49 – The room and the key

The castle was deserted. Julian didn’t think he would find many people still inside, especially considering the state the castle was in, but seeing the hallways empty and lifeless was truly soul rending. He was a man firmly against the soulless grandeur of kings and castles, despite having been a king in a castle in his own merit back on Earth. And yet, now that there was nothing to despise anymore, he wished that there still was something to hate. Because now he was forced to come to terms with the fact that he had been the cause of a huge deal of suffering. Huge holes dotted the walls where rogue spells had hit them, fired from somewhere below during the upheaval that the city had witnessed in the last few days, destroying what was otherwise considered sacred and utterly indestructible.

As a first obligatory step, Julian visited the throne room, but he had not only found it empty and damaged, but it also seemed to be pervaded with some sort of energy that floated in the air like a pervasive, oppressive mist. Leaving at once, without staying in the cursed room one moment too long, he decided to go check the upper levels of the castle and its many towers, that like fingers of ivory reached up into the swirling sky. The Paragon Stone was damaged, and the protective spell that kept the never-ending storm out of the city was weakening at a rapid pace. Those clouds weren’t there a few hours before, he thought.

It was atop one of the towers that he found, rather unexpectedly, the person he was looking for.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the fallen noble Methias!” he exclaimed, surprised. He tried to shift his mood but didn’t think he managed to hide the sad undertones in his voice completely.

“Julian? Is that you?”

Methias’ voice came from behind the tall stacks of books and scrolls that filled the whole room to the brim.

“Yes, it’s me. You can come out.” Julian said.

The noble breathed out in relief. “Well, thank the gods it’s you. Have you seen what’s happening to the city? It’s utter chaos out there!” he said quickly, words speeding up as he said them, like in a rising panic.

“Yeah,” Julian replied as he walked around the room. There was a small cabinet that captured his attention. “I have noticed.”

“Why did you come back?” Methias asked after a long pause, during which he observed Julian going over the whole room with methodic precision. His eyes narrowed. “And where is the friend you were supposed to be saving?”

Julian growled. “You don’t get to speak to me like that.” He snapped, “you just don’t. Understand?”

“I’m sorry,” the noble shrank, pleading. “I had no idea.”

His ashen complexion was on the verge of white, his grey skin losing all color while his dark pupils expanded until his eyes were like two black holes.

“Yeah. He’s fucking dead. You happy now?”

Methias shook his head, looking at his shoes. “I am so sorry for your loss. I truly didn’t know. If I had…”

“Save your words, noble. I don’t need them. As for why I came back, I returned to fix the damage I did to this place.” Julian said.

Suddenly Methias face shifted, and his hunched back straightened while his eyes gained a sinister glint to them.

“Yes, you are right.” His words were the snake’s tongue. “You caused a great deal of damage with your actions. How do you intend to make things right?”

“I don’t know yet... But I know where to start. Have you ever heard of the Paragon Stone?”

“I can’t say I have,” Methias said in his slimy voice, and in that moment all the malice that it exuded should have been evident to Julian if not for the fact that he was too distracted by the scrolls he was reading. “What is it?” The noble then asked.

“It’s an artifact. A device of some sorts. From what I gathered, it controls the weather and protects this city from the storm above.” He walked to the window that was nothing more than a small round hole in the wall close to a heavy wooden desk, that had been propped there by the librarian to make use of the natural light.

Julian pointed at the sky, where a cyclone of swirling dark clouds was gathering right above their heads.

“See those clouds?” He asked

Methias nodded.

“I think the Paragon Stone is damaged. The shield protecting this city is failing, and soon the storm will wipe it out of the fucking map.”

“Oh,” exclaimed the noble, “and where is this Paragon stone?”

“I don’t know yet; I’m looking for it.” Julian said.

“Let me come with you, I may be of help.” The noble offered.

“You are right. You know this place better than me. But first, help me look through these scrolls here, there might be some magic I can use.”

They began to sort through the scrolls and many parchments, separating the useless stuff away from the possibly useful magic. Most papers were administrative documents, stored here by the librarian following a code that neither Julian nor Methias knew. Between the many documents, however, written on the same yellowing paper that only differed from the rest due to its magical properties, were the spells.

>New Spell learned: Earth Wall.

>New Spell learned: Wind Blade.

>New Spell learned: Fireball.

>New Spell learned: Water Jet.

“Is there anything specific that you are looking for? A school of magic, or an element?” Methias asked.

“Nah,” Julian shook his head without lifting his eyes from the scroll he was reading through. “Just gather up everything.” He said, and kept reading. There were interesting facts about the layout of the castle, but nothing that could suggest where the Paragon stone could be hidden.

Before long, the room had been swept clean of all useful stuff that could be found in it without wasting too much time, and the two moved on. Julian had the double goal of finding the secret room and the Paragon Stone, while the noble followed him, acting in his own unknown interest.

“What happened when I left?” Asked Julian as they entered another room, similar to the first they visited, but located at the top of another tower.

“Chaos. Utter chaos. After you left, word spread that the king had been humiliated by a traveler, and that he was now powerless and unable to protect himself. He was found dead not two days after you left.”

Julian hummed. “I thought you would take power, to be honest. I even gave you a gun and enough bullets to keep such power long enough that you wouldn’t need the weapon anymore.”

“I…” the noble began, but then stopped to gather his thoughts. “You didn’t give me enough time to prepare properly.”

He clasped his hands, looking frantically to the left and then to the right as if recalling a moment so stressful that it even affected him now.

“And then you demanded to be escorted to the elevator by my best soldiers, leaving me without men! How could I--”

“I’m sorry. I should have thought about that.” Julian truly felt sorry, because even though they were talking about a coup he felt like he had set up the noble to fail, after having barged into his otherwise quiet life for no reason beyond his personal gain.

“So, when your men returned it was too late?”

The man’s voice was trembling. “It was. Sadly, it was. The whole city was in revolution already. I could defend myself, but nothing more.”

Julian nodded solemnly. “I understand.”

“I lost everything Julian! Everything! You took everything I had away from me, and you promised me power in return but all you did was empty the castle of all its valuable items and then you left! Why did you leave?”

“I was in a hurry.” Julian said, but found that his words had no meaning. “I had to save Cal!”

“But you didn’t save him, did you?”

Julian felt a weight in his chest, and even though he tried to keep reading the documents in search for clues that pointed towards the hidden room, the words flew out of his mind and all he could think about was Cal. He kept trying for a few long minutes but he couldn’t concentrate anymore, and the frustration mixed with sadness and anger until he felt like he was about to explode. He didn’t spot the clear attempt at emotional manipulation, instead ignoring the warning bells in his mind that he thought were nothing more than his dirty conscience trying to flee its responsibilities. In hindsight, he had no idea how much of what Methias told him was even true, or if he was more involved in the state of the city than he let on.

“You can’t bring back your friend,” Methias said. Julian almost snapped at him, and in his mind, he swung his mace at the noble and killed him right there, crushing his head with his heavy steel mace, watching it sizzle and slowly cook in the heat of radiation until the whole room was flooded with the smell of burnt meat. But he didn’t. Instead, he only listened in silence.

“But you can set things right, here in this city that you left to rot and burn. It’s not too late for that.” Methias continued.

The noble was right, of course.

“Okay. You are right.” He said, putting the hidden room out of his mind for now. He was wasting time. “We need to find the Paragon Stone, or it will all be for nothing.”

“Yes. The Paragon Stone. I think I know where we might find some information about it! Come, follow me.”

Methias led Julian down the twisting stairs of the tower and back into the large open spaces of the castle halls, once grandiose and pristine, but now broken, dusty and crumbling. There was a small, unassuming door almost hidden in the side of one of these hallways, and when Methias whispered into it, it opened with barely a sound. Behind the ornate marble of the camouflaged door was a dark corridor that dug its way inside the bare rock of the mountain where the castle had been built.

“These are the dungeons of the castle. The deepest and oldest parts were built deep in the mountain by our ancestors thousands of years ago,” Methias explained.

Something didn’t feel right. “And you just happened to know the password to enter here?”

“Of course, now,” the noble chuckled. “One does not just happen to know such things. Especially not one such as me. I found it in my research, long ago. But I never thought I would use it in such strange circumstances.”

And yet again, the silver tongue wooed Julian. Was it his mental state, was it magic? He never managed to get an answer to that question.

“Hey, so…” Julian said after they walked for a few minutes in silence, and after he had thought about Methias’ words for a while, savoring them and feeling how they tasted on his tongue. There was a doubt that he had and that needed to be cleared. “Were your men watching me from afar while I hunted beasts?”

“No, why would they?” asked the noble.

“I saw someone.”

“You have been gone a year, even if I had sent men to search for you, and I have not—”

“Yeah yeah yeah. But then if it wasn’t you, someone or something else was. Or it was just a prank. I don’t think it was a prank, Methias. Do you think it was a prank?”

The noble swallowed a lump in his throat, doing his best to hide his reaction to the not-so-veiled threat. Julian had the impression that Methias picked up the pace after that, as if he was getting impatient. And indeed he was, sensing that something was not right and that Julian was getting worked up, treating him with hot anger, almost to the point of forgetting all about the city and his guilt. He was treading dangerous water, Methias knew.

The sound of dripping water echoed through the narrow tunnel, and the small puddles reflected the light of the two torches, scattering it to the walls in a dance of light and colors. On their way towards the place that Methias said had hints to the whereabouts of the Paragon Stone, they passed along a great many different rooms, some wide and some narrow, while others were sealed shut by heavy doors that had not seen use in maybe centuries. Behind a small grate Julian saw the remains of a decomposed humanoid skeleton, but the odd placement of some of the bones told him that it wasn’t human.

“Do you have two hearts?” He asked.

“Yes?” The noble said reflexively. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” He said.

“How many does your species have?”

“Only one,” he said, laughing. “Just the one.”

Methias nodded, and they kept walking down the sloping tunnel. Eventually the space opened into a large room dug in the stone, with a ceiling so high that the light of the torches barely reached there. The air was musty and smelled of mold and wetness, but the surfaces of the stones were clean and well kept, and torches were still burning on the walls. Someone had been here recently, perhaps as recently as today. At the end of the large space were a multitude of tools and parchments haphazardly sprawled on top of a long desk, and on the floor beside the desk something had been drawn, but the candles were out and it was too dark to see clearly even with Julian’s zooming skill.

“I have to disable the security systems,” the noble said, “the magic is programmed to kill anyone who gets nearby.”

>Quest: Path to Power I… completed!

>Level math updated.

New Quest: Path to Power II

You have found the room, but now the real work begins. Investigate what was being researched here, and how it might relate to you and your personal quest.   Uncover the secrets of the Room.

Reward: Ascend to F+ rank and unlock F+ Cultivation.

 

Julian nodded distractedly, not even remembering what the noble said, but a doubt soon began to grow in his mind. Watching the grey skinned noble fidget with the magical circles and the scrolls, as well as the blue shining crystals on the desk, he began to recognize something that felt increasingly familiar. It took a while for him to notice, mostly because the designs were very different than his own, but eventually he saw what the noble was doing. His eyes darted to the diagram on the floor, and he suddenly realized that it was but a part of a larger magical circle that occupied the entire room, cleverly hidden by the pillars and the treacherous lightning. Before he could even take out his gun and roll away to safety, the circle activated, trapping him.

“Motherfucker!” He yelled through grit teeth.

Methias turned around slowly, after checking that his mandalas that channeled the magic from the crystals into the magical circle were working as intended. He spared Julian a passing glance and fled the room. The barrier keeping Julian in place fell just as the crystals lost their luster, turning to dust on the thick wood of the desk and singing it. Then Julian felt something sharp, like a piercing pain that spread cold and numbness through his body, and saw his MP, SP, and HP begin to drop as another shield, larger and stronger, surrounded the room. He tried to yell, to scream profanities and threats as he attempted to force the shield and open the doors that led back into the tunnel, but the more he struggled against it, the more the shield drew upon his health to keep itself going.

Julian chugged a trio of potions to stave off his death.