Shadows & Sorcery #95
You know what time it is, it’s Shadows & Sorcery, edition ninety-fifth!
A rich bounty of five fantastical oddities dwells below this week! Weird science, weird magic, old gods and forces, and good heavens, even a little horror.
Let these offerings tide you over, because next week there is no Shadows & Sorcery, but instead the next chapter of The Path of Poison, where we get to see the fallout from that drake attack. What the hell was what all about? Catch up HERE
Not gonna keep you long, folks, don’t worry. Just gonna say…95, look at that number, getting awfully close, aren’t we?
Anyway, if you enjoyed what you read here, let the stories know you liked them by hitting that heart icon! That’s the like button, smash it repeatedly please.
This week, we learn a dire truth in the Ritual Archives, we discover why they build those curious Cemetery Spires, we witness what comes from the Graveyard Chasm, we descend below in search of the Sigil of Frost, and lastly we ascend into the strange stronghold of the Knights of the Cosmos…
Ritual Archives
It sat atop a thick spire of rock, a leaden focus for the people of the time-worn city below. Its dark, slate coloured walls spoke to weight and solidity in age and spiritual strength. It was circular and tapered to a broad low conical roof. Numerous barred apertures were set into the roof that let soft light flood the vast interior. The only approach was a long series of steep, zig-zagging stairs that led up the face of the rock spire.
She sat in one of the stone benches before the archives. The great sweep of the city below seemed so big from here. She could see the busy ports to the north and east horizons, and could see a fair ways out into the ocean. Whole other lands lay past the fog of sight, including her own. All these lands, these people. All so very small. She thought on that as she rose and entered through a smaller portal in the massive oaken doors which had across them great black chains that had never been undone.
These archives went back a full and continuous thousand years, she let that reality slowly dawn upon her as she took in the immensity of the place. The interior wasn't far different than what lay outside: bare walls of cold, dark stone, resistant to just about everything. Intricate geometric patterns covered every single available surface, too. This was the power beyond every throne and grand shrine, the power beyond every blade point and arrowhead. The center of a world-spanning faith that had come together in a dark age against that which dwelt far below.
The teeming millions of the world knew this of their religion: the Great One was below in the earth, far below in a gulf of illimitable darkness which this world and its crystalline dome of night merely teetered atop of. It moved, and the world moved, its motions veiled in occult mystery, discerned and disseminated by learned sages who taught the people the words to say and offerings to make so that each subtle shift might bring blessings upon them. The old gods had been but distant reflections and dim conceptions of this supreme power.
Only in truth, they were rites of warding in the guise of devotion, and the ceremonies performed in the conical towers were not esoteric rituals of deepest worship, but solemn ceremonies of repulsion cobbled together from the knowledge of all the pitifully tiny world. All they did, every libation and sacred geometry was a bulwark between them and it.
She was one of the youngest to ever be admitted to these highest echelons. Her learning knew no bounds, and her magisters didn't see a need to limit her. She could prove yet a useful asset in the defense of the world, so set her loose into archives. It was as much a reward as the next step in her training. These past few years had become a blessing and a dreadful curse, coming to know by slow, sinister degrees what really dwelt in fitful slumber just beneath the world's feet, to have truth revealed. She had taken it remarkably well after the initial shock almost everybody experiences. There was no easy way to break the reality of such a thing. And so she delved into the ritual archives to dredge up anything the sages of times past could offer their descendants.
She had to uncloud her mind. If there was one thing a thousand years taught humanity it was that for all they were dust upon an anthill, their minds were sharp and their intuition was strong. But the influence what was below affected everything, on every level. The archives weren't just the greatest body of lore in the world, they were by necessity a temple, or what most people would call a temple.
She found a section of bare, tended earth, bereft of anything but darkish soil, and there drew a square. The scrawled shape--a symbol of devotion to many--was a realignment, or neutralization at worst, undoing the strange malevolence of that which dwelt below. It was one of the finest discoveries man had made, come to independently by no less than seven lands across the world, including her own native country in the Xurkhein east.
She took then a nearby jug, planted specifically for this use, and poured out a measure of crimson liquid onto the soil. In the oldest times this would have been human blood, the the under-earth was rotten with it. Lakes of it could be found in the deepest caverns, welling up from below. It had been done to defend against, or at least distract or delay the Great One. But now they had the alchemyck from the arid of lands of Albhu, which had been proven some centuries back a far more effective force that quelled the call for sacrifice.
Within moments, the nervous shudder which had rung about her mind began to slow, and then ceased, and she sighed with relief. She slowly began to work her way through the shelves, letting her intuition guide her. In these outer layers, for the archive stacks were constructed themselves like a great circular defensive geometric, she ran her hand along lavishly illustrated and printed grimoires bound in red-dyed leather, or in rich green, bright yellow, or deepest blue linen covers, each book as a thick as her head and twice and heavy. Incredible compilations of the latest knowledge, of translations and interpretations, and new discoveries. Wholesome, uplifting works that lent their readers hope, and she felt secure in their perusal, as did the small number of other sages who nodded silently to her, and shuffled off into other areas.
After some time, she moved into deeper layers, older layers of knowledge from times of strife. In here were handwritten manuscripts of minute scrawls and scratches with carved wooden plates and metal clasps, alongside countless smaller tracts and even collections of popular pamphlets on religious prescription.
Here now was a section that made her shudder. A dark period in classical history manifested in handsome scrolls with gold and silver rollers, from when many gods were still conceived of, when cabals of scholars sought not to repel that which dwelt below but to influence its movements--the knowledge contained therein was deemed half-forbidden, and no sage would speak of it willingly, but they all knew it was there. Whole sections of writing committed to the exploration and frightful experiments of these sages of old, mercifully long dead, their ideas secured.
The deepest layers of the archives were utterly silent, and had a funereal air to them. Not decrepit, but dust hung on everything, and no other scholar walked here. It was like a crypt. And yet, its contents shone through in its lengths of papyrus tied with prayer beads, and even loose leaves of roughly crafted vellum, great shelves and stacks of these rose into the misty air of the ritual archives. They certainly didn't start here, they had been ferried across seas and land to be contained safely. Indeed, they didn't present much in the way of knowledge to be rediscovered, but they were history, human history, the first stirrings of struggle against the Great One below. And for that, she dwelt among them for a while, and let it reaffirm her vows.
Within this labyrinth she would make her mentors proud, and personally see to it that that which dwelt below remained below, at least until she herself was committed to earth as part of the bulwark.
Cemetery Chasm
Far to the west, the land was marked by vast ranges of cold, fog-shrouded hills, strewn with bare stone, laden with spans of lush, slumbering grasses and tall, bowed weeds bent like groups of furtive figures. Short twisted trees snaked their gnarled, leafless boughs into an unquiet sky that was forever heavy with banks of steely, swirling cloud, which only ever parted in places to reveal a dim ashen haze. Small icy streams silently crept in deep rivulets through the uneven earth, often hidden by overhanging greenery.
High in the midst of these hills, away from the low shadowy vales which were as lakes of darkness for most of the year, there was a thin, gnarled forest which grew upon a humped ground. From within, a spire of black stone emerged in a clearing from the fogs that ranged across the slopes, almost as if they were animate. Upon closer inspection, a wanderer in dark, heavy cloak saw then what the spire loomed over.
Most were not set in the ground right, or more likely, had been shifted over spans of silent centuries, but by what, in this all but lifeless place, none could guess. The wanderer inspected their faces--none of the gravestones were under three hundred years old. The quietly fading final remains, perhaps, of some ailing village now nameless and forgotten by all the world. Small low slab tombs, each a frigid bed to lay within, outside of the reach of the earth, awaiting, maybe, some distant promise of resurrection. Dozens more might lay beneath, unseen, unknown, even to their patron, their ugly contents to be revealed to the sun only when the winds and rains have finally battered these hills to dust.
The black spire was, too, a grave marker, dwelling at the head of the lot, making sure any who saw it knew that it was the greatest monument. The brass door was tarnished beyond repair and a kind of thin grating that allowed for grotesque peerings within had been rusted or rent apart, and yellowed bones lay scattered across the dirty marble floor, none of them upon the slab where they had been laid to rest. A mean meal from long ago for whatever vermin got lost in these knolls.
The sun began to lower on the distant horizon, sending weird shadows across the sky, calling whatever dwelt in the those black valleys below to greet the dusk. A fog began to slither amongst the wild earth and blanket it entirely. It would make traversal highly perilous for the wanderer. Hollows existed all across the landscape, and though the vision of an unbroken sea of fog across the hillsides seemed cloudlike and light, the fog was treacherous, and hid entrances into the world beneath.
Something like moonlight leaked from behind the chalky black clouds, a pale, distant orb that made all things appear as if not entirely solid. The dark-cloaked wanderer knew there was no chance of a crackling hearth and a dreamless sleep that night, and so, amidst the crepuscular gloom, a headstone was chosen which offered sufficient shade, and the last sights of the wanderer as they pulled their cloak about them tight were of clawing branches and a black spire, the last sounds were the eerie whispers of wind through grass and snaking stream from afar, and the last sensation the bite of the fog as it settled upon the flesh.
The wanderer slowly became aware of a period of restless darkness filled with indistinct shapes standing out amidst the murk, and of a muffled drumming or thumping coming from all around. There was a dreadful weight upon the eyes, but with tremendous effort they were forced open to gaze over a scene of the cemetery, upon which now was thrown wan blue illumination from an unseen source. Of what it did not touch there was a deep blackness, so that there was a stark aspect to the entire vista. The fog had parted so that naught else but the ragged trees and the low slab tombs were visible.
It was from the latter things there came the sound that the wanderer, who had not risen, associated immediately, and with a swift sinking of the heart, with the beating of fists upon stone.
The stink of cold, stale earth and damp stone was in the air, of old forests through which no wind blew, and of mouldering castle halls. The black spire stood out like a shaft of pure shadow, an anti-light, reaching into a starless void that was smooth and without definition. What the wanderer thought was their own flesh quivering was within moments revealed as aught else.
Amidst the tombs, the ground bulged outwards in successive spurts until it split, and a great black rent gaped, exhaling dusty air laden with darkness. Graves either side of the wound were upturned and swallowed by the chasm, falling noiselessy into its maw. But then without warning or hint of arrival, from its depths there rose a colossal grey hand, of taut, rugose, parchment-like skin over curious musculature, in whose palm a human being might easily fit, and it rose up to the very shoulder. The wanderer looked unblinking and breathless, wordlessly praying that nothing else revealed itself as the thumping of graveborne fists growing in frenzy, like the patter of rain quickly descending into storm. The hand reached out with great intent and tenderly picked up an old bundle of winding sheets and bones that lay half fallen from its cold bed, and with gentle grasp receded back into the deep.
It took a supreme burst of strength, but the wanderer's eyes were quickly clamped shut until the mind was hurtled back into a senseless numbness.
With a gasp and sputter, the wanderer suddenly awaked. It felt like some gulf of time had passed. A weary, grey dawn flooded the land upon which only now a thin mist seeped. The wanderer jumped up, cold, aching limbs complaining. Bleariness covered the eyes as it does in intense slumber, and stumbling forward, it was wiped away as the memory of the nightmare welled up. The wanderer's hand went down as the image of that great limb flooded back with shocking sharpness. But there was no time to wonder what had inspired such a dread vision the night before. In an instant were distant notions of warmth and familiar sights dashed, for not three steps forward into the steely dawn, the wanderer fell back as there came into sight all too closely and all too clearly, a yawning chasm of illimitable darkness whose violent birth and wormed its way into the sleeper's mind.
Graveyard of Spires
The city covers all, its span dominates this landscape entirely. All is stone cut and chiseled by human hands, and metal beaten with human hammers, reared into great prism-windowed faces, yawning arches, winding steps, long rows of terraced houses looking out on vast courts, and pillars of countless number. No bog or swamp or old lake do the people fawn over in worship, save those degenerates who dredge water from the deep vaulted caverns beneath the sprawl. There do their slumbering brains interpret the hum of energies as whispers in their dreams.
For now close to a thousand years has the passion of naturalist philosophy driven away the veil of occultism over the world, and things once secret, or forbidden, have had cast on them the radiance of human intellect. But fondly does man look back on the old gods, and the beauty of the art and vision they inspired, and many keep their antique idols and statuary as fanciful muses from a stranger time, but there is not a soul in the modern city proper who bows before them. Man now looks into the wondrous future promised by the cogitations of the Omnisophists and Panologists, those predominant strains of naturalist inquiry. For them is the universe either an intricate machine, made of wholly individual parts working in tandem, or entirely holistic, a finely balanced construct and self-contained system where all is one, and one is all. Within the bulk of these two greatest of all movements do seekers of truth explore the universe in terms of wisdom, cold logic, abstract symbolism beyond conventional language, and more.
Although they dominate the city's progress and study, and produce its most famous natural philosophers, they are by no means alone. Among them are numerous break off sects and cabals who believe ultimate truth rests in other places, and in other things, or simply deride the lofty "knowledge of all" approach as naive, or arrogant. These smaller sects aren't bound by reputation, face, honour, or even really esteem, and so free of preconceptions beyond that they are strange, they plunge themselves into strange study, and strange practice.
One of the fringe sects who verge upon outright worship are the Fulminators. Worshiping deities and spirits and things the likes of which man believed in during the age of darkness is seen not only as unseemly, but borderline heretical...of course the modern sects don't use the term, but they feel it all the same. The Fulminators hold in the highest reverence, beyond seemingly all else, the lightning which courses through the sky. To them, thunderbolts are the purest expression of energy, vitality, power, and so on, an infinite source that lies just beyond which grants this world of otherwise inert clay the life it holds so dear. Outside the dome of the sky, or veil, or threshold, or whatever it may be, through the stars which are as pinholes or floodgates, or via build-ups of ambient solar energy, or via some as yet obscure theorized Odic force, energy gathers and is released as lightning.
What sets them apart from most other small movements are their practices for the burial of members of their ideology, another piece of evidence that their detractors claims shows them for the cult that they are. The Fulminators believe all kinds of unorthodox things, one of the wildest being their supposed advanced ability to subsist off of electricity, unlike the rest of humanity which subsists off of fire, the human stomach of course being a furnace. But it is within death that they find the most brows raised, and this is because they profess knowledge of resurrection via lightning.
Entailing reanimation, revivification, and inertial reversing, this is true resurrection, if not whole rebirth, in their words surely words of jest, as thunder-clad silver demigods. For this mighty task are the dead of the Fulminators interred within special graveyards, a practice falling out of favour with society and governance at large, though they do enjoy the old tombs for their aesthetic value. Space comes at a premium now in the city, but the Fulminators have fought for the right of continuous burial for the sake of naturalist inquiry. Their cemeteries are wondrously strange things, filled to the brim with brilliant silvery spires arranged in neat rows, leading down into small steel caskets in which the dead are immersed in a preservative quicksilver solution. It should be noted that in more ignorant ages, quicksilver was regarded as a "living metal".
When lightning strikes the spires, the energy floods the tombs, conducted through the precious metal spires and into the quicksilver which has seeped throughout the interred body.
To date, hordes of resurrected Fulminators have not descended upon the city bringing the might and wisdom of thunder, but among certain scholarly circles there have been stirrings. Allegedly there's an old fellow living in a room above a Fulminator Volthall who was their one successful experiment. But seeing as his death and supposed resurrection were done behind closed doors and no official record of the deceased exists, it remains inconclusive to even the most open minded Omnisophist or Panologist. Still, the room is said to be filled from floor to ceiling with the old man's writings on "what he saw", and those from the outside who've seen him wandering amidst the spire graveyards say he's only getting sprightlier as the years carry on.
Sigil of Frost
It must have been sitting down there for years. Slowly spreading further up and up until the tenants complained of an unseasonalbe cold, and two local men, trusted by the burgomaster of the district, and armed with picks, were sent down with a monk to ascertain what was almost certainly a sigil gone awry. It looked like it had been a smuggler's den, could even have been some underground outlaw scribe's old headquarters. They did crop up every so often. But if that was the case, they are long gone, or long dead. The stone of the lightless hallways were riddled with rime, nothing was free of a skin of frost, and treacherous ice coated the floor. The air was intensely cold to the point of pain, it was difficult to breathe, and absolutely still.
They did away with their torches quickly. Likely the elemental cold would swiftly snuff them out. Instead, the monk went forth and produced from a pack a number of small instruments. She took first an inkstone, a small flat oval stone with a depression in the middle, and then created with a small porcelain water reservoir and stick of incense, some ink. She then removed and held with immense reverence a small, wedge-headed thing on a lengthy handle. The local men watched with fascination how she pressed each of the three sides into the ink and then tapped them lightly, one side at a time, in a precise sequence, on the icy wall. When the third one was struck, there suddenly flooded through the passageway a soft but clear whitish light. The sigil did not emanate the light. It merely made it exist in the passage.
The power of sigils never failed to impress even those whose earliest memories are of their working.
The two men thought it resembled a series of letters if they squinted hard enough, but letters that were ornamented to the point of near incoherence. All kinds of winding shapes that never connected, but fit together. Cruciforms inside and outside of circles, long stems intersected with lines which themselves sprouted off into other shapes. Curves and coils abounded, and the ends of stems and shapes often had serif-like protrusions. These were, they understood, whole symbols that told whole stories. Every sigil was a story, from beginning to end, with details and clarifications. The skill with which a sigil was inscribed defined those details. Sigils like these were excerpts, apparently, self-contained sections that were emblematic of conceptual musings, and they were written in a divine language that worked as sublime forms incorporating not just pure descriptions, but tone, aesthetic, intent--things beyond mere technical language.
And they all came from the Book. They had never seen the Book, no, in fact most in the world hadn't. But she probably had, at least from a distance. It was the source of everything in the world, and the sigils mankind used had been derived from its language, a language that described and set down everything that existed, including humanity's ability to use sigils. It had been handed down in a time before time when all was an unfashioned realm of shadow by the angels, or heralds, or watchers, they who cast the shadow of the world and who had a thousand names in the west alone, and so the world was.
One couldn't help but look upon a sigil and think of those most primal of myths that laid the foundation for this small but immemorial world.
And so, a sigil being a whole symbol, a full and self-contained existence, had to be described well. The sigil's potency and working depended upon it. A poorly inscribed sigil was a dangerous thing to set down, for it had no boundaries, and it seemed to the monk that such a thing had happened here. It would only get worse further down, where the sigil was still doing its work. Bless the scribes who spent their lives learning these things, and bless the scribes who controlled them, the two men said to each other.
Further down, it did indeed get worse. They came rather suddenly upon a wall of ice. The two fellows set to it with their tools, but it soon became clear that the ice was thick and absolutely solid. Nary a crack could be made in it, and so they looked to their monkish companion. She grinned as she removed another inkhammer head and set it upon the handle, saying she was glad she'd come prepared. This time, she repeated the process as before, but said that as the ice melted, so too would the sigil made upon it, so no fear of anything going awry. As she struck the third side on the ice, a heat haze filled the air and the ice rapidly began to fall apart, filling the passage with steam and streams of cool water flowing past their boots.
Several more times was that sigil employed and finally was set upon the ceiling to help combat any further build up of frost. They were also rather miserably damp and it would help dry them off. The passages descended fairly uniformly, though they were deformed from the intense cold, cracked and misshapen. There were empty, or mostly empty small rooms lining the short corridors, then a set of steps leading down, winding so that each corridor was stacked directly atop each other. This repeated about five times, new sigils of light and heat struck as needed, for not every passage was entirely blocked, and they could pass over some growths easily.
They finally came to a different kind of room. It sat where more steps down should be, but here there was a large petrified wooden door, burst from within by spirals of ice. The floor was half flooded now, up to their knees, and the cold of it bit terribly, so they would have to be quick. The light from the monk's sigils played across the sloshing water, sending ripples along the cracked walls. The sigil in there was emanating ice as the heat sigils melted it--the ice fell away, though much slower now. The two men took their picks and hacked away, speeding the process up as best they could.
Inside, they could see the crushed remains of braziers and lanterns and torches--and defaced sigils under the still solid ice. The monk looked to them uneasily. They waded hip deep towards a raised dais in the center of the sizeable chamber. Upon it, an old wooden table, from its surface a still torrent of spiralling ice, and before it, an old withered corpse, almost unrecognizable as a person so damaged was it. Whoever it was, and if their secret comrades were still alive, would never be known. They supposed that whoever it was, they'd paid the price for meddling.
The monk recognized the sigil and showed it to the two men. It was a lousy specimen, entire interior sections completely missing. No wonder this had happened. She stood looking at it, biting her lip, and was asked if she would destroy it. There was a hesitancy in the words she stammered out. Couldn't blame her, one of the men thought, monks wouldn't like that kind of thing. But he didn't mind. The point of his pick found its mark, and all of a sudden, a movement in the air they hadn't even noticed ceased, and the ice stopped its spread.
Knights of the Cosmos
The carriage was longer than it was wide, and was sleek, its sides were fashioned like two long, angular wings that ran for its whole length, and its front was sloped sharply and cleanly downward. From that front there protruded a bare metal frame atop which a driver sat, guiding two large metal wheels, themselves almost solid, with thick rims and thin hubs. Other, much smaller wheels, spokeless and solid, sat at angles just under the wing-like sides of the carriage. A production of the highest culture.
From it there now emerged three figures, they quite clearly were knights. Quasi-armoured for ornamentation's sake, they wore knee-length coats of subtly reinforced heavy navy linen with wide lapels and short thick cuffs, unadorned silk breeches, and clean felt boots. Across their shoulders were thin steel mantles and pauldrons of sharp, angular make. The shoulders bore the icons of their strengths and heraldry of their blood. In short, their bearing was emblematic of the intricate, monolithic keeps which they held dear in their hearts.
They inspected the vista about them: a dusky high plain of undulating, ridged land, rising and flowing unevenly. Hard to believe, they said amongst themselves, that the annals recorded this as a place of weeds, dusty earth, and low gnarled trees. Now it was awash with a great span of dark vegetation, singular trees in everlasting bloom, and of course, the mesa which dwelt like a watchtower over all.
That was where he lived.
They discussed the matter at hand in varying tones of displeasure as they walked the short way. Lordship was granted by right of strength alone. Still did the Houses uphold the tradition which ensured survival. Strength was what mattered, and indeed, strength came in many forms. But strength was also determined by your peers. That this doddering old aristocrat, some minor lord who had never renewed his right but faded into comfortable obscurity--disgusting to these young lords for whom ambition was all--was now personally knighting new lords? It was unheard of, and at best was offensive, at worst, it was suspicious.
The landscape was, as they trudged through it, not so much lush as it was virulent. By degrees had a healthier nature reclaimed this place, it was said, but the three knights now questioned quietly whether it was healthy at all. This land was to have been settled once upon a time, but no one really seemed to care. Except, of course, the old knight, who had abandoned his ancestral home for it.
In the shadow of the mesa they stood, and gazed upward. It was rough, rugged, entirely untouched by the hand of mankind. Poorly fashioned steps had been cut into the rock, which the trio now ascended with effort. The climb must have taken well over an hour, for when they emerged, the sun had set and they were left in a twilight realm. They knew the ride out had taken longer than expected, but to have been plunged into night as they wound through the rock?
The summit was large, but its edges could be spied from their position. Roughly circular, it might just be big enough for a small estate, and good thing, for the pre-eminent structure of this curious stronghold was a towering mansion, and it was surrounded by numerous small structures much like itself in aspect. But heavens above, what a strange aspect.
They studied it as they made a slow, silent approach. The design and aesthetics of their lands, of the Allegiant Kingdoms, prized above all else, highly decorative ornamentation consisting of intricate designs but smooth surfaces, clean curves, and bold geometries with hard angles. There was in their design a sense of swift and direct motion that lifted the spirit of those who looked upon it. But what they saw here was something else entirely, it was for a start asymmetric, and it flowed, but it was organic, undulating in sinuous curves, looking, they muttered to each other, more like it had been grown than built.
They passed across what looked like foundations, or unfinished buildings, whose purpose they couldn't conceive. Everything had about it the aspect of petrified life, and that at any moment, it might break free of its shell and run rampant. Supports where nothing stood, open floors encroached on by weeds, it was like passing through a ruined estate, but this wasn't mouldering with age, nothing was weathered, crumbled, cracked, or stained, no, all of it was new.
They stood then before the manse, and marvelled at its alien mien. What mind had conjured this, and what hands had reared it? For hands that were the most skilled artisans and masons in the world must have reared it swiftly and in secret. It had but one great doorway, closed shut, and what's more, it had no windows, though its facade was covered in flowing, living shapes that seemed caught in some dance or reverie.
"He is not to be found within, not as you expect."
They shot around to find a figure standing behind them. How it had approached without notice screamed to the front of their heads beyond the odd words it spoke, though its voice was quite human. In a moment they had taken it in: it was a knight, quite plainly, arrayed in a full suit of armour fashioned after the wild aesthetic of these structures. All three of them demanded to know the knight's name and what lord had raised him up. They could not see the knight's eyes behind the ornate visor. All hes said was, "You know whom."
Questions were babbled out by the startled and rather offended knights who begrudged their supposed fellow for his demeanour.
"We are the knights of new houses. We are twelve in number. For now. New stars as yet lie beyond."
Who was their master? From whence came he? They knew who it was, but did this so-called knight?
"The king is a new force in the world, but he is an old force elsewhere."
King? This old noble thought himself a new king?
"He took it by right of strength, and strength comes in many forms."
Something about this irked the trio.
"A dynasty for the taking..."
The words trailed off with a tremble of wonderment.
"...if one just knew how, and he did."
How? Take a dynasty? What the devil was this fool, playing as a knight, mean?
"The old library was transplanted here as it was, so that he might never forget. And the book..."
Again, that trembling trail. They felt they could almost see the knight's eyes, wide and bulging with that tone.
All the while, a wind had crept up, but it didn't come from below the mesa, or from the air around them. It came from above. Directly above. The knight stood so still, like a suit of plate that adorned an old castle hall. But they knew eyes looked from it, and flesh pulsed with life inside. Like a shell ready to crack, and whatever was within run rampant.
"We are ruling our houses now, but as yet ordinate from afar."
Where, they asked, themselves now atremble? How afar? An enemy nation? Could these knights be spies? Saboteurs? Had they planned insurrection?
"Afar, where we will dwell amidst the black fire of cold, lightless suns while strange moons shine down a chill, eldritch radiance, and every man will be a god under the King."
With voices that shuddered likewise, the trio asked only once more, forcing themselves to a false firmness as they paced around the figure. From whence came their master?
The door behind them shuddered violently, and fell inwards upon a darkness that swallowed sight, and threatened to pour forth at any second.
"It came to him when he called it, on cloud waves that broke on the shore of this world, from what was once lost but is now found, from dim Carco-" but the knight could not finish. The trio lost their strength in that moment, that they not so long ago had laid a feeble grasp on, shot glances to each other, and ran like frightened schoolboys. The knight did not turn, but for their entire flight back to the carriage, they feared it had, and would soon be upon them.