Chương 14: Echoes of the First Magi

"There are references throughout the ancient texts to repositories of knowledge beyond mortal comprehension, places where the accumulated wisdom of entire worlds was stored and guarded. The scholars of my order dismissed these as allegory. I am no longer convinced they were right to do so." - Wayfinder Inston of the Deep Archive. MASON The transition was instantaneous.

One moment the cold obsidian of Peristonia pressed against my back, the next, my bare feet sank into a plush woven rug that felt as soft as memory foam. Warmth enveloped me and I nearly collapsed from the shock of it. I smelled books and polished wood and a floral spice that I couldn't quite place. That same curated opulence I'd come to despise at Trinity Academy, as if every detail existed to remind you of how much money had been spent. Was I remembering a dream, or had that really happened?

My whole life on Earth had begun to feel like it had happened to a different person. I was standing in a library, thirty feet long and twenty wide. Its walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves packed tight with volumes bound in leather and gold, their spines embossed with unfamiliar symbols. I ran my hand along the spines, feeling the smooth leather beneath my filthy fingertips.

A few titles I recognized, famous works from Earth that set alarm bells ringing in my head, but most were in alien scripts I'd never seen. A fire crackled in a large hearth on the far wall, its orange light casting shadows across the ceiling. The flames sat on top of the wood rather than consuming it, the steady heat a clear sign of magic. Expensive furniture crafted from polished hardwood sat empty, but its brand new leather was still warm to the touch as if it had been recently occupied.

If someone were to walk in now, what would I even say? How could I convince them who I was, how would I find Fenris now? Fenris. He was alone again. He'd be sitting in the dark right now, not knowing where I'd gone or if I was coming back. My chest tightened at the image, even as a selfish, desperate part of me hoped I'd never have to return to that place. Light streamed through a series of arched windows that spanned the entire far wall. The glass was translucent but shimmering.

I walked over to it and peered through. What I saw stopped me cold. There was Fenris, and there was me, sitting cross-legged on the ground, my finger still pressed against the ring, his mouth frozen open in protest. My hair was long and matted, a scraggly beard covering sunken cheeks that made me look two decades older than I was. I was peering into a dollhouse, a replica of a real place suspended in amber. I pressed my fingers to the glass and felt the familiar tingle of magic on my skin.

I reached for my System menu, instinct more than intention, wanting to analyze whatever this material was. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. My interface was gone, not minimized, not blocked, absent, as if the System had been pulled clean out of my head. The panic that followed surprised me. I'd spent months resenting the System, questioning its purpose, raging against the rules it imposed. Now, without it, I felt naked.

It had become more than a tool, it had been a companion through the worst of my isolation, a voice in the silence confirming I was still alive, still progressing, still human. Its absence left a hollow I hadn't expected. I reminded myself to breathe. Wherever this place was, perhaps the System didn't reach here; or perhaps this wasn't a place at all. Given all I'd seen, almost anything felt possible.

A large mahogany desk dominated the far end of the room, meticulously arranged with stacks of parchment, quill pens, and inkwells - more a display than a workspace. Scattered among them were curiosities that invited investigation: a celestial globe depicting constellations I'd never seen, a collection of polished stones that pulsed with an inner light, a silver magnifying glass with a finely carved handle. Each one felt important, though how or why I had no idea.

A framed portrait in the corner stole my attention from the rest. I stared at it, disbelieving. It was my face, or near enough. The same blue eyes, the same jawline, but older, more refined, the nose slightly more crooked, the hint of a scar on his upper lip, dark hair showing a touch of grey at the temples. My father? It had to be. I'd never seen an image of him before, but here he was, rendered in paint with a half-smile that made him feel almost alive. A letter lay beside the portrait, the ink still wet.

I picked it up, my hand trembling. The words were in a language I couldn't read, the script dense and alien. Without the System to translate, I had no hope of deciphering it. I could pick out only two words I recognized - "Cassius" and "Samara," the name Fenris had told me belonged to my mother. I tore through the desk drawers looking for anything else, any clue about this place or how to leave it. Folders filled with documents, none in English.

Detailed sketches of people and places, laid out with the precision of an archive. I pulled them out in handfuls, scanning for anything I could read, growing more frantic with each page of impenetrable script. Overcome by a building frustration, I hurled the whole stack against the wall. The papers hung in the air for a moment, then calmly reassembled themselves, each page finding its file, each file floating back to its drawer, and the drawer sliding shut with a quiet click.

The room was maintaining itself, correcting me, putting things back the way they were meant to be. I tried to flip the desk in anger, but my emaciated arm couldn't even lift a corner. I sank into the leather office chair behind it, the comfort so obscene against my starved body that I almost laughed. In the firelight, I could see myself clearly for the first time in almost two years. Dirt and dust caked into my skin like war paint, every rib visible through the rags that passed for clothing.

Where muscle had once been, there was only tendon and bone. Double doors of dark wood beckoned to me on the opposite wall. Could I just leave? I hesitated. Maybe a few more minutes in this warmth and comfort. The thought lingered, a tug of longing. No, I needed to leave. I picked up the note from the desk and headed toward the doors. They opened smoothly, the handle turning with that oiled fluidity of extremely high-end hardware. Beyond the doors hung a black space, cold and uninviting.

I steeled myself and stepped into it.

"-ponsible!" Fenris finished, completing the sentence he'd started the moment I'd touched the ring. I'd been gone what felt like several hours but I was back in the cell in the exact moment I'd left, as if time had just resumed. The letter was nowhere to be seen, my hands empty. I felt a rush of relief at seeing the old bear again, even with his face turned up in a scolding frown.

"Fenris," I said, calming him.

"I went inside it."

"Inside it? What are you talking about? You haven't moved from this spot." Confusion mixed with relief in his very expressive bear eyes.

"The ring, it's some sort of mental construct. I was there for hours, but when I returned it was as if no time had passed." I stood up, pacing to help me think.

"We had it wrong, it wasn't my father's ring at all, but my mother's. There was a note, it was in a language I couldn't read but I saw her name on the bottom, and there was a depiction of my father there." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Slow down, you're not making sense. You went inside the ring? I've never heard of such a thing." Fenris furrowed his brow.

"Don't give me that look, I'm not crazy. I swear to you, the ring took my blood, confirmed my identity as Cassius, and transported me to what looked, and felt, too all my senses like a very expensive office library." Remembering the note, I grabbed a piece of rock we used for etching and knelt down to write.

"There was a letter on the desk in a strange language. I tried to bring it with me but that place is contained to my mind. When I arrived back here, it was gone." I started to write what I could remember of the note. My [Enhanced Memorization] skill returned, the comforting sensation allowing me to get every tick and letter exactly as it was on the page. I'd expected the words to resolve into English, my System's auto-translation feature kicking in, but they didn't, the script as inscrutable as ever.

"That's First Magi script," Fenris said, astonished.

"I don't know all these words, but I can make out a few." He hunched over them, tracing with his finger.

"This here means 'my son' or similar. That phrase indicates a bad outcome, 'the worst' I think."

"If she'd left me this ring anticipating her own death, why wouldn't she have taken steps to prevent it entirely?" My mind reeled at this sudden twist of fate.

"Zachias. You told me that he is a member of this First Magi, and the ring was in his possession. He must know more."

"It's quite possible, though not much good to us down here. This word means 'secrets' - it's saying something about unlocking secrets." Fenris was heavily invested now, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"And if I'm not mistaken, this last phrase mentions 'heritage' or a 'claim' of some sort. Ah yes, that's it, 'birthright.'""My birthright? Could she be talking about my father's titles? But if she wrote this before she died..."

"No, it's referencing an object inside the construct itself. I'm sorry, I can't translate most of it. The First Magi script has never been fully deciphered. Were there other documents? If I had more to go on." I could see that this represented a sizable discovery; even after years in this dungeon, Fenris was still a scholar.

"The office was full of documents, but memorizing and transcribing them back to you would take a very long time." As I said it, I realized how silly it sounded, we had nothing but time down here.

"You said time doesn't move in the construct? We should determine if it's actually frozen or if it's moving so slowly you do not perceive it. What I wouldn't give to see it." His eyes glazed over as if imagining the discovery of a lifetime. It was a bit sad to realize nobody would ever know we'd made it.

"That's true." I went to place my thumb back on the device. This time it didn't take my blood, instead the System provided a prompt asking me if I wanted to activate the construct. I gave it my mental assent.

"Wait, Cas-" Fenris's voice cut off as the world dissolved and reformed around me. I was back. The crackling, fireless hearth, the scent of polished wood, the silent, watching portrait of my father, a hint of white teeth and sparkling eyes. The note was on the desk, exactly where I had first found it. The whole construct had reset to its initial state. A perfect, repeating loop. I ignored the untranslatable letter for now and turned my attention to the room.

My first instinct was to search for a pattern in the books themselves. I began by hunting for some kind of index or encyclopedic collection that might hold a key. I spent weeks pulling volumes from the shelves and watching them return as soon as I released them. There were books of many varieties, some clearly in matching volumes, others small, their lines tight and formatted like poetry. There were books in various Earth languages: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic.

Novels and textbooks, collections of poetry and philosophy, some I even recognized, but nothing of any use for translating the letter. Most of the books were in languages I had no hope of deciphering, alien scripts of symbols, bumps or dashes, modes of communicating inhuman and strange. Many were in the same First Magi language as the letter, but, without some kind of key, of little use. Next, I turned to the objects on the desk.

I manipulated the celestial globe, trying to align the unfamiliar constellations with symbols in my mother's letter. Nothing. I arranged the glowing stones in patterns on the floor. The only result was a pretty light show. Every theory I developed led to a dead end. It occurred to me eventually that this might just be hopeless, that sometimes no answer can be found because no answer exists, but I refused to give in.

If I'd been left this construct - and a letter bearing my name was proof enough of that - there had to be a reason, and if there was a reason, there was a solution. The documents I had thrown earlier were back in their drawers, perfectly ordered. Order. I pulled out one of the files again, the script was in the same alien language as the letter. The file contained what looked to be a personnel record; a beautifully detailed, moving sketch of a stern-looking, dark-haired elf, followed by pages of dense text.

Useless. I pulled out another. A stout dwarf with braided metallic hair. Then a file with a tall, feline humanoid. Each was followed by more pages of unreadable First Magi text. What were these? Records of allies? Enemies? Employees? Fenris had once mentioned Systigmatology, the pseudo-science of interpreting the Ruler's Marks. All of the figures in these files bore marks on their necks or hands, rigorously detailed in the sketches. Were these records of past Trial of Kings candidates?

Fenris said the First Magi conducted the trials, it would track that files would be kept on the Systarchs, but why would my mother have them? But then, why did she have a First Magi artifact and write in First Magi script? The obvious answer was unsettling. I started pulling files at random, spreading them across the huge desk. Elf, dwarf, human, a strange insectoid creature. The script was always the same, clearly written by one individual and very similar to the letter on the table. One thing, however, stood out.

In the top corner of each title page, just above the main block of alien text, was a small secondary line of script that was different for each file. The elf's file had a line of flowing, elegant characters. The dwarf's were hard, blocky runes. One of the human's had a simple, familiar scrawl that was clearly a derivation from Latin.

I'd studied Latin as an elective at Trinity, though I'd never had cause to use it and had mostly forgotten the specific rules that governed the verb forms and grammar of the long dead language. This, however, was obviously a name. Annotations, the names of the subjects in the file, written in their native languages. It wasn't exactly a Rosetta Stone, but it was a start. I focused on the human file first. The secondary script wasn't perfect English, but it was close enough. I could make out the name: ALDERIC VORN.

I pulled out the original letter from my mother and compared the symbols.

"Cassius" - my name was four distinct symbols.

"Alderic" was a different length, but I could look for a recurring pattern of characters in his file. I began the interminable process of cross-referencing. Without the aid of the System and the [Enhanced Memorization] skill I'd come to take for granted, memorizing the file was a herculean ordeal, but I managed it - perhaps imperfectly, but good enough. Day-by-day, I committed the entire Alderic Vorn document to memory, fifteen pages of dense First Magi script memorized by rote.

I returned to the darkness of my cell where I carefully transcribed the whole file onto the obsidian floor in neat lines of text, the resumption of the System's aid a very welcome relief. Fenris was ecstatic, completely forgetting whatever objection he had been about to make when I'd re-entered the construct.

"You see this character here? This blocky one? It repeats four times. And here, a softer, flowing symbol, also four repeats. Alderic Vorn. I would bet my life on it." For months, our world became a linguistic puzzle. I would dive into the construct, memorize a file, and emerge to spend days with Fenris, hunched over our obsidian chalkboard. We were cryptographers breaking the code of the gods.

Enthusiasm didn't quite capture the intensity of Fenris's interest in our project, the opportunity to decipher the script written by the actual hand of a First Magi was the fulfillment of an ambition he wouldn't have ever dreamt big enough to have. To achieve the seemingly impossible, we would identify a name in a language Fenris knew - Elvish, Dwarven, Ursani - then find the corresponding characters in the First Magi script. Each name was a key that unlocked a handful of phonetic sounds and letters.

"Alderic Vorn" gave us A, L, D, R, C, V, O, N.

"Paulsiff the Swift," another file, gave us K, E, and the character for "the." Slowly, painstakingly, we built our lexicon. After another six months of this brain-melting work, we had a rudimentary alphabet. We could now sound out words in the First Magi script, even if we didn't know their meaning. I returned to those original scrapings of my mother's letter, our cobbled-together alphabet in my mind, and began to read it aloud to Fenris.

"Kif... zeth... ciron... yu..."

"Wait," Fenris interrupted, realization sparking.

"Ciron... I know that word. It's an ancient root for 'to find' or 'to reach.' I think it says...

'If this finds you...'" One translated word provided context for the next and soon the letter lay before us in plain High Telviri, my automatic translation revealing the meaning. It was no longer a puzzle, it had become a voice. My mother's voice. My dearest son Cassius, If this letter finds you, then my greatest fear has come to pass. I have left you alone. Know this first, you were not an accident of fate. You were a choice.

I am an Exaltian, a member of the First Magi as we are known on this world, immortal beings who seeded this planet as a playing field for twisted games. I chose a mortal life of fleeting warmth over an eternity of cold darkness, and I would do so again. I chose your father, and I chose you. On our home world, children are a product of design, not love. You were my rebellion, your true nature concealed to shield you from them, to give you a normal life and a human heart.

This ring, this Athenaeum, is your birthright, and your burden. It is the forge of our people, a library containing the knowledge of a thousand conquered worlds. This is the source of all Exaltian power and one I never wanted you to have to use. Now, I fear, you must. Use it to claim a throne among them or to survive their retribution. I cannot make those decisions for you, but I hope this knowledge will help guide you to make the right ones where so many of our people have failed.

Use their own weapon against them. Drink deep from this well of knowledge. Become stronger than any of them. Survive. The greatest gift your father gave you was not his title, it was his human capacity for love. Let that be the secret strength they will never understand. Your loving mother, Samara