“What progress have you made over the last month?” Conten asked.
The white-haired man had been Corinth’s advisor since he’d been recognized by the University. They sat in his office on the second floor. Monthly, they would meet and discuss the constructs that were the heart of University research, and Corinth had learned to consider his words carefully.
“I found more details of the fourth sigil we discussed last month, but not enough to make functional prototypes. I have confirmed the relation to wind, but haven’t managed anything more. Stronger attempts have released poisonous gases, and had to be destroyed.” He wanted to stop there, but couldn’t help himself. “This follows the trend of the second and third sigils, where increased strength causes previously unseen flaws.”
“Are you sure these are flaws? Perhaps these sigils simply contain hidden aspects, only revealed when the whole is empowered.” Conten gazed at him, smiling ruefully. This debate had gone unchanged since they’d dug into the second sigil. While it hadn’t been proven either way, Corinth had been made to regret a few brash statements in the past through endless testing and examination. At least if the man was smiling, he wouldn’t order another month of delving at minutia.
“I’m not sure, of course. But whenever I see these in my dreams, the first sigil is central. And the whispers-” Corinth winced at even mentioning them. “The whispers surge when I frame it like that. All the sigils answer to Kain, but it’s clear that only one of them is his.”
Conten’s smile slipped away. “Have you been hearing them more often? Is the research bringing the connection forward, still?”
“It’s been slipping more as I worked on this one, but when I took a few hours to search for a first sigil construct it was back as quick as ever.”
Conten nodded, and the glimmer of interest slipped from his eyes. “Well, head off then. We’ll have no more use of you, now.”
–
As the office door shut behind him, Corinth sighed in relief. The meetings weren’t unpleasant, exactly, but two years hadn’t fully taken away the nervousness of speaking to the University’s most revered scholar. He was convinced by now that nothing would. He noticed the tension rising in his neck just thinking about it, and let himself relax into the whispers.
Now he would discuss with his other advisor, if you could call the seeping presence anything of the sort. Aside from the name Kain, the voice hadn’t given him a word since it’d drank the light from Apothet’s temple two years ago. It felt like whispers in the back of his head, but the soft sounds never resolved into words. Tone and volume were all the guidance he could hope for.
When he’d first been given permission to seek a construct using Kain’s sigil, there had been a chanting fervour for three days until he’d passed out from exhaustion. When he’d smashed the poisonous glasswork last week, a mournful keening had sung until midnight. And Conten had known when he’d acknowledged them that the whispers would steal his attention until he found some facet he’d been missing from the fourth sigil, or fell asleep.
Corinth let the whispers in as he walked to his own quarters, basking in the attention they gave him. On rare occasions he’d felt a heavier presence that he now associated with Kain himself, but this subordinate chorus was often all the guidance he received. They acted as a dialogue of sorts, changing in tempo to the ideas he considered. He started reviewing the container design he’d made to trap the poison vapours, but was in his room before any real progress could be made.
He grinned, walking through the doors. His makeshift altar was central within the room – traumatizing pious visitors as a regular occurrence – and that alone had gotten him a space to himself. A rough affair carved of soft stone by his inexpert hand, the temple in miniature was horrifying mostly from a professional standpoint. Then again, the jagged teeth and leering eyes it implied probably added to the unsettling feeling. He was familiar enough with it that it no longer bothered him, and as he walked by his attention remained elsewhere in the room.
His office was larger than that of most researchers, but that was tempered by acting as his sleeping quarters as well. A writing desk lay along the right wall, and his bed was in the corner beside it. Across the room was a mess of stone, wood, and glass that made up the sum of his knowledge of Kain’s pantheon; ornate sigils were carved to the delight of wordless voices, and the two constructs he’d discovered rested on the shelves above their respective signs.
Just from looking over the whispering intensified, but Corinth shook his head and turned away. His mother had left him a bundle earlier that morning. No chorus would supersede that.
He sat on the bed, wooden frame creaking at his weight. There was glass under the wrapping-cloth, he could tell, and he unwrapped it dropping four thin saucers of rockglass into his palm. He felt markings under his fingers as he traced the faces of each in turn. She must have asked someone to brave entering his room, he realized, because each was engraved with one of the sigils he’d traced from half-remembered dreams.
Voices crowed in his head at the sight, and he smiled wider when he realized his name was engraved on the opposite side. She’d found a sense of humour in raising a heathen, that much was certain.
He brought the plates over, comparing the etchings to his scrawled designs. She was a much better hand than he was, clear by her profession alone, but he could see minor changes made beyond straightening the lines. Aside from Kain’s sigil, each one had a wedge that he couldn’t seem to remember the contents of. Rather than leave them vague, she’d made each a stylized fracture that connected them stylistically. It wasn’t a perfect solution, given the lack of energetic mental chants, but it cleaned the overall appearance significantly.
The second sigil was a series of branching shards, all identical but receding ever smaller as they extended from the centre. In her version, the branches didn’t fade into minute details so much as appear to wrap around underneath the previous ones, letting the illusion of depth go unbroken. It had struck him as endless branching paths when he’d drawn it up, and he’d found a representation in the construct through loops that energy could travel in any combination.
The third was concentric circles broken in a path by the missing wedge, only thinly connected by lines radiating outward, and the construct he’d worked out cooled the area around it. Under its effect, heat simply couldn’t transfer between objects. He’d been excited at the possible uses, until he realized that the effect that disconnected temperature connected the objects as well, and any motion of the things around it would jolt the construct too. Just trying to walk across the room had torn it from his grip, and several prototypes had shattered in accidents that month.
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The fourth he still hadn’t worked out more than vaguely. It seemed to have a pattern of objects in lines across it, but he hadn’t managed to map it out. Working from recollections of dreams reminded him of being stuck at candles again, going through the same details in hope of sudden, unlikely inspiration. He’d tried to shape a basic construct through a similar pattern of knots in rows, but kept getting coughing fits after seeing shimmering in the air.
He was surprised she’d been willing to carve the first sigil, though. Even with his familiarity, the gaping maw and predatory fangs of Kain’s chosen symbol was eerie. He’d have to thank her properly for the gift.
He left the plates propped up on the shelf between his constructs, and finally turned back to his sigil drawings. From his dreams, the fourth was related to wind and breath, and he was at a loss to depict that visually. The chorus called and he sank into a chair, letting time slip him by.
–
He walked with Conten through dimly lit hallways of stone, grumbling about the shadows, and wished he could throw shade with the ease that Teph’s Speakers cast light. The underground tunnels were unevenly paved, but the darkness would hold no mysteries if it was his darkness. He sighed, knowing that he’d only end up guiding Conten by the hand, and resigned himself to a few more stubbed toes.
“What are we doing this far down, anyways?” Corinth asked. “I didn’t even realize the University had this many underground floors.”
He thought Conten was smirking, but it was hard to tell in the dark. “You’ve only been around a couple years, wait until you find a second kitchen thirty years in. Then you’ll ring some ears.”
“There’s a second kitchen?” He asked. “But where? I could have sworn- No, wrong topic. What are we looking for?”
“We’ve talked about your research every month. This time, I’m going to share some of mine. It’s only fair. You’ve seen the edges of most topics of study here, after all.”
Corinth’s eyes went wide. Conten’s only research he’d been told of was the rockglass discovery decades back; to learn of a whole new field would be an incredible opportunity. “Oh, um, great! I’ll be happy to learn-”
“No need for eager platitudes, and no time either.” Conten stopped at a stone door that looked to weigh as much as Corinth’s altar, and withdrew a glass key from his robes. He unlocked the door, but didn’t step through. “I’m warning you now, and it’s the only one you’ll get. The contents of these rooms are not to be trifled with, and they are placed under two dozen feet of stone for good reason. Tread with caution.”
He pulled the door open without waiting for a response, and Corinth stepped through as the torches burst into sudden flame. Glittering shards drew his eyes from every wall, shelves and stacks of crystal twisted into innumerable forms. He felt the urge to walk around and peer into their depths, but held his place at Conten’s side.
“We’ll start with the first one, as it’s the easiest to understand. A couple years before the passing of my own mentor Torean, there was an incident in the crystal reservoir. That day caused the health problems that eventually killed him, but also led to a discovery rather predictable, in hindsight.” He walked forward as he lectured, and picked up an egg-sized tangle of crystal without apparent order or reason. “The more detail and finesse you try to put into a construct, the more energy it absorbs in the process. I’ve found that long, thin, twisted wires are the best way to absorb as much as possible.
“The discovery that nearly destroyed our access to the reservoir was that this energy isn’t lost when the construct is completed. In some cases, it can be released when the glass is broken. In the case of Apothet’s blessing, this means releasing fire.”
Without a word of warning, he threw the egg into an empty stone alcove, and the following gout of flame reinforced the scorch marks covering the surface. Corinth yelped as the firelight blinded him, and stood frozen until his vision returned. Conten stared at him, expressionless, watching as his student re-evaluated the walls of twisted crystals.
“So, everything in here…” he said, gesturing at the shelves of constructs.
“Could level a couple floors of the University with ease, yes. Hence the workshop far below ground.” Conten gestured at a cauldron of water, and Corinth approached hesitantly.
“Is there any particular form I should be following?” He asked, watching the last ripples vanish from the water’s surface. “Anything to know?”
Conten shook his head. “Long, curved wires. It’s probably the easiest construct design we have.”
Corinth nodded, and placed his hands on the water’s surface. He waited, with only a low murmuring at the edge of his hearing, before a chasm opened. Suddenly he could feel the presence, a weight suffusing him and pulling him down into the depths, where a suppressed hunger ever lurked. He pushed it outwards, tendrils growing from his fingertips, and curled them around like untrimmed nails curving back towards the hand that grew them.
Two loops in, and he could feel the strain pressing back against him, not wanting to be drawn any further into the liquid. When finally he could do no more, he drew himself back from cauldron and let his knees buckle, lying on the stone floor below.
Conten was kind, and gave him a few minutes to recover. It was nearly unique within the University to have such strong physical reactions to working the glass, but he’d been given generous leeway by the senior researchers. It made him feel distant somehow, as if the tendons and muscles guiding his body were miles long, and standing took an age waiting for the right response.
When he did rise, Conten already had his meagre showing in hand. A bird’s nest of crystal cables, small enough to fit within his palm, and braided to hold together despite their short length. He leaned on the old researcher as they stepped over to the alcove, but pulled himself together enough to make the throw. Conten’s eyes sparkled with interest as he wrenched his arm forward, crystal shattering against the wall and-
Melting. It spattered against the stone like it had never been solid at all, and slowly dripped down to the floor. They waited, breath held, but there was nothing. Just a pitiful dripping from the rough walls.
They exchanged glances. “It was an effect, at least,” Conten hedged. Corinth just held a hand to his head, feeling an ache starting that wouldn’t soon let up.
“What was it? Reversion, maybe, or liquefaction? It doesn’t feel right. That doesn’t feel like Kain at all.” Corinth leaned back, bracing himself against a table as the voices exclaimed in his head. “There’s something important to be found.”
Conten walked forward slowly, sniffing at the air like a dog. He seemed paranoid of foul air, it seemed to Corinth, as if he’d been caught by it before. A common effect of the glass nests?
“Careful where you step, wouldn’t want you slipping in a puddle of mystery.” Corinth called out.
Conten placed a foot in one of the puddles and slid it across the floor, before drawing his foot back. He raised it for another step, but paused as he saw the ground below. He stepped back fully and raised a hand. “Come look, boy. I think my eyes are failing in my old age.”
The student walked to his mentor’s side, examining the lines carved into the stone below. “What am I looking at, how it filled the depression here?”
“There was no depression before,” Conten answered quietly.
Again they exchanged glances, and Corinth reached out to the wall near the point of impact. As his fingers brushed the surface, he felt the stone give way, and pressed divots into the rough wall. He could see Conten’s eyes widen, but was too distracted by the surging noise to respond.
“It’s been weakened under the impact. Is it loosened or liquefied like I thought?” Corinth mumbled, hardly able to frame his thoughts under the incessant calls. Suddenly, the first sigil flashed through his mind and the pieces came together. “Consumption. It consumed an aspect of the stone, its strength.”
He spoke, and heard the roaring approval of the voices in his head. “Consumption, Corruption, and Decay. Those are the aspects of my god.”