Storm God, chapter seven
The King of the Dead
“…and from the union of E’a and Sko arose new life, those that are born and grow and die, and within each was kindled a spark of Ilo’s light. But as life succumbed to death, the light was given to Zenops, to keep until this world gives way to the next…”
-The Dance of Ilo
The hall within was narrow and lined with shelf upon shelf of tightly bound scrolls. Vorn slid one out. It was yellowed with age and ragged along the edges. The dark wax button sealing it shut had The Book of the First Time inscribed on it in tiny, rounded glyphs.
Vorn went to break the seal when a shadow moved through his periphery.
He looked up.
Nothing.
Vorn slid the scroll back into its place, and tightening the grip on his axe, slowly worked his way down the passage. It ended at a t-junction. He turned left. That passage forked. He turned left again. On and on. Each aisle in this labyrinthine library was nearly identical. Then gradually, as he went, a low muttering found him. Following it, he came across a shrunken, stoop shouldered man, crouching beside the aisle’s bottommost shelf, searching amongst the scrolls. His incessant muttering almost sounded like counting.
Vorn approached cautiously, axe raised.
“You there,” he barked, stopping several paces away.
The man yelped, stumbling back, scattering the scrolls that had been clasped in his gnarled hands. Vorn blinked as he peered up at him. The man’s face was nothing but a single, monstrous eye. “No! No! No!” he cried, scrambling to pick up the dropped scrolls. His nasally voice emanated from nowhere that Vorn could see.
Vorn knelt to grab one but the man flung himself over it. “No! Don’t touch it. You don’t know where it goes.”
“Fine,” Vorn said, straightening. “I’m looking for my uncle Thoh. Do you know where–”
“Yes, yes. The master’s been waiting for you for a long time,” he croaked, sliding a scroll into a shelf with slow, methodical care.
“You serve him?”
“In a way, I’m just his librarian,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But the master doesn’t write in order, so it’s left to me to put everything in the right place.” It began counting again, working its way down the line of scrolls.
“What is the Book of the First Time?”
“The master calls it his magnum opus. A history of everything that is and was and will be.”
“Huh.” Vorn reached for a scroll.
“No!” the librarian screeched. “It’s not for you. Not yet.”
“Fine, that’s not why I’m here. Can you help me find Thoh?”
The librarian stopped, glanced up at him, then at the scrolls still held in his hands. “No. I’m busy”
Vorn looked down the aisle to the junction at its end, then back down the way he’d come. “Will I be able to find my way on my own?”
“I doubt it.” He slid the last scroll into the shelf, then turned to leave.
Vorn grabbed his shoulder. He hesitated and looked back. “Please help me. Thoh wants to see me. You’d be doing your master a service.”
“No.”
He went to turn again. Vorn grabbed him by the collar of his ragged robe and lifted him off the ground, driving him against the shelves. He squealed.
“You will take me to Thoh. Now.”
The librarian blinked, struggling for a moment, then fell still. “Yeah… o… okay.”
“Good,” Vorn grunted, dropping him.
For a moment he stood still, shaking.
“Go!”
The librarian squeaked and scampered off. Vorn hastened after him. They turned right, then left, then right again. Up a narrow flight of stairs, then around a wide, looping bend, and down a switch back ramp, somehow twisting in on itself. Finally, they came to the base of an ascending spiral stairwell.
“He’s at the top,” the librarian squeaked, pointing to the stairs and backing away.
Vorn nodded. “Thank you,” he said. But the librarian was already gone.
The smooth steps spiralled upwards for what felt like an eternity. Every so often Vorn would pass a landing and an arched open doorway, though which were passages and chambers lined with shelves of scrolls. He didn’t turn off the stairs though. He climbed until his legs ached and his lungs burned, and his skin was sheathed in sweat, until finally he came to the top, where a wide double door of gold. In its midst was a silver eye, encircled with a ring of faintly pulsing runes.
Vorn reached out to push on it, but the door swung inwards of its own accord. Within was Thoh’s observatory, wide and round, with glass walls and a ceiling open to the darkened sky. Overhead hung his beacon: an orb of crystal light, directing a concentrated beam of fire towards the heavens. Atop a raised dais in its centre, Thoh sat at a crescent desk of polished stone. Before him was a dodecahedron made of a material so dark it almost seemed a hole in reality itself. To either side of it sat half spheres of silver metal, on one of which Thoh was inscribing something using a stylus with a glowing tip.
“Here at last, Vorn,” he said, looking at him with his single glowing eye. He glanced up at the beacon, then returned his attention to his work.
“I’m sorry for the delay, Thoh. I came as quickly as–”
Thoh snorted, waving Vorn to silence. “Don’t apologise, Vorn. I’ve been waiting for your arrival since the moment I was condemned to this place. But how long ago was that? A minute? A day? One millennium? Ten? I couldn’t tell you, and even if I could, it wouldn’t matter. You arrived precisely at the moment you were meant to.” He put down his stylus and nodded to himself. “Yes, precisely at the right moment.”
He glanced up at the beacon again, then beckoned Vorn over to him. “I’ve been preparing for our meeting since long before your birth.”
Vorn followed his gaze. As far as he could tell, nothing was amiss. Something about Thoh seemed off though. There was a nervousness with which he kept glancing upwards.
“Preparing?” he asked, ascending the dias to stand across from him.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll see soon enough… This though,” he said, gesturing at the metal orb on the desk between them. “Is what you’ve come for. A sort of prison I’ve devised to capture and contain Tarneb’s power. I call it the Dragonstone.”
“May I?”
“Please,” Thoh nodded.
Vorn picked up one of the semispheres. Its rounded side was etched by blue tinted, spiralling geometric patterns, and in the centre of its flat side was an indent of perfect size and shape to fit the dodecahedron.
“It’s so small,” Vorn said. “How would this serve as a prison for Tarneb?”
“It is not to contain Tarneb’s physical form as the binding spells around Nira did. It will only contain his spirit and his power.”
“And it will work?”
Thoh shrugged. “As I told you before I do not know. It should be able to contain Tarneb’s spirit, unless I’m woefully off with my calculations. But wresting his spirit from his body in order to imprison it? It may not be strong enough.”
Vorn picked up the dodecahedron with his other hand. Each surface was inscribed with a white, angular glyph, so fine as to almost be invisible against the blackness.
“Its core is to be made of vantarite,” Thoh continued. “An extremely rare metal found only on the moon of Tenebris. For the shell, the kariq alloy favoured by the Dwellisian smiths will suffice.”
“Will suffice?”
“This is not a world of the physical. I cannot give you the Dragonstone itself, only the arcana that will make such a thing possible. Study the inscriptions and form well, Vorn. When you return to the World of the Living, it will fall to you to forge it.”
“How? I have no skill in spellwork or smithcraft.”
Thoh glanced up again, then leaned forward and whispered, “with luck on your return, I’ll be able to guide you more directly.”
“You’ve opened another channel through which to communicate with the living? I thought Zenops–”
“Not so loud,” Thoh said, raising his hands. He studied Vorn for a moment. “Might be that I have, but I won’t know for sure until the moment comes.”
“What moment?”
“Either way seek counsel from your father,” Thoh said, avoiding Vorn’s question.
“Miraz? But he–”
“Is blinded by pride and paralyzed with a fear of change. Yes, that is true. He’s very ordered in the working of his mind and fears what might happen if he lets go of what he sees to be true and good. Do not think too poorly of him for that.” Thoh sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Miraz and I were close before my death. I developed much of the Elder Arcana, it's true. But for me, the making of the spells was the purpose. It was he and the other Elders who figured out how to put them to use. We worked together and collaborated much. Often, as was the case with the spellwork that bound Nira and warded the Walls of Kethis, I was developing Arcana at their request. Miraz may have shut me out, but I still see into his heart enough to know he misses those days as much, or even more than I do. Take the Stone to him and he will put it to use gladly.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“As do I.”
Vorn returned his attention to the dismantled Dragonstone in his hands. “And how am I going to return to the World of the Living?”
“Yes Thoh, how is he to return?” A deep, menacing voice echoed down from above.
Thoh looked up, his single eye widening. Through the open ceiling, a stream of darkness flowed into the room, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid shape of tight sinew and polished bone.
Thoh stood and stepped around his desk. He was shaking. “Zenops,” Thoh said in a voice laced with fear. “He’s–”
“His spirit walks in my domain, Thoh,” Zenops said in a smooth, rolling baritone. “In calling him here, you gave him to me, and as is my right, I mean to keep him.”
Vorn dropped into a combat stance, axe ready. “You can try,” he growled.
Zenops burst out laughing. “You think you have any power here, son of Miraz? The delusions of the Herazor are always so amusing.”
“You’ll see what power I have,” Vorn cried, rushing forward.
“Vorn, no!” Thoh shouted.
But Vorn didn’t listen. He advanced on Zenops and swung his axe. It passed through the King of the Dead as if he was nothing but smoke. Zenops laughed again, grabbing Vorn by the throat and lifting him into the air.
All the strength melted out of Vorn, his body withered and weakened. His hair and beard turned grey and dry. His axe was so heavy. It fell from his grip to clatter on the ground.
“Leave him,” Thoh said, stepping down from his dias.
“Why?”
“Because you have no quarrel with him. I was the one who brought him here before his time and I’m the one who must pay.”
“And what more do you have to give? Maybe it’s not yet his time. But he’s here now, here because of you.” Zenops dropped Vorn.
He collapsed onto the ground, wheezing. He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled and buckled underneath him. He was so weak. Was this what it meant to age as the mortals do?
“Everything that’s left of you is already mine, Thoh,” Zenops said. “You have nothing more to give me. Him though…” A malicious, rotting grin spread across his face. “Don’t worry. You will have an eternity in which to wallow in the guilt of what you've done to him.”
Thoh stepped over to Vorn and rested a hand on his head. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Was that it? The end of Vorn’s quest and an eternity trapped in this Netherworld?
Zenops laughed.
“I’m sorry,” Thoh repeated, looking at him. “But you don’t have all that I am. Not yet at least.”
Zenops frowned at him.
Thoh reached for his eye, and rent it from his socket in a flare of searing light. The beacon overhead pulsed and rung like a bell.
“No!” Zenops cried, surging towards them in a tide of darkness.
Thoh pressed his glowing eye into Vorn’s forehead. Its burning light cascaded through him, filling him with its power. Keeping one hand pressed on Vorn’s forehead, Thoh reached the other up towards the beacon. It reached down to him with a tendril of light.
Then everything froze. Zenops’ claw hung inches from Thoh’s head.
Vorn passed through Thoh, up the tendril and into the beacon. Everything lurched into motion below him. Zenops cast down Thoh’s body, but the tendril coiled back up, pulling with it much of what had been his spirit and essence.
The beacon rippled with fire, then exploded, catapulting Vorn upwards towards the sky, faster and faster. Vorn melted away, freeing the Nith within. The stars shimmered and swirled, melting into a perfect golden flower. The Nith shot through its centre into the nothingness beyond.
All was, had always been, and always would be void.
Then Ilo, the first and the last, the one who is all, unknowable and yet already intimately known, breathed life into the Nith, and by secret ways known only to herself, sent it back.
Vorn awoke, spluttering and coughing, writhing on the deck of the Skithiar.
“Vorn!” Ariana cried, her hands still pressed against his chest.
Thalsi and Zera stood behind her, looking down at him with wide eyes. Everything was just as it had been the moment he’d ascended into the Netherworld.
“I thought we’d lost you,” Ariana said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Sorry to worry you,” he said, as his breathing slowed. “I’m fine.”
Zera smiled weakly. “Nice tattoo.”
Ariana pulled back and looked at his forehead. Her eyes widened. “What happened?” she asked.
“I entered the Underworld and met with Thoh,” Vorn answered.
“The Arcana he promised to defeat Tarneb?”
Subtle warmth prickled his forehead as the Lore of Thoh unveiled itself in his mind, and the secret of the Dragonstone’s making laid itself out before him.
“I have it,” he said.
“So we ‘ve done it? Can we go back to Herazeem?” Ariana asked.
Vorn shook his head. “No. Thoh showed me the Arcana that will allow for the creation of a weapon of sorts… the Dragonstone, Thoh called it. But he only showed it to me. Before we can go home to confront Tarneb, we’ll have to create the Dragonstone ourselves.”
Vorn stood, easily and unaided. He took a deep breath and flexed his once mangled arm.
Then Kaberim and the other Lowlander humans approached, crowding around him, murmuring, “Stormtamer,” and bowing respectfully. In the reflection on one of their polished shields, Vorn glimpsed his reflection. Etched into his forehead–more burnt in than tattooed–was the eye motif of Thoh.
If you have any feedback regarding the story, either positive or negative, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m always looking to improve.
Thank you for your time and attention, I truly do appreciate it.
That was such an original sequence of events. The third eye symbolism is awesome and the transfer of power and knowledge between Thoh and Vorn was well done. What an escape!