Ascendancy: The Book of Heylel

Chapter III

Chapter III



         Niklaus spun the curious smoky substance between his thumb and forefinger as he held it to the light. His eyes were inches away from the glass dram as he inspected the writhing black vapor that twisted and turned inside of the vial.

         “It’s intriguing,” he said, as he cleared away papers from his alchemy bench.

         He placed it in the center of a small wood rack, taking care not to disturb the substance within.

         “What do you suppose it is?” Dante took a step closer, standing at his left side. He was covered in splotches of dirt and dust. Cobwebs stuck to his shoulders and back like silvery strings of a frayed cloak. He still drew heavy, ragged breaths from his run back to the castle. His hands rattled, as though the ground were quaking.

         He was clearly panicked from whatever it was he’d seen down in the Mausoleum. It was a place that he’d never been, nor did he intend to visit. The task of burying the dead was reserved strictly for the Apothecaries, and he was more than glad to leave them to it, for he never felt right around the dead. Now that he’d seen the Praetorian pass in such graceless and violent moments, it would be far less comfortable.

“I’m not entirely sure, I’ve never seen anything like it. It appears to be a base of Aeris and Aqua.”

         He reached for a retort, as Dante bent to inspect the smoky mist. “How could it be both?”

         He hadn’t an answer for him. To possess both qualities would suggest that it was nothing more than mist, but then mist wasn’t black as pitch. He removed the stopper, and tipped the vial over the retort, and as he expected, it poured out just as water would.

         “Very curious,” he said. “Where did you find it?”

         Dante shrunk back at the question, his head turned to the side, averting his eyes from the deep black, clearly disturbed by whatever method he had used to obtain this substance.

         “That Praetorian,” he said, as his voice shook. “He breathed it out with his last breath.”

         Niklaus stroked wiry tendrils of whiskers on his chin, “He breathed it out? I thought he was dead.”

         Dante shook his head, “As did I, but it was his last breath, I swear it. He was still alive, Niklaus. I was going to bury a live man,” his voice was shallow and thin as he ran fingers through his hair. “I gave him Valerian Tea in the Necropolis… I’m not sure how I knew, but I knew he wasn’t dead. His muscles were simply stiff like rigor mortis.”

         Niklaus knew the substance well. It was an extract of the Valerian flower, often used for stiff limbs. He’d used it frequently during his time as an Alchemy student. Standing for hours on end, days at a time did often wear his knees and feet, and the tea worked wonders for that.

         “What happened after you gave it to him?”

         “He died.” Dante continued shaking his head as though he felt some sort of remorse. “His body went limp, and he exhaled whatever this is. Niklaus, I – I saw him rot.”

         What an odd thing to say.

         “Rot?”

         “Right there in front of me, I saw years of decay happen in seconds. I’ve never seen anything like that before, it was like he’d been dead for years. Once I gave him that Valerian Tea, he just… decomposed.”

         Niklaus’ skeleton nearly jumped out of its skin at the pounding on the door. It rattled on its latch as the old muffled voice called out from behind thick oak. Metal cracked and the hinges creaked as Dante swung the door open. In a darkened hall, wielding a low burning lantern, and wrapped head to toe in black and tattered robes, Gerbert of Tor stood. He was wheezing and shaky as he pushed himself into the laboratory, beads of sweat rolling off his bald head, and soaking a thick hood that hung at his back like a dead animal. His chain was wrapped tightly in his hand cutting into aged, wrinkly skin.

         “I apologize for the intrusion, Prime Alchemyst,” He said, bowing low.

         Niklaus tilted his head in respectful greeting and gestured for a seat at the round table in the center of the laboratory. Gerbert waved his hand, dismissing the offer.

         “Your apprentices told me what happened in the Necropolis, Dante,” he said, exhaling with great puffs and a crackling breath. “If I may see what you’ve brought back with you.”

         Dante nodded as he pointed at the retort that sat alone on the table. “There.”

         The old man turned and bent low to inspect it. “My god… how could this be true?”

         “Do you know what it is?” Niklaus stepped forward.

         “You don’t know what it is?” His tone was almost condescending. “The Prime Alchemyst doesn’t recognize Aether when he sees it?”

         Aether? That was impossible. None had harvested Aether since the days of Charles of Lysse, much less seen it. Aside from that, what records he had of the substance suggested that it was purely a liquid, and it was certainly not black. This was something else.

         The old man raised his hands in defense, “I know, Niklaus, it’s not as you thought it might be, but this is in fact Aether.”

         “Pardon, but how would you know that, Astronomage?” He’d allowed a slight flame in his voice, for Astronomages knew nothing of the elements.

         “Do you presume to believe I’m not as learned as you, Niklaus? We are of different schools, but Astronomages are every bit as interested in Aether as you. It is the element of the universe after all.”

         “How could this be Aether?” Dante bent low, staring at the whirling substance.

         “You harvested this from a dying man, Dante. It’s not his blood, nor his urine, nor any other natural substance that would come from a man. It’s the only other explanation,” he said, lacing his bony fingers together. “This however, isn’t in its natural form.”

         “What are you suggesting,” Niklaus asked.

         “This has been corrupted; hexed.”

         Hexed? He’d never heard the word. Mages spoke with such strange language.

         “A Hex is a sort of curse. Not like wishing ill will on someone… no. A Hex is far more terrible,” he said, pulling a heavy tome from beneath the wrappings of his robe.

         He slammed it onto the bench, and the pages opened on their own, stopping somewhere in the center of the book. The pages depicted some strange glyph. Lines skewed and bisected one another within a trinity of circles. Within the three rings, three smaller circles were drawn, equidistant from one another, forming a triangle. Symbols were drawn in each of them, symbols he’d never seen. Along the outermost edge, in equal intervals, circles of similar size housed their own symbols. He counted nine.

         “This is the basis of magical study. In particular, this depicts the nature of hexes,” The old man said, tracing his gnarled finger along the outermost circle. “The three symbols in the center represent a relationship between our world and the worlds of the dead. Each are tied to one another through Aether. One is Heaven, and the other is Hell.

         “And those other symbols?” Dante cocked his head, inspecting the drawing.

         “They are our celestial families. They represent worlds far away from us, but still existing in this plane of life. Most of Astronomagic is the study of these worlds and their alignment with the stars.” His voice had regained some of its resonance, as he coughed phlegm between breaths.

         “So, there are twelve worlds?” Dante showed great interest in this lesson of the Arcane, as though he were willing to abandon his school and don the cloths of the magicians.

         “There are twelve that we know of and can study. There maybe thousands, even millions of others in the cosmos that we cannot see,” Gerbert replied, waving his hand over the book, as he did, the pages flipped by again, flapping and rustling as they turned until coming to an abrupt stop. “But here, this depicts another world. This one is very mysterious, and difficult to study.”

         The picture showed the same drawing but this time, there was another circle, with its own individual symbol, away from the others, crowning the drawing. Two lines skewed away from it, meeting at the large trinity of rings, opposite from one another.

         “This world was supposedly created by man thousands of years ago. There are only vague references to it in our writings, but we do know that it exists, as we’ve studied its influence on our celestial harmonics for centuries.”

         Niklaus had heard of this world before, it too was mentioned in limited detail in many writings of Charles of Lysse. None of them were anything more than hypotheses and the occasional theory of elemental relationships, but he had gone into much detail about the mistakes of men in that time. Men were a different people then, wicked and greedy. All of them hungered for power, desperate to overthrow the lords of the earth. It was the age of gods and divine creatures. He’d called them Angels and Daemons, and went into great length about a man who had ascended the favor of the great god, Jezebeth. Beyond that, writings were lost or destroyed through the ages, and like most of mankind, their knowledge vanished as well. He could only begin to imagine how close to achieving advancements such as they. Men may have been wicked in that time, but they were intelligent. Perhaps their intelligence was their undoing. Still, it was next to impossible to truly piece together fragments of a bygone age, and he’d learned over the years that the past was the past. His head remained in the present, focused always on discovery and the safety of Everfall.

         “Anwyn,” Niklaus said, his voice soft and reminiscing.

         “Yes! Prime Alchemist, I’m proud that you would know of this place,” Gerbert was nearly ecstatic as he stroked his long white beard.

         “Anwyn, a world created by a man who thought he could be god. It has since then, been a blight on all other worlds, feeding on their energies like a leech. This one is no different. It is the alignment of this world and ours that allows a Hex to be cast.”

         Gerbert fished about beneath his dark robes and revealed a large parcel wrapped in soft linen. A hint of polished silver glistened in a dim candle light as he removed the wrappings. It was a strange clockwork; circular with duplicates of the symbols in his book, painstakingly srimshawed around the outer circumference of a metal disc. Lines and smaller circles traversed over carvings of familiar constellations, crowned by a thin needle of a dial, almost that of a clock.

         “This is an astrolabe,” he said, holding it in reverence, “It allows us to picture celestial movement within the universe.

         He placed it on the table, his finger pointing downward at the dial. As he hummed some imaginary tune, the dial spun of its own will. As it spun, it revealed that it was not a disc, but many circles within one another. Each spinning opposite of the previous with a hypnotic majesty.
“The dial helps pinpoint alignments of stars and worlds, it is how we Astronomages determine the exact location of our world within the cosmos. By doing this, we may determine when certain magics are more powerful or otherwise useless.”

         The dial stopped, its point thrust at the center of a familiar symbol. It was a simple circle, two lines bisected one another, forming a cross in its center.

         “This is our world,” he said, pointing to it, “As you can see, the dial crosses three other very important symbols as well as a particular constellation.”

         Niklaus scanned the length of the dial, from their world, downward to the center. It crossed over more carvings, just as Gerbert had said. Along the outermost edge, a familiar constellation fell in line with the pictures.

         “Ofuceas,” he said, bending over the table to inspect his assumption. Everfall knew the group of stars as another name: The King.

         “Correct! Prime Alchemyst, your knowledge of the Cosmos is quite impressive for having never followed the ways of the Astronomage.” The old man’s eyes were wide with disbelief as he stared at him through pale gray irises.

         He hated when he stared at him. Hairs raised on the back of his neck from his gaze, and he turned his look away, back to the clockwork on the table.

         “The worlds of Heaven, Hell, and Anwyn,” he said, pointing to each emblem as he recited their names, “And this is Ofuceas, the King. We are currently entering a celestial ecliptic with these stars and these worlds. It is in an alignment such as this, that the most powerful hex magics can be cast.”

         He turned to the dark substance swirling about in the retort, “I believe the last time this happened, this particular hex came to be.”

         Niklaus was not an expert of the universe, but by the rate at which each ring rotated on the Astrolabe, he could estimate that the last time this had happened was well over a thousand years ago; the same time Charles of Lysse began exploring the sciences of Alchemy. It was the age of the old kingdom. He looked back at the twisting black. Such wicked creation swirled about in his laboratory.

         Gerbert reached for the glass, “If I may offer a demonstration,” he said, placing it on the table, and turning to Dante. “Prime Apothecary, would you happen to have any leaf or plant that you may be willing to part with?”

         Dante fiddled about in his pouch and removed a single leaf on a twig, it was rich with a deep green and quite jagged. “Holly,” he said, “Freshly picked this morning.”

         Gerbert took it from him, and placed it beside on the far side of the table, away from them. “As I said, during an ecliptic such as this, any number of Hexes can be cast, I wouldn’t dare attempt a spell such as the one we’re discussing, but I can brave one of lesser extent.”

         He waved his hand about in the air in a circular motion, tracing the outlines of the same glyph depicted in his tome. As he traced, dark lines formed in the air, feint at first but darkening as he continued. Soon, he slowed his hand, and the circle began to rotate about, symbols revolving around one another, and traversing the opposite direction over and over again. He hummed in that strange, non-existent melody as before. The leaf lifted from the table like a feather on a breeze. Standing on end, it rotated as if dangled from a string that had been twisted numerous times. The circle span faster for a moment, emitting waves of sharp grinding sounds like that of stone against stone. The symbols within glowed a burning yellow, and then faded, as the spinning came to a slowing stop before vanishing. As the leaf returned to the table’s surface it appeared as though nothing had happened at all.

         “Egredimini Oblivioni,” the old man whispered.

         As he spoke in the language of old, the leaf shriveled and died as though it suffered an autumn and winter in mere moments.

         Gerbert clapped his hands together in satisfaction, “That is just a basic hex, but similar to the one in that bottle,” he said, pointing to the retort.

         “So this is a cursed Aether?” Niklaus couldn’t quite grasp the idea that magic had such an ability as to corrupt an element. Such a power seemed far too great and terrible to be cast by anyone. It seemed far too divine.

         “Exactly.”

         “What does this mean for us, Gerbert?” Dante’s enthusiasm toward the subject of magics had diminished now. He’d reverted back to his old fears of anything he couldn’t fix with simple poultices and salves. Niklaus didn’t blame him one bit. Such a magic should be feared.

         “It means that entering the ecliptic will be very dangerous, perhaps destructive.”

         He was as much a doomsayer as ever. Though this time, assuming his theory was correct, he understood. A magic so powerful was very well possibly destructive. He could only imagine what the decay of Aether would do to the world of the living.

         Dante stepped back from all the arcane devices on the table, “What do you suggest we do?”

         Gerbert took the retort in his hand, “Assuming my theories are correct,” he said before pouring its entire contents on the stone floor, “The answer lies here before us.”

         Had the Apothecary found the ability to run, he’d have darted straight out of the castle. Dante inched back away from the growing puddle of smoke shifting about on the floor. It whirled and twisted about like an eddy upon a stream, slowly forming into circular lines. It spun back and forth, tracing out some dark glyph. As it formed, the Astronomage nodded and whispered postulations to himself as he looked on, arms folded beneath his cloak.

         At last, the spinning and twisting stopped, and the blackness collapsed on the floor, dissipating into the air in fading plumes. It left behind the drawing of some terrible glyph, burned into the floor as though he’d arranged brimstone in that exact pattern and set it alight.
“It is the return of house Ofuceas, and their kingdom,” Gerbert said, his voice dark and stern, commanding some strange zeal.

         House Ofuceas? There was no such house among the greater families of Everfall.

“The old kingdom is rising once more it would seem, and they want their home back from us. We are, after all, the usurpers of its former power. I daresay, opening the gate won’t help us any longer.”