Darkest secret born of hate
The library's words shall seal this fate.
Ferrian hopped deftly into the empty room, the library re-aligning itself to suit his new viewpoint. This room contained no furniture, no books; it was a small, square, brightly lit antechamber, made entirely of silvertine tiles.
On the opposite wall gaped a simple, doorless arch; in stark contrast to the illuminated antechamber, it was filled with darkness.
The Black Room.
Ferrian advanced warily, his Sword held in both hands before him. The silver tiles at his feet mirrored his movement.
In the room beyond, nothing moved.
But there was a sound.
A soft whimper, somewhere close by.
“Li?” Ferrian said, halting under the archway.
“Ferrian?”
The little voice sounded achingly hopeful. He didn't bother to ask what she was doing in here, because he was pretty sure he already knew.
He looked around, carefully.
Since he had... died, his vision had diminished into simple monochrome shades of black and white and grey. Shadows leached together into inky pools of black, and subtle tones were difficult to make out. But the room was not pitch dark. There was a little illumination, from the single silver ceiling tile, and two other doorways.
It was enough to discern the hulking outlines positioned around the room, and a moment later, three pairs of triangular eyes opened, one after the other.
His fear was confirmed.
Three of them, he thought, teeth clenching. Always three of the damned things…
“Are you all right, Li?” he asked, watching the eyes that stared back at him. “Are you hurt?”
“I'm scared.”
Me, too, he thought.
“Don't worry,” he did his best to reassure her. “I'll get you out of here. I won't let them do anything to you.”
A jerky, rasping, hissing sound filled the room: the Murons' horrible equivalent of laughter.
Ferrian's hands tightened on his Sword. He fixed his gaze on the central pair of eyes. Li's voice seemed to have come from the middle of the room.
“Okay,” he said, attempting to force confidence into his voice. “So you managed to lure me here. I know you need me for something, so just tell me what it is and let Li go! You don't need her!”
The Murons laughed again, like dying snakes.
The sound went on for so long that Ferrian was tempted to simply attack them. With his Sword, he could cut them all easily into pieces… except for the fact that they were far more agile than he was, and one of them probably had its claws around Li's throat…
“We require you,” the one in the centre whispered finally, “to read our book.”
There was a hint of something moving in the darkness. Ferrian shifted his Sword towards it, peering closely, and could just make out an oblong shape, held out in the Muron's taloned grip.
He frowned suspiciously at the Muron. “You want me to read a book?”
The creature's eyes narrowed. “It isss a book of ssspellsss,” it went on. “Sssecret magic of our creator. Muronsss are not born of thisss world; we are creaturesss combined, and better than all!”
The Muron regarded him, and its eyes suddenly widened. “We mussst have our Queen ressstored!”
A deep, unnerving silence fell. Ferrian felt a sick horror slowly welling up inside him. So THIS is why they were so determined to kidnap me! he thought, disgusted. They needed a sorcerer to create for them a new queen. Mekka had hinted that the Murons were dying out, had asked the previous three in the forest if they were the last of their kind…
They were becoming extinct, and they wanted to survive. Perhaps they were not capable of breeding naturally.
Ferrian had had no idea that Murons were created with magic, but he wasn't particularly surprised. He had never known they were real at all; always assumed they were a legend, a scary tale around the campfire – until they had shown up at the campfire for real, proving that they were flesh and blood monsters…
Ferrian couldn't think of anything more revolting than making a queen for them.
He stared at the oblong of dark leather, loath to even touch the book. He thought hard, trying to devise a plan, a way to get Li away from the Murons without getting her killed. Quickly, he raced over the few pitiful spells he had learned, remembering something he had read about a way to ready magic, of summoning it and holding it inside without releasing it, but he hadn't yet practised that one. If he tried to summon the Winter now, it would blast the whole room, perhaps killing or wounding the Murons, but catching Li up with it as well. He had gained some control over the Winter, but barely. It was still too powerful a weapon, even directed through his Sword…
“Take it!” the Muron snapped impatiently, interrupting his desperate thoughts. Its eyes narrowed again. “You care for thisss little sssoft and feathery morsssel, no?” it hissed hungrily. “If you refussse to help usss, we ssshall pick her bonesss clean while you watch...”
There was a squeak of pain from somewhere near the floor, and Ferrian winced, gritting his teeth, remembering how easily a Muron had smashed his own hand…
“Alright!” he cried. “Leave her alone! I'll do what you want!”
Three pairs of eyes stared at him, burning with satisfaction.
“Take the book!” the central Muron demanded again.
Hesitantly, Ferrian stepped forward, deeper into the room, aware as he did so that he risked being outflanked and his escape route cut off. But he had no choice.
Sword still raised, he reached out with his left hand and took the vile book.
The Murons waited.
“I can't read it in here,” Ferrian said. “It's too dark.”
He refrained from mentioning that he couldn't read it at all.
A hiss of annoyance passed around the room, circling him like an angry zephyr. The Muron in front of him made an awful sound in its throat. “Very well!” it rasped.
The Murons fell into glaring silence. Ferrian began to back away, very slowly.
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Pale eyes to the left and right of him bored through his skull as he passed them, but otherwise made no move. Ferrian reached the archway, and continued until light spilled over him once more.
Then he stopped, and looked down at the book.
It was bound in black leather, old, battered and creased, the edges fraying, pages uneven. It felt unpleasant to touch, as though it had been handled often by greasy fingers. Ferrian couldn't open it with one hand, and he wasn't willing to lower his Sword, so he knelt, keeping his eyes on the black room, and placed the book on the floor.
In the darkness, the Murons stared back.
Reluctantly turning his attention from them, Ferrian opened the book.
Just like all the other books in Grath Ardan, it was written in a language he could not understand. Unlike the carefully scribed tomes lining the shelves, however, this text was messy, scrawled in great slanting scribbles across the pages in haste or madness. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to decipher it even if it had been written in his own language.
Carefully, he turned the yellowing pages, a dry, crackling rustle in the silence.
There were crude drawings, too. Clearly, the author was no better artist than he was scribesman. Many of the pictures were labelled, the text running carelessly over the drawings in some cases, and showed odd and increasingly disturbing things. There were pages of animals, and depictions of all the races: Dragons, Humans, Angels, Centaurs, even Griks, all of them curiously splay-legged, like corpses waiting to be dissected. There were diagrams of weird mechanical devices, and symbols which could have been spells or runes or nonsense, for all he knew.
Then, a few pages further on, his hand froze mid-turn.
The page he had just turned contained a drawing of an Angel in the top, left hand corner. At the bottom, right hand corner, was a Muron.
All of the space in between was filled with a series of sketches.
Sketches showing how one transformed, hideously, into the other.
Ferrian stared at it, stricken with horror. Then he looked at the facing page.
This showed a detailed illustration – the book's author had put much more effort into this one – of an unfortunate Angel strapped into some kind of torture device, with metal bands securing him in place, and tubes and all manner of other horrible apparatus all over–
Ferrian looked away, closing his eyes.
He had thought that Murons were half-Human and half-Dragon, but that was not correct. They were Angels, mutated by some disgusting magical experiment into vicious beasts!
And worse… the realisation hit Ferrian like a stone. The Murons hadn't brought Li here merely as bait to capture him, though that had worked perfectly.
They wanted to turn her into their Queen!
If his stomach had still been functioning, he would have retched. As it was, he felt an overwhelming urge to destroy this book, the Murons with it, and obliterate all trace of them from the face of existence…
A rush of bright coldness surged through him. In sudden panic, he fought it back.
No, no! he thought frantically. I can't unleash the Winter! Li will get hurt!
Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he repeated a concentration spell in his mind until he had regained control of himself.
As he did so, an idea suddenly flashed through his thoughts.
Thankfully, the Murons had been patient, still within their dark room, watching him. Composing himself, Ferrian opened his eyes. Sword now lowered, he stood up.
He stared into the shadowy room.
The Murons stared back.
“I know,” he told them quietly, “what to do.”
The Murons growled amongst themselves in their guttural language, no doubt pleased with Ferrian's acquiescence.
Ferrian gestured into the middle of the light-filled room. “You need to bring the Angel girl out here.”
The Murons fell silent, their eyes narrowing into barely-discernible slits in the darkness.
Ferrian glared back at them. “I need to see what I'm doing!”
After a moment more of silence, one of the Murons barked a command, and, amazingly, they did as Ferrian asked.
Picking up the foul book, Ferrian backed away, allowing them to pass through the archway and into the room. Two of them stationed themselves in front of both exits: the entrance to the dark room and the doorway to the central shaft.
The third Muron was slightly larger than the others, strongly muscled and sleek as a large cat. The horns at the back of his flat, wedge-like head were long and sharp as trigonic blades. A gruesome necklace of bones, teeth and other objects rattled on his scaled, ebony chest as he slunk into the middle of the room. There he dropped Li at his feet, placing one huge, taloned hand over her head, almost engulfing it.
Li, despite her fear, squirmed under his grip, her little hands grabbing futilely at his claws.
Their leader, Ferrian thought, as the huge Muron glared back at him.
“Don't panic, Li,” he told her. “Just… just stay still. You will… you'll be alright...”
He didn't sound very confident, but nevertheless, the girl ceased struggling, trusting him.
The Muron leader sneered at him, showing his impressive black teeth. “You know the ssspell?”
Ferrian tried to hold the thing's gaze, but couldn't. Knowing that this creature had once been an Angel suddenly made the Murons even more horrifying than they already were.
“I do,” Ferrian replied, feeling despondent and sickened. With great reluctance, he sheathed his Sword.
If his plan didn't work, both he and Li were finished, regardless.
Clutching the book, he opened it again, turning to a random page, pretending to find the correct place. Then he turned his back on the Murons, and faced the wall.
“I'm… I'm going to write a spell on the wall,” he told them all carefully. “Don't interrupt me. When it's done, the change will happen quickly.”
Rummaging in the pocket of his silver-embroidered jacket, Ferrian produced the stub of charcoal.
Then he stepped up to the wall, set the charcoal against a gleaming silvertine panel, and slowly began to write.
The Murons couldn't read, and this was a huge advantage. They did not know what he was writing, simply trusting that it was a spell to transform Li into their Queen. Likely, they were not aware of exactly how the magic of Grath Ardan worked, either, otherwise they would never have allowed him to do this.
Mekka's words whispered in his mind, from a conversation that seemed eons ago:
Words written within the library reflect back on themselves, gaining power until their meaning becomes literal…
Ferrian kept writing, forcing his hand to remain steady. The gaze of the Murons felt like a burning, prickly sensation on his back, almost like the touch of trigon.
One by one the letters appeared, overlaying themselves on his own reflection.
It's going to work, he told himself determinedly. It has to work…
The Murons behind him silently observed, calmly watched him spell out their fate, and yet did not know…
Reaching the final word, Ferrian's resolve hardened. He quickened his pace, and into the last downward stroke of the last letter, he poured all of the vengeance he could muster, finishing with an angry cry.
As the echoes of his voice died away, he stared at the wall, the charcoal reduced to powder in his fingers.
There was silence.
Ferrian stood there, excited yet in fear, but finally summoned the courage to turn around.
The Murons were gone.
The room was empty, save himself and little Li, kneeling in the centre of the floor, looking up at him with huge eyes.
Ferrian stared around, hardly daring to believe. His gaze fell upon the black room.
Moving over to it with slow, quiet steps, as though the spell could be broken with a sound, he peered anxiously inside.
No dark shapes loomed there, either. Nothing moved.
The Murons were truly gone!
Heaving a sigh of relief, Ferrian slumped against the wall beside the archway, letting the book fall to the floor. “Thank the Gods!” he gasped. “It worked!”
Noticing Li, he pushed himself away and ran over to her, falling to his knees in front of her.
“Li! Are you okay?”
She nodded.
Ferrian looked her over, but she seemed to be fine. No broken bones. No cuts or bruises.
Relieved beyond words, he hugged her.
The Angel girl hugged him back, tightly.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked, pulling away. “I thought you went up to the city?”
“I did!” Li replied defensively. “I was helping Hawk! He told me to go and wake up the Seraph, so I did, but when I went back to the platform, he was gone!” She looked unhappy. “I thought he fell off. He can't fly! So I went down to the forest to look for him…”
“And then the Murons caught you?” Ferrian guessed.
Li nodded, biting her lip. She hugged her knees to her chest. “I saw one of them coming, but I thought it was Mekka…”
Despite himself, Ferrian couldn't resist a laugh. “You thought a Muron was Mekka, eh?” He ruffled her hair, smiling. “Don't tell him that!”
Li looked up at him uncertainly. “Are the black things really gone?”
Ferrian nodded, and put his hands on her shoulders reassuringly. “Yeah. They're really gone.”
But the thought made him hesitate.
He glanced over at the Black Room. The book still lay on the floor, where he had dropped it.
Getting to his feet, Ferrian walked purposefully towards the room. Snatching the book up on the way, he kept walking into the shadows. He pulled the book apart as he went, ripping the pages into the smallest pieces that he could manage.
He stopped before the pile of torn books that formed the grave of the murdered Angel sorcerer. There he scattered the pieces of the Murons' book, until they lay amongst thousands of other shredded and mutilated words, indistinguishable from the rest.
Of course, Ferrian thought with a twinge of dark worry, Grath Ardan still holds this secret... But hopefully it was lost now, buried under a mountain of endless knowledge.
As satisfied as he could be, Ferrian left the room.
“C'mon Li,” he said. “I think both of us are sick and tired of this musty old place. Let's get out of here. Let's go find Hawk and Mekka.”
The Angel girl needed no convincing. Jumping to her feet, she ran after him and grabbed his hand.
“What did you write on the wall?” she asked, looking up at him.
Ferrian gave her a smile. “A spell, like I said,” he replied. “One that will make sure the Murons never come back.”
After they had left, the silver room continued to glow with a bright, steady light.
Only dust moved, resuming its conquest of the floor.
On one wall, black letters remained, large and neat and filled with all the terrible power of Grath Ardan:
MURONS DO NOT EXIST.