23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡanTL9qLdm3
“The sword of the Pendragon, called Echbalder, is a powerful symbol of unity. It was under the banner of that sword that Lieber forged the old Alliance and began a peace which lasted nearly six millennia. The sword and the station are intrinsically linked; without the sword there is no Pendragon.”
– The Alliance, its Founding, and its Principles, circa N.D.111
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6EyE4tMYfC
Chapter 5:
Keep off the Grass
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy5bWFWhCnH
#5.1 – Monday, the 9th day of the 9th month…
In books, people described blacking out during a fall. They talked about disorientation, confusion, and then they woke up at the bottom in a daze.
Scarlet experienced exactly none of this.
Instead, she stayed conscious for every single second. She didn’t really fall so much as ride a fast elevator, surrounded by dirt and loose rocks. She landed flat on her butt with a sharp thwack, coming to rest on a steep slope. Scarlet instinctively tried to stand up, immediately lost her balance, and fell head over heels, tumbling down at high speed. Each bump, each scratch, she felt.
Owing more to having read a lot than mere instinct, Scarlet used her arms to shelter her head. This meant a lot of nasty cuts and abrasions, but at least her brain, with all its probably useless historical trivia, remained safe when she landed in a puddle at the bottom.
For a few moments, as the icy-cold water seeped into her clothes, Scarlet waited, expecting to pass out. That’s always how it went, you were supposed to black out after something like this!
…weren’t you?
When no unconsciousness took her, Scarlet dragged her body into something vaguely resembling a standing position. In the blackness, she felt about herself for any injuries. No broken bones or even rattled teeth, just a lot of big, ugly scrapes and so very many bruises. She took a few steps to get out of the water, then began searching her pockets for the flashlight she always carried.
Switching on the light, she found herself standing at the bottom of a strange, V-shaped corridor that sloped down to the small pool where she’d landed. It wasn’t rock-cut, but rather clad in a series of stones fitted so closely together that a knife-blade couldn’t even pass between them. Overhead, Scarlet could make out a fantastic vaulted ceiling made from overhanging courses of tightly dressed stone.
Such a wet underground space should smell strongly of must, but the air felt strangely antiseptic. Even the large puddle she landed in looked crystal-clear. Rubbing a few drops between thumb and forefinger, it felt soft, pure. Cleaner than her tap water at home. Before the collapse of the roof that brought her in, this place may well have been air-tight.
Back the direction she came, Scarlet saw shimmers of daylight peeking down through the caved-in section. Among curled and gnarled tree roots, it didn’t look like much of a climb. But that was a problem for Future Scarlet. Real-Time Scarlet had more important things to look at.
Moving up the opposite slope from where she’d fallen, Scarlet’s thick boots skidded on the damp stone floor as she made her way to a small chamber. When she came to a stop, she could hear no other sound than her own breathing. She held her breath. The stillness of it all chilled her to her very core, but Scarlet could not stop.
That she had fallen down into a tomb was as obvious as the bandage still taped to the side of her head. But who’s tomb? She needed to know.
Flashing her light around, she saw a vaulted ceiling. Scarlet’s hand trailed along a dry wall, as if the V-shaped corridor behind her somehow channeled all the moisture out of the place. In front of her, a strange glass arrangement sat atop a low pillar.
The device looked like a sort of weird collection of angles and lenses, all held together in a single orb. It was supported atop four stones, with a gap in the bottom for something to be inserted.
“That’s riiiiiiiiight,” Scarlet whispered. “It’s a Vrasser Lens! An old tomb-keeper’s trick! They’d use it to amplify and focus light, then beam it and reflect it all over the tomb! A single light source could illuminate the entire under-ground structure.”
Scarlet looked at the glass piece, then down at her little flashlight, then back at the glass, and to her light, and back and forth about a few more times before her face split open in a smile.
The Vrasser Lens was designed to receive an oil lamp or candle, and the beam of her flashlight wouldn’t work. But she could unscrew the top, take off the reflector, and expose the bare bulb. It turned her directional beam into a sort of super electric candle.
Using some tissues from her pocket and a note from her math teacher that her parents were supposed to sign, Scarlet wedged the flashlight into the holder at the bottom of the Vrasser lens. After opening the remaining panels of the ancient apparatus, brief flashes distorted her vision as the signal from her little flashlight passed through the reflectors and bounced off various other devices placed all over the chamber. The small point magnified only to a dim, eerie glow.
Not much light, but enough to see the statue.
Drawing a single, ragged breath, Scarlet fell to her knees. The monolithic stone stood over twelve feet in the massive chamber, the features cut and polished to a high luster. The light even reflected through a small channel in the base behind a series of letters, causing them to glow.
Scarlet didn’t allow her eyes to focus on the letters just yet. She already knew the five-line epitaph, famous throughout the known worlds*. Scarlet stood inside the grave of Lieber†, First Pendragon of Slayer Dragons.
For ten thousand years, this chamber lay hidden in darkness. Secret, sanctified; beneath the feet of so many, known only to so few. Sitting beneath it, having fallen over onto her side, Scarlet braced herself on one arm and ran the other hand across the stone floor. Even though it had been polished eons ago, the mirror-smooth rock still felt like glass beneath her fingertips.
The fantastic kaleidoscope of the ages wheeled through Scarlet’s head as her mind cart-wheeled back in time. Only the nameless, long forgotten artisans who built this monument ever saw it. A dozen of them, perhaps a score, ever got to see what lay before Scarlet’s eyes.
She turned her gaze to the enormous outer stone sarcophagus that held Lieber’s body. Like the great statue, only the builders ever saw it. Scarlet felt a sort of irony that made her want to laugh, though she dared not desecrate the tomb. Long ago, when Lieber died, mourners placed his body in an ornate coffin. He lay there in state, his body viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. But accounts of this coffin were as varied as the stars. No two sources agreed on what it looked like, or even what they made it from.
So here, now, Scarlet got to see the secret outer coffin kept only for Lieber; but was denied a view of the well-known inner vessel that could clear up so many long-standing mysteries.
The noise of her own breathing filled her ears with a deafening roar, the only sound in the deep silence. Each breath felt like a hurricane, ferocious, deafening. To get some peace from the cacophony, she held her lungs shut as long as she could until she felt dizzy, then it started all over again.
The five line epitaph.
Scarlet didn’t need to read it; she’d memorized it in first grade and knew every sentence by heart. She knew the meanings of all the words. She knew all the derivations. But getting to read it, here, with her own eyes, was a gift she could savor but one time. She drank in the sight of the intricate stonework. The masonry techniques employed here had been abandoned ages ago. Curving segments that should have been straight, rounding corners to give the illusion of points; a hundred little visual tricks all designed to make the stone appear a certain way to the human eye. Modern machinery, maths, and precision tools all made things that were correct, but did not look as perfect as this.
Scarlet forced her eyes to focus on the epitaph, and a small problem presented itself: the stonework before her held six lines of text.
Scarlet read every verse as carefully as she could, letting her eyes linger on each letter so that the image would be forever burned into her brain.
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrNNg9ntiO9
Here Lies Eieber
First Pendragon of Slayer Dragons
Who turned to and Put out Strength
Who Carried the Sword of the Righteous
May his Soul Never Rest
Until the Great Illusion turns Away
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMrYlNA7Kks
Those first five lines were exactly as Scarlet knew them. The ‘Great Illusion’? She’d never heard of anything like it, before. Maybe the line got dropped from Lieber’s First Edition Honorarium+? Out of the question to check, no one anywhere had anything that precious. Still, as someone who’d studied every last scrap of information on Lieber, Scarlet would know about it if it were important enough to be etched upon his grave marker.
Lieber.
Eieber?
Why did the epitaph say ‘Eieber’?
He’d variously been called many things, but the name Eieber appeared in no source Scarlet knew of—and she’d seen all of them, at least she thought.
The sarcophagus sat in front of the statue. Raised on a pedestal, with its own feet, and sitting at a slight angle. The statue towered above it, stretching into the dark recesses, making the entire chamber at least two stories high.
But in the sarcophagus, lay the body of Lieber himself.
Lieber, who first took up the sword.
Who created The Ten.
Who ended the Mage Wars.
Scarlet tried to grip the smooth stone beneath her hands as thoughts washed over her. Lieber(Eieber?), the first Pendragon of Slayer Dragons, was not a Jusenkyou, so far as anyone knew. But he shared many traits in common with Hunter Jusenkyou—the last Penmdragon of Slayer Dragons. Both were quick-witted, adaptable, and knew just when to act. Just like Emmerich said, they weren’t chosen ones, they chose to be.
And that was Eieber(or possibly Lieber)’s legacy. When the choice was set before him, he could have ran away and saved his own life. But instead he picked up that sword and made it into a banner for victory.
Then, when the time came to face his own mortality, he handed it down to the next Pendragon, who gave it to the next. Through the Ages of the Alliance, one hundred and nineteen Pendragons held that sword, each one swearing the same oath: to never again let the world go so mad as to allow another Mage WarsSS.
Echbalder.
An image of that sword was said to be inscribed on the lid of Lieber’s secret outer coffin.
Scarlet’s breath froze in her throat. Coming face to face with a part of history this real, this visceral, made her heart throb in her ears. Guided, drawn, unable to not take the final step, Scarlet approached the grave.
The coffin was covered in elaborate carvings. Patterns within glyphs within images that told the entire story of Lieber’s life.
All except the top.
The top was polished to a mirror finish and held a single, intricate engraving.
Echbalder had been forged by mortal handsP. It was made in hope, in faith; a prayer in metal that the divine power of Echbaldam could be returned to the world. In the center of the lid, the hilt directly above where Eieber’s heart should be, the artisans created an exact one-to-one scale carving of Echbalder. This part Scarlet knew should be there, every Pendragon received a similar gift to accompany him(or just as often her) through eternity.
Scarlet’s heart beat so fast she thought it might explode out of her chest. Her ears buzzed and her vision blurred, she couldn’t remember when she’d last drawn a breath. Her hand slowly moved across the stone, still stretching out to touch the image of Echbalder.
At last, her fingers closed into a fist over the image of the hilt.
She held it there for a long time, then finally relaxed and let her fingertips gingerly trace the line of the blade across the smooth stone. Ten thousand years left only the slightest layer of dust, the crypt so thoroughly sealed. She could see her own fingerprints in the dust. Her eyes focused on the contrast those marks created, and in the dim half-light of the tomb something else appeared etched on the lid.
Here now she saw, very faint, almost ghost-like, a second much larger image. Stretching the entire length of the coffin lid, it encircled the smaller sword and indeed all of Eieber’s body.
Scarlet recognized the image instantly, because her family owned a museum-grade replica and kept it on the mantle at home. It was an image of Echbaldam, the sword now enshrined in the Slayer Dragon’s Enclave# at the heart of the city.
“This shouldn’t be here.”
The words themselves exited Scarlet’s mouth, but she didn’t know for sure if she’d really said them. She certainly hadn’t drawn a breath in any recent memory, so where the air came to move over her voice box created another mystery.
No one knew what Echbaldam looked like in Lieber’s time.
When Scarlet finally pulled away, her throat opened. One massive gasp followed by a series of long, hoarse breaths. She fell to her knees and stared up at the statue, head spinning.
She sat for what felt like hours. Breathing, staring. Her eyes moved from the statue and back to her hand, she couldn’t look at the sarcophagus again. Body quivering from exhaustion, she pulled herself to her feet.
Scarlet read the inscription one last time, then bowed deeply to the statue as she backed out of the burial chamber. Moving quickly up the passage, she ignored all of the side chambers and alcoves. Her mind yearned to explore them, to see what grave goods had been left for Lieber, but her heart forbade it.
By the time she reached the sloped passage, she was traveling at a fast walk. When she hit the bottom, she broke into a run. Climbing the slope, racing towards the light. Grappling blindly at handholds, she clawed her way up and pulled herself out, then lay, panting, on the grass.
Night fell as Scarlet reached the top of the path; her class long gone and the Plaza empty. Briefly, she wondered if she were even assigned a field-trip buddy, and what they said when asked for her whereabouts. This was far from the first time she’d ended up alone on a school outing. Seeing little other choice, Scarlet began to walk home.
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZPlAi87KCw
* #5.2 (Monday, 9/9) *
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTfhBYY6uP5
Scarlet knew she was in for it the moment she rounded the corner to her street. Two city watch* cars, with lights flashing, were parked out in front of her house, along with several vehicles she recognized as belonging to various family friends. Her parents weren’t night owls; it was well past ten and the house still sat fully lit. A heavy air of dread hung over the place.
“Yeah… I’m in trouble,” Scarlet mumbled, then took a deep breath and kept walking. She untied the light jacket around her waist and pulled it on, thankful for her usual darkly-colored attire. The walk home shook off most of the dirt, and she hoped the tear in her cargo pants wasn’t terribly obvious. After throwing around a few various explanations in her head and deciding that, in the end, any possible lie she could concoct would only blow up in her face, she opted to simply tell the truth.
Not the whole truth.
As complete a version as was strictly necessary would do. No one would believe her anyway. Somehow, her reasons for running off, coupled with her little underground adventure, seemed like something that could be left out.
Resolute, she walked up the driveway and through the open door.
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyAaBM7xp4R
* #5.3 (Monday, 9/9) *
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡehAL7FeOmk
Scarlet’s parents were furious.
Eventually.
First there was the whole “We were so worried, we’re so relieved you’re safe!” then the “Where did you go, what happened?” followed by the inevitable “You are in SO MUCH TROUBLE, young lady!” and then another “We’re so happy you’re safe”.
You know, that usual suburban nuclear family emotional rollercoaster.
Given what she’d been through recently, her parents did not even discuss the notion of punishment. They were more concerned about Scarlet being unwell, and in a rather cruel twist agreed continuing the week in school would be best for her(because of the stable schedule and daily life and whatever other tortuous excuses Scarlet’s mother could name). Ann also declared she would get Scarlet’s next therapy session moved up, so that was great. Scarlet had been seeing Dr. Flowers for a few months now and vehemently hated the woman.
And yet, at the same time… it had all been worth it.
She didn’t have long enough on the walk home to fully process the events, but by the time her parents dismissed her to bed, Scarlet found herself beyond the sort of exhaustion that sleep could fix.
Her mind kept circling back to Emmerich, and how he was the only one she could ever think of telling. No one else could know, no else could understand what happened to her in that tomb.
Scarlet threw herself down on her bed.
In a way, the encounter was sort of prophetic.
Her eyes shut for a brief moment and, real or imagined, the nightmare flashed behind her eyelids. She was trapped in a grave, running down a long hallway towards a light that receded just beyond her reach.
With a start, Scarlet woke again. That nightmare came and went just like that over the years, going back as long as she could remember. She threw herself out of the bed and began to pace about her bedroom. Scarlet eyed the stack of books left over from the day Emmerich died. Her stomach dropped into her knees as she thought about them. How, so important she be on time for the exhibition, she still stopped at the Library.
She didn’t need those books. Not now. They were for a line of research she was already past. General reference books utterly lacking in the specificity required to take on the great revelations brought to her in that grave. The name carved in stone, the mysterious sixth line of the five-line epitaph, and the out-of-place carving of Echbaldam.
Those were to be her obsessions now.
Scarlet sat at her desk and took out History of the Greater Continent, the most valuable of volumes in the stack. Every other book(and indeed most of the bōchōrdP filling her bedroom) were more than fifty years old, some went back centuries.
But History of the Greater Continent saw publication just thirteen years ago, about the same time Scarlet was born. In a small way that made it feel like it belonged to her(also, her own blood soaking the pages personalized it a bit, too). The recent printing of the book meant it included important moments like Amarir Tenzeki being named Light Bearer*; but didn’t cover more current events, such as the military coup d'etat in Bident and subsequent civil war within the Trans-Draconic Federation†.
“That’s right, I have a ‘current events’ assignment due,” Scarlet murmured. “Stupid ‘current events’; why can’t they just be past events?”
The problem of the blood would need to be solved by Future Scarlet. Some day, Real-Time Scarlet was going to become Future Scarlet, and probably regret all the problems Past Scarlet had intentionally created for her. But for now, she ignored the damaged book and tore into her own not inconsiderable personal library.
Sleep blurred the edge of vision. Real, restful sleep would never come. Not until she’d made some small sense of the things she saw today.
“Yesterday, actually,” Scarlet acknowledged the alarm clock bolted to her headboard. “Hmm. Have to get up for school in five hours. But that’s also Future Scarlet’s problem.”
In a fugue, she began taking books down from her shelves, searching for some sign that Lieber had once been called Eieber. With each book her eyes could not focus enough to read. Future Scarlet’s problems were rapidly becoming Real-Time Scarlet’s problems.
She slumped into bed again, a volume of the Denton-Mills Stenography opened across her eyes. Every now and then she’d drift into a delirium, maybe it was a dream state, maybe just wild hallucinations. She re-lived her experience inside the tomb; every scent, every touch, the feel of the air on her face. Consciously, Scarlet knew each vision was but the space of a few heartbeats, yet the moments lasted long enough to replay the whole adventure a thousand times.
One trance persisted above all others, the sensation of that final run out of the grave. The visions of the tomb became jumbled, over and over, until nothing but the image of the sword, carved into stone, remained. It was burned into her memory, etched into her eyelids. The whole experience would stay with her forever, but that one image remained first and foremost.
Nothing about it made any sense.
Today, everyone knew the image of Echbaldam. Scarlet got to see the sword herself when she went to the Keep. But no mortal laid eyes on it between the end of the Age of Myth, and the end of the Sixth Age. Eieber lived at the start of the First Age+. His corpse-bucket had no business holding an accurate etching of Echbaldam.
Of course, his name also wasn’t Eieber, it was Lieber. And his epitaph only contained five lines. So none of this made sense, not really. The only part that worked was the cruel irony; Lieber/Eieber, who shouldn’t know where Echbaldam was, had an image of it in his tomb. And Scarlet, who knew exactly where EchbaldamSS was, had not the slightest idea where Echbalder lay. But Lieber/Eieber also had a picture of that in his grave.
“Very unfair, that,” Scarlet mumbled.
Scarlet knew from the moment she laid eyes on that statue deep underground that she’d keep this memory for herself, always. But now, deep in the falling night, she remembered: the one person she could ever share it with was gone, and would never come back. Alone, she crumbled into aching loneliness as she sank beneath the covers and let the heavy book slide off of her face, landing amidst the clutter on her floor.
A strange weight appeared about her, a pressure on her chest and in her sinuses. The heat behind her eyes that refused to leave. Every breath shook her, made her tremble, and she needed to blow it back out to stop her quivering. A coldness on the side of her face told her she was crying; long, narrow tears that hit her ears and flowed into every crevice and crack. She rolled onto her side and the tears ended up in her hair. Just a few drops from her eyes, but it made her feel uncomfortable.
Who could she tell?
Who would care?
23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuut2TcHQfz
End:
Chapter Five
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.