4.96: Descent

In the video, we descended the staircase.

The diameter of the staircase was much larger than most, the central stone pillar being the entire width of the sculpture above, so there weren’t that many actual rotations. The pillar was right in the middle of the flat wall of a huge semicircular room, so for half of each turn around the stairs we were facing a white stone wall, and the other half we could look out into the room.

The room itself was largely featureless, made entirely of bright white stone, as was the staircase. Deep networks of runes that the tablet camera hadn’t picked up all that well were carved into the stone everywhere, but the most notable feature of the room was the half-circle of thick metal rods  around the room.

Max dashed ahead. I was barely halfway down the staircase by the time he was already kneeling by a rod, inspecting it closely. Each one was almost as thick as his torso at the base and a few metres high, thinning as it went until the top looked about as thick as an arm, although the distance from the camera and the white stone of the room made it difficult to judge size. They were curved like giant bows. Max ran his hands up and down the parts of the pillar he could reach, clearly tracing runes.

“What are they?” I asked.

Max didn’t answer. He just pulled out a notebook and started sketching.

“I didn’t expect the secret heart of our mysterious magic school to be so damp and musty,” Kylie remarked behind me.

“We are under quite a lot of water,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but still. These stairs are dry and firm. The walls are dry and firm. Even with this humidity?”

“They’re limestone,” I pointed out. “It’s made in the sea, isn’t it? I’m sure it can handle humidity.”

“Which raises another good question. How did limestone get down here? They would’ve had to truck it in, right? The stone above isn’t anything like limestone.”

“So? I’m sure they had to truck a lot of stuff in to build – ”

“Kayden. Look at it. Do you see any seams between blocks? I think this whole room is one piece! How could they have possibly gotten it in? And why?”

“That’s not the weirdest thing about the stone,” I said. The camera view swung wildly as I pointed it at the wall. “Look.”

“At what?”

“At what you can see. This room is huge. Our tablet lights aren’t all that powerful. And yet, we can see everything. So where’s the light coming from?”

The camera swung again to show Kylie, looking worriedly at her own feet. “There are no shadows in here,” she said, sounding near panic. “Why aren’t there shadows here?”

“That’s a very good question,” I said.

“Do either of you guys have charcoal on you?” Max called.

“Why would we have charcoal?” I asked.

“Well, I meant to bring some, but I forgot. I thought you guys might have.”

We finished descending the staircase. I tripped on the last stair and readjusted my bags, grumbling.

“Are you seriously going to keep carrying that?” Kylie asked.

“It’s my climbing gear. I lost it in the lake once and now I’m bringing it back.”

“You have new climbing gear!”

“That’s not the point.”

“I really doubt that you’re going to need climbing gear down here,” Max said. “I know we’re pretty far down under the school, but I don’t think that climbing out is going to be an option.”

“Fine,” I grumbled, putting the bag down. “The sacrifices I make for you guys.”

We headed over to join Max. I ran my hand up and down the rod that he was inspecting. Despite being right under a lake for centuries, it wasn’t tarnished at all.

“What metal do you think it is?” I asked. “It isn’t silver.”

“It’s titanium,” Max answered, not looking up from his work.

“They’re like whale’s teeth,” Kylie said.

“What?” I asked.

“You know. For eating krill? For filtering them out of the water?”

“I think she means baleen,” Max said. “And no, they’re nothing like baleen. Baleen are more like a, a forest of much thinner spines. Like a brush.”

“What are they?” I asked. “Besides just big and creepy.”

“Well, if I’m reading this right, I… think they might be prisons. Or traps, I suppose.”

“Just like whale’s teeth!” Kylie grinned.

“No.” Max stood up and started to circle the column again. “See, I think each pillar actually holds a spell. One of the ancient, powerful spells that the founders of Refujeyo carried.”

“The what now?” I asked.

Max sighed. “Okay, so. You know how Refujeyo was founded. Everyone got together, built this place, built the Pit, all that.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, most of the spells being used would end up inside the Pit when their mages died. They were the first seeds for the Pit. But many of the people in charge were from ancient, powerful magical lines, carrying powerful inherited spells, ones that would only travel by bloodline, or needed specific inheritance rites. They wouldn’t be appropriate for the Pit. But there were obvious political implications to a bunch of powerful mages establishing a place like this, encouraging everyone to give up their own traditions for it, and then holding onto their own patterns of inheritance. They had to commit and use the Pit themselves. So with the exception of the kuracar, for obvious practical reasons, the powerful founding spells were locked away.” He rubbed a hand up and down the pillar. “If I’m right, I think this is the Grand Master’s fire! And… oh, let me...” he dashed to the next pillar, inspected the runes for a few seconds, and grinned. “Yes! I’m certain that this is the High Crone’s spell! Guys, we’re standing right next to the Eye of Duniyasar!”

“Um,” I said. “Great?”

“This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Max said. “If only things would photograph properly in this stupid lighting.” He ran around the whole semicircle, briefly touching each metal rod, grinning.

“Guys,” Kylie called from off camera. We spun around; she was near the staircase again, looking at something in the flat wall. With the way the room was glowing, we had to get quite close before the camera made out the large block of pure white… something else. Something that wasn’t limestone. Another stone? Wood? Set in the wall.

A door.

“There’s no handle,” I pointed out.

“There are runes,” Max said. He inspected them for a while. “Hmm. I think it’s just a question of providing power.” He took out his runecrafting pen, drew some ichor, and, after inspecting the door a bit more, dabbed it on a specific spot. Presumably it was the centre of an important rune or something, but the lighting made I hard for the camera to make the runes out.

“Huh,” he said.

“A different spot?” Kylie asked.

“No, that’s definitely the spot. But some of these runes are odd. Maybe it… hmm. Not power, but… let me try…” he pierced another spot on his arm with the pen and dabbed some blood on the door instead.

It swung open.

The room on the other side was sensibly lit with crystals, like the school, which made it easier to see what was going on. It was huge – logically, it was probably another semicircle, to form a complete circle with the neighbouring room, bu it was impossible to be sure because none of the walls were visible. Near the door were some large, heavy, ancient desks, and behind them the rest of the room (or at least as much of it as was in sight from the doorway) was full of completely packed bookshelves.

Max actually giggled like a little girl and dashed through the door. He immediately stumbled, reached for a desk to lean on and started rubbing furiously at his eyes.

“Are you alright?” Kylie asked.

“Yes. Yes, fine. It’s just… unpleasant.”

The camera view moved forward as I headed for the door too, then lurched downward as I apparently dropped the tablet. “Jesus!” I coughed. “What is that? Some kind of dehydration filter?”

“It’s probably to protect the books,” Max explained, furiously blinking moisture back into his eyes.

Off camera, Kylie swore in a language I didn’t know. She must have just stepped through the doorway.

“Now, Max,” I said, as he went for the nearest bookshelf and started skimming the titles, “you remember that we need to get out of here, right? Not live forever in a magnificent library?”

“Of course,” he said. “We’d starve in a few days. Although, if you find a food and water source, I might rethink my position.”

“What should we look for?” Kylie asked.

“Let’s start with maps,” Max said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. You guys look for maps, I’ll start trying to translate things.” He picked up a handful of white cloths from a desk and handed them to us. “For picking up papers and things. Don’t touch the books with your hands. Even dried by that filter, we’re filthy, and we’re not here to destroy this place.”

“We’ll be careful,” Kylie said.

“And don’t get lost!” Max called, as we headed for the bookshelves.

Good advice, apparently. It quickly became apparent that the place was a maze. I didn’t see or hear Kylie in the video for awhile, and I couldn’t tell if we split up or if she’s just quiet, but I quickly lost track of where the past version of me is in relation to Max as the feed moved around bookshelves of all sorts of sizes and designs, laid out in what start as organised rows but quickly become a confusing array of dead ends blocked by book stacks and random furniture, and then stop having any kind of grid pattern at all, laid out to form winding paths sprouting out in all directions. It’s not only bookshelves, but racks of scrolls, display cases of papers laid flat; the documents are written on the kind of modern paper I’m used to, and rough ancient paper, and what I was pretty sure was papyrus and even vellum, although I don’t know anything about paper so they might have been something else. There was an entire rack of actual clay tablets. All of them were in fantastic condition, given their age. Some of them had wear, or rust, or water stains, but never enough to make anything illegible. Very little of anything I could see was written in English.

Some of the shelves didn’t hold written records at all. There were a few racks of tapestries, a large display case full of butterflies, another full of jewellery. One shelf was full of vials of a dark, crusted substance that I assumed at first to be dried ichor, until I saw that it was labelled as blood from various sources; apparently, whatever care had been taken to preserve the paper wasn’t nearly as effective on blood.

Finally, the feed rested on a shelf of scrolls, with a couple pinned open on a flat display board, showing maps I didn’t recognise. “Max?” the me in the video called out.

“Now, my deer,” a chillingly familiar voice said right behind me, “you know that you can’t make any progress moving in straight lines.”

The camera view swung around to show, just for a second, an inhuman face, a pair of perfectly symmetrical eyes, and a too-wide mouth grinning wide to reveal two rows of incisors. Then the video went black.

Safe in our tunnel overlooking the Lake of Inquisition, Kylie and I looked at each other.

“So, uh, that’s the first video,” I said, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

“Well,” Kylie said. She swallowed. “That’s, um. A lot.”

“Yeah. Nice to know what to expect down there, I guess. This is… this is all good stuff.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good stuff.” She wiped her eyes.

“Should we, um… play the next one?” I asked, desperately trying to think of a good reason not to. Not yet. I needed time to process this. To process the place, process what we’d lost… to process seeing so much of Max. This wasn’t like watching some video of a party I’d been at with him or something. These were memories I didn’t have of us together. It was almost like a new interaction.

It was probably worse for Kylie, who wouldn’t say his name, who wouldn’t look at him as a janitor. If this wasn’t ‘save the world’ stuff, I probably would’ve suggested that she didn’t watch them, that I do this alone. But her insights might be needed.

Kylie didn’t answer for a long time. I got the sense that, like me, she was trying to think of some reason not to do this right now. But in the end, she reluctantly nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Play the next one. Let’s get this over with.”

I played the next video.