Astral Threads, Ch 11: Chamber of Amaris (Patreon)

The group headed back up to the first layer, where they located the storeroom of Amaris. Unlike the other two that had been hidden in the mountain, this one was an actual building, or at least the outer layer was. Drifts of snow were piled up against tumbled stones that had once been the walls of a great palace or armory. Shattered pillars and collapsed arches spoke of a height that had once stretched five stories, making it the tallest building in the area. When it had been new, it must have dominated the layer with the importance of what lay inside.

Now, however, it was little more than an enormous pile of shattered greenstone and the occasional flicker of an enchantment that hadn’t been completely destroyed.

Sam frowned as he looked across it. A current of astral energy tugged at him from the broken enchantments beneath the rubble, sparking like trapped wisps from between the stones. With the major transfer lines on the first layer repaired, the old connections were far more active than they’d been a few months ago, but whatever was under there, it was going to take a while to find it. He didn’t have a good way to move all of that stone at once.

“Are you certain this is the place?” Lenei asked as she looked around. She was still next to Lesat, as she had been all evening, and Sam felt a flicker of surprise as he noticed it again.

“It is, but opening it is more of a problem,” Sam agreed. “The relic’s memory is still fragmented, and these sensitive areas were highly secured. The part of the relic that remembers them is limited. We might need to dig a bit to find the right enchantment lines, or even reconstruct them. Hopefully, once we find the right one, it will move some of this out of the way for us. My guess is that whatever we’re looking for, it used to be beneath this palace.”

“The golems might be able to help,” Lesat suggested, “if you call them back and set them to work, I bet they could dig through this in short order.”

“That would work, but let’s look around a bit first,” Jeric agreed as he looked over the area. His new class as the Commander of the Frozen Peak had crystallized the changes he’d experienced over the last year. Perhaps it had happened earlier and it was just more obvious now, but the result made him come across as far more confident and commanding. His newly blue eyes were as piercing as a mountain peak on a blue sky. “We might find the entrance here and get in on our own, but if not, at least we’ll have a better idea of where to have them dig.”

He wasn’t the only one who was different from before. Aemilia stepped up beside him with a confident grace. Her eyes flared with moonlight as she frowned at the rubble and raised her hands in front of her.

Ripples of light flared through her aura as she looked across the stones. It was an effect of her new class.

“I’ll try to read the history here,” she said thoughtfully as she walked toward the building. She paused by the closest broken arch. “My new class ability, Records of the Past, is supposed to access information about the relic, even what was well hidden, and this will be a good test for it. I think I can make it visible to everyone, if I understand it correctly.”

She fell silent as she laid her hands on the stone and closed her eyes. A moment later, shades of moonlight began to pool on the ground in liquid rivers around her. Green, purple, and blue, as well as the slightly lighter blue of her own mana signature flowed through the air like paint that spread across the rubble. The colors sank into the stones and the snow, filling in the broken gaps, and then moved upward.

Slowly, an image began to form as the stone arches and walls were rebuilt from moonlight and stretched upward into the sky. When it was complete, the image was thin, like a reflection on water, but the swirling colors held depth that made it seem like a pane of reality that had opened onto another realm.

Story by story, the building that had once been here rose again, towering into the sky as illusory bricks flew back to their places, walls fused together, and towers formed, crowning off the top of the palace. It was a building out of time, its walls exuding a sense of antiquity that pressed down on Sam’s senses even through the spell.

The first story was a beautiful arcade of arches joined end to end, each column ornately carved with floral motifs that wrapped around them and flowed upward into the second layer, where they formed airy balconies decorated with translucent silver and green windows that opened onto long halls just barely visible from the outside. The weather here had been warm enough once to fill those halls with pleasant breezes, bringing a touch of spring and winter at the same time to the people inside.

All three of the original races were there, their forms shimmering in the moonlight as they walked along the arcade and leaned on the balconies. There were the elemental giants known as the Toa’an, ten feet tall and more, who towered over the others as they filled the hall. Their bodies matched different elements, with skin like stone and hair like flames or flowing water, each of them unique as they reflected their specialties and advancements in their classes. There were humans in unfamiliar robes that had ornate slashes along the sides. Some carried books in their hands and others wore fluted armor and had long, curved blades on their hips.

Then there were the winged Aelvara who landed on the balconies and launched themselves off again. Their wings were similar to those of the golems, stretching a dozen feet to either side and banded in two different colors. In some respects, they looked much like humans, but their bodies were thin and angular, with broad chests and hawkish eyes over waists that were barely a double hands’ breadth in width. Their fingers were tipped with short talons not so different from his own.

Above that, the third through fifth stories were similar with more balconies trailing vines and flaring arches that marked out entrances where Aelvara could land or the inhabitants could step outside for air and survey the lower slopes of the mountain. Whatever the palace had been, it was clearly important, a hub for administration or high-leveled officials. Perhaps it had been a place of government for the relic.

Aemilia let out a long breath as she raised her hands higher, and then the image began to move. Time flowed forward, skipping from image to image as she searched for the moment where it fell to ruins and then backward as she spun it back through the years to the beginning. Her view of things probably came with more information and detail, but to those watching, it was a blur of images that finally settled on a moment where a towering Toa’an walked through the entrance of the palace.

He was taller than most of his race, perhaps 14 feet based on the others around him and he was a mountain of elements. His legs were pillars of stone flecked with veins like iron ore and his arms reflected the moonlight like gemstones. His hair was a ripple of similar metals, like liquid pouring down his back, and his eyes were piercing topaz. He had to have chosen an Earth and Metal-aligned path. His hands looked like those of a smith as he waved away a guard. They were gnarled and muscular with an array of crisscrossed, misshapen scars along them, but there was a methodical care in his movements that spoke of restraint.

Time sped up as the image followed him inside, flowing through the hallways as he marched along them to a central courtyard. Once he was there, he waved everyone away from the center of it, where there was a fountain and a stone-lined plaza. He gestured at something that couldn’t be seen and the plaza came to life as the stones curled away to form an arch in front of the fountain, with a staircase leading down. Two more sharp gestures brought a young Toa’an and a human to his sides, who followed him with a respectful posture as he marched down the staircase.

The staircase gave way onto a crossroads with three paths, and the Toa’an took one that led to a long gallery that looked more like an herbalist’s garden than a subterranean chamber. Herbs of every type decorated the chamber, which stretched out beyond the field of view. The greenstone on the walls was alight with light and color, and crystalline formations seemed to channel sunlight from the mountain above.

At that moment, the image flickered and faded away as Aemilia staggered to the side, where she was caught by Jeric. She dropped her hands as she gasped for breath, leaning against him.

“That’s all I can see for now,” she said as she shook her head, “but I think that was one of the High Council at the time. He was a craftsman who had come to gather some materials from the storehouse.”

“Well, it looks like we know where to dig,” Jeric said as he wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll have to see what’s left of that underground gallery. It looked like an herbalist’s garden.”

“There were two other doorways as well, which might have led to different things,” Krana said as she stepped forward, looking at where the image had been. She gave Aemilia a slow nod of appreciation. “That was impressive. You looked through ages of time and showed it as it happened. That must have been over a hundred thousand years ago.”

“The new class helps,” Aemilia said with a little laugh, but she looked pleased with herself and more confident than ever. “Once I get some mana back, I might be able to see more, but I’m confident that was the entrance to the storeroom at the center. I’m not sure what was in all the chambers yet.”

“We know enough to start digging,” Sam agreed as he communicated with the Guardian Star and reached out to the relic. A moment later, ten of the green crystal golems with large builds appeared in the sky and dove toward them. Their wings flared as they came to a halt, hovering just above the ruin, and then one swept down and knelt in front of the group.

It bowed toward Sam and his parents and then stood up before it walked into the rubble of the palace, studying it in silence. It had to flare its wings to climb onto the pile at the center, but eventually it looked skyward at the other golems.

Without speaking, they dove toward the rubble and picked up chunks of stone, pulling them away. They carried them off to the side and set them just outside the grounds of the palace before they returned for another load. Their motion was simple and elegant, and at first it seemed like they were moving slowly, but the pile grew with every passing moment. Boulders the size of wagons were picked up by a single golem without any apparent effort and smaller rubble was gathered up with a sweep of their wings as they compressed it into a bundle and carried it aside.

It only took them thirty minutes to open a path to the inner courtyard. Before Sam and the others had even become tired of watching them, they were done. The first one bowed again and then all ten launched themselves into the air, leaving behind a clear approach to what had once been the fountain. The stones were a shattered expanse, but even the shards had been moved away.

Sam wasn’t the only one to look up at the remains of the arch above his head as he remembered the figure of the Toa’an walking through the entrance. A sense of time flowed over him like a cloak as he followed in the giant’s footsteps. He stopped at the same place in front of the shattered fountain, but only a few stones remained to mark where it had once stood.

He sensed around him for the relic's energy and, after a moment, he sensed the empty nodes of an old enchantment, but it was even more broken than the others he’d dealt with. It meant he’d have to take a different approach.

“Step back a bit,” he warned the others. “The protective enchantment is broken in at least three places and I’m going to have to reconstruct part of it to open the door. It will probably be energetic. Fortunately, most of it is still here.”

He waited for them to move as he reached out to the threads of energy in the greenstone, feeling for the strongest connection. At the same time, he opened his mind to the core enchantment, letting it flow into his thoughts as he looked for the matching sections. Only the essential functions of the relic were there, but these storerooms were critical. After a moment, he found it.

A moment later, Transfer Aura flared out around him in a brilliant wash of silver light as ambient energy poured across his body. He drove his hands straight down into the greenstone at his feet, as if he were reaching down to the center of the world, and he let out a low rumbling growl as he caught the stream of energy there and pulled it back toward him.

Energy sheeted out in every direction, twisting into silver spirals and wisps that flowed away from his shoulders as he dragged the edge of the transfer line out of the stone. He poured his own energy into it, strengthening it, and then he turned and took three steps, dragging the line with him as he raised it into the air again. He let out another growl as he slammed his hands back down into the earth, driving the connection home into the fragmented line that was already there.

As soon as he did, a quarter of the floor around him began to burn with silver flames as a flood of astral energy tore through it, but it only lasted for a moment before it stabilized. As he stood back up, the floor flickered with a new glimmer in half a dozen areas.

He repeated the same process in two more areas as he rebuilt the relic’s transfer lines. After the third one, sweat poured down his body as his arms shook and he had to pause to take a breath and meditate. These weren’t the major energy lines that he’d had to repair up on the peak, but they still weren’t easy to move. Half an hour passed as he recovered his energy and studied the result, and then he pushed himself back to his feet.

Without wasting any more time, he reached out to the repaired transfer lines and channeled their energy into the seven empty nodes that formed the sealing enchantment here. Although the lines had been broken, the chamber itself was far below the ground and had been spared the same fate. The wisdom of the builders in hiding their treasures was as strong here as it had been in the other secured storerooms.

Given the state of things, they had been right to worry.

The floor shuddered as the greenstone filled with energy and formed an arch in front of where the fountain had been, just like in the vision. Stairs formed heading down and streaks of light began to shine from the walls, revealing the way. They weren’t as bright as they should have been, but it was enough.

“I think that Toa’an would have been proud of your work,” Aemilia said with a smile as she stepped up next to Sam. She rested her hand on his shoulder, although she had to reach up to do it.

Sam gave her a grin as he flexed his hands and compared them to the ancient giant’s. The Toa’an’s were bigger, but if his battle aura advanced more, maybe he could match him in size.

He was very curious about those giants. He’d learned some of their history when he’d helped compile The Chronicle of Moonlight, but it hadn’t been that deep. He wanted to know how they were related to the elements and if they had any connection to the Astral Titans. Perhaps they were another evolution that could lead to the same path? The vision had made their power seem like a very different thing from the elemental fusion of the Bloodline Clans.

“Let’s go see what this one has,” he said with a chuckle. “Hopefully, it’s something to help us rebuild.”

Aemilia only smiled as Jeric moved up on the other side of her, and then the three of them walked forward into the arch, followed by their friends, who looked around with interest at the lines of energy running through the walls. This structure was similar to the reserve storeroom, but more highly protected.

The tunnel led down to the cave with three arched doorways. When they reached it, the room gave off a redolent smell of earth and stone that wasn’t dust, but rather some compression of time pressed into the air, silent and dark as it waited beneath the surface.

“This room probably hasn’t been opened in the memory of any living being on Aster Fall,” Jeric muttered as he looked around them. “It’s hard to believe. Time feels stretched out here, from one moment to the next, as if it were just waiting in silence, asleep and then awake. Was there anything in between?”

“What is time to stone?” Krana asked quietly from just behind them. “A hundred thousand years is only an eyeblink in the memory of a mountain. You feel it like that because you are part of the Earth, both your class and your elemental alignment.”

The giant had gone to the left, toward the herb fields and perhaps other things, but instead of following in his footsteps Sam led the way straight through the arch that was in front of them instead. They would see if the herbs were still there soon enough. The pull of the unknown was more tempting.

The tunnel ran for about forty feet before it opened onto a cavern that stretched for perhaps two hundred feet into the distance and about a hundred feet across, forming a long hall. The walls looked odd at first and somehow sparkling, until Sam picked out row after row of carved crystal plaques that were set into the greenstone. They were all a soft silver, which made them resemble dragon scales set in lines.

Altogether, there were thousands of them. They lined the walls from top to bottom in orderly ranks.

In the middle of the cavern, there were a series of stone and crystal octagonal pillars. In some ways, they resembled the control pillar on the central plateau, but these were smaller, about ten inches across. Each of them gleamed with an internal light as they waited there, as silent as stone as they waited for someone to wake them.

“This is....” It was Krana who spoke, her words a sudden shock in the silence. “I’ve seen similar things in my ancestral caves, although nothing like this. If I’m not mistaken, this is a library. Information should be recorded on those plaques, as well as in the crystal pillars. I’m not sure what they will have, but it has to be something important.”

“Classes, crafts, and herbs....” Aemilia’s voice was strange and light, like a breath in the air as she looked across the cavern. Her eyes were glowing with moonlight and there was a quiet reverence as she spoke, her attention moving slowly from one object to the next. “They saved them all. The records of what they did and what they taught. History, beasts, alchemy...enchantment patterns, spatial laws, metallurgy, and more. Powerful skills you can gain and how to do it, ways to prepare for Evolution, class abilities that combine well and those that don’t.

“Achievements you can earn and monsters to watch out for. The relic was a school and these...these were the textbooks.” Her tone changed, taking on a bright edge as she stared across the space and realized what was contained here. “When the relic was built, this was the center of knowledge. No better education existed in the world. The world has changed since then, across three Breakings or more. Beasts and monsters have Evolved, Aster Fall has been reformed, and the World Core has changed many classes, but some things will still hold true.

"If we wish to rebuild the relic, we'll need more people to aid us. This will be the foundation for those who come here. These are the halls where they can learn to be more than they were.

”This is why the trial tested the heart,” she added softly. “It wanted to make sure I would use the information to benefit others.”

Sam looked around the room, his aura flaring as he looked at the stones and felt the weight of the ages settling on his shoulders. This time, the weight was comfortable, like a heavy cloak that blocked the wind and the rain. There was a stunning number of steles and plaques in the hall, hundreds upon hundreds of them stretching out in their rows. If each of them held even a single book's worth of information, then no matter whether some of it was out of date...the value of it all was incalculable.

Knowledge was power and this was a library. It was the foundation for a power that could shake the world if it were given time to grow.

The Trial of the Elements had been about protecting the balance and the golems were part of that: builders and defenders.

The Trial of the Heart had been about testing wisdom and the ability to care for your people. This library had been built for the same purpose: to instill that ability in the guardians of the relic.

Desire for the things that he could learn drew him to the stones as surely as a firefly to the stars.