| Another tremor shook the Tower, originating in the smallest part of Felanya's imagination, racing through her limbs and outward into the physical world. Inside the Box she could feel again, after what seemed like an eternity in nothingness sensation and emotion returned in the barest of waves with each new crack in the walls of Paersfitholn. Whispers built up in her mind as she lay curled on the smooth floor, pressing her back against the wall. Two days, they said to her. She had been here, dreaming for two days, and they only hoped it would be enough. She dreamt of all the things she did not yet understand, and the voices responded with the same words Acharya had used so often. It was only a matter of time. She dreamt of the darkness in Acharya's eyes, his purpose in having her locked here. She understood that he had made a choice by letting the light behind his eyes die, but she could not yet fathom the exact details of the choice or what it would mean in the end. She did not understand the dread that had washed over her when her mind first started to come back, when the volume of the voices dimmed beneath the sound of a sweet golden whisper. The only thing that was absolutely clear in her fragmented consciousness with its shattered memories was the ardent wish that this war would end. Not that it would ever end completely. Once Torankhayel was banished, or killed if it could be killed, some new evil would rise and take its place. But that was not, would not be, her fight. This was the battle that she - and so many others - had stepped forward to fight, and when it was done perhaps they would all find peace. This fight, against the dark that had taken her family, her friends, her mind, her world and her past was the one that mattered now. Felanya opened her eyes, blinking in surprise at the brightness of the wards covering the cracked walls. The world did not make sense. The tremors, reminding her that she was still being used and had only minimal control, had cracked the walls. According to her understanding of Magi Song, and her fragmented memories of the Rites used to construct the Box, the cracks should have weakened the wards and made them appear to dim - when someone looked in from the outside. Felanya shouldn't have been able to see them at all, but she decided that it didn't matter. The world made no sense and she couldn't have cared less. These walls could not hold her and she knew it. It made no difference whether the workings of this world followed the rules of logic now or not. She could play this game any way she needed to, and she would see this war end. She got to her feet, steeling herself and searching her mind for the words to tear her prison apart. Then she would search out Acharya and get her answers - all of them - one way or another. As she drew the breath to raise her voice a cry at the back of her mind forced her to pause. Not human, the cry told her without words that if she left the Box now she would be dead within half an hour. The cry could not tell her whose hands would end her life, but the cry also said it didn't matter. There was a reason Acharya had ordered her dragged to the Box and that was where she should stay. All of this the cry conveyed without words. "Ridiculous," Felanya shook her head and breathed in again. She was tired of listening to voices that wouldn't explain anything. Her breath caught without reaching her lungs, the wail turning to a screech as her throat constricted. "Veraye sollayeth," Felanya whispered to herself in a hissing voice that did not belong to her. Have faith. "No," she shook her head again as she gasped for air. Felanya stepped forward, reaching for a door that she knew had to be there. In midstride she found herself paralyzed. Unlike her inability to attack the Acharya in the sparring chamber, something beside her own mind and memories held her physically still. "Ashar so'er thai'ya." She rasped to herself again. Not strong yet. "What?!" The last thing she - who she really was, the Warrior from the Old World who was taking control again after centuries of whimpering in the back of her own mind - wanted to hear was that after more than 1400 years she was not strong enough to open a door. The screech ascended in pitch until Felanya thought her eardrums might rupture, all the while still struggling to make out the words. Your mind isn't what it should be... wait... Felanya growled softly, recognizing the screech and the creature it had to belong to. She loathed admitting it, but the screech was completely right. Her mind was nowhere near as strong as it should have been, but she could fix that easily enough. She sat down in a huff in the middle of Paersfitholn. It was time to stop dwelling in the past, before she ended up getting herself killed in the present. The words Acharya had written down made no sense. They'd made sense when Ardaelan rasped them and when he had written them. Now it was all in a language he knew he was supposed to understand, but he couldn't even begin to make out the characters. Ardaelan rasped again, bringing Acharya's focus back to the three initiates standing straight and still in the middle of the Blessing Chamber despite the tremors that shook the Tower almost regularly. "A'fath nilyahr tael'mahraynen na sha'et akar balmathtal." The feeling behind the words always came through first, without any effort on the listener's part. The words rang in Acharya's ears and a part of his mind understood, translating so that they made sense to the rest of his mind before falling silent again in the shadow. The Six Warriors were abused in this world. There was a sadness in Ardaelan's voice for which nothing could account. The initiate had not been there, so long ago, watching bodies twitching in agony on bloody puppet strings. Acharya let out a snarl, anger boiling through his veins and in the back of his throat like acid. Something in the back of his mind screamed and he voiced it without thinking. "Ashar balmathtal," he spat. "Sha'et akar kaeran y'erahn tael'kaerafekh." Not abused. This world fucking raped us. The Mage shook his head in an effort to make the fury and the scream disappear, his dark eyes smoldering. He wondered where the words had come from, why he had spoken them, why he was so angry. Ardaelan cocked his head curiously. Shadorin had given him a strip of cloth from her plain, faded red robes and carefully covered Ardaelan's empty eye sockets. He'd refused to let her touch his face, to clean the gore that had streamed down his temples and cheeks. His own robes - the unadorned, faded blue fabric of the male initiates - had been badly stained and he had yet to change them. Since he had been brought before the Acharya two days previous he had not left. After waking in darkness and wandering out of his room, a myriad of whispers had grown steadily louder until Ardaelan had no choice but to listen and repeat each phrase to this world's god. With each word he'd spoken the clamor lessened. Flanked by Shadorin and Faerkesh, their hands resting gently on his shoulders, he had sputtered the words spinning in his head for two days. The desire to make the whispers stop, to let his mind just be quiet once more, consumed him. He had spoken, keeping skin-to-skin contact with his new comrades in mutilation, and Acharya had listened. Touch opened their minds up to each other, letting them communicate without words. Physical contact served as a reassurance that whatever they experienced, whatever visions and sounds overwhelmed their sense, they were not alone. Touch opened all of their minds up to the wail of the world, letting the unbearable volume in Ardaelan's mind spill over into the two others. Acharya's gaze flicked from deaf to blind to mute, studying them for any sort of reaction. Shadorin returned his stare coldly. The blood on her neck still seemed fresh, shining in thick trails leading from her ears. The eyes of Faerkesh were completely neutral. "Your Tower is going to fall," Ardaelan rasped simply and clearly. He was losing his voice from speaking for so long without eating, drinking or sleeping at all but it didn't matter. It was almost done, almost quiet. All of the rage that had welled in the back of Acharya's throat just... dissipated. "What?" The papers he had been writing on, musing over fluttered to the floor. The tiniest echo of a shadow of hope reverberated in the back of his mind before curiosity erased it. Was any part of him still capable of hoping? If it was still possible, then whose hope had he just felt? "Obviously you heard me," Ardaelan smirked at the sound of the scattered papers settling on the floor. He had gotten a reaction from the Mage. Good. "I will not repeat myself at your whims." It felt so good to talk back to the master and fear no punishment. That foul blood had changed him, and somehow it mattered to the Acharya. "Whose Tower?" Acharya demanded, stepping closer to the prophets. Was the initiate referring to the Warrior from the Old World, trapped in the back of this mind - his own mind, ironically - forever screaming and promising revenge? Or did he mean Torankhayel, the terrible darkness bent on draining this world of hope, happiness and love before moving on to the next world it wanted to see die. Maybe he meant the other, the in-between that had named itself Acharya. Still smiling, Ardaelan only offered, "It's a surprise. Dailyahrahn, Acharya. Sha'et akar elth sa'ech nikaersh ulnaiahn." He took the hands of his comrades into his own and led them out into the hall with a confidence unexpected from a blind initiate, leaving Acharya on his own to stare at the bird in its cage. Fight hard, Great Leader. Bring this world to its knees. If Tahdisha had understood a single word of what had been said here, he didn't seem to be willing to divulge the secrets of the universe. Acharya decided that he needed to take a long walk to give his mind a chance to clear, absorb whatever it could. The Mage sighed heavily as he made to lock Tahdisha's cage. Under normal circumstances it would not have been necessary, but those normal circumstances never seemed to exist. Acharya trusted the bird to wander on its own, he knew the animal would return no matter where in Trinlayra it wandered. He even had begun to trust that neither the initiates nor the Magi would harm the bird - it was very likely that by now they all knew that the cost would be their own limbs, skins, or heads. Trinlayra had simply become a shaky place in the last two days, figuratively and literally. After the departure of Lyahr and Corridan, sporadic earthquakes had begun. None of them were severe - to the best of Acharya's knowledge - but he hadn't any idea what was causing them and that bothered him. In addition to the unexplained shaking of the ground, eight of Felanya's pets had spiraled out of the sky landing most delicately amongst the gemstone statues and scaring the denizens of Trinlayra witless. Every part of each of his minds had begun racing since hearing the screech of the Kael'adahn, feeling their presence as a simple coldness scratching at the surface of his awareness. As his feet carried him through the halls and stairways of Bantaehl, his minds continued to race. His first assumption had been that being locked in Paersfitholn had caused Felanya to snap - and it would have been just about time. The dark part of this mind had expected that woman to break much sooner, in all honesty, to let Torankhayel just have her. If that had been the case then the Mage could have assumed that the Kael'adahn were here to smash every single statue - and this far into the war there were hundreds - and send their souls straight to the darkness, making Torankhayel that much harder to defeat. That had been the purpose in founding the Magi, when the great dark completely claimed control over the Warriors from the Old World before the being now called Acharya awoke from his stupor and began making his own plans. Acharya wandered out into the courtyard, a tiredness seeping through his body. He was growing so weary of this ageless war, and knew that it could end within two years' time if all went according to plan. So much hung in a tenuous balance, Acharya thought to himself as he felt a slight shake in the ground beneath him. In front of him the Kael'adahn snaked throughout the massive graveyard - the courtyard, as some had taken to calling it, without realizing that the gemstone statues were more than lavish decorations. The largest of the beasts - alpha, something in the back of his mind told him - named Sollayeth by their human master, moved carefully amongst the statues. He plodded gently between the rows of half-dead Magi, taking the time to examine each statue, curling his tail carefully behind him so as not to upset any of them. After seeing the care the monsters had taken around the statues, it was obvious that they were not here to destroy anything. So little made sense... Acharya stepped forward, closer to the Kael'adahn wandering the grounds carefully. A'Eranth - the three, in Kaer'melthek - had not said anything that might apply to the arrival of these Beasts, or the significance thereof. They had not said anything about themselves, which slightly surprised Acharya. He knew that it was Vincent's foul blood that had tainted them - blood he had almost told the other Magi to clean, before realizing they would never do such menial tasks - but he had no idea whose side they might be on. An insect crunching beneath the Acharya's boot caught Sollayeth's attention and the Beast turned to the Acharya with bright, curious eyes. Tilting his head back, the creature issued a series of loud screeches that almost made sense to Acharya's ears. The world blurred and a wave of dizziness washed over the Mage before the Beast fell silent. Acharya could almost understand what the Beast wanted, something about patience and a mind but the rest was unintelligible. Tired, but knowing he would not be able to sleep for a very long time, Acharya turned to walk back to the Blessing Chamber, retrieve his notes and try to make sense of the world. |