It said in its usual clipped tone. There was a heartbeat’s pause, before it resumed its question repeated not only verbatim, but identical in tone and cadence.
Again there was that minute gap.
Alarion tilted his head, trying to make some sense of what he’d heard. Again a number of key words meant nothing to him, but the voice left him just enough to parse his way through.
Alarion replied with a hint of worry.
There was a pause, the sound of something heavy moving just beyond the wall. Alarion flinched as the silence lingered for several seconds, before the voice said,
It pressed.
There was another long pause as the voice digested his information and formulated its next question. Then the lights in the room flashed, and a small projection was displayed on the wall Alarion was facing, its dark lines scrawled across white metal. Six months ago, Alarion would not have recognized what he was looking at, but thanks to his crash education he at least understood the general shape of the world.
Three major landmasses dominated the map of Ilun. On the far left was Alarion’s home continent, a lanky L shaped thing with a large freshwater sea at the connecting joint. The Ashadi called it Celes, while the Vitrians called it Nostrum. In the middle lay the second continent, Gartite, not as long or as tall as Nostrum, but more densely packed. To the far east lay Nusume, ZEKE’s homeland, a land almost as large as the first two put together, its mass cut up by a massive northern bay and a southern inlet that ran half the length of the continent.
Other, smaller bodies dotted the map. Chains of islands, and the smaller southern continent off the eastmost tip of Nostrum that Alarion could never remember. But there was only one other landmass of note. In the north between Gartite and Nusume. The dark continent. The lost lands.
Alarion did not hesitate. Shockingly, Vitrian education had focused almost entirely on the empire. Given that Imuria was now part of the empire, Alarion’s teachers had graciously pointed out his homeland, which allowed the young man to easily trace the borders on the projection with his finger.
To his surprise, the map zoomed in to accommodate him, filling most of the wall as the voice persisted.
He admitted.
This time he groaned in earnest. If not for the system, the truth was he’d have no earthly idea. <14th Telana, 461 A.T.S.>
Alarion repeated his answer and the voice reiterated its apology and question. On the third failed attempt, something changed.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
On and on it went, question after question. After his father’s name and date of birth came his mother and hers. Then his siblings. The voice asked the current date and failed to comprehend his answer. Then it looped back to his home, trying to find a more specific address to no avail. It asked about his childhood neighbors, about his grandparents and finally about some sort of ‘Global Identification Number’ before it finally gave up.
The sudden change of topic brought him up short, in part because he did not know the answer. He was not here to destroy it, but was the Revenant? Would Alarion have to damage it to accomplish his geas?
That was certainly an answer. It was one Alarion understood as ‘we are watching you closely and can tell when you lie’, but in that way it had served its purpose.
He shook his head. Then, when the voice began to repeat itself, he quickly added,
An image of a middle aged bearded man appeared on the wall. The man was slight, his eyes turned to the side as though he did not realize his visage was being captured. The name Vitali appeared next to the depiction.
No, no, no. Dozens of images flashed on the wall without the slightest hint of recognition. The procession grew boring quickly, with Alarion snapping out his responses faster and faster as it became clear he did not recognize a single person.
Until he did.
Lamesh.
He did not know how to answer. Not just because the name was wrong and the face was subtly incorrect, but because some part of him recognized the danger he was in.
Alarion was not certain if he’d ever heard more frightening words. He could not carve his way out of this room, he could not hide, he could not run. He was at the mercy of something that was not even a person. And he may have made it angry.
His hand moved to his ear. Sierra had told him that the range of the Simus were measured in hundreds of yards under ideal circumstances. He’d flown up several times that during his ascent. The chance that she could hear him was next to nothing, but he focused on the device anyways, as he spoke.
“Sierra, if you can hear this, I am in trouble. Do not follow me up. It is not safe. If I can find a way down I will. I am sorry.”
The seconds dragged on, one after another. Would he even know if the thing had poisoned the air? Alarion looked to his status, and saw no new notifications. He looked to the wall, to the floor, wondering if he’d been wrong. Perhaps he could stab a hole through. Something deep enough that he could breathe through it, if push came to toxic gas.
Fortunately, it did not come to that.
Alarion swallowed hard as a door slid open silently on one side of the small metal room. Bright light flooded in from outside, and he squinted against it to see a glowing green arrow directing him to the right. Sword in hand, Alarion stepped out into the corridor, but not before uttering two more words in Ashadi.
Sure, the thing had threatened to asphyxiate him. But it cost nothing to be polite.