Even with the directions, the journey took at least two more hours. The fact that it had to recalculate the route every single time Mary's hand left the wall - for example, because she had to turn in the opposite direction - was not helping.
But finally, they were back at the audience hall, or whatever it was. Arthur was slumped on the throne, resting his chin against his chest. After a moment, Mary realised that her steps were the only ones echoing around, and she glanced back at Paolo.
He was rooted in place, mouth slack, staring into the wall next to the throne. Or rather, at the man inside the wall next to the throne.
Oh, right. Nicolaus.
“Muchmighty, have mercy... what is that thing?” he whispered.
“Not all dead have seen the war's end,” Arthur answered without lifting his head.
“You did this?” Paolo said, red drops of blood showing on his fingertips. Mary didn't like where this was going, but she wasn't exactly in a mood or position to stop it. She was half-ashamed she wasn't the one to start it.
“A few months is nothing compared to decades. Decades aren't much against millennia. Millennia pale when you but glimpse the eternity.” Arthur was using his ancient mummy voice again, but made a significantly lesser impression. Trails of green smoke lifted from his lips with each word. Paolo slowly grew bloody talons on the top of his hands. “Tell me, o' son of Vladimir. Would you rather doom the world by following your flawed illusion of ethics? You can try to strike me down. Who knows, you could even land a hit. If Mary joins you, you could even kill me. Me, the entire command of our little resistance, and many others on your way out... That would be a truly understandable, more - commendable act of loyalty towards the Academy. After all, treated you way better than us, hadn't they?”
Mary wouldn't know if she'd join Paolo in the attack. She certainly felt like it at the moment - but should she? Arthur did have a point... He put his sword tip-down perpendicularly to the floor and rested a hand on its hilt. Green flames danced over the blade. “Or would you tolerate me borrowing a piece of your friend over here for another moment of his precious eternity for the greater good?”
Paolo's face contorted in a painful grimace, and it took a while for any of the muscles to move. Finally, he glanced at Mary and recalled the blood back into his veins.
Arthur snorted and threw his head to an upright position with a loud crack. His eyes reflected nonexisting green candles, but the flames hugging the thick blade slowly died down.
“Now that that's settled, let's get back to business, shall we?” He glanced at Mary. “Or not. How are you feeling in this form? Do you need any help?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Mary glared at him, and the shadows around her darkened a shade. “You knew.”
The man raised an eyebrow at that. “And?”
“You should have told me! Warned me!” The stone around her cracked. Paolo looked at the ceiling, either in a complaint to the Author above, or checking whether he'd be buried alive anytime soon, Mary couldn't tell. Mossie just buzzed around quietly.
“If I told you, you'd have failed. This way worked, so let's get past it.” Arthur shrugged. “Your form seems to be holding, and your speaking abilities are progressing much faster than usual. Since you haven't complained about anything specific, I take it that everything else works just as well.”
Mary clenched her fists, but she really didn't have much more to complain about.
“What do you want from us?” Paolo asked through gritted teeth.
“Nothing you wouldn't want yourself.” Arthur stood up and tapped the floor with his sword. “Only to help you see the world burn.”
There was a loud rumble, and the floor cracked again but did so in a way that seemed more intentional than the damage Mary had caused. Parts of it moved, up and down. Others started twisting and turning. It was a mess of stone machinery without any obvious purpose.
“So...?” Paolo asked.
“Give it a few minutes.”
True to his word, after ten minutes of reconfiguration and awkward silence filled with just stone grinding against stone, there was a hole in the middle of the floor, with a spiral staircase leading far, far down. Mary's brain simply refused to understand how the heck did that even work. The girl looked quizzically at the guy who was most likely to know how, but even more importantly - why.
“We've thought about upgrading it to a regular elevator, but we have better stuff to spend money on. Follow me.”
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More. Sandstone. Why was everything sandstone... Ok, it was probably the cheapest and quickest way of building anything around here if it was just lying around. Still, it was getting boring.
At least the room they finally arrived at was interestingly shaped, like an amphitheatre, but with additional (sand)stone and glass apparatus. Mary could see large mirrors magnifying the contents of what seemed to be another stone bowl on a pedestal. It had a single, six-sided die lying inside. There were three men in ancient, Greek-like robes on the scene - one man threw the dice, the second marked them on a clipboard and read them aloud, and then the third one entered them to an old computer, one at a time.
The stone die rattled on a stone bowl. “Six.” One man scribbled, one man typed. More rattling. “Four.” More rattling, scribbling and typing.
“What is this place?” Mary asked.
“It's an oracle. A true oracle,” Arthur said. “That die is a single most random thing in existence as we know it. Once we generate enough randomness and plug it into a computer, it'll generate a prophecy.”
“It seems a bit... anticlimactic,” Mary said.
Arthur shrugged. “There was a time we had to do everything by hand. It was a nightmare, and all those errors...”
Paolo was still subdued and simply watched as the men performed their tiny ritual again and again.
“How much do we need to wait?” Mary asked.
“Not much.”