Skylar blinked as the results of the poll flooded back almost immediately -- everything was unanimous. Well, that's new. Usually my viewers can't agree on anything. Taking a deep breath, he looked backwards at the others in the circle of silver light from the lantern to make sure no one was taking notice of him, then slipped away and began to pad softly down the stone steps of the stairwell.
For a moment, he thought Reine might come after him, but he heard nothing; he felt a brief rush of satisfaction, followed by a moment of confusion. Wait, there's no light down here. How am I able to see? He squinted into the darkness, but everything stubbornly remained perceptible; it was as though a sort of cool blue radiance suffused everything, like he had a dim but sufficient LED light behind his own eyes. Weird. Maybe it's the auto-narrator, or some other weird Incursor ability, like how I can understand most of their weird fantasy language? No, I was blind before in the swamp. He shrugged. Well, whatever. I'll figure it out later.
He began to descend, circling around and around as the steps spiraled downwards; the first few moments were uneventful, but he jerked up short when he started to take a step down and his foot nearly slipped on something round. He stumbled backwards, heart hammering, and groped against the wall in search of a handrail that had never been placed by a safety inspector. Drotz. Who would leave a rock on a stairway? Did it fall from above? He groped around for the obstruction, and his hand came back up holding something that was definitely not a rock.
Oh.
Skylar beheld the grinning skull in his hand with a mild sense of unease, wondering if he needed to wipe his hand as he set it down on the step beside him. Okay, be cool. It's probably been here long enough that all the bacteria have died from a lack of moisture. Better question is, how'd they die? Fall down the stairs? Looking downwards for other obstructions, he immediately saw the rest of the skeleton -- lying in a twisted position not far from where he'd found the skull, but several steps below. He frowned. Why was the head so far away from the body?
Cautiously, he crept down a few more steps, then crouched down to examine the rest of the corpse. It appeared to be mostly whole except for the missing head, but whatever clothing had originally covered the carcass was gone -- rotted away, if there was even any clothing to begin with. For all I know, this guy was a nudist. He shifted to look further down the stairs, to see if perhaps anything the corpse had been carrying had fallen or rolled below the corpse's feet. As he shifted his weight to his right hand and craned his neck to peer further in the darkness, he heard a soft click and felt the stone beneath his right palm give way slightly.
Immediately, there was a quiet hissing noise above him, followed by a sort of whispering click; Skylar flinched, then looked upwards to see a large curved blade retract back into the wall at what would have been approximately neck height if he'd been standing upright. Oh. Oh drotz, that was a trap. His body locked into stillness, barely daring to move; with exaggerated slowness, he rotated his gaze down to look at the skeleton more thoughtfully. Okay. I need to proceed a lot more carefully, I guess.
Gently lifting his weight back onto his heels, he scooted back up the stairs out of reach of the trap and put his chin on his folded hands, contemplating the situation. Fact one: this place is trapped, and that probably isn't the only trap. I'll need to be a lot more careful going forward. Fact two: Amara, or whatever her real name is, probably knew that when she sent me down here. His gaze flicked down to where the next set of steps curved out of sight around the central wall of the staircase. Fact three, whatever is at the bottom of this staircase is something the original builders thought needed protection with decapitation traps.
Squinting, he realized that he could discern the difference between the trapped step and the other, more normal ones; it probably would have been impossible to see by the light of a torch or candle, but his weird blue night-vision seemed capable of picking up changes in texture as though the light were always favorable. Interesting. Maybe this'll let me spot other traps before I run into them. After a moment of further scrutiny, he cautiously began to slip down the steps a few at a time, alternating between a crouch and a reverse crawl. This way I'll be beneath any other decapitation traps.
He spotted two more traps -- a spear trap and something that looked like it would have turned a trio of stairs into a trap-door of some kind -- before he reached the bottom; when he finally arrived on a little stone landing before a large and ominous door, he took a moment to stretch and feel satisfaction. Then, conscious of the ticking clock above him, he turned his attention to the door; it was a little over half again the size of a standard door from a normal house, with a large iron hasp that held it shut. The hinges were a cunning mixture of stone and more iron, with a tiny hair-width gap between each of the components of the hinge that looked like it would allow the door to open silently if its hasp were freed.
Not terribly useful, but at least informative. Skylar examined the door carefully -- if the stairs had been trapped, this thing almost certainly was too -- but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary about it. The lock, on the other hand, he could see extremely well -- it was a huge, bulky cylinder of more iron which sat directly below the door's hasp and held it closed, with a keyhole nearly an inch in diameter. Skylar chuckled. That's a big-brux key.
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Carefully, he examined the area for fallen keys or tools, but saw nothing; at first, he thought he might be able to simply slip his slender teenager fingers into the lock and feel around for the tumblers, but the mental image of a poisoned needle jabbing into his flesh within the lock brought him up short. He fumbled in the heavy leather coat's pockets, searching for tools, but came up empty. Drotz. Am I going to have to go back here?
After a moment, however, his searching hands fell upon one of the bone-white buckles of the coat, and Skylar nodded to himself in satisfaction; the buckle pins should be small enough to serve as crude lockpicks -- as long as they don't snap off. Doffing the heavy coat, he immediately staggered as his vision went black; donning the coat once more brought back the blue glow, which helped something click in his assumptions. Right. The coat must give the wearer the ability to see in the dark; that's why Mr. Mask wasn't blind when the rest of us were. Makes sense. It took him only a few seconds to tap the fat, rusty pins of the ancient lock into place using the buckle as a makeshift lockpick; Skylar Kass didn't know fratz about picking modern locks, but he'd played a few games in his day, and the primitive lock clearly hadn't been designed to hold up to anything other than being bashed with a rock. Technology, fratz yeah.
As the lock clicked open, Skylar used the edge of the buckle to lift the hasp away from the door and was gratified to glimpse a little needle shoot through the hole before retracting; it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. But the rest of the process was uneventful, and he gently eased the door open before slipping through and leaving it ajar behind him.
The space beyond was a maze of dusty, cobwebbed tunnels, but he could quickly make out a system to them; the secured entrance/egress he had just passed through opened up into a large hall full of broken stone tables, with doorways heading in each of the four cardinal directions that branched off into barracks, a kitchen, and a thoroughfare tunnel (respectively) that led deeper into the heart of the keep. He made his way swiftly inwards, mindful of being gone too long, but kept alert for more traps.
Beyond the initial tunnels, he encountered more security -- another locked door, a pit trap which nearly dumped him onto a set of rusty iron spikes, and even a portcullis that had sizzled with some kind of harmful energy when he got near it (which he bypassed simply by using an iron torch stand from the previous room to pry it up and out of the way before wedging it open). By the time he entered the final room -- a blank stone cell with a long wooden table half-eaten by age -- he was beginning to feel very pleased with himself. I'm the boss of this korskak dungeon.
At first, his search seemed as though it had come to an end; but a careful search revealed an iron trapdoor beneath the mouldering table, and he was able to get it open despite its overwrought and impenetrable lock with some careful vandalism (mostly because the wooden parts where the hinges had been attached were beginning to rot away). As the trapdoor clanged open, he cringed at the loud sound -- hope nobody down there heard that -- before descending the iron ladder it revealed and arriving at the final destination of his search.
The room below the trapdoor was vast -- impossibly deep and wide on all sides even beyond the extent of his strange blue nightvision -- and seemed to be a pedestal of improbable height out of an impossible chasm below. Carvings -- grotesque, alien, and sinister -- decorated every inch of the black stone which sheathed the entire platform before flowing together in a huge altar, upon which rested an iron chalice.
Skylar approached it, frowning. "This is way too weird. Why would anybody go to this kind of lengths to protect a metal cup?"
Why indeed, hissed a noiseless voice out of the darkness.
Skylar jumped. "Who's there?" he demanded, but only silent laughter answered him; he cringed away from the impossibility of what he was experiencing and wrapped his arms around himself. That's insane. You can't hear silence. But apparently he could; the un-sound modulated itself out of the silence, like feeling a bass beat below hearing range. "Who's doing that?"
Maybe it's your imagination, teased another non-voice -- just as silent, but modulated differently in a way that felt distinctly feminine.
He is too weak, commented a third silent voice out of the gloom. Look at him. Not a warrior, or even a mage. A common thief.
The word thief resonated in Skylar's mind in a way he didn't understand, but it felt natural. "A thief, huh. Don't thieves have something valuable to steal?"
Value is in how something is used, rumbled a fourth un-voice -- this one was decidedly male, with a slower, deader cadence. Even a stone may begin the avalanche which crushes a kingdom.
Skylar looked around, but the platform remained stubbornly empty. "Okay. Whoever's there, I know you can hear me, and you made me aware of that on purpose, so I'm guessing you have something to say. I'm listening, but don't drotz with me -- we don't have a lot of time." Out of the shadows, he felt radiating approval, amusement, and anger, but held his ground. "Let's get this show on the road."
There was a brief moment of pause, then the first silent voice spoke again. Do you wish for power?
Skylar sighed. "Yes, obviously. But I have to know the parameters of whatever bargain I'm striking. I'm guessing you're Gram, or somebody who serves him."
We are Gram's children, the feminine non-voice replied, his Devari. Drink from the chalice, and you shall know us.
"'Know' you? What does that mean?" Skylar crossed his arms. "I'm already being blamed for being a cultist of Gram. Why would I want to sign up with you?"
If you are already being blamed for associating with our Father, said the first un-voice distinctly, why not avail yourself of the power such an association promises? It is only logical. This voice, Skylar noted, had much sharper articulation than the others. The servants of Lucia cannot prove any allegiance if you are clever.
Skylar scowled. "Big talk. You could be lying, too."
I told you. This one is too cowardly, too facile. The third voice -- strong, aristocratic, and forceful, Skylar noted -- protested. Let us focus our efforts on my descendant instead.
"Your descendant? Levan?" Skylar guessed, and smirked when the darkness radiated a sense of surprise and embarrassment. "Sure, why not. If you've got no use for me, sounds like a deal I didn't want to take anyway."
There was a pause from the shadows. Perhaps I spoke too hastily, the lordly voice hissed, its nega-tone decidedly chastened. There was a pulsation of non-sound from the surrounding darkness that felt like laughter.
I like him, the feminine presence chortled. I claim him first. Father's tools are too often dull.
Yes, muttered the precise voice. We do have need of an instrument of exactitude. Skylar felt the sensation of physical nearness -- cold, fluid, and analytical -- for just a moment before it withdrew. Drink from the chalice, human. We will keep you alive.
Drink from the chalice, said the third, rumbling voice. We will give you power.
Drink from the chalice, muttered the lordly voice. The darkness will obey you.
Drink from the chalice, Skylar, whispered the feminine voice. It'll be fun.
Against his will, Skylar found himself moving closer to the chalice -- within, a pitch-black, mirror-smooth liquid beckoned. "This seems super shady," he complained. "'Don't serve evil gods' is generally enlightened self-interest at worst. If you force me to do it, I'm not really agreeing to whatever pact you're trying to sell."
There was a brief silence, during which Skylar felt disbelief and ire radiating from the stygian pit surrounding him. He thinks we're evil, groused the rumbling voice. He thinks Father is evil.
From a certain point of view, the feminine presence chided, it could be viewed that way. And forcing him certainly wasn't what we wanted.
Skylar, the precisely-articulated voice pulsed against his left ear -- close enough that if there had been breath, it would have tickled him -- you must make your own choice. Things are more complicated than they appear, but this decision is not. We offer power, and we claim no dominion over you -- if you do not desire it, reject us. But be warned -- Lucia's Devari will see you as tainted by us, and will not avail you. If you reject us, you will never command any Arts -- and I expect you will not live long afterwards. The voice withdrew, and the silent turbulence within the space went still. The darkness held its breath, waiting, as Skylar regarded the chalice dourly.
Easy for you to say -- it's not your soul you're maybe gambling with. Skylar reached out his hand, gripping the chalice.
DRINK FROM THE CHALICE?
