Orpheus clenched the sodden straps of his baggage, his skin paler in the tense detestment. They swung heavily through the rain with little care for the contents, knocking against stone supports and the corners of buildings. A frown had settled beneath his cloaked hood, glaring at every road and stair he passed as he followed behind the old mage.
“Why are we gallivanting around the world like two poor fucking settlers? Do you see with those eyes? It’s fucking pouring!”
“I find it refreshing, refreshing to thought, thought sobering. Is it not, not pleasant to bathe in the rain?” Anosorin spoke from over his shoulder, nonchalantly taking each step and stride through the labyrinth of stone structures. His hands opened beside him as if to collect the water in his palm.
“She left me with an old fool.”
Anosorin’s pace slowed beneath the cover of an overarching walkway, the entrance to an almost ruined white stone building that barely stood upon a series of hefty pillars. The building had no source of light, nor glass or doors with a single exception. A wide entrance parted archaic ornaments and engravings; within it, a shallow-stepped staircase led down into an unseen abyss.
He collected dust from the walls with a single stroke of a finger. “This is some sort of grave, for you, old fool? It’s not been bloody cleaned for years.”
“A tomb? No, no not a tomb, at least not entirely. This is where it resides, knowledge of old dusks, knowledge of coming dawns. I’d suggest it, yes, that you utilize this place, utilize it well,” Anosorin stopped to speak, gesturing to the entrance with one hand and using the other to wipe the rain from his forehead. “Master Edgar will be most, most welcoming, I do believe.”
“This is the library,” Orpheus mimicked in the voice of an elder, “That would have bloody sufficed, I presume.”
“Ah, yes, yes true enough,” Anosorin replied, retracting his hands and then gesturing to the foreboding entrance once more. “This is the library.”
Orpheus only scoffed as he heaved the weighted leather over his shoulder, cushioning the straps from his chest with a firm grip.
For a short while they stood without moving.
“Orpheus?” said Ansorin.
“What?”
“Do you, Orpheus, like the look of the library? You may return, later. The tour, the tour is not finished.”
“Then why in bloody hell aren’t you moving?”
Ansorin turned and stroked his beard with his full hand. “Ah…”
The old mage returned to his dawdling steps onward and out from the cover of the walkway, returning to the rain and the stairs and the winding back alleys. Each turn seemed endlessly met by another that looked the same. This went on until a view broke the dark, rain-soaked greys.
Orpheus found himself alongside a short, cobbled barrier. It was rough in its form and ridden with moss, but served to frame the green hills that lay beyond. From the lookout, he watched the road he’d just travelled curl in and around each of the hills. Steady waves of wind washed through the tall grasses from the storm’s edge and off into the distant horizon. It almost seemed a different world.
Below the cobbled fence, stone bricks held the path above a cliff of rock. Raging rapids swallowed the rain and carried it further downstream where it eventually fed the largest of the rivers, the same one that carved through the stronghold’s core. Orpheus watched as lightning struck metallic pylons on the opposing bank below, pulled to them with no apparent pattern.
“You fools channel the lightning from the storms? Absurd. It’s like a necessity almost for you all.” he said aloud, wishing to be free of the drench “you deranged asses.”
“Necessity? I suppose it is, it is now, though, it began as an experiment, an experiment that cannot be undone, not as of yet, not by any of us,” Anosorin replied.
“Excuse me?”
“It began, began as a spell, a spell cast by the Archmage. Though, she was not quite an Archmage then, no, she was simply Ravyn. It was to be her Magnum Opus, and it was, and it is,” he continued, pausing in his steps to look beyond the spire. His gaze looked on in admiration of a powerful glow at the heart of the storm, pulsating in azure and cyan light. Orpheus followed his gaze.
“So the storm is one of her stupid fucking spells, then?” he paused, “Here’s a solution, if you’ve a brain in that block of yours–stop casting the goddamned spell.”
“Impossible, or rather, improbable. It has been called the ‘Perfect Storm.’ It has never, never ceased, ceased to be, ceased to end,” Anosorin finished before he resumed along the path. “It likely never will.”
He held his face in disappointment. “Honestly.”
—
Orpheus’ bags hit the floorboards with a heavy thud at the room's centre and released a seeping puddle. His eyes wandered around the dull shades of grey and white amidst the coarse walls. There was a bed, laid with thatch; a table and stool, stood on questionably tilted legs; a chest, its lock long broken from the pins; and a series of hangers and hooks by the door. Dim rays of light from the skies beyond the tower served as the room’s only source of light.
“This a servant’s quarters. Old man, I’ll not sweep the halls and scrub the floors. Do you know just who I am?”
“Servant’s quarters? No, not at all, in fact, this is amongst our nicer rooms. Look there, there to the window, you’ve got your own, your very own window,” Anosorin pointed from the room’s entrance, gesturing to the frame and past it. The rain seemed to fall away from the window, leaving it mostly untouched by the pelting droplets and rushing water from the roof.
He observed the room and furrowed his brow. “I’ll kill that fucking Dagon,” he said, turning, “Leave me, old man,” Orpheus said as he turned to unpack his belongings, tossing all that was soaked into a corner of the room.
“If it is, is as you wish, then I shall,” Anosorin replied, taking hold of the door handle. “An assistant professor will be sent, sent on the morrow. I should hope you rest well, in your new room.”
“Piss off,” he muttered.
His door creaked to a close and the old man's steps faded into an echo along the hallway. The building was compact, the size of perhaps the Blackwell maid’s and cook’s dorm back at the estate. There were a supposed four others that he would call his neighbours, none of which he’d asked the names of. He listened to the muffled dripping of the rain for a long time, until, outside the room, he heard the scrambling of footsteps and then a knocking upon his door.
Orpheus did not answer. They knocked again and then on the third there was a deep silence, save for the heavy breathing he could hear behind the other end. He wiped his face with his hands and went and opened the door.
Before him, in the hallway, he saw a young man and, in the crook of his elbow, he held a sack that extended by the opening to the floor. He had hair of white wool that stood on ends and deep brown eyes like the makings of old beans. Of about a head, he stood taller than Orpheus and he smiled as if he had seen him someplace before.
“What the fuck?” said Orpheus.
“Hey. Nice thing having new neighbours, right? I’m Ned.” He dove into his bag for a short while and with one hand as he smiled up at him, he held out in his palm a slab of dried meat. “Fancy a bite?”
“What the fuck?” Orpheus said in repulsion.
“Oh. Right. It’s beef. Like, how the Imperial Commanders would cure them,” he paused, “they take this empty keg, or anything compact works. And they stuff it with beef, lots of it–tons.”
Orpheus held out his hand and Ned stopped speaking. “Stop, fucking, stop.”
“Oh, yeah?” he smiled and moved the meat slab up and down again as if to tempt a dog. “See? Usually when I get going on history, me, a huge history devotee, people can’t resist it. Sends them running away sometimes. For weeks.”
“What? Stop. Your name was fucking what?”
“Oh! Ned. Harrien. Ned Harrien.”
As the young man went to speak Orpheus shut the door on him and buried his wet face within the palms of his hand. He drew near to the open window where the crooked table stood after casting his overcoat to a hook. He sighed as if he could not believe the moment.
“Fucking Ned.”
