Soulburned: The School of Souls

Chapter 30 (Part 1): The Fragment

Entity was gone.

Not just silent, but gone.

The space in Lyra's mind where the Spirit had found purchase was scrubbed clean, replaced by white emptiness.

With how the spirit had been, Lyra would have thought she'd been relieved to be rid of her, instead, she found herself terrified.

She felt her anxiety rising, clawing its way up her shoulder blades and up the back of her neck.

The night had stilled. No wind, no chill to the air, no... anything.

The only sound was the hum of power coming from the five obelisks, which were still connected by the colorful beams of electricity.

Lyra looked around, trying to see if somthing had changed in her surroundings. She could see the glowing obelisks, but nothing beyond them, but that was hardly surprising, it was an overcast night, and the peak of the Tower was hundreds of feet above the Soulight lamps that would have been illuminating the streets below.

Eventually. Lyra crept over to the edge of the tower and looked down.

The sudden vertigo knocked the air from her lungs as if she'd been punched.

She slowly sank to her knees and clutched at the dark, homogenous stone of the Iris. She'd expected to see the familiar streets and curved walls of Sclera's Old Town... to see Soul-light lamp-posts illuminating an otherwise dark Iris campus... to see the curved walls that gave Sclera its defining ocular shape.., to see the ominous and looming Brow mountain rage stretching into the distance.

Instead, she saw nothing.

The city and its surroundings had been replaced by endless and uncaring black nothing.

The Iris floated in the Void.

She screamed.

Void! Lyra thought, fucking VOID!

Her heart rate skyrocketed, and her skin started to tingle uncomfortably. Her face flushed and Her breathing grew quicker and quicker. She was dying, actually dying. Holy fuck, was she still breathing? She pressed her fingers hard against her neck, frantically feeling for a pulse. She found it punching out a tempo that would put any Slaver's drum to shame. She was dying, actually fucking dying.

She pressed her face against the cold stone and took a giant racking breath.

Okay. Okay, good. Blood is still pumping. Air is still filling her lungs. She started tapping her fingers, trying to find a soothing rhythm.

She lay there for what felt like an eternity. One hand pressed against her pulse, the other pressed against her chest.

She just breathed and beat.

She wasn't dying. She was going to be okay.

Her pulse began to slow down, and she was once again able to think straight.

Alright. She said to herself. That was a panic attack!

"AGHH!" She yelled in frustration. "Why are you like this!?"

Her face flushed and her pulse again began to rise

Nope. Nope. Just breath. Aftershock. Just breathe... and beat.

"Fuck!"

She wrapped her hands around her neck, pressing both thumbs hard against her veins.

She counted out her pulse.

One, two, three, four.

Two, two, three, four.

Three, two, three, four.

Four, two, three, four.

It was consistent and steady.

She wasn't dying.

Her breathing once again slowed.

That was the worst part about a panic attack. It wasn't the out-of-your-mind mania, the paranoia, or even the mild hallucinations... It was the aftershocks. You'd be fine for days, weeks, maybe months, and then one night as you're trying to fall asleep, you'll remember what that moment felt like, and just the memory of it will send you into another attack. Fear of fear. A vicious, unending cycle.

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She wished she still had Entity to talk her down. Lyra hadn't in weeks, since Entity had decided to tag along inside her mind... And here she was, not even minutes after Entity went missing, absolutely losing her shit.

She felt exhausted. Like she'd been running laps up and down the Spiral all day.

Suddenly, all she wanted to do was sleep.

And why not sleep? In the silence of this place, sleep seemed like the most natural thing in the world. The only thing that seemed to belong here, even. A sweet, dreamless sleep. Oblivion.

She bolted upright.

No, sleep was a terrible idea in this place. She didn't know why exactly, but she just knew, that if she fell asleep here, she wouldn't wake up again.

She stood, sending another wave of vertigo pulsing through her body.

Time to take stock. You can do this alone, Lyra.

There was no discernable change in the Tower.

She stooped and studied the eye-shaped Glypsh. She still wasn't able to read the runes, but they seemed unchanged.

She walked over to where Greystole had been standing. There were no marks of any kind. She walked over to the socket in the wall where he had pulled out the spell rod. It was empty.

Lyra then began the painstaking work of trying to decipher the glyphs the adorned each of the obelisks. Most of the runes were in that strange alphabet, and the ones that weren't didn't serve any function that she was able to discern.

She chewed her lip in thought.

Can I just climb back down the tower?

She walked over to the hatch she and Greystole had come from.

Lyra's eyes grew wide. The glyph was different.

Finally! Progress!

She bent down to examine the bronze sheet. Like before, it was a Wizard's Mark. She took a moment to read through the Contract runes that she had noticed during her and Greystole's climb.

She furrowed her brow.

This is a banishing contract. Lyra thought, Why would there be a banishing contract in a Wixards glyph?

Entity would know. She'd probably have been able to tell her what the strange glyphs on the Circle were. If the spirit knew what the brewing habits of long-dead islanders were, she'd probably recognize a long-dead language... Lyra was stupid for not asking Enity about it when she had the chance. Now she may never get that chance.

Where was Entity? Had she been pulled back to the Logos Sanctum? Had she just been destroyed? Lyra swallowed her worry and forced her mind back on task.

As far as Lyra knew, banishing glyphs was only used in Summoning Circles. It was a failsafe. Unlike the standard confinement glyphs, a banishment glyph would allow a creature to leave its summoning circle, but would immediately banish the creature if it met, or failed to meet certain criteria. In this contract's case, that criterion was distance. Once the summoned creature left the glyph's sphere of influence, it would disappear.

But what was being summoned here? The hatch? Her? Was it her contract glyph? Had Greystole performed some sort of reversed summoning ritual?

Lyra decided that if the opportunity presented itself, she would move as far away from the Glyph as possible. It couldn't have a range too far... Maybe if she could go down into the Tower's depths? Maybe the Trial was as simple as "Make it back to the Vocatoin Hall." That wouldn't be so bad...

She channeled a stream of Logos into the glyph, and the hatch popped open. The same wooden ladder that she and Greystole had climbed was present... but that was all that was present. There was no platform, no Spiral, and no light. Just the ladder and darkness for as far as she could see.

Nope. That's a death hole.

She took a moment to walk along the entire edge of the Iris's roof, trying to get as far away from the circle as possible.

No luck. She didn't simply poof out of existence.

With a resigned sigh, she descended into the tower.

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At first, she was excited. She'd solved it. She just needed to climb down until she was out of range of the circle.

That had been hours ago.

Her hands had long ago blistered and broken open against the splintered wood, and she was now leaving a trail of blood ascending up into the darkness.

The colorful electric light of the Circle had, for a time, illuminated her descent, but now she existed in only darkness. She wasn't even able to see the ladder! She had no way of knowing if she was nearing the bottom of this infernal well. For all she knew, she could be standing on the final rung of the ladder, and one more step would send her plummeting into the Void.

The Void seemed to reach up from the depths below beckoning for her. She knew it was just a trick of her mind, but she would swear that the darkness concealed invisible hands that waited to drag her into the depths or some other incomprehensible horror. The Accursed had to come from somewhere, didn't they?

She had long ago figured out what she needed to do.

May you be held by the Void..

She hugged the ladder close. She'd already broken down into tears,

They wanted her to let go. To fall. To be held by the Void.

She laughed bitterly in the dark. She no longer tried to look around. Doing so for any sustained period of time restarted her panic. Which was something she was unable to afford while clutching her lifeline.

If it was just a stupid trust fall, then why had they put this ladder here!?

She sobbed. Many times.

She'd made several attempts to reason her way out of this. This was supposed to be a test. And exam? Shouldn't she be able to apply the knowledge she'd acquired to this situation?

She'd tried to conjure Soul-Light, something that she'd learned in her very first week in the Iris. The Void swallowed the Logos in an instant.

She'd tried scratching a small summoning circle into the ladder, in a desperate attempt to summon help. Even the Gnome, Jingles would have been a sight for sore eyes... at least she wouldn't be alone.

She'd tried dozens of different illusions, even ones that made no sense. She went so far as to attempt to make mist. Even that level of sensory input would be comforting.

Her strength was failing.

Any moment now, the choice would be robbed from her, and she plummeted into the darkness regardless.

With one last shred of resolve, she pushed herself off of the ladder with a shove.

She fell deep into the dark and reached out to the Void.