Walking down the dead, quiet streets is eerily reminiscent of Emrox. At the thought, my mind returns to Ink. Visiting Emrox had knocked some of its ancient memories loose, and while I was fused with it during the griffin fight, I experienced something like that again.
I catch up with Zyneth, who’s consulting his navigation spell. He glances up when I fall into step at his side. “Something the matter?”
“Maybe,” I say. “I fell into another one of Ink’s memories. It’s been here before, I think.”
Zyneth frowns. “In what capacity?”
“I’m not sure.” I try to think back on the snippet of memory I’d seen. I mentally nudge Ink, asking to see it again, but it isn’t sure what I’m talking about. Some of its memories are too old—too faded or fractured—for it to find easily. And there’s so many blank spots. It finds it hard to remember what memories it does or doesn’t have when it’s not in the middle of recalling them.
What do you mean you don’t remember your own memories? I ask.
Ink bristles with offense. It points out that I don’t know all of my own memories, either.
That’s because some of them got stuck in you, I say, now a little defensive myself. That wasn’t my fault.
It shrugs. Then some of its memories must have gotten stuck with someone else, too.
I tip my head, considering that. A big portion of the predator had been torn away back in Emrox. It would make sense that some of its own memories were taken with it. Could some of its memories even be stuck in my mind, like how some of mine are stuck in its? I try to recall anything related to the Ruins. That glimpse I’d caught for only a fraction of a second, like I was looking down on the Drifting Isles from above—
The memory snaps back into clarity. It really is only a fragment of a memory. A snapshot only a couple seconds long at most. But in that brief glimpse, I catch details I hadn’t the first time: buildings, whole and pristine. People in the streets—and in the air. I’d mistaken them for birds, before.
And there’s something else. A sense of something impending. An… eagerness? It’s coming from me, I realize. Or rather, Ink—or the predator—or whatever creature made this memory in the first place.
And then, it’s over, like a piece of film cut mid-reel.
Through me, Ink also experiences the memory. It thinks it feels familiar. But it is just as perplexed about the fragment as I am.
“Kanin?” Zyneth asks. “You’ve gone quiet again.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I found the memory. It was from when the Drifting Isles wasn’t a Ruin.”
Zyneth looks troubled. “Like with Emrox.”
“Yes.”
Zyneth sighs through his nose and turns back to his navigation spell. “This is troubling.”
“No shit,” I say. “It has to be related to the Ruins, doesn’t it? As far as I can tell, Ink doesn’t have any memories from before the time it got stuck in the Between—aside from these moments at Emrox and the Drifting Isles. And the way it feels in those memories… well, it didn’t have good intentions.”
“It had to have been involved in some way,” Zyneth agrees with a grimace. “I am having second thoughts about you attending a God’s Tournament. If this entity truly is related to the downfall of ancient civilizations… I am starting to suspect why Yedzaquib made the comment he did about the gods.”
I don’t want to admit it, but he might be right. When we get back from this trip, I’ll have to weigh my options. Are there better ways to search for the lost souls? Where can I start, while also avoiding drawing any unwanted attention?
Ink doesn’t understand what I’m worried about. It’s only memories. Maybe it will remember more, maybe it won’t. If it can’t remember something, it must not be very important.
I’m not sure everyone else is going to see it that way, I think.
Soon after that we pass by a great, circular plaza. The area is depressed in the shape of a basin, with the obvious signs of spell circles and runes carved in the stone. Attiru is fascinated and attempts to sketch what they can in their notes as we pass. It reminds me of the giant spell circle in Emrox. The one that was designed to access The Between. Great cracks have spiderwebbed their way through this one, and entire chunks are missing. This spell circle won’t be able to be reactivated anytime soon.
On the other side of the plaza, Zyneth stops outside a nondescript building. There are no doors, so we can see right through to the back of the structure. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing special about it. Just another crumbling building among hundreds. But according to him, this is it.
“Ready?” he turns to look back at all of us.
“I’m not sure what we should be ready for,” Attiru admits.
Zyneth grimaces sympathetically. “I wish I could say.”
Out of arrows, Noli is holding her hunting knife. Zyneth gives one of his to Attiru as well. Then he turns back to the door and steps inside.
His spell takes us to the center of the room, where an unassuming pile of rubble has collected on the floor. After walking around it a few times, Zyneth gestures for help moving the stones aside. Rezira grabs the largest chunk, and I tug at some of the stones as well. They’re actually far lighter than they look, and Rezira nearly throws one of the boulders into the wall behind her as she yanks with all her strength and the rock easily comes away. Once it’s apparent that the magic-infused granite is lighter than wood, Noli and Attiru begin to clear stones away as well.
I reach for another rock, and my hand brushes against something beneath.
DANGER.
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Ink jerks us away as alarm spikes through us, and we fall back, scrambling to get away. Dread fills us up and overflows, drowning out rational though as we press ourself to the opposite wall.
People are yelling.
Rezira has grabbed Noli and pulled her away. Attiru also scrambled back. Zyneth is looking wildly between the stones and us—me.
“Kanin! What is it? What’s going on?”
I try to force the overwhelming wave of alarm away and calm Ink down. In my mind, its hackles are raised, teeth bared, tail lashing with fear and agitation, and in reality it formed claws of void over my hands, which are stabbing into the stone beneath us. It’s okay, I try to tell it. We’re not under attack.
But something in the middle of the room is exuding a sense of wrongness. It’s almost a tangible force. We hadn’t felt anything before, but once we touched it, for the briefest moment, it was like we could sense invisible hands reaching for us, and we knew that if they latched on, they’d never let go.
“I’m okay,” I tell Zyneth, still warily eyeing the stone. “But whatever’s under there is dangerous. It’s… I don’t know what it is. But it feels unnatural. Bad. It scared Ink.”
That’s a sobering thought. I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed it frightened of anything before. I carefully pick myself up, but remain against the wall, unwilling to get closer to that sense of danger that’s still emanating from whatever’s beneath the rubble.
“You’re not hurt?” Zyneth confirms.
I shake my head. “We only barely touched it. Just, be careful. I don’t know what this feeling means, but it can’t be anything good.”
Zyneth frowns, cautiously approaching the rubble. “You can feel it?”
“You can’t?” It’s like a miasma has filled the room. I carefully take a step forward, and the mental warnings of “threat” increase. I shy back once more.
“Maybe it’s because you touched it,” Zyneth speculates. He wraps a hand in the edge of his cloak, slowly crouching by the pile of rocks.
“Are you sure you should do that?” Attiru asks, nervous.
“Well, we’re already here.” Zyneth uses the edge of his cloak to carefully brush the dust and pebbles aside. “And I still have a job to complete. Might as well see what we’re dealing with.”
I stand there, tense, torn between wanting to pull Zyneth away and wanting to retreat from the room. Ink is still very bothered. It wants to take control and get us away, but I hold it back. Just because something is giving off a sense of danger doesn’t mean we’re actually in any imminent danger. It could be a defense mechanism, I point out, reminding it of some of the poisonous and spiky fish we’d encountered in the ocean that ended up posing no threat to us.
But Ink disagrees. This is different. This thing’s wrongness screams at it. It hasn’t felt anything like this before, except for… It hesitates. There was a brief moment when it thought it recognized something, but the feeling fades.
Carefully, still using his cloak, Zyneth lifts something from the rubble.
It looks like a black marble. Strangely mundane. But Ink is convinced that is the source of the danger. Uneasy, I Check it.
There’s an unnaturally long pause before Echo responds.
[Check:
“What?!” I cry.
Zyneth jumps. “What is it?”
“Sorry—it’s not the relic,” I say, realizing I’ve probably nearly given him a heart attack several times in the last few minutes. “It’s Echo. She won’t say what that thing is. She says I don’t have the right ‘permissions.’ This has never happened before.”
Zyneth frowns at the marble. “She knows, but won’t tell you?”
“Right.” I try an Inspect instead. Weirdly, this does get me some information.
[Object is infused with null arcanum.]
Not much information, granted, but more than a Check is telling me. Why is that? Is it because a Check is just one of Echo’s default functions, while Inspect is a spell I learned on my own? That still doesn’t explain why my Check was ‘denied.’
Denied by who? I ask Echo. Who is denying access?
[
Great. Are there users with more permissions than me?
[Affirmative.]
Well that’s something. But it’s creeping me out. There are other people on this planet who have Echos and access to this magic System. But why haven’t I met any? Why does it seem like no one else knows it even exists?
And what does all that have to do with this strange null-arcanum marble, if anything?
“I can still use my Inspect spell on it,” I tell Zyneth. “You’ve got a spell like that too, right?”
“Yes,” he says, still turning the marble over in his covered hand. “It’s an arcana identification spell I typically use with artificing. I’ve already used it, actually. Some sort of null-arcanum relic. Possibly a spatial attribute. It’s old, but exceptionally mana-dense.”
“And by that, you mean powerful,” Attiru says.
Zyneth nods, withdrawing a cloth from his bag with his free hand to wrap around the orb. “It’s not rare to find powerful artifacts in the Ruins. It is rare for them to be this powerful. Over the years, most objects begin to leak their potency. If this object was powered by some form of Storm arcana, I could understand—it might be passively absorbing magic from the Ruins itself. But this is null arcanum. I’d expect to find something like this in Emrox. For it to still be this powerful, it either was significantly more powerful in the past, or it was designed with such incredible craftsmanship that it’s lost little to none of its strength over the years.”
“Gods above,” Attiru murmurs. “I’m not sure which is more frightening.”
Zyneth folds the cloth around the marble and places it in a pocket of his bag. “The really peculiar part is that its power is entirely undetectable unless you are directly examining it. Which explains how it was able to remain here without any other explorers happening upon it before now.”
“But your employer knew it was here,” Rezira points out. “They even had that focus that would take you right to it. Why didn’t they pick it up before now?”
Zyneth presses his mouth into a displeased line. “An excellent question.”
I shake my head. “You guys really can’t feel that?” Even with it wrapped in a few layers of cloth and tucked away, the aura of danger it’s exuding is just as potent as ever.
Everyone exchanges looks with one another, then return my question with a shake of their head.
“Sorry, Kanin,” Zyneth says. “Whatever you’re describing, it seems it’s only affecting you.” He stands, stepping back from the pile of rubble in my direction. The feeling of “danger” swells even with that small increase in proximity, and I tense up, fighting the urge to bolt away.
“Well,” Zyneth says. “I guess that’s it. We got what we came for.”
“A little anticlimactic, isn’t it?” Noli signs, smiling weakly. If it was an attempt to lighten the mood, it doesn’t succeed.
“Then it’s time to head back down?” Attiru wonders.
“It’s only an hour or two before dark,” Zyneth says. “We might as well camp here for the night. We could all use the break, I’m sure.” His gaze returns to me, eyes creasing in concern.
“Sounds great,” Rezira says, cutting through the tension. “I’ll go gather some fuel for the fire.”
Noli and Attiru start busying themselves as well, setting up camp and unpacking supplies for an early dinner. Zyneth shrugs his bag off and leaves it with the other supplies before approaching me. I haven’t moved from where I’d initially pressed myself back against the wall.
“Are you going to be alright?” he asks me.
“I think so.” Ink is still anxiously pacing my mind, not taking its attention off the bag that contains the null marble. Not that we could lose track of it if we tried. It’s such a concentrated instinct of danger. I’m not sure if it's the marble making me more uneasy, or the amount of disquiet that’s spilling over into me from Ink.
“I’ll just need to keep my distance, I think,” I tell Zyneth. “If I get too close, I might not be able to stop myself from grabbing that pack and hurling it out into the sky.”
Zyneth chuckles. “I’d much prefer if you didn’t do that, especially considering it contains our tickets to get down from this Ruin.” He leans against the wall next to me, tipping to the side so his shoulder rests against mine. “We won’t have the relic for long. Once we’re out of the Isles, I can turn it over to the client, and you’ll never have to think about it again.”
I hope he’s right.
But deep down, I don’t think he is.
This relic bothers Ink on such a fundamental level, they must be connected somehow. And given Echo’s comments about permissions and withheld information…
Honestly, I have no idea what to think. Echo, Ink, the Ruins, this relic. They all seem like such completely different things that I can’t even begin to make sense of how they all might be connected.
Zyneth holds out his hand, and I take it, lacing our fingers together.
I try to focus on his grip instead of the unease that’s steadily rising within me. I wish I could attribute the feeling to the null marble. But something tells me this relic is only the shadow of an approaching storm.
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