The rest of the week leading up to the day of the festival was blur to Cadryn. Days spent cutting and hauling wood blended into nights at Jalisco’s Library, learning about the Neeft’s previous occupiers from Encara. To be reading, and learning, combined with the routine of the preparations, awoke a sleeping longing in him for his life at the Academy. That pain was soothed however, by the bonds he had made with his fellow Keepers of the Neeft.
His own history, and future, were becoming one seamless line of experience, and for the first time, he felt he really knew where he was going. So when Encara asked him if he would like to forgo the lecture, the second to last evening before the Festival, for a trip, he readily agreed. It wasn’t until they took a disused set of stairs deeper into the Citadel that his curiosity forced him to speak.
“I thought we were going somewhere else?” he asked.
Encara looked back up the stairs at him, the torchlight casting her hair as molten silver. “Oh we’re going somewhere no one has been in quite an age.”
As they descended deeper, the air became cold and dry, soon Cadryn recognized the chambers and cells he’d searched in a near panic with Silence for the lost crate of alchemist’s supplies. “I’ve been here,” he said, hoping that if this had been her goal, they could turn back.
Sensing his apprehension, Encara tsked him, the sound echoing into the empty dark. “Do the cells off The Reformatory frighten you, brave soldier?” she asked.
“A cell without a door is just a room,” he answered, but peered into each, all the same, to confirm its vacancy.
“The same can be said of the mind, or was, by the demon that built these . . . Sal’ata’maru the Curator, had strange ideas about humans.”
“I thought demons were a story made up by mages to keep the priests from meddling in their arts.” Cadryn said.
Encara’s torch sputtered at some shift in the air, and she turned towards a collapsed hallway. “All falsehoods are stories, but not all stories are false, Cadryn Bence.” With that she began to walk faster, turning just before the collapsed section into an apparently empty cell. “It’s here,” she whispered.
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Edging up behind her, Cadryn could see the newly penned map Encara was following. It looked to be a collage of tracings, given the conflicting scales, over thin parchment. There were several areas crossed out by the caricature of a skull.
Before he could ask where she was taking him, Encara thrust the torch forward, jamming it into a hole left by a missing brick. Fire, blue and hissing, burst from the orifice and traced the outline of a door onto the wall. With the stench of old air it swung inward, revealing a slowly curving ramp into the earth.
“Come along,” Encara said, “The beginning of the Neeft’s history awaits.”
Cadryn briefly considered going back, but his lust for adventure won out. They walked, circling downward and inward, they had to be well below the level of the Citadel, and near the very center of the Neeft’s axis. After a few minutes, the ramp ended in a doorway through which a pale light danced across the smooth stone of the ramp.
“Welcome, to the Foundation Stone,” Encara announced, as they crossed the threshold. The domed chamber they entered was roughly the size of the entire toll house. The floor was bedrock covered in a thick layer of dust, through which craved sigils were visible. Small shrines to a dozen long dead gods dotted the space, moldering into ruins.
But in the center, unmarred, and glowing with the soft light that filled the room, was the Foundation Stone. A perfectly square cube of pure white marble, atop which the base of the Neeft’s Central spire melded into the roof of the chamber. Staggering amid now disturbed dust, Cadryn approached the stone, and felt the air grow warmer.
“How is this possible?” he asked.
“It’s invulnerable: to time, magic, man, or beast. A final testament of the First Time. This is the work of the Lobeski, the Obelisk builders. Its power strengthens anything built atop it, allowing for the height of the Neeft’s spires.”
“Does the Empire know?”
“About this? I imagine they suspect, the Lobeski towers were erected all along what is now the frontier of the Provalian Empire. If one were disposed to symbolism, they might claim your Emperor chose to define his lands by them.”
“My Emperor?” Cadryn asked, his hand moving to rest beside the hilt of his sword.
“Our Emperor, My apologies,” Encara said, and smiled easily, “old habit.”
“Right,” Cadryn said, and turned his attention back to the Stone, closer now he could see the light was uneven, and actually emanated from miniature text carved into the surface in palm sized sections. He reached out to touch it.
“I wouldn’t, friend.” A voice whispered in his ear, but it was not Nine’s voice.
Encara had heard it, too, for she turned to one of the many entrances to this place, this one leading down. A light welled there, and grew. When it had nearly become a match for the glow the stone, it faded again, and a shape, not unlike a man, stood in the passage’s mouth.
But it was not a man.