Chapter 3: To Be Known

“Well!” Lila said, seemingly amused about something, “that’s certainly one way to put it. Now, I’m sure you have a hundred questions for us. Why don’t you come with me to my Sanctum, and we can let these people go back to what they were doing?”

“Yes,” the Grand Elder agreed. “No sense in keeping the rest of you here. And seeing as young James is unable to access his power at the moment, training would not be of any benefit. Particularly from you, Erebus. It is well and good for him to understand the cycle of life and death, and the gravity of his actions, but anything further can wait until he is ready.”

With that, the assembled Elders swept out of the room, leaving James behind. Even Master Erebus left, with nary a glance. Without the imposing Elder nearby, James felt oddly bereft.

“Oh, don’t miss him too much,” Lila sighed, seeing his line of sight. “He’ll be out and about, and you’ll see him often, really. Come along, then.”

“Mistress-”

“Don’t call me that, dear. Lila will do, or ‘ma’am’ if you insist on a formal address.”

“-ma’am, why am I here if I don’t have a power?” James asked. Why was he not being trained by the Elders, if not because of that?

“Correction - you cannot access it yet. Your power awakened before Erebus brought you here, yes? And then you could never seem to reach it again.”

James nodded hesitantly.

“That happens sometimes, with some of our disciples. It might take a particular emotional or mental state, or a certain environment, for them to be able to access their power. It’s really up to chance for us to figure out what that condition is. So for now, I’ll be teaching you all you need to know about the world and our place in it, so when you are ready, you can become a fully-fledged disciple.”

The Elder’s hand on his shoulder was warm, if a bit dry. He subconsciously leaned into her as they walked. She reminded him of something just out of his reach.

Her Sanctum was a stark contrast to Master Erebus’ Sanctum. Plain, grey stone formed the exterior, like the walls of the keeps and castles he was familiar with. But past the heavy oak doors, the interior was brightly lit. Large chandeliers hung along the length of the main hall, with braziers lining the walls. Banners hung high between the pillars, some with insignias, some with diagrams and maps, and still others covered in script he could not read.

Lower down, what initially appeared to be alcoves were passageways, some that lead down into the ground, and others that opened up into large chambers. And down the main hall, the apse opened up beneath a dome, with high shelves of tomes lining the walls. There were no flames there, but as they drew closer, James could see tiny magelights drifting through the air, altogether bright enough to illuminate the entire dome.

James looked up in wonder. The ceiling of the dome was covered in paintings, featuring all sorts of people and creatures. Wars and treaties played out across the stucco, along with scenes of romance and discovery. Beneath the dome, a spiral staircase allowed access to the upper storey of shelves and led further down into the ground, where he was sure hundreds upon thousands of tomes and scrolls were stored.

A gentle hand then led him down the staircase, revealing the cavernous understructure. In front of him, there was a deep, blue lagoon, lit from within by fluorescent creatures. It tapered off into a river at the far end, disappearing into a tunnel that led away from the Sanctum. Behind him, a central cavern was flanked by imposing statues and gargoyles, and further within, the supporting buttresses reached up through the ground like the ribs of some long-dead leviathan. Between these 'ribs' were stored what seemed to be a million tomes.

“It’s much bigger beneath than it seems on the outside,” Lila said gently. “One of my predecessors managed to work some spells into the masonry that allows this.” She nudged him forward, stepping between the spears of the statues.

James jumped as the floor began to vibrate, accompanied by the sound of stone grinding against stone. The stone at the center of the cavern sank into the ground, and an oddly textured table emerged. He blinked, and the strange texture coalesced into mountain ranges and valleys.

“The Continent,” Lila murmured, confirming his suspicions. She ran her fingers across the map, tracing along rivers until her finger rested inside a half-ring of mountains. “The Council’s lands.”

James approached the table hesitantly. They were a lot further south than he had thought. As he took in the shape of the land, he realized with a start that they were fairly close to the southern coast of the Continent. Following the coastline, he traced it south and west, quickly stopping on…

On Briarcliffe. They were only two fingers’ width from his home.

A crash behind him shook him out of his reverie. He spun on his heel to look, pressing closer to the Elder, who sighed.

“Must you always activate the array?” a goblin grumbled, picking himself off the ground. “I very much wish to peruse your shelves without losing a limb or two.”

“Master Edmund.”

“Yes, yes.” The goblin waved them off. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

“Wait!” For a beat, James wondered who had spoken, until he realized that it was himself. The goblin turned around slowly, cocking his head to the side.

“You want to know why your family was executed?”

Before James could even open his mouth to ask.

“Wh- how did you know?” James squeaked out.

“Mind reading just so happens to be one of my gifts,” the goblin grinned with mouthful of pointed teeth.

Mind reading. The thought of it terrified him, especially as the goblin put away its teeth and lowered its gaze in an attempt to look docile and non-threatening. Powers like strength or speed or magic seemed acceptable to James, but the sheer intrusion of a power like mind reading was horrifying.

"If it helps, I have to make eye contact," the goblin offered, still staring at its feet.

"Oh, he'll get used to it eventually, Eddie. Now, since you so kindly offered, your insight on what he asked would be invaluable," the other Elder consoled.

To James' shock and dismay, the goblin nodded, its large ears flapping, and scampered over to them. Then, Lila outright offered it an arm so the goblin could hop up onto the edge of the table-map. Out of nowhere, the Elder produced a tiny white flag and handed it to the goblin, which gleefully placed it on Briarcliffe.

"Notice anything...special about this town?"

"It's... coastal?" James replied, hesitantly. His apprehension with speaking to the creature was largely overridden by the need to know exactly what had happened.

The goblin snapped its spindly fingers, making James jump.

"Just so. As the only eastern coastal town in the Kingdom of Corith, Briarcliffe holds major strategic value. It is not a large port for trade, as you well know, but rather a miliary port. Look to the east, James. What lies to the east of Corith?"

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"The Marshes?" He had not thought much of the world outside Briarcliffe, let alone Corith, before. While he had heard of the Marshes in passing, it was only in conjunction with folk tales he took little stock of.

“The Icudoran Marshes, child," Lila corrected. "Home to several tribes of Beastmen as well as a clan of orcs."

"Beastmen?"

"We classify them thus colloquially," the older woman said. "In reality, they are an amalgamation of losely related species, with one common thread - they were human once, but by some sorcery, they were made beasts."

"What do the Beastmen have to do with Briarcliffe?"

"That's just the key, my dear," she smiled, pleased to share this bit of knowledge with him. "There is a centuries-old feud between the Beastmen and Corith. The Beastmen were once citizens of the human kingdom, but broke off from them for ideological reasons. Once they turned, they began pillaging the southern shores of the kingdom, neatly cutting off trade to the Deep South. When Corith finally won the wars, they established Briarcliffe as a naval port town, where a fair portion of the Corithan navy is docked. It is meant to deter any further incursions from the Beastmen."

"The other notable feature of Briarcliffe is that it borders the Morian Deserts, and the Scorned Lands by extension," the goblin continued, as more miniature banners were placed on the map. "If any land army wishes to attack Corith, they would have to cross the Deserts, as do bandits and warlords from the Scorned Lands. The proximity of Briarcliffe to the Deserts, as well as its even terrain for housing troops, makes for a suitable place to garrison a standing army. Tell me, James. What role did your father have in Briarcliffe?"

"He was the governor, I think," James replied, realizing he had never given what his parents did much though besides knowing they were fairly influential. "But what does this have to do with our family?"

"Your grandfather was the governor," Lila corrected gently. "Your father was the Lord Commander of the Grey Knights and was one of two men in the entire kingdom who could command the garrison - the other man was the King of Corith himself."

"And," the goblin interjected, as if that wasn't enough, "your mother's family was none other than the Kents, who command the bulk of the fleet at Briarcliffe."

James gaped. He had no idea that his family had so much military power. He nearly made eye contact with the goblin again before he sharply looked back down at the map.

"Then... did someone want this power? Was that why...?"

"Yes and no," the goblin shrugged. "While it is true that many notable families were envious of he Greyfields, the one who truly felt threatened by their amassing of military power was the King of Corith himself."

The thought of it ran through James like a lightning bolt. The king himself?

"But... I though someone else had made the accusation. And the King only ordered the... punishment."

"There was certainly no shortage of people who would gladly play along."

Lila frowned. "But there is one point that doesn't quite make sense, Edmund. Why did the king only act now, and not when James' mother married his father?"

"What significant change occurred in the fledgling king's court only a year prior to the executions," the goblin queried, nonchalant.

"The death of the Queen Dowager," James answered immediately, remembering the entire mont they had all been in mourning for a woman they didn't even know.

"Precisely, the only woman - no, person - who could control the king died. Rather suspiciously, but that is irrelevant at the moment. And guess who stepped up to be the king's primary advisor? Why, none other than Lord August, father of the Queen of Corith. How opportune!"

"Lord August, whose wife just so happens to be the siser of the commander of the Royal Navy," Lila murmured, eyes distant.

"Not only that, he is a man fully convinced that gold and salt mines are hidden in the Marshes," the goblin finished. "So you can see, he wanted your family's power for himself, but also to invade the Marshes, potentially restarting an old war, just to make himself wealthier. And he just so happened to be able to exploit the king's paranoia and the envy of the court to make it happen."

With that, the goblin hopped off the table and padded away.

James was still reeling with shock when Lila put her hand on his shoulder and murmured, "Would you like a moment longer to think on it? I know it is a lot to take kin. We can talk about the rest of the Continent on another day."

"No." The word ripped its way out of his throat, surprising him with its ferocity. "No. Let's continue. there's nothing I can do about the past, right now."

"If you're sure," she sighed.

I'm sure, James though. I know that the moment I have my power, the moment I can go back to Corith, I'm going to tear the king and Lord August to pieces. The vindictiveness of it surprised him, but only a little. He was cold with fury.

The Elder picked up another flag and placed it on the Deserts.

"It is common practice for many nations to exile their criminals to the Scorned Lands. In the Morian Deserts, bandits who were once proud citizens of Corith make their living. But that is not what it once was.

"Where Corith now is, was once a mighty nation known as the Moria. Historians say they were the first settlers from the Deep South, bringing their Old Gods and Deep Magic with them.

"The Kingdom of Tyraen," she said, putting down a flag on the Tyraen Plains, "once held all the land from the south sea to the Reyk Pass in the north.

"When Moria came, they were utterly destroyed by some black magics, leaving an empty desert and an arid grassland as the only evidence of their existence."

"What happened to the Moria?" James wondered. "If they were so powerful..."

"Who can truly say?" the Elder shrugged. "The truth is, they disappeared so quickly and so thoroughly, nobody knows. Some speculate that they simply took down their cities and left to return to the Deep South. Others speculate that some Deep Magic rite gone awry obliterated them.

"The most popular theory has always been that they angered their gods, who consumed them utterly."

"Are gods real?"

"Again, who can say? We know magic is real, and perhaps demons too, so why not gods? Alas, they have yet to interfere with us, so there is something to be said of that too.

"Now, what the Moria left, exiles from the North settled. The one thing about us humans, despite being weaker and overall more short-lived, is that we reproduce very quickly. The humans that established the kingdom of Corith quickly expanded, also invading the Marshes and driving out the indigenous species there. I suspect it was something they left that turned the humans there into Beastmen.

"Humans soon became the species with the highest numbers on the Continent, driving the orcs back into the mountains and steppes, the elves back into their hidden halls and woods, and the dwarves deeper still beneath the earth.

"Eventually, the twelve human kingdoms that had been established," she uttered, "had enough of fighting each other, deciding to unite into one Empire - the Empire of the Sun. Each ruling family had a seat on their Senate, and they all appear to have lived in peace and harmony till today."

James did not miss the deliberate choice of the words "appear to". There seemed to always bee more than what met the eye. Of the twelve red flags representing the twelve kingdoms of the Empire, the Elder snatched away five.

"The Empire once tried to expand further east and north, but was met with the coalition from the Kingdom of the Moon. Species that the humans had tried to wipe out had banded under one banner to strike back.

"But with one spell array from the sorcerers of the Kingdom of the Moon, both armies were obliterated and the land beneath them scorched away, leaving what we now call the Red Wastes." A black flag landed on that desert. "The Red Wastes, Tyraen Plains, and Deserts of Moria together form what you know to be the Scorned Lands."

"Why is one the Empire of the Sun, and the Kingdom of the Moon? Did they just want to be opposites?"

"On the contrary, this very much happens to do with religion. At the time these nations were established, people very much still believed in their gods. That has fallen out of favor in the last century, but I digress.

"The Empire is a monotheistic one, where their only god lies personified in the brightest object in the sky - the sun. On the other hand, there are a wider variety of beliefs in the Kingdom of the Moon, as each species brought their faiths together. The worship of the Moon Goddess predominates, but there are also worshippers of the Father of the Forest, the Maiden of the Mountains, and the Scourge of the Sea, who also go by other names. Just to name a few."

James pointed at the icy land in the far north still devoid of flags.

"What about here?"

"These are the Ozmyth Territories," the Elder replied, placing a flag on the north-westernmost peninsula, "which are nominally still a territory of the Kingdom of the Moon, but enjoys far more freedom.

"Over here,to the north and east, lies the Vrisian Tundra. Few make it out of there alive, harsh as those conditions may be."

"Why don't we go further east from here?" James wondered, pointing at the patch of desert just south of the Tundra.

"The Sea of Sand," she replied, with a flourish. "A massive desert that is, so far, completely impassible unless you sell your soul to some greater demon. That desert has swallowed entire armies alive. That is why we are a separate continent from whatever is out east."

Something only the Elder could hear suddenly seemed to draw her attention. She blinked and pulled James away from the table. With another grinding noise, it sank back into the ground.

"I am needed elsewhere," the Elder declared. "Any final questions?"

"What is your power?" James asked, feeling overwhelmed and small.

"I can see the memories of the dead when I touch what they left behind." From the folds of her robe, she produced a hefty tome. "A brief history of the Continent, if you care to learn more. Come and ask myself or Master Edmund, should you have any further questions."

With a whirl of blue-grey robes, she was gone, leaving James standing between statues, staring into the bleak darkness of the hall.