[The Twining] 17. The Sentinel (Patreon)

[ Currently leaning towards Severed Divinity as the title... but still very open to suggestions. ]

Isen awoke in a room filled with brilliant light. He was stunned to realize he could see at all. He sipped a tormented breath of air. It felt like swallowing a hot poker. He nearly blacked out again from the pain.

Forcing another breath through his gritted teeth, he looked down. He was no longer pressed between the pages of the statue’s tome. Instead, he lay on top of the cover. His dagger lay next to him, its surface oddly shiny, almost iridescent.

Isen was just happy to be alive. His skin was a blistered, bloody mess, and his bones protested at the slightest movement, but his injuries weren’t as severe as he’d thought. The tight-packed, unregulated houses that popped up in Goldbounty often weren’t safe, especially when winter rolled through. Victims that survived the fires looked like old candles, their skin melted. They often died from infection.

He'd worried that his skin would be similarly ruined, that he’d never feel again. His present condition left him overwhelmingly relieved. He could feel all his limbs, even if he wished he couldn’t. But he didn’t know how bad the damage was, how deep the burns went.

Isen tugged on the sinew string, pulling the dagger to his good arm, the one that wasn’t a broken mess. Panting heavily, he raised it up to the ruin of his left. The limb was broken, but at least the bone wasn’t protruding. It didn’t look like a bad break.

With a small whimper, he cut into the skin. The dermis looked like little more than charcoal, but it was a very thin layer over raw pink skin that looked serviceable.

He blinked, shocked. His tempered skin hadn’t burned past the surface level despite seconds of exposure to open flame. Either that, or he’d healed much of the damage in his sleep, but he doubted it.

Or… the fire had been special.

Isen figured the right answer might be a combination of all three, especially given that his hands—the first point of contact with the fire—still retained all their sensation, even if the flesh looked shiny and unnatural.

Breathing came easier the longer he sat, possibly because he was acclimating to the agony. His arm and shoulder in particular were a mass of pain, every motion setting them off, but Isen managed to stand on the book cover while only minimally tweaking them. The fire had been concentrated on torso, the burns mostly ending below his chin and above his hips. It was a mercy that his feet had been spared, and the survival of his pants was a welcome blessing.

Whatever insanity had transpired before he passed out with the moving statue and the menacing shadows seemed to be over, but Isen faced a new predicament: He didn’t know how to get down. The book was a dizzying height above the ground level. If his arm wasn’t broken, he would’ve been confident in climbing or perhaps even using an energy burst to jump down and break his fall.

His eyes fell on six open-face floors that spanned the chamber from ground to ceiling. Each level formed a square U with the gap centered on the statue. Isen considered the jump to the nearest floor. The statue’s shoulders were level with the sixth story, its arms level with the fourth. Isen could potentially jump to the fourth if he were at full strength, but he could barely move. The third floor seemed possibly achievable.

His mind made up, he cycled for a few minutes, building up a small reservoir of energy. Then, he ran off the book and leapt forward.

Even with the sixth sense guiding him, he landed poorly, twisting his ankle and jostling his broken arm bone out of place. He limped to one of the upholstered seats lining the walls, one next to a black vase. In a more comfortable position, he pushed the bone back. A strangled yelp escaped his mouth, causing his chest to scream anew. Tears beaded at the corners of his eyes.

Isen knew from experience that a sprained ankle was quick to heal. If he took things slow for half an hour while cycling, it would be back to full function.

His overpowering thirst persuaded him to stop only for a handful of minutes. He let his gaze wander and it quickly fell on a painting around five feet away. He limped forward to get a better vantage point, collapsing into a divan with a thick floral cushion.

Before, the paintings had been shrouded in shadows, difficult to make out from afar. Those shadows were gone. This painting revealed a gentleman in a military uniform of uncertain nationality. His hair was dark, but locks of gray and white streaked through, giving the illusion of clouds after a squall, the sun peeking through and limning their curves. His eyebrows sat heavy upon his brow, like thick swords, and accentuated the judgment in his storm gray eyes.

Isen’s eyes fell on a small bronze plate on the ornate frame. It looked like it once had held a name, but the text was worn away. Isen doubted he’d have been able to read the words anyways.

Isen had seen only a smattering of real paintings in his life, many in Lady Jin’s domicile. The few pieces that traveled with the caravans were always well-wrapped to survive poor weather. Some people in Goldbounty made art, but there was a qualitative difference between what the rabble made—line drawings for signs, annotated maps, and crude graffiti—and the masterpieces that deserved frames expensive enough to feed a young boy for a year. A military town like Goldbounty simply wasn’t a place for artists—it wasn’t wealthy enough.

All he knew was that this painting seemed good. It was realistic and far more detailed than the mural, which had been thin lines and flat colors, almost like a mosaic. But it also didn’t seem extraordinary the way the mural was. There were no words that spoke to him. It didn’t move.

Deciding that he’d rested long enough, he stood and walked to the banister. For the first time, he beheld the statue in its full glory from a distance. It seemed to be vaguely androgynous, but Isen thought the figure was somewhat womanly, just as the mural struck him as slightly masculine. The statue’s eyes were pure beacons of white light, while a violet iris made of energy sat on her brow, its petals turning in a circle.

He averted his gaze to the mural. The angle wasn’t as good from the third floor, but he could still see it. The figure was in profile as it had been originally, but his arms were elevated, hands grasping a jet-black sword wreathed by unmoving violet lightning. It reminded Isen of the dark, towering spire he’d seen above the temple, its column riven by purple light.

Despite his wretched condition, he was tempted to climb the stairs to get a closer look, but stopped cold when his eyes fell on the two suits of armor flanking the entrance to the fourth floor. He’d assumed they were decoration, but looking at them now, his mind told him to run.

It was a pertinent reminder that this place was out to kill him if he wasn’t careful.

He walked down the stairs, placing less weight on his bad foot and supporting himself with his right arm. Thankfully there were no suits of armor guarding the stairs downward, so he made it to the ground level without incident.

His feet stepped off the long runners that covered the stairs and onto the chilled stone. The second his foot met the floor, a door revealed itself, as though it had always been there, even when Isen knew that was impossible. It was directly under the mural.

Because simply walking straight across the room felt like an invitation for trouble, Isen walked around the perimeter. While he no longer felt danger from the dark, he avoided the shadows cast by the upper floors.

When he finally stood in front of the empty doorway, the room beyond obscured by a dark haze, Isen hesitated. What if there was even more danger on the other side?

Too bad, he thought ruefully. He would die if he stayed here, waiting for Ros—or luck—to rescue him.

He stepped through and beheld a thin room with a tall ceiling. The walls took his breath away—they looked like the dark night sky, the stars themselves stolen for his viewing pleasure. They seemed to shift slightly as he walked, as though the whole room was alive.

“Welcome to the Seventh Compass of Legacy.”

Isen froze. The words entered his mind like the ones from before, when he looked at the mural. They transcended language. Suddenly, the starry surroundings shifted, forming a figure out of the celestial firmament. She looked just like the statue, even the angular iris on her forehead and the beacon-like suns that composed her eyes. She seemed serene, stoic, content.

Then the darkness folded itself into a sword and speared her through the breast. Outlined in actinic violet light, the swordsman cupped the starry woman’s cheek, his gaze somber but resolved. As the stars that formed her eyes faded, the warrior’s gaze shifted to Isen, pinning him in place.

“In an era of relentless darkness, the Sentinel of the Abyss carved a future from the past. He stole the heart of Legacy and split her single, flickering star. He hid her light in his abyssal sword, the only weapon that could cut through Annihilation.”

The scene of stars shifted along with the words. The warrior’s sword blade splintered into seven violet-limned pieces, each encompassing a flickering tongue of flame. The shattered shards drifted in different directions, shooting across the walls.

“Legacy is the only remnant of that bygone age. This compass is born from her eternal torment. Do you accept its burden?”

The Sentinel of the Abyss stood before Isen, his sword reconstructed. The more Isen studied the warrior, the surer he became that the sentinel was the figure from the mural.

According to this story, the statue must be Legacy.

Isen absently realized that all his pain, thirst, and overall discomfort were muted. It was as though time had stopped. He was free to think without distractions.

The Compass of Legacy… the burden of her eternal torment. It was a lot to absorb.

In the story, the Sentinel of the Abyss was framed to be a hero of sorts. Reading between the lines, it seemed like there was some great danger, the Annihilation, that perhaps only the Sentinel could fight. At first, it seemed like the Sentinel had slain Legacy and stolen her power, scattering it in the void, but that was inconsistent with the later sentences. It almost sounded like… Legacy was still alive, or that she at least existed in some capacity.

Isen thought back to the statue, how it had grasped his immolated body and wrapped him in the cooling embrace of a book. It was eerily like the icon outside the temple of a tome embracing a flame.

She didn’t just save you, he mused darkly. She was also the one that set you aflame. But in the end, it was her fire that dispelled the shadows.

He knew the entire situation was manufactured, the statue and mural created by the same unseen hand. But it was ultimately all he had to go on. And as weird as it was, he had the sense that the statue really had acted of its own volition to save him.

He decided that he didn’t want to profit from Legacy’s torment, even if that meant forgoing quick gains. He didn’t want to accept the offer. But... he felt that he was missing something.

He narrowed his eyes at the dark sentinel. He’d occasionally had this feeling when entertaining Lady Jin’s distinguished guests that passed through Goldbounty. They’d speak broadly of politics and economics, mentioning as many noble houses as they possibly could to seem… informed? Well-connected? But sometimes they’d ask him questions, cruel ones intended to make him seem slow, uneducated. The sixth sense would always warn him when the obvious answer would lead into a trap.

What is the question really saying? He decided to reorder the question to make the meaning clearer. “Do you accept the burden of this compass, born from Legacy’s eternal torment?”

He frowned. Would accepting the burden… worsen her torment? Place more strain upon her flickering star?

He reordered the words again, simplifying them, listening to his gut. “Will you shoulder the burden of Legacy’s eternal torment?”

It was a gratuitous interpretation of the original words, but it felt right.

Why are you overthinking this? he questioned himself. An opportunity lies before you. You’re going to take it. You always do. It’s practical—you’re just looking to justify your choice.

That truth almost made him reject the burden of Legacy’s compass, if just to prove a point. But Isen wasn’t going to throw away an opportunity like this—one with undeniable ties to divinity—out of childish spite. Everything he’d seen was awe-inspiring and he suspected that he’d only scraped the surface.

It was incredible. Impossible to refuse.

But ultimately, it was still presented as a choice. He wondered what kind of person could say no. He doubted it was the sort that would enter the lightless depths of the Twining, traverse its monster-ridden radiant lake, and enter the dark temple at its center.

Expression grave, he voiced his decision: “I accept the burden.” He waited, unsure if he was supposed to do something. Maybe whatever force had presented him with the decision couldn’t understand.

Then the walls to his right and left were folding inward, threatening to crush him between them. Isen’s heart skipped a beat. It reminded him of the way the darkness had folded itself into a sword. He spun around, looking for an escape, but there was nothing. The way he’d come no longer existed.

Gritting his teeth, Isen squinted his eyes shut. He trusted himself and trusted his decision. Regardless of the sixth sense, he had selected his answer with good intentions, and he didn’t regret it.

If the walls were really going to crush him after everything, then so be it. But there were many things he’d experienced today that defied expectation and weren’t what they immediately appeared to be.

Rather than fighting the inevitable, he released his held breath and let the tension drain out of him. He opened his eyes and faced his fate with a smile.

Fate’s sentinel smiled back.