"... oh, no."
The words came as little more than a whisper. Markus looked up from his pile of notes and stared at the massive basalt disc mounted against the far wall of his laboratory.
It was a lens. A focusing lens. How had they missed it for so long?
Gathering the papers, he stuffed them into the nearest satchel he could find and made to exit the academy. He had to warn everyone before it was too late. Something was coming.
No... not something. Some one.
The young priest raced out of the chapel and made his way down the promontory and past the ruins of the village council hall. Although it was a moonless and blustery winter night, he knew the path by heart, and did not slow a single step for the darkness. He rushed into the still-standing guard house and immediately accosted Constable Dreng.
"Mamadou, you must send your men to the Chapel of St Cambrace and to the Hall of the Untainted immediately!"
Dreng did not know what to make of the wild-eyed priest. "Markus, what is going on?"
"The bells, Mamadou," he continued without seeming to hear the constable's question. "It's our only hope! The sound of the bells will let the village know we are under assault!"
"Under assault?" the lawman asked incredulously. "There is no assault- I've received no word from any of the guardposts, nor from any of the Redeemer's outriders that we are under attack..."
"It's not from land, old friend. The assault is coming from the sea- the unfathomable depths of the sea! You must trust me in this!"
Dreng sat silently for a moment, weighing the sanity of the young priest. He rose and looked to his first leftenant.
"Tanner," he said to old Eli's eldest son. "Take these tokens of my office. Send two men to each of the martial orders and tell them to ring their bells. Send the rest of the men throughout the village and tell them to spread the word-- we under under attack, and the attack comes from the sea."
The guardsman saluted and rushed from the room to execute his duty.
"Now Markus," Dreng began, repeating his earlier query. "What in the nine hells is going on?"
* * * * * *
"You were very kind to come here tonight, Josie," Anton Vyrlich said as the Bard of Viborg retrieved her stringed citole from the entry hall.
"Actually, Anton, it is you and Magda who are kind," she replied, smiling warmly. "I am afraid that on this solstice I have nowhere to go- the Kraken is closed for lack of holiday business and I have no family to celebrate with here in Hannsport."
"Nonsense," Magda called from the parlor, momentarily breaking away from her preparations. "You are as much family as are our own children. Markus and Mamadou will also be pleased you are joining us for the yule feast."
"Well, the least I can do is help with the place settings, I- what is that?"
The bard froze. Listening carefully she thought she could just pick out the tolling of bells. In moments, she was certain of it. The tolling was soon loud enough for the others to hear, as well. As they exchanged quizzical looks, it dawned on the bard what was happening.
The church bells of the martial orders of Hannsport were sounding an alarm.
* * * * * *
Markus and Dreng burst through the door almost as soon as Mayor Vyrlich could release the lock.
"Well," Josie Nightingale wryly remarked as the pair made their unruly entrance. "We know it's not a fire burning down the town. I looked. Are we under attack, then?"
"You've no idea," the priest answered, frantically searching about the hall. "Come and see."
He entered into the dining parlor and dropped his stuffed satchel on the perfectly set table.
"Markus..." Magda nearly growled at him, anticipating what was about to come.
"I do apologize, Magda," he said, taking hold of the long table cloth. "But I do not think there will be time for a yule feast tonight."
* * * * * *
They peered uncertainly at the diagrams and papers that Brother Markus had spread over the newly cleared dining table. The act of roughly making space for the priest's copious documents had put the night's hostess into a cross mood, but one that quickly subsided once the priest set to his purpose.
"I will make my explanation as short as I can." he began, arranging a handful of large parchments into the center of the table. "Magda, Professor Malort and myself have all been puzzling over a very particular conundrum these last several months."
"The ley lines?" Magda asked.
"Yes. The very same."
"Isn't that something to do with magic?" Dreng interjected.
"Yes, indeed," Markus replied. "Anyone who manipulates mystic energy taps into the ley lines that crisscross Primordia. It does not matter whether you learn to tap this energy through faith and devotion, or memorizing incantations, or by force of personality, or through any other discipline. The ultimate source remains the same."
"The strength of the ley lines fluctuates predictably over time and place. We theorize that this is because the lines move ever so slightly over very, very long periods of time. We also believe this is primarily related to the force that makes compasses always point north, although there is some debate on that point especially concerning the variant forces that account for earthquakes, vulcanism or even celestial mechanics, in fact-"
"You said this would be brief, priest!" Mamadou warned him.
"Indeed, I did." Smiling ruefully, Markus returned to the matter at hand. "My point is that the forces that cause the ley lines to move are beyond the scope of we men and women. We simply do not possess the raw power to affect such things. That is why mystics have always sought out those places where different ley lines cross each other- if we cannot bend the energy to our own purposes, we can at least find those nodes where the energy converges and magnifies.
"As a result, mystics often spend time researching how these energies move. For example, we take measurements of the energy in our surrounding ley lines and calibrate our mystical instruments accordingly, whether they be brewing cauldrons or forges or any of the other tools we use to fabricate enchanted items.
"Calibrating is how the three of us recently became aware of... irregularities in the ley lines. My brewing and alchemy, the Professor's rituals and summonings and Magda's scrolls and trinkets. We all noted the same issues."
"And we haven't been able to identify what exactly is happening," Magda added. "What have you learned Markus?"
"I know why we were detecting the irregularities, Magda."
"The disc is a lens," he announced. "It is a very large focusing lens. In order to work properly, it needs two other pieces to siphon and redirect energy from the ley lines directly into the disc, which then focuses the energy. The disc is the lens, ad the idols are the siphons. We had all of these things in proximity to each other, but not in the proper pattern. It was enough, however to cause the disturbances that we have been measuring.
It seems that someone has now arrayed all of these items in a specific pattern according to instructions that are deeply coded into the runic sequence on the disc itself, and now this array is moving the ley lines."
"You said no one could do that..." Dreng grumbled.
"I said no man or woman could do that," he corrected. "The disc and the idols are ancient things, infused with a dark and malevolent essence that is not of this world."
"Markus, do you know why the lines are being moved?" Josie asked.
'There can be only one reason."
"It is the 360th winter solstice in our current cycle. The significance of the markings along the 360 degrees of the circumference of the disc are now revealed! Every 360th solstice, the ley lines are in proper alignment and also converge with the alignment of the celestial firmament. It appears to be the ideal condition, or rather, the only condition where one might use the disc and the idols to move the ley lines and open a very, very large doorway."
After a moment's pause to mull the priest's revelations, the ground began to violently shake, as the rising winds outside howled their fury, drowning out the deep peeling of the bells of Hannsport. After the shaking stopped, Markus gathered himself and pronounced his final assessment to the gathered throng-
"I believe that He Who Dreams in Darkness is about to be awakened."
* * * * * *
Josie looked out over the balcony and toward the sea. An angry red light was growing in the depths of the storm clouds that hung over the middle of the bay.
Frowning darkly, the Bard of Viborg knew what she must do. She would have to alert Kell.
She reached into her vest and drew forth a small vial of a faintly shimmering liquid. After a lusty curse of fate, she tipped it back and drank down the potion in a single swig.
"I am flying to Kell's keep," she told the others, who had come out to join her vantage point. "The Lord of Hannsport will need to know what is happening."
"The Whispering Wind guide you," Markus blessed her. "Magda and I will make a sending to the heroes of Hannsport, and hope that they will join us in time."
* * * * * *
"Alright, that should do it," Markus stated, looking at the heavily edited message they had been working on. Magda nodded, and they began the sending.
My friends hurry back we are under attack from the sea He Who Dreams in Darkness ret-
As the duo were in the midst of their arcane transmission, a second greater calamity befell them. At that moment, the entirety of the Academy of the Whispering Wind was engulfed in a massive explosion, as the process of focusing the ley lines' energy reached its climax. The force of the eldritch blast washed over the town, leveling those buildings nearest the detonation, and shattering windows all the way to the edge of town.
The biting winds of the winter gale swept into the Vyrlich manse through the broken windows, extinguishing all flame save that of the roaring hearth fire in the great room.
Both Magda and Markus had been cast to the ground from the impact of the blast, and it took several moments for the young priest to regain his senses. Slowly rising back to his feet, he noted that Magda was still lying prone just outside the glow of the hearth.
He moved immediately to her side, and turned her over.
"Magda, are you alright?" he said, an edge of worry in his voice. "Magda, are you--"
He froze in horror at the sight before him. The visage of his old friend had . . . changed. What lay before him could not be the matron wizard of Hannsport. Some nightmare had claimed her place, and the priest recoiled from it in shock. As he drew away, the thing opened its eyes and looked at him unknowingly, pushing his grip on reality even further to the edge.
"Magda, stay back. I don't want to hurt you!" He muttered in a voice almost not his own, continuing to withdraw from the impossible horror that continued to advance upon him.
As he retreated out into the hallway, he caught sight of a dread vision in the full length mirror mounted just outside the great room. He was surrounded! But no...
At that moment, his sanity finally crumbled with the realization that the monstrosity that stared at him from the glass was none other than he, himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment