Black drapes wrapped around the priest’s shoulders, held like a shawl to keep it shut below where he’d parted it. There was nothing imposing at all about that hanging, ink-dark fabric; there was no hint of what it contained. It still made Rhode feel small to look at it.
“Can you give me a second. I’m not really ready to talk to him,” Rhode replied.
Eloft’s ears dipped. He tipped his head. “Yes, well there’s no such thing as ready. You can’t say no, Rhode.”
The First Hero of Sacred hesitated for as long as he dared, but the light had bent crooked. Shadows flowed over his calves, and Rhode lurched forward, his eyes wide. He rested a hand against a wooden ceiling beam, and regarded the floor behind him with paranoid suspicion.
Then, embarrassed and with the snickering of his peer chasing him out, the homunculus squatted low and stepped through.
The word caul means barrier: a reference to the amniotic sac. It represents a sealed boundary between the outside world, and a pregnant, gestating space inside.
How could a person describe what mana is? It would be like describing an x-ray. In its raw form, Mana is invisible, untouchable, untasteable. Yet it is real, and it is energy, and it is oh so very dangerous.
But from another perspective, the nature of Mana has noticeable parallels in geology. Consider the origin of minerals. Deep under the earth, stone is in a constant state of metamorphosis. Time, density, and pressure will change buried matter into something new.
Churning, alien energy tickled at Rhode’s skin, trying to crawl inside him. He had an instinct to clutch at his weeping scars to stopper them, but it would be impossible to cover them all.
Rich, saturated colors hued the room, thick from a meticulous arrangement of healing crystals which hung overhead from a webbed mesh of silk thread. During his own recoveries, Rhode’s little underground chamber had been lit with tiny shards. Here, the violet stones were prisms the size of fingers. Green pearls clustered in bunches like grapes. Carnal red fossils twisted like curling ferns, and obstructed a rare number of amber-gold cubes.
Crystal magic didn’t make sense to Rhode: there was no sane analogue for it on Earth except for in the delusions of cranks and the schemes of con-artists. Here though, each mineral was resonating in tune with a different and essential vital… something.
But whatever principles this energy acted on, the bio-reactivity of the environment wasn’t balanced correctly for Rhode at all. His cells, organs and fluids were being incited in the wrong ratios. A dissociative wrongness began to build in his innards: a creeping onset that took time to notice.
It was strange how dark the room was, when all of that color was present. Rhode had to stoop to keep from tangling in the formation overhead.
A mere four strides wide by six long, the private inner chamber was smaller than he’d expected. And even that limited rectangular space was cut in half, bisected by a gauzy veil. Two severe-looking half-elven physicians stood at military attention in front of that curtain, wearing starched white gowns and long gloves. Brother Eloft stood just in front of Rhode, guiding him forward like an attendant trying to direct a landing aircraft.
Hemmed in on every side and surrounded, the homunculus worried if he was ever going to be comfortably sized indoors again.
The hardwood floors were stripped bare of the lush carpets which were common elsewhere at Four Ring, and the walls were blocked by long sheets of pale, crimped paper. Lines of dense calligraphy striped up and down the inside of each crease. A solid oak writing desk had been shoved unceremoniously into the far corner, and three brass plinths stood at specific points in the room.
Each plinth supported a treasure, and each treasure churned with its own character of weird energy. Unnatural.
Rhode’s eyes snapped to a vague, boxlike shape on the opposite of the veil. A canopied, four post bed was (if not visible, then) discernible on the other side. He squinted, straining to see into a concentrated patch of gloom.
A shape, the occupant, moved.
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“Your Grace,” Eloft announced. He fell to the floor on his knee, and tucked his head low. “The Hero, Irving Rhode Mortimer.”
Formality had never particularly been Rhode’s strong suit. The concept of caste was alien to him, anathema to his beliefs. But the stakes were high, his mistakes had been public and bombastic, and there were promises he needed to keep. Slowly, and looking to mirror his healer, Rhode lowered himself down to a knee.
“Your Grace?” Rhode attempted.
“Lay a towel. Rise, Goodeman Irving. We bear no expectations that you perform the appropriate obeisances. If you are to err, We would prefer that your blunders favor efficiency over tact.”
Deliberately, Rhode stood back up. This time he didn’t care that he disturbed the crystals, he shoved his palm against the webbing to make room for his head.
”Your Grace,” he began again.
“Excuse me, Goodman Irving,” whispered one of the healers. The half-elf had short-cropped hair, and a clipped ear. He threw a towel down at Rhode’s feet, and negotiated around the homunculus’s legs to spread it out carefully beneath him.
“Yea. Thanks, um, Goodeman. Listen, Sir,” Rhode entreated.
“You will still address us only as Your Grace. Before We are to begin, tell Us, Goodeman Irving: do you remember Us?”
The homunculus curled his fingers around tangled string, his fingers brushed against a petrified scarlet coil and [Vigorous Ichor] squirmed inside his marrow. Rhode remembered a pool of blood, recalled its smell but not its dimensions. He remembered the surgical knife, and blue baths with a forest of columns that stretched out infinitely. An image of a looming shadow lingered in his mind. He imagined one little star of color in its middle, like a poisonous insect.
“I don’t believe so, Your Grace,” Rhode hesitated. “Or maybe we’ve met in passing.”
The figure on the bed was shapeless. Maybe it was sitting, propped against the headboard. It was hard to tell.
“Yes, you do. You retain more than you think, and you suspect more than you admit. Therefore, We shall be blunt. Goodeman Irving, do you intend to perform acts of treason or sedition tonight? Have you conspired with foreign powers to do harm to our efforts, to endanger your fellow Heroes, to sabotage The Project, or otherwise commit seditious acts to undermine the sovereign Kingdom of Sacred?”
Sweating meant pain, as cold perspiration dripped salt into Rhode’s wounds. “What?” he gulped. “No, of course not.”
“What, Your Grace. No, of course not, Your Grace. Goodeman Irving, we do not inquire as to the quality of your loyalty to Us, or your oppositional and contrarian personality. Your reluctance. These are known factors.”
“Prince, I really don’t, I mean I promise that –”
“Seventeen of our subjects are counted to be dead so far, and this number is expected surely to rise. Eight independent attempts have been identified to breach our sealed quarantine of this facility. Our servants are yet to confirm whether this count is comprehensive, or even if the totality of these efforts were foiled. While We are confident that order is to be restored, the motivations, objective, membership, and resources of the seditious parties are yet to be determined.”
Rhode gulped. Suddenly, standing upright seemed like a bad idea. He dropped to the towel on his knee, and bowed his head.
“So We ask again, and specifically. Goodeman Irving, did you commit treason against Our interests?”
The homunculus throat rasped as he stumbled over his words. An intrusive question bubbled up in his head: how were executions performed in olden times?
“Tonight,” clarified Prince Llanthinanumen.
And something about Rhode’s fear broke. “No,” he replied more surely. “No, Your Grace. I tried to help.”
If he had feared the ax was coming in the long contemplative silence that followed, or the noose, it never did.
“Very well. Those who [Serve], you may leave Us. That which you have heard, you may [Forget], with Our leave.”
Eloft rose slowly. The priest lingered at Rhode’s side, but still followed the other two physicians out of the room. Then, crawling shadows circled the curtain, and a heavy stillness cut the palace off from Rhode and the Second Prince.