“The four-sided pyramid is used on Aeon as a symbol of Man’s reach for greatness and eternity.” Acolyte Tinar pointed at the pyramid in front of them. “A smooth-sided pyramid symbolizes elegance and that power can smooth away difficulties. A step pyramid, on the other hand,” Tinar pointed at the pyramid next to the one he’d originally pointed at, “symbolizes that eternity only comes through effort; indeed, it is possible to show that any pyramid, even the ones that seem the smoothest, contain many small steps.”
Serenity blinked at Acolyte Tinar. He certainly hadn’t expected that lecture. “You’re the tour guide again, then?”
Acolyte Tinar smiled. “Yes. This is not the guiding I thought I would do in the Church of Aeons, but I am good at it and it lets me travel to places that not many visit. I have been to Aeon before, more than once.”
That was clearly a dig at Deek, though Tinar didn’t emphasize it.
That day, Tinar showed them the Water Garden and the Tower of Broken Swords.
The Water Garden wasn’t what Serenity would have called a garden at all. Instead, it was a clearly manufactured area filled with various water features; there were a large number of waterfalls, hot and cold pools in all sorts of sizes, beaches for both ocean and lake water, and a number of canals and underground water tunnels that made it all work; some of them seemed to be for enjoyment as well. There were plants, but they were clearly tended and set up to separate areas or look pretty. The real garden had to be somewhere else to supply the plants, since none seemed to be young.
Serenity would have called it a water park, but there were several differences from any modern Earth water park. First, it tried to look somewhat ‘natural’; there were no obviously manmade structures. Even the flooring was made of shaped stone, though Serenity suspected magic rather than nature put it where it was. Second, it wasn’t set up with the large walking areas between individual attractions that were needed to handle large crowds.
The third difference was the complete lack of those crowds. There were no other people in the Water Garden as far as Serenity could tell, not even the workers who had to be there. Several times, he heard something in the distance but he was never certain if it was someone hurrying out of sight or simply another waterfall.
Serenity half expected Rourke to make an appearance; the noise of the waterfalls would be the perfect cover for a secretive conversation. Unfortunately, nothing like that happened; they just spent hours walking through an oddly creepy wet fantasy land. There was a sense of oppression to the place that Serenity couldn’t quite place; he’d felt things like it before, but they were usually places where a lot of death had happened, and there was absolutely no remnant death energy in the Water Garden. If anything, it was lower than normal.
In fact, when they left the Water Garden, Serenity realized that his joke to himself was correct: the level of death energy in the Water Garden was lower than its surroundings.It was an odd thing to manage; Serenity couldn’t think of any reason to lower the death energy in an area. Still, combined with the strangely creepy feeling he couldn’t place, the Water Garden seemed to have some meaning more than simply a play area for powerful Priests.
Serenity turned to Tinar. “If I wanted to come back and spend some time enjoying the pools in the Water Garden, would that be possible?” He couldn’t think of any other reason that it was on the tour, but assuming other people’s intentions never worked for Serenity.
Acolyte Tinar nodded. “Of course. The Water Garden must be reserved in advance, to prevent overlap. If a higher ranking individual requests your time slot, yours may be moved; however, this is uncommon as the Water Garden does not see much use.”
Serenity frowned; the facilities were nice enough that he expected it to be essentially fully booked. Was it the creepiness or was it expensive? “Why not?”
Acolyte Tinar shrugged. “Few with the status to request it reside nearby, so only those with portal access truly use it. I have heard that High Priests, Priest-Scholars, and High Warrior-Priests are the only ones who use it frequently; Head Priests and Grand Priests may if they happen to be on Aeon, but most spend their time on Lyka. It is said that the Garden also closes each Eclipse, for an Eclipse Party.”
That was an odd way to say it. “It is said?”
Acolyte Tinar shrugged. “It’s true that you can’t book during an eclipse; I tried. The Water Garden staff won’t say who has it booked, but there are always rumors. An Eclipse Party seems the most likely.”
Serenity noted the strangeness, but he didn’t really have any reason to think of it as important yet. It could have been booked by anyone higher ranking than Acolyte Tinar, and that meant nearly everyone who wasn’t staff; it was clear that Aeon couldn’t run itself without staff and while Serenity hadn’t met them, he doubted they were all Priests.They probably weren’t even all acolytes, though given that they had an acolyte acting as a tour guide, Serenity was prepared to be wrong about that.
Serenity didn’t expect the name of the Tower of Broken Swords to be literal; normally, a name like that referred to a historical incident. Sometimes the names came more from myth and legend than reality.
That clearly wasn’t the case at the Tower of Broken Swords. It was literally a tower, about three stories tall, made from broken swords crudely welded together. When he first saw it, Serenity hoped that the swords were merely a sheath laid over a structurally sound tower, but as he got close enough to see it clearly he changed his hope to hoping that it was only built to be observed.
There were large spaces between the swords; they were clearly in layers but they weren’t well matched to each other. There were spots where Serenity could see several inches into the wall of the structure; past that, he thought he’d need a light on the other side to be sure but he thought there were some spots where he could see all the way into an interior area. It simply didn’t look structurally sound.
The tower itself was probably about thirty feet in diameter; even with the very thick walls, that left a good amount of space possible inside. Serenity had seen similar towers built of stone, brick, and even wood in the past, though usually they were part of a larger structure. This didn’t seem to have anything that it was intended to connect to.
Acolyte Tinar didn’t say anything as they walked up to the single straight tower built exclusively from broken swords; instead, he led Serenity, Rissa, Sillon, Kerr, and Deek around the tower to an entrance. He stepped into the entrance, but Serenity stopped outside. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this felt like a giant trap that he didn’t want to step into.
The feeling of it being a trap wasn’t helped by the fact that, unlike the Water Garden, there was a feeling of death about the tower. Much of it came from the swords, but Serenity could feel it seeping out of the tower itself.
Serenity shook his head. He didn’t need to show off his bravery by stupidly stepping into the biggest trap he’d seen since he came back in time. “This is far enough. Please tell us about the tower.”
Acolyte Tirnar frowned. “The story is better inside, where you can see the tower’s shape.”
Serenity shook his head. “How many people have died here since the tower was built? Or was this a battleground?”
He didn’t actually think it was a battleground. If it were, the deathly feeling wouldn’t be concentrated inside the tower. It was enough to make Serenity curious, but not enough to make Serenity stick his head in a trap to see what it was made of.
Acolyte Tinar frowned. “This tower marks the site of the Surrender of Karit, the last of the apostate kingdoms of Lyka. There was no battle here; the Karit royalty realized the Eternal Truth of Lykandeon and joined the Church of Aeons in our search for Eternity.”
That was propaganda if Serenity had ever heard it. It also explained nothing about the tower itself. “So why is there a tower made of broken swords?”
Acolyte Tinar grinned. “These are the swords that are no longer needed. They mark the opportunity to turn those whose lives would have been lost to warmaking to better ends. Many of the people of Karit serve here on Aeon today; it is a mark of prestige.”
Prestige? Serenity had his doubts. Sure, traveling to Aeon had its prestige for a priest, but “serving” on a moon set aside for the priesthood didn’t sound nearly as impressive. “Wait. Did you say the surrender happened on Lyka?”
“Of course. The Eternal One created Aeon after the unification of Lyka.” Acolyte Tinar didn’t seem to see what the problem with that statement was.
To be fair, Serenity probably wouldn’t have seen the problem with it back when he was Vengeance, either. With what he’d learned since, though, he knew there was something wrong with the statement; either Lykandeon wasn’t the roughly Tier Ten “deity” that Serenity thought he was or he’d done something strange to create Aeon.
Creation of a moon, even for a powerful pure mage with the right Affinities, was closer to Tier Twenty than Tier Ten.
When Serenity combined that thought with the knowledge that something had hurt Lyka’s World Core in the past enough for Ita to convince it the problem was the Eternal Church, the fact that the World Core was currently being mined, and the fact that Acolyte Tinar had identified a spot on Aeon with a place on Lyka, Serenity had a sinking feeling about what was going on. “Where on Lyka is the scar from Aeon’s creation?”
Acolyte Tinar looked up towards where Lyka filled a good portion of the visible sky. He seemed to squint at it for a moment. “Ah, we’re lucky; it’s visible right now. Do you see the continent that is greenish brown at the top and yellow at the bottom, with a large lake in the middle?”
Serenity searched the partially visible globe of Lyka until he found it; there were only a few clouds in the way. “Yes.”
“The lake rests where Aeon once was. Lykandeon pulled much of Karit into the sky to save it from the death-smoke that took the southern half of the continent.”
Serenity looked closer. It did look like the yellow started on the shores of the enormous lake and spread south from there, but that didn’t strike Serenity as confirmation of the story of Lykandeon being a savior; instead, Serenity’s guess was that pulling Aeon out of the continent set something off that poisoned the land.
Perhaps he was just cynical, but Serenity didn’t trust Lykandeon at all at this point. Too many things didn’t add up if he tried to believe the stories he heard; they added up much more reasonably if he assumed the worst of Lykandeon.
Serenity turned his attention back to the Tower of Broken Swords. He still thought it was a trap, he simply didn’t know how or what the trigger was. The fact that Tinar didn’t know of anything that would cause the death Serenity felt made it hard to guess exactly what the trap was. “So what’s in the tower?”
“Come in and see!” Acolyte Tinar invited Serenity.
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