Shadow Realm: Silence
Continued from the last post:
The warrior knew he was approaching Volunios's room about thirty feet before he entered it - there were papers scattered all over the floor in front of the door. He leaned his sword against the wall, gathered them up, and then knocked on the (open) door, holding the papers to his chest with his other hand.
"Come in!" an aged voice shouted from inside the office. "Watch your step by the doorway!"
Pushing the door open, the warrior stepped inside, avoiding a small pile of books next to the door as he did. The room was in a state of stasis between utter disarray and complete insanity, with disarray edging out by the slightest of margins. Shelves were half-full, the other half of their contents scattered around the room and over the desk. Books of all ages and types were everywhere; an old, battered tome with its title written in Infernus on the spine sat atop the pile by the door, while a newly-printed cookbook (The Many Uses of Des Dendle Sprouts) lay next to the phone. The room was lit by twin lamps against the wall opposite the doorway.
For a few seconds, the warrior just looked around, not sure where to put the papers in his hands. Finally, he tucked them into one of the shelves and made his way to the center of the room, placing his feet carefully and almost catching the toe of his boot on one particularly large book.
In the room's center, sitting at the desk, a Stern Mystic carefully placed a bookmark in a large, broken-spined volume and shut it, looking up at the warrior with a glance that showed all the signs of carefully scrutinzing its subjects. His staff lay against the desktop, and his robes were covered with coffee stains. He pushed himself to his feet and leaned in, causing the warrior to take a nervous step back.
After a moment, the spellcaster took hold of his staff and rose to his feet, dusting off the front of his robes. "I knew it," he said, letting out his breath. The smell of asparagus briefly lingered on the air. "Lofi isn't one to let in any old querent at this time of night. But I did not expect to see one such as you." He stepped forward and sniffed at the warrior's clothing, causing his subject to raise an eyebrow. "That scent... those flowers only grow in two places. The Higher Plane is one of them. The other is the Chorus of Sanctuary. But I'm being rude."
Moving back to his chair, the Stern Mystic sat down and sighed. "I am Volunios, as you likely know by now. What brings you to my office, Silent Swordsman?"
Thus identified, the Silent Swordsman reached for his pouch, but then paused and sniffed at his shirt cuff. A smile crossed his face, and he took a longer sniff before opening the pouch and shifting through it. His hand withdrew, the parchment in its grip, and he unfolded it as he set it on the desk before Volunios.
Adjusting his glasses, the Stern Mystic leaned in, humming a bit as he studied the parchment - not, as the Swordsman noted, the drawings on it. "Very peculiar... these aren't cut marks, but they aren't signs of tearing, either. And I can't make out any wood grains, either. This isn't actual paper, but something formed in the image of paper. Saturn left this for you, didn't she?"
One of the Swordsman's eyebrows twitched, and he leaned in, taking up a pen and a loose scrap of paper. He then wrote, "Get on with it!"
Clearing his throat, Volunios said, "My apologies... It is rare that I get visitors, especially not ones as legendary as yourself. Now, I have seen these symbols before, my friend, and not that long ago... Who recommended you to me?"
"An Eria the Water Charmer," the Silent Swordsman wrote in response.
Even as he moved towards the bookshelves to his right, Volunios nodded, saying, "Smart girl, her. She may go far in this place." He slid his fingers over the spines of his books before taking out a slender book with white covers, the title reading simply Azoth. On its front were the circle, twin circles and triplet circles that were on the paper.
The Silent Swordsman blinked, and then stared at the book before seeking a place to sit. None were forthcoming, and so he just sat on the desk.
Volunios pushed his glasses up, and then frowned, looking at the book he now held. "This..." He paused, and then muttered, "If that note means what I think it does, then I understand why Saturn called you forth. Those circles, as I recall, symbolize the three Primordial Suns. They're a story that dates back to before you were even Level Three."
At the words "Primordial Suns", the Silent Swordsman's eyes flashed white, and he grabbed his helmet, falling off the desk and onto the floor. The books bounced around him as the Stern Mystic cried out...
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Before anything, there is only a darkness as deep and still as the coldest waters of the oceans. The Shadow Realm is only stitches and threads of a lighter hue than the utter blackness around it.
In this place, the walls are thin, barely keeping this empty black space separate from the empty spaces on all sides of it. There is nothing in this world to hold the walls up, and so it should not be a surprise when the walls begin to crack. And when there are cracks, there will be any number of entities seeking to get through them.
This place, the Shadow Realm, is no exception, and so - even as Exodia awakens and the shadows begin to pool together to hold everything in one piece - a single spark, no more than a tiny ball of light, slips through one of those cracks. The walls seal behind it as the battle between Exodia and Necross begins, so that nothing else from the spark's world can pass through.
Over the ages, the spark grows hotter, and soon it spits out another spark, which breaks into two. The first spark draws together a body, which looks for all the world like bandages wrapped into a human shape. The second sparks, too, develop a body, one that appears more corpulent and feminine than their parent. At some point, it spits out three tiny sparks, which grow three bodies, small and immature compared to their predecessors.
No one thinks anything is unusual about the three sets of sparks at first; they keep far to the side as life begins in the Shadow Realm and the monsters begin to gather. Eventually, seeing them for the first time and learning that they had existed as long as anyone could remember, some monster - name forgotten by history - gives them their names - "Helios the Primordial Sun" for the first, "Helios Duos Megistus" for the second, and "Helios Tris Megistus" for the third.
But there is a reason the three sparks have never done anything. This world is completely foreign to them. They are not sure how to even move with the bodies they have developed, let alone act. In their confusion, they do not realize this is not their place, their world. And they do not sense what they are doing to it. They should not be here.
And the walls, so long ago having hardened, begin to soften and flake behind them. The ground on which they sit rots and overgrows simultaneously, and the air warps around them. Their very presence begins to eat into the Shadow Realm.
By the time Exodia realizes this, the Primordial Suns have almost torn a hole in the fabric of the world simply by being there. Their existence is tugging threads out of the Shadow Realm. Even as he makes plans, however, something happens.
The Shadow Realm is alive, in a sense. It has no true mind, but it can sense pain and wounds. And like any creature, it abhors pain. Like any creature, it can heal.
One morning, as Exodia heads out from the gathering of monsters to check on the Primordial Suns, they are gone. He is confused beyond all measure... but then he senses it. As if they were cancers, the Shadow Realm has enveloped them in its matter.
They no longer exist in the Shadow Realm, but in a pocket world, far from the dimension to which they do not belong. In their own world, they can do no harm to the shadows. This realm, a world outside of any other, is eventually named "Macro Cosmos".
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A light, sweet smell floated through the air around the Silent Swordsman's head. He held onto his skull and sat up, wincing as he did so. His helmet sat on the floor next to him, and Volunios stood beside him, holding a pot of coffee and a cup.
"I read about that tendency of yours," the Stern Mystic said. "Once you found something connected to your mission, all of the knowledge burst into your head at once. The Higher Plane is rarely gentle with its servants, I take it."
Nodding, the warrior took the cup and sipped at it, finding the coffee to have a somewhat less bitter tang than usual. He lowered the cup and looked to Volunios, eyebrows skewed.
The spellcaster chuckled, adjusting his glasses. "For some years now, I've taken to putting cinnamon in with the grounds when I make my coffee. I like it, but it's amazing how few people are prepared to drink it..." He then cleared his throat and sat behind the desk, looking to the Silent Swordsman. "I take it you now know the origin and meaning of those symbols?"
After taking another sip of the coffee, the Silent Swordsman nodded and stood up on somewhat shaky legs, moving to lean against the wall. He then glanced to the book, Azoth, sitting on the desk.
"This book was written in 3455 by the Disciple of the Forbidden Spell known as E-441-V," Volunios said. "In it he recorded everything he could about the Alchemicals, the monsters with an unnatural connection to forces outside of the Central Shadow Realm. The Element monsters, the Dimension monsters... The crux of the book is discussion of the Primordial Suns. According to E-441-V, as long as they are sealed, the Shadow Realm is unharmed. But those monsters were never meant to exist in this world. Should they ever reenter it..." The Stern Mystic paused. "Imagine, if you will, the Shadow Realm as a tapestry. Now imagine someone yanking threads out of it at random."
The Silent Swordsman paused, lowered his coffee cup, and shivered.
"E-441-V wrote of a method, apparently in two parts, that could release the Primordial Suns from Macrocosmos," Volunios continued. "But he was unable to find exactly what those parts are. I'm afraid my own research has failed to work that out, either. What I do know is that a Trap cube and a Magic cube must be used together to free them, and both would have to be custom-made. If you could..."
And then the Stern Mystic stopped, as he was talking to air. His pen was on the other side of the desk from where he'd left it, and on a piece of paper before him, the Silent Swordsman had written, "I know who to talk to next. Thank you for the coffee."
Despite his sense of propriety, Volunios chuckled, thinking to himself, If I know anything about you - and I daresay I know a lot about you - I know exactly who you're going to go talk to...
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As the story goes, once the Meteor Black Dragon had killed the soldiers in the Silent Swordsman's unit, it looked around for more prey. At first, it did not see the little swordsman, as its eyes were turned too far up to spot him. Wracked with guilt at having called his fellows to their deaths, he did not move or speak, making it easier for the dragon to ignore him.
But then it hurled itself upwards, taking to the air. And of course, once it was overhead, the Meteor Black Dragon could not miss that distinctive blue outfit silhouetted against the soil. It chuckled and inhaled, preparing to hurl another meteorite down at the Silent Swordsman.
Looking up, the little warrior was fully prepared to die. In his sorrow, he could not forgive himself - he had spoken but once, and his words had condemned all who heard them.
But fate would not let him go just yet. At that moment, having heard the sound of the Meteor Black Dragon's first attack, a tall man in purple robes ran up to the Silent Swordsman and stood over him, metal staff drawn across his chest. This was the first Dark Magician, Wagnard, destined to die on the final charge of the First Dragon War; for now, he still lived, and he would not let the dragon kill anyone else.
Before the Meteor Black Dragon could fire, Wagnard yelled three words of power, thrusting his staff out. Magic exploded on the air around him, and a thousand blades formed from pure mana fired up at the dragon. This was the spell known as Thousand Knives.
The knives hit home, one after the other, carving the dragon's heart to pieces. It shuddered, and then fell to the earth with a mighty crash, exploding into countless shards.
As the smoke cleared, Wagnard looked down to the shaking warrior, asking him in a quiet voice, "What happened?"
But the Silent Swordsman did not answer. In grief and shock, he pulled himself to his feet and ran, trying to get as far as he could from that spot...
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Cold, biting winds blew through the Spellcaster Living Quarters, just as they did everywhere else in the city. Lower-level monsters just pulled their robes tighter around themselves and walked on, doing what they could to keep warm. Most of them were lucky enough to have apartments, which at least put walls between them and the chill; those that didn't - and some, for whatever reason, did not - glared up at the Spellcaster Penthouses and looked for something to light on fire.
In one particular penthouse, the owner looked out the window, down to the streets below and then up to the Council Lower Quarters, her gaze never really focusing on any of it. Her fingers traced over the glass idly before she leaned back, running her fingers through her hair; her hat rested on the sofa.
The woman's name was Alamere, and her major distinction was being the first of the Silent Magicians to prove the "LV 4" usually written after their names was there for a reason. She was the first of her kind to level up, and as a Level Eight had managed to parlay her newfound powers (and immunity to magic) into success. The name of Alamere appeared on various contracts and leases throughout the Central Shadow Realm. Like many other Level monsters, her origins hovered over her like a ghost, and so she had made a point of treating low-level monsters fairly, which helped cement her reputation as one of the most beloved spellcasters in the city.
She was painfully aware, however, that at that moment any number of them would be willing to kill her for her penthouse. No food and lack of a place to sleep were easily enough to push envy over admiration, and there was only so much she could do.
Alamere sighed (the "silent" in her name merely reflected a preference for quiet, not muteness) and loosened the clasp on her robes. She had silver hair, settled over the light blue skin of her face, and wore immaculately-cut white robes, along with elbow-length white gloves (currently draped over her hat). Her beauty was the first that anyone mentioned in discussing her, followed by her achievements and then her acts of charity. Or, as a rather disgruntled Trial of Nightmare once put it, "Spellcasters get all the looks."
Even as Alamere considered calling it a night and changing into her nightgown, she heard a sound like a single note of music. A moment later, she could smell the scent of a rare, nonnative flower, and her eyes went wide. "Now?" she whispered to herself; she never spoke above a whisper.
And then a white-gloved hand gently slid over her stomach, and emerald skin slid against blue as the Silent Swordsman slid into place behind her, his face set in a gentle smile. His other hand slid into hers, thumb rubbing the palm.
The Silent Magician lowered her eyes to the floor, letting her breath roll out even as she instinctively leaned against him. Her head settled against his neck as she whispered, "Something must be wrong if you're here..."
A finger settled against her lips, and the Silent Swordsman carefully turned her around in his grip, arms never leaving her. Behind his shoulder, she could see his helmet on the floor, apparently set aside in the name of avoiding accidental collision. She had once lost a hat that way.
Her train of thought stopped there as the warrior pulled her in, and Alamere kissed him, holding tightly onto his shoulders. He returned the kiss, and they held the pose for a few seconds, just letting themselves have the moment.
To be continued next post...
