made him look like the Michelin man with the other gear. The two were more like walking piles of steel than explorers. Not only that, they were carrying their large weapons along too—Miklas had a war hammer, and Ritol a spiked mace. Izumi was certain that she couldn’t have moved at all under such a burden.

“It may be impossible for a woman to understand,” Miklas solemnly replied.

It didn’t seem like he was mocking her, but legitimately convinced that the male and female faculties of thought were worlds apart and irreconcilable. Therefore, he didn’t even attempt to explain himself.

“Of course, it’s so that the enemy won’t get the drop on us,” Ritol produced a more direct answer.

“Precisely,” Miklas concurred.

“…What about that was supposed to be hard to understand?” Izumi listlessly remarked. “But, what enemy? I haven’t seen any sign of danger so far.”

“Yes, that,” Miklas slowly articulated. “It’s that, which you can’t see coming, that kills you.”

“Well, yes, I sure can’t fault your logic,” she admitted, “but won’t that mean you can never undress?”

“It’s not logic,” the man retorted. “It’s sense.”

“Do you even know what logic means?” Helmich asked him.

“Yes,” Miklas grimly nodded. “I’ve killed five.”

“Why, and I had six at home!” Ritol added, not wanting to be outdone.

“Whatever. Will you take your mulled wine now?” Izumi asked with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want to ever talk to you people again.”

Departing to look for the next team, Izumi ran into Taun on the way, who pointed her in the right direction. One city block northeast from the previous place, the next team was investigating a temple-like building right along the central avenue.

The entrance was shielded by a series of thick, rectangular pillars, which looked like countless stone squares of varying width and color piled and glued atop one another. They couldn’t possibly have been sculpted by hand, surely.

Inside the temple was a wide ceremonial hall with a round, concave ceiling, decorated with once magnificent, albeit now largely faded paintings. All around the floor, dozens of small, half-burned candles poked out from the snow, which winds had thrown in through the empty window holes, between scattered chairs.

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In this place, Izumi found Tomas, Ren, and Vil, the Dharvic scholars, who insisted on carrying out their own research apart from the rest of the company. Dressed in loose brown robes like Franciscans of old, the three were absorbed in inspecting the deteriorated illustrations on the hall walls.

“It is indisputable that we stand in a place of great religious importance,” Tomas surmised. He was the oldest of the three. “It appears that unlike the later generations, our ancestors were once actively engaged in Divine worship. See, here is a stylized image of a flame-haired serpent, the symbol of Lord Athysla. And over there is the black turtle, the symbol of Lord Genfu.”

“You are doubtless correct, brother,” Ren called out from the opposing wall. He was the second-oldest. “And here is the fat yellow coyote, the symbol of Lord Yeotyra.”

“Hm? Are you quite sure about that?” The youngest, Vil turned around with a frown. “Yeotyra is worshiped almost exclusively in Estua, and he was never popular among mainland people. Why would they have known him here, this far in the north?”

“It would stand to reason that our ancient ancestors were a group of mixed origins,” Tomas suggested. “The Precursors did not necessarily target any specific region, or a community as they looked for slaves, but may have abducted people at random, at different time periods, wherever the opportunity arose. Isolated villages, wandering tribes, travelers, and so forth. And these people then brought their cultural influences together with them. The original pre-Dharvic community was like a melting pot of various beliefs and schools of lore.”

Vil didn’t look as convinced by the explanation.

“Wouldn’t that mean this was a temple the slaves built for themselves?” he asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Precursors have allowed such a waste of time and resources, for a structure that has strictly no functional purpose and doesn’t benefit them in any way. And in such a prominent location too?”

“Perhaps it was to keep the slaves content?” Ren answered him. “Well, here it is, and there could be any number of reasons as to why. Don’t start harboring any fancy theories there, junior. What have I always said? Look at the facts and only the facts!”

“I am looking at the facts!” Vil insisted. “You two are the ones making up theories!”

“Ahem, remind me, who is the professor, and who is the apprentice again?”

“You teach preschool classes, you’re not a professor! Don’t try to copy Van Hortz!”

“Hmm,” Yubilea crossed her arms, floating up and down in the air, absorbed in thought. “Why would these ‘Precursors’ have built monuments to appease their slaves if they could control their very minds?”

“Don’t come out in front of people,” Izumi reproved the Divine.

“Why not?” Yubilea retorted. “They can’t see me!”

“You distract me,” she said and waved at the spirit to disappear.

“Yes? Did you need something?” Tomas turned to ask Izumi, giving a weird look at her gesturing.

“Eh, no, I...I brought mulled wine,” Izumi hurried to answer, raising the thermos bottle. “Want some?”

East from there, Izumi crossed the central avenue again, on her way to see the next team, which she had already spotted from a distance.

There was a four-man group consisting of Hrugnaw, Siphis, Orik, and Minsk, working on the far edge of a clearing amid a group of taller houses. They had yet to even begin their search, because the entrance to the building they tried to get to was buried deep under a tall mound of snow. Gripping shovels and pikes, they were in the process of digging a path to the door. Over the ages, the snow had packed hard as rock, making progress slow.

“Why do I always get saddled with menial labor like this...?” Hrugnaw groaned, carrying away the large chunks of ice that the others kept breaking off from the hill. “Just because I’m a larger sort of a person, it doesn’t mean I want to work harder than anybody else.”

“What do you have to complain about?” Minsk protested, huffing and puffing, as he leaned on his pike, pausing to wipe sweat off his brow. “Mother nature never built me for this shit!”

As he said, Minsk was not strictly a warrior, but one of the cooks from Alelard. He wasn’t a robust hunk like Joort, his chief, either but more or less a man of ordinary measurements.

“If you ask me,” Orik spoke, “I’d rather swing swords than shovels.”

The only one not complaining at all was Siphis, though he likely had most reason to. As one of the three brutes of the crew, he shared Miklas and Ritol’s principles on the benefits of armor, and kept shoveling away while clad in a hooded chain mail of unconventionally heavy make.

“Oi, Sip,” Orik called out to him, looking concerned, “why don’t you take a break, mate? You’ve been at it for quite a while and you’re...well, steaming.”

Indeed, faint vapor was rising from under Siphis’s sleeves and collar.

“Nah, I’m good,” Siphis insisted with a sniff, water dripping down the bridge of his nose. “Pain is my pleasure.”

“No,” Izumi intervened, “you trade the shovel for a towel now like a good boy, and get over here for a cup.”

Continuing on to the next destination, suddenly feeling more like a lifeguard on a crowded beach than a delivery person, Izumi found Faalan, Gubal, Tordith, and Tuberkan. This group had stumbled into what appeared to be an underground food storage in the basement of an apartment building. It was a wide room with a low ceiling, crammed full of wooden shelves, clay urns, and jars. But little else.

Certainly no gold here either.

“Look, Faalan, your mom came for a visit,” Tordith called the hero. “Aren’tcha happy?”

“I brought hot drinks,” Izumi clarified, stiffly lifting the thermos bottle. “I didn’t come here to see anybody in particular, and I’ll be soon on my way again. And this is not me being a tsundere now.”

“Speaking of drinks, look at this!” Tordith exclaimed, trying to pry open one of the lengthy amphorae piled by the wall. “Official Precursor wine! If there’s one thing that’s for sure, this man ain’t going thirsty tonight!”

While he struggled, Faalan went and picked up one amphora, held it up in the air, and let go. The clay container shattered on the stone floor, spreading chunks of dirty ice around.

“I’m afraid they weren’t designed to preserve the product for thousands of years,” he commented. “The contents are frozen through, turned to dried-up vinegar.”

“Nooo!” Tordith wailed, examining the other containers. “So much perfectly good wine, wasted! Who thought to leave it all here!? It’s criminal, man!”

“They did have appetite for everything else, it seems,” Gubal remarked, surveying the empty shelves. “You don’t suppose the Dharves emptied this storage when they left? They were going to need a ton of food on the way out, no way around that.”

“Whatever they left behind and wasn’t put in a bottle, animals must’ve consumed,” Tuberkan said. “Foxes, rats, moles, birds.”

There was a tiny window opening in the back wall, unbarred, through which small birds and such could have easily fit in an out.

“Well, ain’t no man of Dharva, who emptied this place!” Tordith declared with certainty. “No ancestor of mine spat in the bottle, I know this! Unless it was one of those Owlshead bastards!”

“Or, could it be,” Gubal pondered, “that at some point in ancient history, Dharves actually possessed a level of common sense, and chose food, women, and children over alcohol?”

“What are you talking about?” Tordith asked him. “You take the women and children—and make them carry the liquor! There’s your common sense!”

“This is non-alcoholic but do you still want a drink?” Izumi interjected, raising her offerings. “Then get your mugs and line up, nice and quick. I’ve still got places to be, and tolerance for only so much medieval stupidity.”

2

Leaving the storage cellar, climbing back up to the surface, Izumi found herself back at the central Shrine. Her mission was not finished yet, however. She saw Marcus at the Shrine entrance, who informed her that the last team was investigating the larger building at the far end of the western avenue. This put Izumi on quite a walk to reach them. Fortunately, the container she carried had become considerably lighter by now.

Overlooking the western city from a higher level was a larger structure, respectfully distanced from the rest. It had castle-like majesty to it, yet at the same time appeared a tad too simple to be a royal residence. A cathedral without spires or bells, devoid of religious symbols, or other noteworthy imagery, its purpose was not immediately obvious by the edifice.

Izumi walked up the wide stairs towards the entrance, trying to image what it had been like to live here ten centuries past.

The vaulted doorway was cleared of snow, and the second of the pair of massive, green-blue doors of stone was pried open, just by enough for people to pass through. By this and the accompanying footprints, Izumi deduced the investigators to be already inside.

After the entrance came a shadowy intermediary room. The air inside felt different from the other places Izumi had seen. Graceful and timeless in an inexplicable way. Still. Not in a vacant and abandoned fashion, but just as it was intended by design. Every little sound rebounded from the walls, amplified, and Izumi found herself going tip-toe, so as to not disturb the peace of the building.

What could this place have been in the past?

The entrance chamber was followed by a narrow corridor, which then opened up into a magnificent hall. The floor plan was shaped like an upside-down keyhole, with a circular base and a lengthy, straightforward back part. Upon the side walls, tall vertical lines of slim windows allowed natural light to fill the space, making it not too bright but just about enough to see without conscious effort.

Directly in front of the entrance was a circular, terrace-like platform. From both sides of it curved down wide marble stairs, onto the lower floor. Further ahead, on the sides of the hall, were more stairs taking to layered walkways above.

The explorers’ team was currently investigating the ground floor.

Or, some of them were.

“Hey, hey, Bard, lad,” Tidaal called out. “Won’t you make up a song for me? I’ve got a few ideas to pitch, if you wanna hear them. One goes like this; ‘daa-daa-daa, dam-dam-dam, and his balls were steel and his cock pure fire’. How about that? You can come up with the rest.”

“Sounds like syphilis to me,” Waramoti replied. “You want to make that public?”

“Haa, haa. Son of a bitch…”

“What are you doing?” Izumi asked with a sigh as a she walked down the stairs to them, suddenly feeling very tired.

“We—are making history, ma’am,” Tidaal answered her, dragging his feet around the frosty hall floor, carrying his arbalest over his shoulders. “And if this keeps up, we are going to be history. As in, bored to death. There’s nothing, nothing, nothing, in this whole goddamn place. It is empty.”

“Come on, man, we heard you the first fifty times,” Vikland told him.

“Well, let me say it again, because it feels just that fucking marvelous: the legendary Gronan Arkentahl and his merry band of Dharves ride hundreds of miles across ice and beasts for a whole lot of fucking nothing. Ta-ta-da-da-dah-daah! That, my lads, is poetry.”

“It’s been half a day, and you’re already throwing in the towel?” Till asked, looking around further back. “How about you actually help us look?”

“Help you?” Tidaal parroted. “I’m looking, aren’t I? I’ve eyes in my head, don’t I? And I see—nothingness. Emptiness of epic proportions. What is this place? A tavern? A barn? It’s just floor and walls, I mean, what the shit?”

“Take a cup and shut up,” Izumi said, setting down the container of mulled wine. “Hey, that rhymes. Maybe I should become a bard too?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Tidaal said, coming over. “I’ve a much, much better job for you, you beautiful thing. How about you take on the honorary role—of being the mother of my children?”

“No thanks, I don’t want syphilis.”

Tidaal was shut up for the time being, and everyone took the opportunity to pause their search in favor of a warm drink.

“Hey, professor!” Till called over to Acquiescas, who was conducting his search independently, deeper in the back of the hall. “Come take a break!”

The scholar hurried shortly over, smiling wide, his face red with excitement. At least there was one person on this expedition, who was not disappointed in the slightest by the thin results thus far.

“A remarkable place!” he told Izumi. “I’ve never seen anything like it before! Nothing of this scale! The sheer sophistication and artistry of it all…! It appears to have been a library, or an archive of some sort in the past—but where are all the books? Where were they taken and why? What could explain such a need for concealment? This is most intriguing! What a mystery!”

“Never thought I’d see a person get this elated over nothing at all,” Tidaal remarked, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, but there is plenty in here to be seen, young man!” Acquiescas retorted. “Such curious markings and furnishings, the way they’ve worked stone and metal and glass; they speak of methods, of mentality, and a level of technological development that is completely foreign to us modern day humans. It’s inconceivable! I’m confident there is a lot more to this room that we’ve yet to unveil. And it is only a matter of time and patience before we do. Aah, I can’t bear to sit still! I must get back to work—Oh, thank you, Lady Izumi, by the way. The drink is most excellent! If you’re free now, why don’t you stay and give us a hand? I’m sure we could benefit from your feminine insight.”

“Eh…?”

Before Izumi could answer in any way, Acquiescas had already turned and left to return to the back of the hall, his mug in hand. The others didn’t seem as eager to resume the fruitless search, but sat or stood quietly, sipping the mulled wine, looking more or less apathetic.

Izumi gazed around with new eyes.

A library? Now that she thought about it, such was precisely the impression she’d had upon entry. Izumi had been a frequent library visitor in her past life, and the similarity of the lofty atmosphere was striking.

Yet, as had been made clear by now, there were no books in view, nor anything else that could have confirmed the theory on the building’s purpose. No shelves or holders, no drawers, or closets. Had the tomes vanished together with the writers, or were they merely removed and hidden, as Acquiescas appeared to believe? It was not altogether impossible that there was a secret room, or a hidden passage to such.

Where to find it? Where to even begin looking?

Izumi turned to glance at Waramoti, who adjusted his lute, sitting on some manner of a knee-high platform of stone that protruded from the floor. She hadn’t noticed it before in the dim lighting, but there were numerous similar, shallow, rectangular tables with beveled edges throughout the hall, in slanted but evenly spaced rows, each shape about ten feet long and three wide.

“Not a fan of the shifting temperatures,” the young man said to her, noticing her look. “It causes the strings to contort and expand, and I need to redo the tuning each day.”

“Kinda like my—” Tidaal began to say.

“—Don’t say it!” Till cut him off, mindful of the lady company.

“...I admit, I walked right into that,” Waramoti sighed.

Izumi barely heard them.

What were those shapes on the floor?

Two lines of them, with a little space in between, followed by another two lines. Then there was a wider walkway in the middle of the hall, and another set of two and two lines...The layout of those stony elements was a bit like where bookshelves should be, were this hall an actual library. Not that anything could be stored on or under those solid, featureless surfaces. Maybe they were simple pedestals where the real bookshelves had been, and which had since been taken away? But wasn’t it inconvenient, to make the visitors climb on such slippery steps whenever they wanted to reach for a book?

“Oh…!” Suddenly, a random thought occurred to Izumi. She hurried over to the platform Waramoti sat on and started to examine its surface closer, wiping off the hoar, trying to find any signs or markings. “There must be some kind of a mechanism...”

“What? What is it?” the bard asked her, confused.

The others also frowned at the woman as she knelt in front of the slab of stone, feeling its edges. There was a seam, hair-thin and barely visible, running around along the sides.

“That happen to her often?” Tidaal asked.

“Izumi?” Waramoti continued to question her as she made no response.

“Not all books are stored in open shelves,” she thought aloud. “In archives meant for long-term storage, you wouldn’t want to leave the materials exposed to outside air and harmful elements. The question then is, how do you open them…?”

Was it designed for a human to access or some other type of a creature? Did it require any specialized tools, an energy source, or was the system purely mechanical? There should have been at least some minor clue available.

“A-ha!” Soon, Izumi came across a familiar type of a shape.

In the far right corner of the surface was a slim, narrow bar, the stone hollowed around it, just so that fingers could reach around. Taking the mess kit spoon from her side bag, Izumi scraped the handle clear of excess ice, then gripped the handle and turned it. As expected, the mechanism was frozen and quite stiff. Holding the handle with both hands, she turned it as hard as she could, clockwise.

The frozen humidity in the thin seams couldn’t resist the force for long, and the handle began to stiffly turn. It rotated about ninety degrees, then stopped and nudged a little outward. In this world or the other, there were only so many ways to assemble a simple handle mechanism, and it seemed Izumi had guessed the function of this one correctly. She proceeded to draw the handle out of the platform, bringing up a polished steel cylinder along with it, about half a foot long. Reaching its maximum height, it allowed Izumi to turn it the other way again, and after rotating it for 180-degrees, she could push it back down.

At the same time, a heavy, clicking sound rang out across the hall.

Stepping back, Izumi watched the previously inert platform begin to rise from the floor with a stony rumble, forcing Waramoti to leap off his seat in dismay.

“Thrang’s balls…!” Vikland mouthed.

Before their stunned eyes, the odd element rose up to five feet high, revealing that it was not all solid, after all, but merely a lid concealing a thin framework of titanium underneath. Moreover, what emerged from this subsurface hide were no books or conventional scrolls. In slanted square holders were colorless hexagonal sticks of crystalline material, about six inches long and less than two inches thick each. There were dozens of them, if not hundreds.

“W-what is happening? What have you done?” Acquiescas came running to them, alarmed by the noise.

“Looks like we found your archives, professor,” Till told him, nodding at the peculiar container.

“If these are books, then I ain’t literate,” Tidaal remarked, stepping ahead to pick out one of the glassy bars, examining it closer.

“By the Lords,” Acquiescas exhaled, astonished, staring at the transparent object in the mercenary’s fingers. “It’s a crystal. Of course! Crystal!”

“Come again?”

“Hahaha!” the scholar laughed, clutching his head and spun around. “Yes! Crystals! I should’ve known! It’s so obvious, when you think about it a little!”

“Mind explaining for the rest of us?” Vikland requested, not looking particularly enlightened.

Recomposing himself, assuming his educator’s posture and tone, Acquiescas faced his ignorant audience and explained,

“Somewhere in the eighth cycle, the mages of the legendary Academy of Kaldession developed a method to store memories in crystal. The exact procedure has since been lost in time, but some later groups are known to have continued to refine the technique, to make it more accessible to non-magicians. What we are seeing here is no doubt—pardon the pun—the crystallization of that effort. An archive stored forever in stone. Hahahaa! This could be the very reason why the Precursors built their civilization up here in the mountains! To preserve their knowledge for all time, even should they themselves perish! This is marvelous! I can barely believe it!”

“So, is it valuable?” Tidaal asked, holding up the crystal in his grip.

The professor looked slightly taken aback by the banality of the question.

“Why, needless to even say, they are all priceless to the scientific community!”

“Why do I get this feeling that your ‘scientific community’ doesn’t have any money?” the mercenary replied. “Let’s say I take this thing to a pawn shop, what will I get for it?”

“Not a copper, I think,” Till answered in the professor’s stead. “Quartz may be pretty, but it isn’t exactly rare. Our miners tend to just throw it away.”

“Figures,” Tidaal sighed, dropping the crystal. Or attempted to. As soon as his hand started to move, Acquiescas lunged out and snatched the relic from him.

“Don’t do that!” the scholar cried. “Did I not tell you it is a record! You have no idea what is inside! The contents could hold information of groundbreaking historical significance!”

“Then, how do we read them?” Waramoti asked. “So far as I know, none of us has much magical ability. Not to the point of deciphering the work of ancient minds.”

“Rest assured, young man.” Acquiescas wouldn’t lose heart. “These were meant to be found and read, by anyone. If my hypothesis is correct, there should be a device—a ‘reader’ of some sort, somewhere close by. Using it, we ought to be able to view the records, provided the machine is still operational. Though I see no reason why it wouldn’t be, since the archives themselves are well accessible. Clearly, the Precursors knew what they were doing.”

“Alright then,” the bard shrugged. “Suppose we’re looking for this reader thing next.”

“Machine, eh?” Till commented, the mechanic’s professional interest rising. “Can’t wait to give a gander at that.”

Suddenly, tension came back to them all (save perhaps Tidaal) and they hurried to empty their cups and resume the search. Child-like excitement she thought she had lost in the past now came also to Izumi, as she joined the others with a smile, and began to look through the grand hall. Secrets from the distant past of this fantastic world were within their reach. Even if the recordings wouldn’t make anyone rich, they ought to at least have some entertainment value.

Yet, the innocent thrill of the treasure hunt was only about ninety percent of what made Izumi’s pulse now grow quick and heavy. The remaining ten percent were something else.

The sense of foreboding she had missed so far had stealthily come back to her.

Were the lost secrets of this deserted city necessarily worth finding?

Only time would tell.