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 Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2015 6:45 pm
Backdated to Feb. 2, 2015
The first reaches of the Rift were familiar and comparatively easy- he'd been down to it with a captain's escort hundreds of times in order to find and learn from Obsidian. The single-width span and then spiral stair of the Hall of Shadows was never comfortable, always taken sideways. The waking of blue light as the path widened, then the mouth that looked out to a city stretching in every direction never stopped being dramatic. This time he took it with careful observation and a try to cement the turns and liquid falls that seemed like water and came from unknown places.
As deep as this goes, it doesn't feel real that it remains on Earth. But the Wonders can't be seen either. And Our weapons are sent to Other Space all the time. I guess somewhere there is some deep, unseen space into Other Space that holds the castle and capital. And the Castle was plain and marked for all to see, blazoned with the symbol of Earth and fine towers. Titan knew it well from unenjoyed visits to find some of the information branch in their to-and-fro from Zinkenite's War Room in the high tower. The stairs continued on into what some called the heart of the city in the Arena. The dust and shifting dark of that places was very well known. So these are my landmarks. The Castle itself there, with crumbling black throne said to belong to Tanzanite, and this Arena, where knights and warriors trained. Lords and ladies of government would not want to go far for any of their chores. Nobility keeps apartments and holdings at the edges for living sometimes, riding in to court at need. But Court is always near Crown Seat and close in area to the other buildings of office. Never too many hours by ride. Walking is not riding...but it's a start.
It was a start and a plan that he could work from. Minutes of the first walks spread into hours of the first day. Then a second. Then into a third, still weaving back and forth through the little streets, or on fallen stone and crystal, or wholly on crystal while peering narrowly down into faceted depths for an idea of what was locked and encased beneath. To ensure he didn't double back, he made crayon marks every so many yards he went in the forms of letters along the corridors- A, B, C, D, progressing into AA, BB, CC, and further. Far more than 26 roads, or 52 with roads and side streets and alleyways, catwalks and promenades. The Youma stayed away in the dark, but their eyes were plain and considering. Sometimes they closed in curiously behind to examine a crayon mark and puzzle over it. Did the feral remember language? He did not sleep deeply, waking every hour at slithering, or stepping sounds that came too near. Or any sound at all, or feel of aura near enough to resolve as a single thing outside of the sense of the countless thousands that teemed in the Rift.
Walking on grew worse on the third day, every muscle finally starting to protest the predicted lack of hydration. Titan's head throbbed lightly, and the lurid blues of reflected light off the building sides swam a little with glare. The increasingly thick, old crystal growth spidered along the empty windows and broken mouth doors spoke of long, long years. He wasn't certain how the crystals grew- if it was like the mites and tites of whatever the rock-science class was in sophomore year. Those had taken liquid, and centuries for inches, hadn't they? Did these take energy? Or were they just formed full and ready as they were, and the energy collections pumped into them provided the greater ambient illumination? It might be something Zinkenite knew, not that Titan had seen the small General King in months on months. Maybe Laurelite knew? It seemed a small, dumbish thing to visit her with. Though food and drink would do her well. The stacks of her chosen office just grow and grow. Maybe she just live here in the Rift? Does she come to these buildings? Does she look inside them? Maybe she already knows where the different government buildings are. Asking her about them would make questions though. Why should Titan be curious about anything.
What are government buildings like? There'd been a required field trip in 8th grade back in New York where all 300 students of the class had been packed up on tour buses to visit Gettysburg, Antietam, Colonial Williamsburg and then Washington D.C over the course of two weeks. The United States capital had been sprawling with massive cement, pillared structures and long lawns. Everything had felt heavy and soaring all at once. Decorative, but not attractive, in a mode that wanted to imitate pieces of Europe he'd had the pleasure to tour with his mother. The size and scale was something to go off of. So was Parliament, and other pieces of London he'd had the joy and aggravation to see. So much of England, especially old England, was apparently made for very small people. It must be large like that. The Palace of Westminster, with the London Eye and all those lights. And the river was there. The coffee was awful, but the tea was great at that little shop we stopped at. How many of these were little shops?
Tired eyes drew again more to the specifics of the little facades he passed instead of scanning broadly for something more grand. They might have been servants quarters. Or teachers. Or scholars and scribes who kept the notes and necessaries for the nobles and administrators of the government and the strange, missing Academy that had been assured to him was there somewhere. If Hvergelmir trusted this 'Code', and so did Babylon, then there must be something to its certainty. Was it only the Academy that was important to the knights? Or to the Code? Did they know that the Rift was the Capital, with its rubble throne, cathedral castle, and sigils of Earth built into the very walls? An answer wasn't forthcoming from the walls themselves, but the road, if it could be called that anymore, had something else to say.
Under his too-large feet in the cobbling of the path was an unmistakable pattern of pale stone set into the darker. Titan crouched, tracing gloved fingers along the dusty edges. That is old moss on the darker. Old and turns to dust at a touch. And the pale stone it doesn't grow on is like marble. Its the symbol of Earth in the very road.
He followed on, catching hints of the same symbol in the road here and there, sometimes broken up with the road and land beneath wholly furrowed and torn by ancient catastrophe, othertimes drowned beneath crystal growth. HHHH opened out to a wider Road that was straight and certain, wide enough for at least 2 wagons abreast with space for vendors stalls on either side nestled against buildings. Opposite him was a large crystal-vined building with narrow, dark windows that reflected muted, broken colors back from the blue light. Stained glass.
So far back, at least a thousand years and more, glass was expensive to most cultures talked about in books. Even if the world was magical, different and wider from trade with forgotten empires among the stars, it couldn't have been so completely alien from history class and the historic villages at home in Norway- long, low houses with carven stone or wood and rarely glass. Or in Canterbury and London with their cathedrals and churches that stole his breath away and made him feel of a correct size for once. Here was such a building, horse on horse in length on down blocks, and it had windows winking of coloured glass.
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Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:18 pm
Backdated Feb. 4-5
What may have been the ‘front’ was a wall of crystal growths- mixed cubic and dendrite formations in various hues of deep purple-black that was barely lit. It took some minutes of consideration to make out the tympanums, three altogether, with their lintels and arches as separate structures from the dim false-rock. Energy rock? There were places where the stuff laced into the stone like veins of new flesh trying to repair damages from the old war that had blasted whole parts of the city. Repair was the more comfortable idea compared to consume. Assimilate. The latter thoughts came, almost echoed like once after the other in brain phantoms of Kairatos and Hvergelmir. It seemed like words they would use, or might know from more learned things than watching bad science fiction blue-rays on movie nights. Massive hand-paws patted here and there experimentally, gripping and tugging, testing the old growth for strength and feel of depth. It was enough to warrant continuing on around the rest of the building in hopes of finding other smaller, less impressive entrances. Clerks’ entrances. Walking all around the building took more time, but it might pay off in less effort and water expended trying to break through. There were two other entrances that he could descry. Both appeared as indistinct dark depths in the already dark crystal like the wall had been sunken in in architecture to create some sort of ribbing and tunnel effect. It was deeper grown in, filled hollow with Rift material like water filling goblets. There was a third possible ‘entrance’, but that section of the building was a complete overgrowth and riot of broken stone and mortar, fallen buttressing and crystal forms that made only mad interpretations of structure. Whatever had happened there had been a direct hit that ended that section of whatever it served and entrance both. Titan made his way, continuing the circumference to the first and apparently best chance of getting in. The captain just stared, daunted, for a moment at the three drowned doors.
Enough force breaks any of these crystals. They are delicate, mostly things of energy. But depth makes strength. Once piece of paper is not so hard to tear, but a whole phone-book is a different thing. Do I have enough supply to keep looking for other buildings? Or is it better spent with this one? This could be just a bookkeeping office. Like a bank. Did banks exist back then? Maybe it is something like a church, for some strange god or interpretation of senshi or Metallia. Maybe its a grave place, like where they put bodies in walls. There’s other large buildings right here. I guess if this one doesn’t work, then I move on to the next. And the next. There’s nothing that says I can’t go back to the city and get more water and food to come back on another hike. As long as I meet my quotas and take turn ins from some lieutenants, I’ll still appear to be active and available. Less trips would mean less youma asking other agents what I may be doing, if they grow curious enough. Or other agents stumbling on me.
Thinking about it was wasting too much precious time, beyond the five minutes to check his breath and get bearings. He pulled off his gear and set it safely some feet away across the ‘street’ next to one of the other buildings. If things came down suddenly in strange ways, a gear piercing or loss would be an expensive hassle. Then Titan summoned his hammer to hand and set to work on breaking a path in the crystal to the left most door. Hammer first, careful of shards, then pushing and digging out the path with hands. Some pieces came off large like false icebergs, which uniform lent him enough strength to lift, push, pull and get from out of the way. It still took hours, and searching for where to hit the formations right to guide the fractures and minimize the splinters. It felt like mining, except without the benefit of song or coal or treasure veins to plunder for the work. Just a door of three. It took hours? He paused for water twice. All of the extra ration that didn’t belong to a specific day was used. Checked his watch, finding it was six hours in and sections of the portal itself were finally cleared from the encasing. He’d taken off his shirt long ago, and it hung like a sad flag, windless and limp as he felt, from one of the crystals near the rightmost door feet and feet away. But does the door open in or out? That might change how easy it is to get open. I don’t want to break the door.
Having gotten close at last, the portals were beautifully carven, the surrounding structure in stone while the doors were mixed of old wood and metal. The preservation, locked away in whatever geographic hole-cave that was the rift, was incredible. The Crystal forms had prevented even the highly limited moisture of the Rift air from touching the surfaces for what had to have been centuries. There were whorled, knotted animals that felt like the Urnes style from touring with his family in Norway, and painted, gilded knots that seemed more like the stuff that came from old parts of England and Ireland. Even were it not so similar to places he’d been, the history felt more than the physically tangible, its weight and solidity under his own hands and now marked in places slightly darker for a handful of seconds by human sweat where he’s brushed an arm against it, or leaned on it to rest until he no longer felt dizzy. These were artifacts from a forgotten world where there was, apparently, a single monarch that ruled the whole of the planet. These were pieces of history that had somehow been wiped out of every book, off every pillar, from every monument on the planet regarding the existence of the city, the government, the people, the Knights and their system of magic and wonders. Here was all that was left of that time, minus what few pieces, if any, stood like the well and ruined stable at the Hvergelmir out in the middle of space. This was Earth.
This was a deep part of his heart. If the dreams and hopes of those he loved proved true beyond even his doubts, then if was even more and a part of the very soul song that he never heard anymore in the missing peace of days and nights. Deep as the Aurora Borealis, the snows on the peaks, the sound of the sea, the the Royal Post Path between Bleiklindi and Styvi, the waterfalls down the sheer cliffs and the scent of wild flowers mixed with woodfire in the fjords. No, not all of them. Sogn og Fjordane county. The Nærøyfjord.
Think. Which way do the doors open? How do you tell that? He stood away from some crystal he leaned against, leaving his hammer where is rested on the rock. His eyes drew along the seems between stone and wood from base of the ground up to apex double his reach even on tip-toe. The central door, beside and still locked in energy and facets, was greater still and enough for mounted entry on barded charger. His gaze came down again, the line of the seam unbroken by anything unusual. Unbroken. There’s no …..things. Hinges. There’s no visible hinges. At least not on this side. So the doors...they probably open out? No...they...open towards the hinge.
It was worth the try. The hammer had started out feeling like a 150lb Atlas stone on the end of a stick, and every hour since had felt like it added fifty pounds. Titan flatted both hands against the door, near the edge and middle where he expected the thing to open. Like the Conan’s Wheel where they put the grips and weights on furthest edges for physics. Something about length and leverage, and the hinges were the stress point the way the pivot stand was for the Wheel.. Titan breathed, then pushed. Tension rippled from his arms down his spine, leaked down into his thighs and aching calves. Chiming, breaking sounds echoed around the crystal tunnel he’d wrought over the hours to the door and around the door. He boots scrapped against crystal dust and shards. There were more breaking sounds. He left off, panting a moment, then braced and threw shoulder against the door to push with a different and more sudden force. Crystal rained down like glitter out of the seam and the portal budged. He repeated the motion, growling through grit teeth and the shock through his shoulder. Thick, hard wood that had survived a millennia was a good deal more solid than muscle and human bone. The door ground open in a scraping, scratching trail of purple splinters. Titan looked into the black dim, blinking against the complete lack of light that led away into the stale, unseen emptiness. His swallowing breaths for air echoed back, telling of high ceilings, smooth floors and space.
The way was now open.
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Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:47 am
Backdated Feb. 6-7
The air inside was stale, possibly unwholesome with whatever happened to tombs. Coughing came naturally every couple of moments until his body decided it didn't care anymore. Titan lit his lantern in the dark and the rays did not reach the half the distance to apex of the walls, it did not touch the ceiling. What it did show took more of his breath away. Masterwork of knots and webs, walls of wood and here and there one of inset tapestry with faded, blacked threads woven among untarnished spun gold and gems. He spent two hours recovery time sipping water, just walking and looking, giving another whole day's ration to it in need. No auras felt near. No spells seemed woven round of danger or peril. The halls echoed his steps not in gladness but quiet grief, carrying them desperately here and there as though to try to multiply him to some greater count than one. Something the space was more used to and remembering, like his one extra ration of water, one and one, unfulfilled and unquenched, but it was companionable.
While we are neither warm, neither rested, we can keep each other company. This place has such luxury still. The war came here, but it is not ransacked? Why?
What worth are jewels, when everything is broken, on fire and dying? Bread and water have more worth. Blood and life have more worth. Who will gems buy from? What cities or trade stations when all the peoples are thrown down before magic and suffering.
"Will you spare me a while?" The words were soft, spoken to the building itself. Answer came in the stillness, neither yea or nay. He went back to and closed the door. It will be safe enough here. Safer than out there, where Youma have roamed and reformed all the city. Here....it has lasted untouched, tainted but not wholly changed, I think. It is absence where there should have been filled. But I can sleep here, hours chained together, and actually rest. I must, with the opportunity, or I will go slower and slower and the way get more dangerous. These front rooms are empty. Sitting chambers strange with carved benches and made for unknown gatherings. One can hold me for what hours it will take.
So he settled by one of the benches, his stiff shirt laid beneath like a hope of a blanket and a pack as a pillow, the captain slept in the deep black of exhaustion for another ten straight hours. Waking brought need of water again and the slim ration of food. The shaking was bad enough that both hands were needed to steady any effort at redonning his shirt or eating the ridiculous food. The first weeks were the same for him at the tents. His body was no more used to starving and small ration in years from now than mine is now. I will not get used to it in two spent searching. And it won't go away for complaining.
Titan broke fast, forcing himself to treat it mechanically. Less attention to it meant less reason to lament meagerness, turning thought to his lantern, pack and the lodging again. Even so slow as his own thoughts were, the long dark felt strangling and his mind desperate for something to focus on. It still stood silent around him, but more familiar in a way for sharing the hours. He rose, less on edge, and started pushing the doors one by one to find stores of strange piles of dust, collections of scrolls yet unwritten with dried ink wells and dust in a box that probably had been something to write with, old barrels and boxes stacked with shelves of goblets gone black. At last he came to doors large again and in number side by side and that stood already open. He stood in the entrance, looking in to an impossible hall, too long and tall for even the size of the outside perimeter were there not other rooms. Soaring near the ceiling hung tapestry flags beyond his counting in tatters. The poles of the standards drew his eyes down, the lantern lifted up and his feet carried in. At the base and over the poles rose blank or broken wooden orbs, and those before a rail. It looked like the room was made of two levels, the floor he stood on and an upper deck. The chairs that lined the walls were tall, with carven, pillared canopies each to seat and strange glints of color down the long backs of them. Each was raised so that the platform that rested an occupants feet was equal with all others and above the level of the floor. The floor itself was set with stone inlays of roots that led up to a dais far, far away into dim beyond the lamp's revelation. The captain stepped up onto the right lane of stalls, the wood giving no protest at his weight. He gently pulled his glove down the darkened tiles on the back, swiping a path the gleamed with sudden vibrance. Soot. These are painted and enameled metal. But what is this on them? Plants, shields....this higher one has the same colors and tree, the same sort of pelican. The bird's position changes. The letters in the banner look the same in these two, but different in this one. Knights...and shields. It's their symbols. The things on flags and shields that used to tell them apart. What were those called...jackets of some sort? Arms. They changed with marriages and new honors, new lands and grants from kings and queens. I've found something. These plates...does ever seat have them? Are they different to each chair? Seats where knights sat....I have to check them...and...is there one for their King or Queen? What is this room?
He stepped down again to the main floor, trotting down the whole, massive length of the field-like room. Some of the banners shifted ominously, dropping a thin rain of dust and bits with that bare shift of air. The roots and branches on the floor soon wove onto the dais itself as the sigil of Earth, made large in the floor for at least 50 to stand around, and across the surface were a small group of similar stall seats with blackened plates, blackened flags, two seats on either side of the largest central seat that had no plates but the crest of Earth carved into the back. Titan climbed the dais to loom over the central seat, traced the emblem with his fingers, then turned to look at the chamber. A meeting chamber between lord and vassals. Even if I cannot find the knight I seek here, I have to see if I can find any loose plates that I can safely remove from the backs....I should bring them to Hvergelmir. She will know how to return them. These were theirs. This was them. There is no magic left here, no feel of anything, just dreams of another time and an age that fell to ruin.
Titanlåvenite turned to the right wall of the chamber from the dais to begin the painstaking work of wiping off the plates that tiled the back of the stall and testing them if any were loose. If one was, he spent the minutes working it back and forth until he could get the knife of his Leatherman behind it to leverage the piece free, wrapped it in cotton and then set it into his messenger bag. Not many, of the tens-hundreds-thousands were loose, but the captain's reverence here held. Doors were meant to be opened, but these things had been meant for some other purpose in their decoration of the seats. Each stall had a story of a whole heraldry down it, though not the same numbers of each other to right and left. Whether the plates were created for every knight of a line, for those who came to the chamber, if certain houses were longer lived or lost more people than others, he could not tell. The purpose of the chamber itself was dim, except as a meeting place. He lost count of hours again, smearing off black grime with black cloth, until he'd visited every seat of the floor.
Six plates had loosed from their ages old glue - a complex, diamond shaped Celtic knot tangled around the earth symbol on a pale green shield, flanked by two bird of prey charges. The shield itself was wreathed in lilies. An open-visored helm was centered above it and turned inward. There were no supporters. Second, a crest featured a heater-type shield in silver. In the background there were three trees and in the foreground a green unicorn rampant wearing a collar made of mistletoe and a grey symbol of earth from which dangled a feather in its centre. The shield rested between what appeared to be two trees wreathed in mistletoe and at the bottom its banner and letters. Third, a crest on a green, edged shape shield; in the center of the shield was a black tree with coiling roots reminiscent of a triple spiral. The spirals covered the lower portion of the shield. Protruding from just behind the top of the shield, two black antlers extended past either side; a necklace made of golden chain hung loosely around the base of the antlers, and from the center dangled the Earth emblem over the image of the tree, framed by the barren branches. Several gold and black dahlia shaped flowers rested within the crooks of the antlers. Fourth, a heater-shape shield, dark green field with gold edging; on the center of the shield is a light brown tower, and the shield is supported on either side by lions rampant. The shield was crowned with the coronet of a watchtower. It felt familiar.
From the left wall came the other three he'd collected- an English shield in moss green, with a golden chevron behind an apple blossom. The terrace-in-the-base is a pale, luminescent silver. The whole draped in a black-and-gold mantle, with daffodils tied into its white tassels. Another a classic shield with a silver field with a dark green chevron. At the center in front of the chevron, a golden blade held up by two clasped hands made of twisting brown lines to form the knots and grain of tree roots. The ends of the wrists fell toward the bottom of the shield, coiling behind the symbol of Earth in silver. That shield was almost fully circled by a wreath of periwinkles. A coronet of gold held a pale green helm with plates and silver markings stylized to mimic leaves and bark above. Supporters of spiked towers in white, green, and silver supported a banner with letters as incomprehensible as all the rest.
The last of the six he held, in its cotton, and carried to the seat of the monarch. As Titanlåvenite he knelt, setting that plate on the seat of the stall, but the plate was from a line of symbols he knew from dream. The crest of sable and vert Mountains over a road of azure. The wyrm coiled over all, and motto of the house there still legible for someone who could read it. He couldn't, but he new the words as another man's mouth had spoken them to Princess Ida, to Hvergelmir, to the Royal Kairatos- hatr er hjarta dauði.
"Hate is death to the heart." He leaned forward, folding his arms under his head as pillow on the seat of Earth. His kneel slowly deteriorated into a collapse on his hip. "I have not served as I should. I will make it right."
The knighthood Nærøyfjord was not a dream.
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