MQ: Scaling Heaven

[Ashiakin]

((By invitation only.))

Ashiakin’s pen held steady even as the tower’s foundations quivered, reverberating with the cannon fire and the cries of the masses outside. The black ink left a complex trail of tribal code and ancient glyphs across the parchment—a secret language that only he could read. Seated at a cramped desk in the king’s private study, it felt strange to him that record keeping was even necessary now, that logbooks and records could serve as a counterweight to the revolutionary demagoguery of the rabble. The people love to talk about bread and freedom these days, he thought sourly, but not how it’s hardly possible to have them both at the same time.

Across the room from him stood Iorlan Rathaxea, King of Salvar, silently witnessing the collapse of his kingdom through the tower window. He was a tall man for a Salvaran, in his late forties with long, graying hair that had once been brilliantly dark, and he maintained a well-trimmed beard. Ever since the events of the morning—the betrayal of the Church and the news of nascent peasant revolts in the countryside, his own army being forced to lay siege to St. Denebriel’s Cathedral, rendering them incapable of controlling most of the riots in the capital—he had reacted calmly and with strength. But now it seemed there was something dead in his gray eyes.

Aside from the king, Yesirvn Jaicnec, an ex-Arbiter of the Church of the Ethereal Sway sat at a long table, idly flipping through The Records of the Enlightenment. Stocky and in his middle-fifties, the “retired” priest was an unsettling figure—gruff and quick, somehow giving the impression that he knew everything that was going on without paying attention. He had been released from the Church and bereft of his lands some months before on trumped up charges, his true crime having been serving as a spy for Iorlan in the religion’s upper echelon. Ashiakin did not entirely trust him.

The door to the crowded study squeaked open and a lanky blond woman, her olive skin implying Coronian descent, stepped into the room. She was Aerran Ivkinic, the Countess of Aouk, and a close ally and friend of Ashiakin’s. Rumor had it that her rural holiday estate had been seized and her family slaughtered by a mass of blood-thirsty peasants, but for all that she seemed reasonably well-composed. There had been all sorts of rumors flying about since the morning and it was difficult to verify many of them—even for someone who was as well-connected as Ashiakin. Stills, all the rumors from western countryside seemed bleak, and it did not seem morbid to expect the worse.

“Your Majesty,” she said quietly, bowing slightly in Iorlan’s direction.

“Aerran,” said the king, turning toward her. “My condolences.”

“What, to her family or to our kingdom?” Yesirvn asked gruffly, slamming his book closed. “I’ve got a son in Sulgolok that the army may have bloody well run through because he’d felt a higher calling, but I doubt we’re here to chat about it. I don’t think a damn knitting circle is going to help us pick up the pieces of our government.”

“Yesirvn,” Aerran said levelly, taking a seat at the table, “that’s hardly appropriate.”

“Perhaps not,” said Ashiakin, looking to Aerran and then to Iorlan. “But I think we have to admit that he’s right. This is something that we’ve always planned for, but never in circumstances quite like this. We won’t last the night if we don’t concede that.”

Iorlan waved his hand to prevent anyone from speaking further. “Our course of action has been decided upon,” he said. “You all know that isn’t why I’ve asked you here. This isn’t about policy. There is something that the three of you must do for me.”

Ashiakin set his pen down in its jar of ink, the clink cutting through the silence of the room as loudly as the cannon-fire in the distance. He had been afraid of this and had been naively hoping it would not happen. “We are your friends and servants, Iorlan,” Ashiakin said, shooting a sharp glance at Yesirvn when he seemed ready to interject.

“Yes,” he said, looking at each of them in turn, “you three are the only friends I have had in this viper-filled labyrinth they call a castle I’ve lived in for the past three years. You’re the only ones I trust to do this. You must gain entry into St. Denebriel’s Cathedral and find the Justice of the Church. You must kill Lev Testhan.”

The three of them had known what he was going to ask and therefore there was no surprise. Clearly none of them wanted to do it—but clearly all of them were loyal enough to the man to do it even if it meant their deaths. “Then Lev Testhan will die,” Ashiakin said simply, and the other two echoed their agreement.

“There is something else,” he said, lips twisting at an odd angle as if he were regretting haven spoken already. “There… There is a man that you must find in the Cathedral. He must accompany you and you must bring him to me after Lev has been slain. His name is Dr. Dorian Ionos. He’s a conductor with a… curious connection to magic. I feel that I may be able to use him in the future, and that you may need him in the Cathedral.”

Ashiakin frowned—he did not like being told to take on an unknown accomplice with little explanation, but he trusted that the king’s motives were trustworthy. Still, he gave his assent along with the other two, wondering if they felt the same way.

“I may have to flee the city, if things get bad,” Iorlan admitted. “If I must do that, I’ll flee to Aihnrekvalok or Vogstok, most likely. The four of you are to meet up with me there when you have done what I’ve asked of you. I see no point in delaying any of this further. Please prepare yourselves and depart within the hour. You’re… you’re dismissed. I wish you only the best of luck. I’m afraid that you’ll need it.”

The three stood to leave, agreeing to meet in the armory in the castle’s basement shortly. Ashiakin was the last to leave the king’s study. As he was stepping out the door, the king called out to him, causing to pause and turn around to face the monarch.

“Ashiakin,” Iorlan said, a calculating look seeming to bring light back into his eyes, “I hope you’ll be able to ensure that betrayal does not cross their minds of your own.”

Ashiakin’s blue lips curled into a smile. “The Sway save the King,” he said.

[Ashiakin]

A draft skirted up the mouth of the sewer's entrance like the last cold breath of a dying creature. The three companions stood around the cavernous gap, checking their weapons and equipment in the flickering light of a single torch. They were all dressed in the crimson robes of the clergy, though Ashiakin's sash marked him as a Conciliator whereas Aerran's marked her as a less renowned Intercessor and Yesirvn's named him a lowly Mediator. Devotional masks--the images sometimes laughing, sometimes tearful faces of long-dead saints—were perched atop their heads, ready to be pulled down in case they ran into familiar clergy. Yesirvn's face particularly needed to be kept hidden. As a former Arbiter, he would be well known even amongst initiate Counsels, but his knowledge of the Cathedral's layout and customs would prove invaluable to the trio.

Having been given free reign to raid the King's private armory, they were particularly well armed. Aerran, never one for subtlety, wore a dark elven blunderbuss on her back and a hooked sword at her side. Ashiakin had opted to take his own bow and quiver of arrows along with his two knives, but had purloined a fine enchanted rapier and a Queen Valsharess pistol from the royal collection.

Yesirvn's choice of armament was less conventional. In one hand he held the group's torch, but in the other he held a sliding leash. At its opposite end was a hideous creature, one of the Church's pets from another realm—a squat, hideous thing with a tripod of legs, countless bulging eyes, and a circular mouth lined with vicious yellow fangs. It waddled with a sickening quickness, sucking on its teeth, slipping in and out of visibility. Yesirvn called it Sally, “after a woman I was once wed.”

Ashiakin crouched at the mouth of the sewer entrance, his eyes following the rusted ladder down the tunnel and into melded shadow. Echoes of shouts and scraping steel stole up the breach, sounding far away still. “That’ll be our friends holding off the Church, most likely,” he said. “They’ve been told to let us pass through safely.”

He stood, brushing the grime off the bottom of his robe, looking at his companions in turn. “I don’t want to do this anymore than either of you,” he said, “but I know you’re both with me so I’m not even asking. Lev’s never been disloyal before. I don’t mind having to kill him—he rightly deserves it, and worse—but I don’t understand it. Iorlan could have sent anyone to kill him. He sent us, I think, because he wants to know why.”

Yesirvn nodded, jerking Sally’s leash so that the creature skittered toward him with a coughing rasp, its yellow spittle dotting the moldy concrete. “I should be able to get us around most of the fighting,” he said. “There’s all sorts of secrets in the Cathedral, even things that I only know vaguely about. There’s answers there, if we can find them.”

“Iorlan wouldn’t have sent us if he didn’t think we could,” said Aerran, stroking the hilt of her crooked sword. “He knows there’s no one in the kingdom better suited to than us.”

“Perhaps,” said Yesirvn. “The Cathedral… It’s a strange place, an old place. It doesn’t play by our rules. You’ll see things there that you never thought possible. That’s why I’m less certain. Sometimes, well, being in the Cathedral can be like living in a dream.”
At first Ashiakin found Yesirvn’s subtle glorification of the Church’s headquarters unnerving, but he soon realized than even he was enchanted with the idea of their destination. “We should leave,” he said simply, turning toward the crevice.

The climb down the ladder seemed impossibly long to Ashiakin, his pale hands quickly becoming damp and spotted with scrapes from jagged rust. They did not speak in their descent, wanting to send as few echoes and possible slinking through the sewers below. Finally the ladder ended and Ashiakin dropped down onto slimy concrete amidst the dark and sounds of running water, the other two landing shortly after him.

Yesrivn’s torchlight revealed that they stood in the midst of a stone semi-circle passage, water and muck running down its center with a damp walkway on either side. Sally jumped down from its masters chest and clucked its teeth, pressing its lips to the grime.

Ashiakin lifted a finger to his blue lips to indicate quiet, and then pointed down the passage. A distant gunshot and heated shouts stirred the air, spiraling down the tunnel, but still a ways off. The trio and Yesirvn’s pet set off into the violent dark.

[Ashiakin]

They ran through the sewers for nearly an hour, the sounds of battle nothing more than ghosts—the violence never touched them. Yesirvn’s word held true. All around them it seemed that there were skirmishes, the sound of flintlocks cracking and steel blades slamming into armor, but they had no such encounters themselves. They were well into Church territory, anyway: If they encountered a fight, the clergy would see their disguises and they could use superior numbers to overwhelm their own monarchist allies. The thought did not sit well with Ashiakin, but he knew that it may be necessary.

Fortunately, it seemed that it would not be. The light of Yesirvn’s torch flickered through the distant shadows, showing that their path’s end was ahead. There was a grubby stone wall with only a storm drain to distinguish it, through which the sewer’s murky water flowed into some unknown depths.

Tangled against the storm drain was a pathetic figure, clad in filthy rags that barely concealed his wrinkled, bony form. His long, gray hair was heavy with shit. Achingly, he craned his neck up from the filthy stream, looking up at the three companions with the scaly eyes of a blind man. “Thrice I have been passed by without pity,” he rasped. “Can you spare some change for one who once knew the way?”

Ashiakin, his lips pursed in visible disgust, strode forward. He grasped the man’s hand firmly—struggling not to recoil as his wet, filthy, fingers clawed at his own—and pressed a coin into the man’s hand. “I can spare more than that, friend,” he said, as if by rote, “I offer my hand in friendship, if you will only show me the way.”

The man murmured something and slumped to the floor, impossibly shrinking, twisting, and vanishing through the bars into the unknown dark. Above the storm drain, dust and stone flakes fell away to reveal a simple wooden door. It swung open soundlessly.

Aerran laughed, momentarily forgetting to minimize their echoes. “Just like in the stories,” she muttered, amused. “It’s right out of the Records, almost.”

“Yes,” said Ashiakin. “The Church isn’t as clever with their secrets as they think they are. I suppose it’s supposed to be like hiding in plain sight. Any peasant is well familiar with the tale and could conceivable get in, but who would connect it?” He shrugged.

“It changes every time someone gets it right, you know,” Yesirvn said, jerking Sally closer to him—it had been “sniffing” around the bars for sight of the old man. “Sometimes Counsels are stuck here for hours trying to remember how the story goes.” He shook his head, smiling, then stepped through the doorway and pulled his pet along.

Ashiakin and Aerran followed, both doing a quick check of their weapons. They were in the basement levels of the Cathedral, with halls of black stone stretching all the way on either side of them. There were secured doors at regular intervals, as well as sparsely placed torches, and many turns to take. The air was dank and chilly. The whole place smelled of rot, almost worse than the sewer.

Yesirvn led them now, knowing the way better than any of them—Ashiakin was familiar with the Cathedral, but not like the ex-Arbiter. They had taken exactly three turns before they caught glimpse of a figure turning around a corner a head of them, his shadow dancing along the walls in the dark.

The ex-Arbiter halted immediately, lowering his torch so as not to cast any extra light. “Well, well,” he said, the shadows not concealing his grin.

“It’s possibly someone sent to follow us,” said Aerran, “but I’d say it’s more likely that some initiate is down here running errands. We don’t know, though.”

“Since we do not know,” Ashiakin mused, “we must follow him.”

The three rounded the corner quietly just in time to see one of the doors along the wall close. The companions looked at one another and nodded, rushing toward the door. With Ashiakin and Aerran keeping watch to the sides, Yesirvn flung it open. “Name yourself and for whom you stand!” he hissed, Sally straining on its leash.

[Dorian]

Though the labyrinth was cramped and its hallways small, the figure scuttling through them tiny by comparison. Although strong with youth, standing straight as if to defy the drab gravitas of his surroundings, it seemed an act; even the prodigious Dorian Ionos, with all his bravado and courage, seemed to be only putting on an act before an unsympathetic audience. The passages were woven tighter than the finest rugs of Akashima, and at times he could discern the most subtle slope, as if one hallway was laid on top of another. He could not tell how deep he was; all he wanted to find was somewhere to hide or some way to escape. The doors he kept seeing were always barred shut or sealed with enormous, forbidding padlocks.

Normally as serenely self-assured as his finest compositions, the doctor of music's composure was finally starting to crack. This place just seemed wrong. Something in it whispered to him faintly and forlornly, something he did not quite trust. He had once been allowed to play a scale on a grand pipe organ, one of the best in Alerar, and when his finger left the last key he put his ear against the belly of that wooden leviathan. In its innards he heard the most precious echo, as if the last sounds of the thing were rattling around inside it waiting to be released. The voice now dogging his footsteps was much the same, only it had been trapped inside the organ-belly of this monstrous cathedral for centuries. And the years had not been kind...it had grown malevolent, tricksome, ready to hinder the path of any who dared traverse its domain.

He could suddenly hear voices behind him, soft and still, and the faintest trace of footsteps. He quickened his pace, even his keen and clear mind finally cracking from the psychological torture of these damp, cramped hallways. It was the demon come to torment him again, he was sure of it. The battle had not pressed this far beneath the citadel; the monks were still running about above killing anyone they didn't know. No flesh but his walked these halls, so the footsteps had to be something exceedingly sinister. There was no telling what foul beasts lurked behind those doors, either. He felt almost like a beast himself, for he could smell terror on the very air around him. It never occurred to him that it was his own.

Rounding the corner, he saw a door. It was slightly ajar already, its mouth yawning open, faint light from a torch showing it to be empty. Whatever had dwelt in it had to be long gone. Maybe it was taken to the battle above...

Grabbing the torch from the wall and slipping into the door, he shut it slowly, leaning heavily against it. He looked around the room, holding the torch forward. It was enormous, stretching as far as he could see in all directions. It seemed to produce a weak light of its own, but it was flickering as if something in it was defective -- but it was like he looked out on a plain in three directions. On the floor in front of him was a shattered globe, set in the floor above a panel of what appeared to be suitcoat buttons covered in strange symbols. Behind him was the door and a wall, and he gripped the handle tightly. A room like this was not the sort of thing he needed to soothe his nerves. It was unnatural. But at least it provided a chance to rest his legs and regain some measure of sanity.

Suddenly the portal he leaned against flew open. Unable to keep his footing, he fell backward out into the hallway, smacking his head against the cold stone. Through the stars flashing before his eyes he could make out nothing but snarling, gnashing teeth belonging to a particularly ugly brute and a voice demanding to know who he was. Throwing up his hands to defend his face, knowing he would never see daylight again as a living soul, he shouted the only defense he had.

"My name is Dorian Ionos! I have no side in your quarrel!"

[Ashiakin]

“I’m afraid you do now, Doctor Ionos,” said Ashiakin, staring circumspectly at the man sprawled on the floor. He could not see what use Iorlan thought this Dorian might be, but he remained open to being impressed.

Aerran extended her hand in order to help their new companion up. Yesirvin reluctantly restrained Sally and wandered past the open door, distracted by something.

“You see, we’re friends of the King on whose fine land you choose to lounge about and whose domain this monstrous pinnacle despoils,” Ashiakin continued, speaking as if to himself, regarding the Doctor with scientific amusement. “Patriots and fools, you could say. We gather you’re either one of the two or both, at least in some sense.

“We’ve dressed as you see us and stuck into this place on an extremely important errand. You’re to help us as you think you can, when you think you can. Otherwise you are to keep quiet and do as we say. I have a deep and abiding affection for our sovereign and I am sure it would grieve him deeply to hear that you… fell in the midst of battle, say.” Ashiakin smiled acidly at that, his white hair swaying oddly in the dead air of the hall.

“Are you armed, Doctor Ionos?” Aerran asked, fingers gliding over the hilt of her hooked sword as her eyes searched for a weapon on the man’s person.

There was a clatter from the open room, however, that drew her attention as well as Ashiakin’s. The room within was changed—in fact, it could no longer properly be called a room at all. A mountain path surged up from the foot of the doorframe, winding and climbing toward snow-covered peaks that loomed miles in the distance. Although the hall remained untransformed, it was filled with the ghostly echo of some other place.

Yesirvin was striding down the path toward the door, Sally reluctantly following in tow. As the ex-Arbiter was nearing the doorway, the scene flickered—experienced some crisis of existence, hesitated between the mountain and the room—and then the old room was back again, the shattered crystal ball as lonely as the distant mountain.

“The device is broken,” Yesirvin said, looking cautiously at Dorian, but speaking more to the others. “We’re going to see many more rooms like this. Rooms that are functioning properly. They’re one of the ways the Cathedral defends itself—how it hides its secrets. You really have to know what you’re doing in here. It’s hard to tell what’s real.”

The large man clapped his hands together, tugging Sally through the door. “Well then,” he said, trying to seem less gruff. “Let’s get going. I’ll take up the rear.” There was a subtle but quite clear message in his words—Dorian was, essentially, their prisoner.

Ashiakin nodded and was turning to leave when he noticed that Sally was crunching on bits of crystal between its twisted fangs. The bloody shards fell to the drab, gray floor and sparks flew. Miniature empires, barely perceptible to his eyes, rose, flickered, and fell around those bits of crystal—their poetry and songs, wars and revolutions, passions and treacheries whispered fiercely and then were silent. Peasants rose to be kings and fell again to be peasants, cities were built and crumbled into bits of glittering glass. After a second, they were only minor stains on the stone floor of the Cathedral—the nexus of a realm that was itself rent asunder.

[Dorian]

Dorian got up and dusted himself off, not speaking as the display of strange sights moved before his very eyes. In some way, it reminded him of home...of the way the Citadel would shift and move about when one stood within its rooms or stared too long down the same passageway.

But something Ashiakin said had angered Dorian, and he turned to say so.

"Lounge about?"

Dorian was not the kind of man to take such words lightly. Snarling beast or not, he was proud enough to defend himself. And now he knew these people would not kill him out of hand. They might still kill him, but perhaps by asserting himself they would be less likely to do it arbitrarily.

"I'll have you know that I am the finest composer in the civilized world. I was not brought here to lounge, but to work day and night on the artwork so great a nation deserves. You may not desire the finer things..." he sniffed, his glance falling to the three companions and their clothes, "but those whose manners seek refinement do not hesitate to ask Dorian Ionos, Professor of Composition and Accredited Doctor of Music. It is not my fault that the day I was running over the acoustics in this building you Salvarans decided to start yourself a civil war."

Dorian was seething. He had come to Salvar on commission from the King himself, to teach the King's favored fosterlings. But he had also come to escape the civil war that had embroiled his own Corone. It seemed he had done nothing but stumbled into another one.

Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a slender wand and a smooth stone emblazoned with an unfamiliar rune. With a sudden jerk of his hand, the stone released a ringing note, pure and piercing. As the note died on the air, a stream of fire shot from the tip of Dorian's wand. He had been practicing; it was now thick, and seemed to trail for a moment along the stone floor as if the wand itself was shooting not merely fire, but also a thicker, more fibrous type of flame. The burst ended as soon as it began, but a black, sooty mark on the stone indicated that it would cause significant damage to those who stood in its path.

"My lot seems cast with yours now, ladies and gentlemen, whether I wish it or not. But while I prefer to use diplomacy to achieve my ends, I am not a stranger to blunter means. Lead where you will, and for God's...excuse me, for the Sway's sake...be quick about it."

[Ashiakin]

Ashiakin listened to Dorian impassively, although he raised an eyebrow when the flame burst out from the end of his wand. Dorian's outburst had been educational—angering someone all too often provided easy access to their résumé. He seemed to be a man of refinement without any political agenda to enact. Ashiakin knew this would prove to be either useful or annoying, depending on the way his moral compass swung.

Aerran had only half-listened to Dorian’s speech. She had been distracted by something, glancing up and down the hallway nervously. Yesirvn was frowning gruffly, allowing Sally to wander about the padlocked doors while Dorian introduced himself.

“The finest composer in the civilized world?” Ashiakin asked after their guest had finished. “There doesn’t seem to be much of that left. Our side is trying to save it, really, but it doesn’t help that we have the Sway’s earthly representatives and a multitude of hungry, irrational peasants trying to drag our whole nation into anarchy.”

Ashiakin waved his hand dismissively. “It’ll be hard to save the world if we stand around chatting in the hallway. We really have to get going, I’m afraid.”

“Wait,” Aerran hissed, her eyes narrowing on flickering shadows in the distant torchlight. Silence fell over the group. Slowly, the sound came to them all: voices and footsteps approaching, not only from one direction, but from all possible routes.

“Damn,” Ashiakin muttered, rubbing his pale white eyebrow while he quickly moved through his thoughts. “Aerran, come with me. We’ll go to the right and try and see if we can gauge their strength without being seen. Yesirvn and Dorian, you go to the left and do the same. Do not attack and do not be seen. Once you know how many there are, and if possible, how they are armed, meet back at this open door. We will make a decision about which group to attack from there.”

“Ashiakin,” said Yesirvn, looking resigned to the plan but still rubbing his beard, “you know that we could try to—”

“No,” said Ashiakin, cutting him off. “That’s too much of a risk. Not yet. Go.”

With that, Aerran drew her hooked sword and Ashiakin his bow and they set off down the hallway. When they were out of earshot, Yesirvn jerked Sally closer to him and looked Dorian in the eye. “You stay here,” he said. “I don’t need no fancy-pants bard pussyfooting after me a tad too loudly and getting me killed.”

Without another word, Yesirvn turned and moved toward the other end of the hall.

Ashiakin glanced back to see Yesirvn walking off without Dorian and frowned. As he considered doubling back to send Dorian after the ex-priest, the slithering of a shadow—too large to be an anomaly of the torchlight—caught him off guard. A second later a lone guard cautiously rounded the corner, standing in full view of the hall.

Aerran’s hooked sword glistened in the firelight as she raised it, but there was no need. Ashiakin had raised his bow and sent an arrow sailing in a matter of seconds. The arrowhead pierced the man’s throat and he fell to the floor, clasping his neck and gurgling as his blood splattered across the floor.

“Bapplebee!” a voice cried, preceding the sound of rushing footsteps.

Ashiakin cursed under his breath and signaled silently to Aerran that they should retreat. The pair sped back toward Dorian, occasionally glancing back to see if the rest of the guards had appeared. When they reached Dorian, six guards rounded the corner and stood over the body of their fallen comrade.

“Stop!” cried one of the guards, firing a crossbow bolt that narrowly missed the trio.

“Stop what,” Ashiakin muttered, eyes glancing at the advancing guards, “living?”

The door to the room with the broken globe creaked, swinging even more widely openly. Within it, a blank, white space swirled together and stabilized. It was calm and even, a tranquil, otherworldly sea lapping at the shores of a troubled realm. Without further ado, Ashiakin grabbed Dorian by the shoulders and shoved him through the door.

He turned toward Aerran, grimly meeting her gaze. “There’s no other way,” he said.

She nodded simply and followed after Dorian, hooked sword still in hand.

“Yesirvn!” Ashiakin cried out, nervously glancing at the guards who were almost upon them. “We have to go through the door! Come back now!”

There was no answer, though the sounds of battle echoed faintly in the hall. “Yesirvn!” he cried, more desperately. Ashiakin did not kid himself that he valued Yesirvn’s life or friendship—he simply knew that the man’s knowledge of the Cathedral was invaluable. But there was still no answer and the sounds of battle seemed to be fading.

Resignedly, Ashiakin cursed and stepped through the door just as the patrol fell upon him. He slammed the door behind him and it seemed to lock somehow, an eerie click reverberating throughout the room.

“Yesirvn isn’t coming,” he said plainly, then turned to face Aerran and Dorian.

[Dorian]

Dorian tucked away his baton as Ashiakin spoke, slipping it into his breast pocket with a flourish. He continued rubbing his songstone between his fingers, feeling its smooth surface, shiny and clear, except for the single run that appeared suspended in the center of its polished circle. He tended to agree with Ashiakin's assessment of the peasantry; why, only days before getting his invitation to attend the courts of the King, he had been mugged in the streets. The dratted urchin had even shown the audacity to....

His thoughts trailed off when suddenly his stone began to glow a faint yellow, casting pale shadows on the stone floor. It emitted a piercing tone, but softly, as if heard from a far distance...and then he heard the footsteps. The stone had done the same thing when he'd held it right before getting hit by that street rat, but he hadn't known what that was about then. Hmmm...I wonder.

Slipping the stone in his pocket, he grasped a torch firmly in his hand as the man called Yesirvn told him to stay put. He was mildly offended, but he suppressed his pride; the ugly man did happen to have an even uglier beast with him for protection, and Ashiakin seemed more than capable. He'd let them do what they felt; if they didn't want his help, he saw no reason to volunteer it.

With the one they called Ashiakin walking steadily away, and Yesirvn on the other side, he felt safe enough to examine the open portal. It looked very familiar, but the shattered crystal globe seemed out of place. He had seen this before somewhere, but he couldn't place it. Let's see...it was a long time ago, could it be the same principle? It would make sense, although things are shaped differently and this feels less structured, somehow weirder. But it does seem like the rooms in the Citadel before they are prepared! To test his theory, he thought of something, like the monks had told him. The thought that came to mind was a forlorn beach, waves gently lapping the shore, the sand smooth, supple, soft as silk. He didn't know why it came to mind, but he did know where he recognized it: his first love had been on a beach just like this. Dorian could almost see his lover's form materialize on the beach, and he longed to go to him.

But before his mind could give more substance to the image, he heard a cry, the twang of a bowstring, and a gurgling noise like a man choking in his own blood. He whirled his head in the direction of the noise, and saw that it was, indeed, a man choking in his own blood. Then Ashiakin was there, shouting, men were rounding the corner, shouting, Yesirvn was nowhere to be seen...

...and he felt a push at his back. Losing his balance, he fell headfirst through the portal, stumbling forward into the sand. He desperately tried to hold his balance, but the dunes gave way beneath him and he fell face first to the beach.

It stung his eyes, filled his hair, covered his robes. He had not remembered the sand on the beach he had been on so long ago being quite this coarse. He wished he had not fallen, desperately wished to get the nasty, grainy particles out of his hair. He tried to spit the grit out of his mouth, then to his amazement found that his mouth was empty. His face was clean, his hair perfectly arranged, his robes spotless. And that's when he knew what was going on.

"Wait!" He tried to shout fast enough, but too late; the portal had already swung shut. Leaping to his feet, he swept past Ashiakin and Aerran, beating furiously against it with his hands. But it was futile; the edges were already faded, going, gone, disappearing into nothing but the wind stirring the dune grass.

Turning to Ashiakin, he said, "Well, we're in a bit of a spot, thanks to your impulsiveness. My studies at Glissando were not all about chords and keys. We also studied history, music, art, philosophy, magical theory, and unless I miss my guess, these rooms functions like the rooms of the Citadel."

Reaching down to pick up some sand, he let it slip through his fingers, imagining it glowing and vanishing as it fell...and before their eyes, the sand seemed to glimmer like a thousand stars, burning to dust before it hit the ground. "But the Citadel rooms are constantly maintained by monks; when one steps through the portal, the room is set and does not change unless the monks are willing it. They operate on rules, and the combatant does not change the rules in the middle of the game. It appears this place is different."

Striding towards the water to get a foothold on the damp, firm sand, Dorian continued, "The shattered globe in that room has rendered this room unstable, unsure. And the Citadel was also constructed tens of thousands of years ago, a testament to the architectural and magical powers of the Mya, meaning this more recent construction is probably not as stable even when in working order." He imagined a boat in front of him, a small rowboat suitable for three. And there it appeared, out of thin air.

Turning back to Ashiakin and Aerran, he said, "There you go. I thought us a boat, and here it is. The room responds to what we desire. But when I was beating on that door, I wanted out, so it seems there are certain wants the room does not intend to grant."

He looked again at the boat, his bottom lip coming out in frustration. "I fear, friends, we could be here for a very long time."

[Ashiakin]

Ashiakin’s eyes sharpened at Dorian’s mention of his impulsiveness, but he said nothing and listened to him without looking at him. He looked back to where the door had been. Dunes masked an indistinct horizon.

He was vaguely familiar with the magic of the Citadel monks—he had always considered it an infantile trickery and bastardization of the magic of the Tap and the Forgotten, no matter the institution’s hallowed origins—but what Dorian said made sense. Ashiakin managed to look patronized without seeming petulant.

Aerran wandered to the edges of the water, allowing the waves to lap at the tip of her boots. She looked at the ocean as if judging whether or not it was real. “So we can’t just find where the door would physically be in the room and open it, whether or not we see it?” she asked as Dorian finished, her voice tinged with a mild, rhetorical hopelessness.

Then, a moment later, “Possibly, we could be here forever.”

Ashiakin frowned. He ignored her, instead looking to the rowboat that he had failed to notice before. “If you could imagine anything,” he asked rather sardonically, “why not conjure us up a frigate with a full crew? Or maybe our door out?”

Nonetheless, he strode over to the rowboat and climbed in, taking up one of the paddles. Aerran followed after him, taking the time to look to Dorian and shrug beforehand.

Ashiakin did not want to admit it to the others, but he was leery of continuing on without Yesirvn. He did not trust the priest—far from it—but he had felt like the man could not easily lie about the intricacies and oddities that lay between them and Lev Testhan. Now all they had were Ashiakin’s dusty memories of the Cathedral’s architectural philosophy and Dorian’s stuffy, academic musings. And they were lost in the broken rants and lunatic ravings of a magic as ancient as Salvar’s godly stewards themselves.

When they were all settled inside the boat, Ashiakin turned to face his companions. “The Church may be in chaos, but it’d optimistic for us to think we can slip quietly through their fingers,” he said. “They know this place. They outnumber us and they’re familiar the territory. We’ve as much chance as three escaped convicts wandering through a dark prison without a map. Do not forget that and we may make it.”

Aerran nodded silently and set the boat off from the shore, Ashiakin beginning to row. Their vessel bobbed up and down, trekked over the waves, heading for the calm of the inner sea. It was that distant tranquility that kept Ashiakin’s gaze hostage as if it might herald the death of the earth itself.

[Dorian]

Dorian watched as Ashiakin plied about the boat. He was trying to puzzle out how the room worked, and paid little attention to any of Ashiakin's comments. He had no time for them.

Citadel rooms were functional within boundaries. They had set rules, often rules that were set as they were entered, and monks served to maintain a variety of charms that promoted either more or less rigidity in those rules. And yet nothing the monks could do could change the basic function of the room's rules as set upon entry.

"It's an elementary puzzle," said Dorian, eyes flickering as Ashiakin quipped about a frigate full of sailors. "And it would be impossible to conjure other sentient beings; to imagine another consciousness would be too complex an imagining for a single mind, or maybe even two minds. Indeed, it is impossible to even conceive another whole intellect from within a Citadel room, for there is room in a single mind for both its owner and a new phantasm..." He trailed off, declining to involve either Aerran or Ashiakin in his pedantry.

Reaching down to begin pushing the boat into the water, he thought through his frame of mind as he had entered the room. He had been fleeing, his only goal to get as far away as possible from their pursuers...and what is more, the sudden attack and flight had put him in the frame of mind to believe in heroic legends and daring quests...and as he remembered that, a smile suddenly played on his lips.

With sudden gusto, he grabbed the boat's rear, and said, "Shipmates, let us embark on these choppy waters, row these forbidding oceans, and we shall find what treasure or splendor lies on far shores in sunnier climes!" And with a wink and a nod, he said, "My guess, you see, is that the rule of this room is the quest narrative, brave companions set adrift in uncertain times with only a few tools they must use to press forward in the absence of surety. So, follow that narrative wherever it wills," he pointed towards the horizon of the dark sea, "and we shall find the way out."

With a heave, he began to push the boat into the deeper water, Aerran leaping to keep up with him. Both he and her swung into the boat at the same time, and he grabbed the handles on two of the oars. "So, erstwhile allies, help me drive this ship to wondrous sights and fairer shores."