Chapter 48 – A House of Knowledge
In order to reach Adam’s office, hoping to find clues on his research, Adam, Emily, and Oliver paced through the great domed main hall of the Menhir League. Giant skeletons of whale turtles and gale bats hung from the ceiling. The Oath of Objective Truth was inlaid into the wide floor with golden letters; a constant reminder for researchers not to allow dogma or previously held beliefs to cloud the judgement of objective facts. Amidst the lettering stood a replica of the ancient menhir, around which the first members of the League gathered to share their knowledge.
Supposedly, the magnificent room of veined marble symbolised the League’s mission to gather knowledge. However, the ridiculous investment to make it so beautiful was probably more motivated by the financial necessity to impress donors and new students.
“Hmm, you can tell Caine never visited this place much,” Adam said, his footsteps echoing through the room.
“How so?” Emily replied. “Because there are so few people here?”
“Huh, now that you mention it. No, because many details are wrong. Look at the cabinets at the sides. There should be all kinds of scientific curiosities, like newly invented medicines and alloys. I guess he didn’t notice them, so they don’t exist here.”
Oliver pointed. “Seem like he did pay attention to those stuffed lizards and those… uhm… things floating in jars. Organs I think?”
Emily scrunched up her nose. “Probably because they are nasty.”
Adam frowned at the bottled flesh. “And judging by the shape, he probably had no idea what they were, either. Hmm, but why are there more cabinets in place of things he hasn’t noticed? Shouldn’t there just be nothing if he doesn’t remember?”
“Well, maybe the ‘holes’, the things he doesn’t remember, are kind of filled in with things he expects to be there? Like, if you look at a person and try to remember them later on, you can imagine a relatively accurate picture of them, right?”
“Right,” Oliver and Adam said at the exact same time. They looked at each other for a moment and smiled.
“But did you pay attention to the shape of that person’s ears?” Emily continued. “Or the length of their eyelashes? I think what you remember are the main points you’ve actually seen. The rest, the details, are kinda filled in with what you expect to be there.”
Adam nodded. “Sounds plausible. If we could only see the things Caine has explicitly paid attention to, we would be seeing holes or empty spaces everywhere.”
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The group walked farther until they ended up at a simple wooden door in one of the hallways. Adam stopped himself from walking through at the last moment, as there was nothing but an inky black darkness beyond the doorway. Adam stared wide-eyed at the empty void that had almost swallowed him.
“Hmm, you mentioned something about holes and empty spaces?” Oliver asked dryly.
“That’s… bizarre,” Emily breathed. “Oh! Maybe Caine never walked through that hallway? If he’s never been there, he doesn’t have any idea what’s behind the door! So, it’s not ‘filled in’ with something he expects to be there!”
Adam picked up a rather depressing book from one of the nearby closets, ‘The End of Identity – A Study on Cultures Destroyed by the Pure,’ and threw it. The darkness unceremoniously swallowed the book, no sound came of something hitting the ground. Adam suppressed a shiver down his spine. “Maybe we should take a different route to my office.”
After a while, the group neared Adam’s office. As they got closer, they didn’t see shimmering shapes in the office’s direction.
“What if Caine or a young Adam is in there?” Oliver asked. “In Eulenschloss, the soldiers and that officer reacted to our presence. Or what if it’s a specific memory, like your oh-so-funny joke with the stables, will they see us standing in the room? Or will the memory just happen in front of us as if we aren’t there?”
Adam worked his jaw. “Hard to say. The apparitions from our joke just now didn’t seem to see us at first. But they did later on, just like in Eulenschloss. So, I wouldn’t be surprised that it’s possible to interact with the events of those memories as well.”
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Emily followed Adam down a winding stair. “Huh, that would be an interesting conversation. Like, how would sober versions of you at the time react when we walk in?”
Adam thought about that for a moment. “Even better: how would the person Caine thinks I was back then react to it? Oh wait, if it’s the version of Caine as he was at the time, would he still be on our side?” If his ‘change’ happened at a later point in time, this version could be a valuable source of help and information. Behind layers of bitterness and rage, a vague feeling of hope rose within him, and he immediately got angry with himself that it did. Maybe he was plotting behind our backs the whole time. And what if he attacks us together with the version of me during the war?
After they prepared for a battle just in case, Adam opened the door.
He blinked a couple of times; seeing a room he’d forgotten the contents of, but which almost immediately was as familiar as his own boots was a peculiar sensation.
The walls that weren’t covered with bookcases were hung full of art, wooden masks, notes, and drawings about sorcery and ancient cultures. Many paintings of wild animals, like lions and great apes, hung together with diagrams depicting their movements in combat. A timeline of history hung above the messy desk. It indicated the alternating periods in which civilisations practising Instinct had the upper hand and those in which Novaseers held the most power.
Above a cabinet with all too strong beverages, a banner hung on the wall. Adam grimaced a bit to see a message once shown throughout Dorenland. ‘THERE IS HOPE. Ajax is defeated by the Fist of Gotterburg’ it read. A stylized depiction of Adam taking down the armoured warrior on his abominable mount was shown below. Adam vaguely remembered how proud he used to be. He scrunched up his nose, trying to ignore the bitter aftertaste it left him.
Upon closer investigation, they could see the translucent shape of Caine who sat on an oaken chair. As expected, a tiny sprite flew around this mirage as well. Carefully, Adam touched the speck of green light, causing Caine to turn into a real person, who seemed oblivious to the three other people in the room. Adam wasn’t sure whether to sigh in relief or groan in disappointment. Together with Emily and Oliver, he moved back towards one of the bookcases to make room for whatever would happen in front of them.
A young version of himself casually kicked open the oaken door; a beast of a man in his prime.
His long brown hair hung loose and wild. There was a subtle tension in his steps that radiated power, like the slow, temperate walk of a predator. Even though he wore his trusty, long leather coat, the young Adam was way more muscular, lean, and in shape than the current one. Painfully so. Moreover, untouched by the trauma of Ziecherhein, the young Adam didn’t cover his wrists and neck yet and his eyes were still brown.
None of that was what shocked the current Adam the most, though. There was something… off about the glance in his younger self’s eyes. An unpredictable tension in the way he worked his jaw. Like an aura of danger that clung to him, as if he could lunge into an attack at any moment. Maybe, hopefully, it was just how Caine remembered him. Although it reminded Adam an infuriating lot of his damned father and damned Joshua.
However, the young Adam’s eyes lit up when he saw Caine. The friends grinned, bumped their left elbows, and shook their right hands, a greeting born out of an old inside joke.
“Well, well, Caine at the Menhir League,” Adam said with a puzzled twinkle in his eyes. He leaned against his desk and crossed his muscular arms. “Must be difficult, with all this scary science around?”
Caine faked an expression of fear as he looked at Adam’s notes. “Oh, I’m this close to running away screaming. Although that’s probably because of your smell.” Both of them laughed. “Actually, I wanted to ask you a favour. It’s about this research you are performing.”
The current Adam exchanged silent glances with Oliver and Emily. She pressed a finger to her lips.
The young Adam raised a thick eyebrow. The current Adam silently wondered if they were really that hairy or if that was just how Caine remembered them. “Well, this is going to be interesting. You want a favour about research you well know is secret, and shouldn’t even know about?”
Caine sat down on a chair and sighed. “Look, the war isn’t going as well as it should.” Caine stared with lines of tiredness in his young eyes. It was strange to see him, the old embodiment of nonchalance, that tense.
The young Adam nodded slowly. “Sad but true.”
When did this conversation happen? After the tragedy of Unfall Valley? The loss of the Needles, maybe? Adam squinted and searched his memory for clues.
“We need all we got to survive!” Caine continued. “I’ve heard about this sorcery of memory, Reminiscence, and that it might very well be what the Prophet is using. That could be the key to stopping him!”
“ ‘Heard’? Agatha the Red has been talking, eh?” The young Adam gave a lopsided smirk and scratched his jaw. The current Adam frowned as his younger self’s jawline seemed sharper and more powerful than it should be. Other features, like the eyebrows and muscular build, seemed a tad exaggerated as well. In contrast, Caine’s younger self seemed oddly skinny and had a bigger nose than Adam remembered. He gave a dark grin. My, my, were you jealous of me?
The young Adam nodded slowly. “But I agree, I doubt we’ll take the Prophet down without this third type of sorcery. Although I haven’t been able to get it to work yet.”
“Teach me about it!” Caine said, standing up. “This is not the time for secrets and political approval, but one for action!”
Adam narrowed his eyes as if trying to catch him in a lie. “Are you asking me on your own, or on behalf of the Starwing Order? Last time I checked, they weren’t such a big fan of me.”
“I’m asking you in secret.” Caine gave the friendliest, most sincere smile that hideous mug could produce. “Come on man, you know you can trust me.”
Trust, eh? The current Adam clenched his hands into fists and the muscles in his arms tensed up.