…have shaped me. At what point did it become inevitable? Did it ever become inevitable? Is it now? Could I have taken a different path? Can I still?

--

Vic grinned back at them as he walked over to one of the strange hollows in the floor and laid down. “So, you just looked up at the ceiling?”

They had marched down the hallway from the common room, a mix of determination and eagerness driving their steps. After the last exchange, nobody had said a single word. They all knew what was at stake, and a strange mix of excitement, hope and fear played out when their eyes met. Would this work? Now they were standing in a line along the wall, watching Vic as he stretched out on the floor.

“Yes,” Matt answered, his voice coming out a hoarse whisper. He coughed and continued. “Look up at the pattern in the ceiling. I don’t think I focused on anything in particular, I just opened my eyes and it… happened.”

Matt clenched his fists. If this works, it changes everything. But if it doesn’t… Matt had read the hope on their faces, and could only imagine the crushing disappointment. Life would go on like it was always intended; for another few months or years, and then they would die. The difference was that they would have the memory of this day, the single spark of hope they had carried for a few minutes. What would that memory do to them? How would they behave towards him, knowing he would continue after them?

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, watching Vic laying on the floor. As he looked, Vic opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, his chest quickly raising and falling as his arms and feet jerked restlessly with nervous movements.

Nothing happened. Matt watched the absence of threads with dread. For me, it happened instantly. He was trying to find the words to apologise when a single thread reached down towards Vic. Mia grabbed his arm when he inhaled sharply at the sight, asking him, “Is it working?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. He was enthralled by the sight in front of him; the single thread had multiplied, and now an ocean of slow, swirling filaments of dark energy were reaching down from the ceiling towards Vic. The thin threads were questing downwards, something deliberate in their movements as they searched for a connection. And still the density of energy increased, and soon the chamber was filled with dark, grey threads that branched and looped in a cascade of different symbols.

There was something ominous yet beautiful about the display, and a shiver ran down Matt’s back as excitement built. More and more threads filled the space, and then they reached Vic, streaming into his eyes as they vibrated with dark energy, enveloping his body in a cocoon of nearly black. The threads wrapped around him, contracting as they grew in density, until they suddenly all disappeared into Vic in a flash of dark light.

For a moment, the chamber was still. Mia was still clutching at Matt’s arm, looking up at him. Again she asked, “Did it work? Dammit Matt, tell us?”

Can’t she tell? He wondered and looked down at her with a smile. “Yes, I think it did.”

Vic was getting to his feet, his movements smooth and powerful. “Wow…” His voice trailed off as he turned slowly, looking around the room, looking back at them. “That was… And–” He squared his shoulders and stretched his neck, moving his arms and twisting his neck. “My body! And… my breathing.” His eyes shone with wonder. “It is so much easier. The pressure is gone… I didn’t even know there was a pressure, but… It’s like a weight has been sitting on my chest for so long I forgot about it, and now it’s gone. What is happening?” He looked at Mia, hope blending with terror. “Does that mean… it’s gone?”

“I don’t–” Mia began, looking back at Vic. “I don’t know, Vic. But…” She turned slowly to Pete and Thor. “We need to try.”

As Vic stood more still than Matt had ever seen him, Thor, Mia, and Pete made their way over to the hollows in the floor. They each found one and laid down.

This time, perhaps because he knew what to expect, Matt could see the threads appear almost instantly. A light green filament reaching down for Mia. A blue steel thread reaching down for Pete. And a deep red stream of energy reached for Thor… and then another, a light, light shade of blue, joined the red threads reaching for Thor. That is interesting. Two colours for Thor, and just one kind of thread for the others. Before he had time to think about it, he was captivated by the display of colour that was building in the room. Like before, the threads multiplied again and again, and the different colours mixed together, flowed around each other, and filled the chamber until the density of energy was almost physical.

Moments later, the threads connected with the three people on the floor. And just as Matt heard Vic say, “Is something supposed to happen?”, the threads wrapped around them moments before four flashes of light filled the room. A thrumming of green, and steel, and red, and light blue, finding a peculiar harmony that echoed inside Matt’s mind.

As the light faded, Mia, Pete and Thor tentatively sat up and got to their feet, sending each other looks of joy and hope and relief that built to a crescendo of emotion.

Smiling, Matt watched them. Mia was far away, a small smile on her lips as her eyes looked somewhere far into the distance; standing still with arms resting by her sides. Pete was walking around with a grin covering his entire face, and Thor had sat back down with his head bowed. He was taking deep, deep breaths, as if for the first time in his life, free from a weight on his shoulders.

Mia, who was always so in control. For a moment, small and fragile as she rearranged foundational truths in her thoughts. With a smile playing on her lips, Matt could see how she rebuilt the way she viewed the world; revisiting assumptions and coming to new conclusions. Seeing into a different future. A new type of steel rippled across her youthful face as she found hope and Matt shivered as he recognised a determination to change things, and that determination to drive change harmonised with something within himself.

Vic, for once, standing still without a backdrop of nervous energy steering his movements. A wave of calm had settled on his body and his features as he focused his mind and took in his new situation.For the first time, Matt could see Vic’s expression loosen the tension of whatever was haunting him. A younger man looked back at him with piercing eyes, with a calculated determination that spoke of something that made Matt shiver. Matt felt it, the need for ruthlessness that was required of them as they defended what they had against their enemies.

Pete had come to a stop a distance away from the group. He looked back at them with an expression of compassion, his body reflecting an aura of protection. Where Mia and Vic had reasoned their way to a new understanding of the world, Pete had found it by instinct, as if it was always there for him to find. The ease with which Pete accepted his new future and his role within it made Matt feel safe.

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And then Thor. The calmness that Matt sensed in him from the beginning was transforming into something more–a curiosity for the world that almost matched his own. Eyes still closed, face opening up, Thor was radiating serenity and authenticity. Almost like he had re-found something that had been lost to him, something to steer him into the future that was based on something in his past. There was a gravity to him, a stillness and confidence that inspired Matt to find his way in this strange new future.

Coming out of her reveries, Mia was the first to speak. “I do not know what happened. But the pattern on the ceiling… You were right, Matt. It did something to us. To our mind. And to our bodies. The wasting…” she disappeared into herself again, for a moment. Coming back, she continued, “It has changed something inside me I did not know was there. When the pattern connected, it was like an invisible fist around my chest released its grip.”

Matt saw the others nodding.

“This is… This discovery. Everyone. The world…” Mia trailed off, and Matt understood where she was going, his mind having gone there already. “Right now, in villages across Askat–across the world–people are dying to the wasting. This can save them.” Matt had never heard Mia’s voice with this much passion. “This discovery,” Mia continued, “changes everything.”

A moment of quiet, before Pete said in a low voice, “And it explains the nobles”.

Mia nodded. “Yes. They must know about this place—or if not this place, some other place with a ceiling like this.”

Matt looked up, thinking. “Or maybe it’s just the pattern and the symbols. I think that’s the key, how the energy moves along the pathways. Can we copy it? Would it work from paper, or does it need to be stone? Can we… Can we spread it to other people, to other villages?”

“Fucking nobles,” Vic muttered. “They know about this. They are keeping this… A deliberate secret. Fuck them. If I could–”

Mia interrupted Vic, giving him a sharp nod. “Probably. Certainly. They know. And yes, fuck them.” Her lips were curling, her hand held in a tight fist. “Fuck them. And we will, but carefully. If they knew about us, about this place, about what we know… they would kill us.”

Matt heard Vic draw a breath to reply, but his own mind was heading in another direction. So one question seemed to have an answer. About the wasting, and its connection to the ceiling. But that was just part of the answer. The ceiling held a pattern, and the pattern held a concentration of the strange coloured threads. But the threads existed outside the pattern. As he was thinking, Matt could see the threads all around him, and as he looked inwards, he saw the sphere at his mind’s centre. Pulsing with light and energy, each pulse sending out a small wave of something very much like pain—or pressure.

How did the pattern on the ceiling collect the coloured threads, and how did some objects–like the gemstones–absorb more of the threads? How could the energy be used both to cure people of the wasting disease and to unlock strange portals? And what was up with the different colours? The threads surrounding him held a multitude of colours, many he couldn’t even name. Can I copy the pattern? He looked up at the ceiling again; this time paying attention to how the lines moved across the ceiling, seeing the colours moving, tracing the lines. He saw Mia’s green thread, and… He suddenly remembered something. Why had Mia kept asking him if it was working? Can they not–

“Uhm, guys,” he started, “Guys! What was the colour of the thread?”

“What thread?” Pete asked.

“When you looked at the ceiling. The thread that reached down towards you.”

“Again… What thread?”

“You didn’t…” Matt looked around at the others. “You didn’t see the threads? You still don’t see them?”

They all shook their heads. “No,” Mia said. “I just felt an energy. My head got warmer, then my body.”

“Same here,” Pete said.

“And now? Do you see any threads?” Matt asked.

Matt looked around, seeing them all shaking their heads. What is going on here? “I told you before. I see threads of some kind of energy. All around… They are floating in the air, drawing strange symbols that… Twirl around. It started after I looked at the ceiling earlier, and then I saw them…” His voice trailed off. That is actually not true. I saw them before. When I was dying…

“How odd,” Thor said, his hand scratching his chin. “So when you looked at us… At that,” he pointed back to the hollows on the floor, “you saw threads reach down?”

“Yes,” Matt said. “And they were different colours. Vic’s was dark grey, and–” He stopped talking as a thought struck, remembering something. He looked up at them and said, “Do you have your crystals? The ones from the dungeon? Let me see…”

One by one, they brought the crystals out, and with a stab of insight, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Matt smiled up at them. “Vic, you have Thor’s crystal and Thor, you have Vic’s. Pete and Mia, yours match the colour of your threads.” He reached into his pouch and brought out his own crystal, careful to not look at it too closely. It was pure white, not matching any of the threads he had seen.

He explained about the threads of power he had seen when they looked at the pattern and the different colours, and how they matched the colour of the crystals. “Pete, try to look closely at your crystal now.”

Pete looked at him with raised eyebrows before nodding and peering into the gemstone. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Matt saw threads rushing from the gemstone towards Pete, who stumbled back, almost falling. The threads shot into Pete’s eyes. The steely blue threads twisted and curled as they connected, before the stone suddenly disappeared as the last thread was sucked into Pete.

“What the fu–Wow!” Pete muttered, bringing empty hands up to his face. Where had the blue crystal gone? Into…

“Oh fuck,” Pete said, “there is a symbol inside my head now. It’s like… the energy from the stone is there. In my head! And…” Pete paused for a moment, “There is a second pattern there?”

Everyone turned to Pete. Everyone except Thor, who was staring into space. At something.

“Yes,” Thor said slowly, “The symbol is similar to the pattern on the ceiling. Try focusing on it.”

Confused, Matt looked inside his mind, but all he could see were swirling threads of coloured lines, always changing. The spherical cloud in the centre was gently pulsing and surrounding it was an ever changing chaos of coloured light. Nothing settled into anything like a pattern. What were they talking about?

“Oh, fuck me!” Pete exclaimed. “What in the name of–What is that?”

“Some kind of, uhm, writing?” Vic said. “Right in front of my…erh… face? What the fu–”

“Yes, yes, it is writing, but look at what it says!” Mia said.

“Mia, I can’t read.” Vic crossed his arms.

A pause, then Thor’s deep voice filled the cavernous room.

“What is a level?”