“The caverns open up somewhat in the upper reaches of the mountains, but presumably because of the limitations of stone remain rather cramped…”
As views of a capitol went, the Cavern of Dread, evidently shorthanded as “The Fish” for its acronym C.o.D., did not disappoint as they approached from Abyss. Unlike her first view of the necropolis, lanterns were not the only light source. The streets and many of the buildings had been painted in what she assumed was a fungus, gently glowing with a blue-green light. So it was that she could see the tiers of cavern, the tunnels under bridges between far sides of the space, hints of the architecture and the general shape of the city. In places, there were open holes in the ground, and Hexadecimal felt briefly dizzy to contemplate how deep she was and that there might be deeper yet to delve into the Orth. Looking up, glow worms were visible, so that it was almost like being above the ground on a clear night. There was even rain, evidently, to judge by the steady drip drip of ground water. Everywhere, stalagmites decorated the ground, stalactites hanging from the ceiling and hugging the walls of buildings.
She also reflected on Barbery. In its tunnels and in Mount Barber, everything was cramped, there was nothing so open and airy. Her experience of the Sevens was that each kingdom had a particular aesthetic it favored, but in her chronicling of Barbery she had not considered whether the cramped confines were an intentional aesthetic choice. Indeed, she had focused on the choice to be, as able, subterranean rather than assigning any significance to it. Now she wondered what the significance was. What was being conveyed by the cramped, claustrophobic confines of Barbery’s tunnels and caverns? Was it just the inevitable result of a surface people uneasy with the weight of stone above them?
Feeling someone brush past her, Hexadecimal realized she had stopped moving with the caravan to consider aesthetics. To be fair, a solid grasp of aesthetics was an essential element of a good chronicle. There looked to be two predominant themes, and Hexadecimal made a note to wander the city—provided it was safe—and take more detailed notes at a later point. Picking up her feet, she accompanied the caravan to an—the?—Amonite neighborhood, and pilgrim’s housing. Given that she wasn’t sure Dread existed and Herring and Lantern had insisted that if she was making the pilgrimage to the Fish, she had to attend a service at the Great Temple. Everything was Great in the capitol evidently. The best Oozekennen, the grandest Temple, the largest cavern to be found for some untold distance. Hexadecimal could almost—but only almost—forget about the stone over her head with so much open space. Now that she thought about it, the glow worms on the ceiling gave the stone a presence. There wasn’t the theoretical possibility of open space overhead, there was a definite, finite space above which lay the surface of the Orth.
Hexadecimal hoped, heh, to see Hope teaching while she was there, even if there was no hope of talking to her directly. The Temple was built with a great deal of open space, carved from the living rock. There was no clear division between indoor and outdoor, roaring fires keeping the back spaces warmer than the ambient temperature in the cavern. As she passed, she heard one of the fires sizzle from fallen water. Water overhead only added to her sense of claustrophobia, drowning being a slower death than summary crushing by tons of rock. Still, she proceeded onwards. A couple-dozen yards wouldn’t make any difference if the ceiling gave out after untold Ages.
There was a wall of glass between the foyer and the service space, an impressive working of fire and earth sorcery to Hexadecimal. There were seats, then a raised platform with an altar, and behind that a purple curtained space Hexadecimal suspected she should not go inspect. She noticed that many of the congregants were wearing head coverings, her travels giving her context that this was likely a sign of respect to the One God. Chagrined, she wished she had something suitable to wear towards that end, and felt self-conscious of her bare shoulders and back. Still, nobody was hassling her, and she assumed everyone else was intent upon their own worship.
Lantern and Herring had been cagey about what to expect, telling her only to stand when the chest containing the Scriptures was opened and during the first stretch of readings. Beyond that, they told her to do as she felt inspired. It reminded her of the freeform nature of her Charismatic church, except she had received blank stares when she mentioned the Holy Spirit, so clearly it was some other mystical force at work here. Still, it was all for the glory of the One God, and so she was content. A pilgrimage city would be used to strangers with strange ways.
Dutifully she rose as the curtain was drawn aside and a gilded chest opened, out of which were lifted scrolls of, presumably, scriptures. She was a little disappointed to see an unknown woman with a tasseled shawl carry the scroll around the altar, before unrolling it and beginning to read from it. The passages she was reading were old, and not entirely known to Hexadecimal. As a Paxite, she had learned a different set of Scriptures from those of Wholism, never been formally trained in Wholist faith, and then Charismatics focused more on a general message of Salvation through Christ Savior and experiencing the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Draconic used was similarly old, and similarly unfamiliar to Hexadecimal, and she struggled to follow. Still, she caught the word “stand” and rose when the rest of the congregation did, listening to the benedictions and mostly keeping up. Following that were readings which were still from before the time of Hexadecimal’s faith.
The service was, unfortunately for her chronicles, largely a mystery to Hexadecimal. She was certain she missed a great deal of symbolism in the fact of the archaic Draconic and her own imperfect grasp of even modern Draconic. There were people standing at intervals she didn’t understand, not all at once, and a sermon delivered in such thickly-accented Draconic that she was entirely lost.
Afterwards, in the ambiguously outdoor indoor space of the Great Temple, she looked around, a bit lost. She needed to find pilgrim’s quarters, given her limited funds, but she wasn’t sure who to ask. After wandering amongst the clumps of people discussing in more modern Draconic the service for some time, some kind soul took pity on her and asked if she needed something. She replied that she was looking for cheap quarters, as she was a pilgrim on a small budget. Asked what manner of pilgrim she was, her answer that she was exploring the seventh kingdom got her slightly huffy directions to an Oozekennen hub, along with advice to wear something more modest the next time she felt like being a tourist. Hexadecimal felt a flush creep over her face at the admonition.
Before she left, an argument broke out between a woman and a man in the courtyard. They were arguing vehemently over a piece of scripture, and the people around them were largely ignoring them. Hoping to glean more from the service, Hexadecimal edged closer to the arguing pair. They actually had small books of Scripture and were arguing over specific passages, those in archaic Draconic, but their discussion was otherwise modern. Both of them had sat toward the front of the Temple service, and both wore a hat and shawl. The point of contention seemed to be whether elemental spirits counted as spirits for purposes of the ban on spirit magic. This was of immediate interest to Hexa, as she would love to not be counted amongst the ranks of abominations, and if she could recite by rote an argument against being such… she listened eagerly. The point of contention revolved around the pronunciation of a word which meant either “medium” or “spiritualist.” A medium, specifically, was one who dealt with the spirits of the dead, while a spiritualist naturally dealt in all manner of spirits.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
They began shouting, and Hexa shivered at the animosity, while the people around them, aside from raising their voices to be heard over the din, paid them no notice. Curious, Hexa asked someone, shouldn’t somebody moderate between them? But no, evidently it was not necessary. They were both Teachers, they were not arguing about God Undivided, they were arguing for the sake of God Undivided. Hexadecimal, bemused by the distinction, kept listening until the argument wound down, and then to her astonishment the two of them grasped hands, snapped their books of Scripture shut, and walked out arm in arm. Clearly, there were dynamics of conflict which she did not truly understand here. She would have bet that they were going to come to blows, and yet they were either best friends or a couple.
Turning back to the man who had explained the nature of their disagreement, she asked another question. Why, so far as she had witnessed, were the Amonite people so prone to disagreement? He raised an eyebrow, and replied that there were two answers to that. One was that they simply weren’t. What she had witnessed was not a disagreement as the Oozekennen understood it. It was not disharmony. It was the passion of God within them, bringing them closer to Her in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, that the most Amonites might be ready to follow Him. If she witnessed the other kind of contention, an argument for the sake of argument, it was because these were stressful times. The Oozekennen claimed primacy in the caverns, especially the Fish, named for their “Great Ken” and taxed the Amonites to support their own temples and religion. There was no talking to them about it, because the majority of Oozekennen didn’t realize that the tax collectors were corrupt and taxed the Amonites more heavily. Even then, they would attribute it to error or a single instance of corruption, when it was systemic. Their Great Ken would not permit disharmony, greed, and corruption. He sighed and shrugged. “But you would side with them, being Oozekennen yourself. I don’t know why you asked, but I certainly took the bait.”
“No no no! I am not an Oozekennen! I am a Charismatic!” Hexa lost her affect in her hurry to assure the man he had not wasted his time. But she had to use the Loon word for Charismatic, and got only a confused look.
“Is this some new sect of the Oozekennen? Or has a new Teacher risen in the far reaches of the Deeps?”
Hexa did her best to explain what a Charismatic was, but there was so much to cover and her Draconic was insufficient. Ultimately, she managed to convey that it was a faith based on direct experience of the living God, a concept which seemed to baffle him as much as the Loon word on its own.
Mystified by what she had witnessed, and depressed over the limitations of her grasp of language, Hexadecimal made her way to the Oozekennen quarters that had been recommended, thinking they were a quieter people at least and that she might be more comfortable there. She would still be out of place in her leathers and open back, but at least she had not witnessed them have shouting matches. Though, she supposed, she should attend an Oozekennen service before being so certain they didn’t.
The pilgrim’s quarters were only one storey, but they were girded by thick stone columns and the entrance was an almost excessively tall open archway. The walls were painted with murals and decorated with statuary, and the cells were rich with worn but clean embroidered blankets. Hexadecimal wondered if there wasn’t some truth to the man’s explanation of uneven taxation, if even modest Oozekennen quarters boasted embroidery. Once again she was wandering aimlessly, until she found a desk towards the back with a person of indeterminate gender.
“I would like to rent a bed?”
“Certainly. Will you be paying in labor or in silver?”
The idea of paying for a room with labor was novel to Hexadecimal, so she asked more questions. Always ask more questions. “What kind of labor?”
They shrugged. “Depends on your skills. Copying tracts, embroidering, painting… if you lack any specialized skills, the floors always need scrubbing and the laundry always needs doing.”
“What tongue are the tracts in? I have a quill, even, if your paper is thick enough.”
They gave her a strange look, one eyebrow raised. “Draconic, of course. There may not be dragons left, but their language is serviceable.” Hexadecimal was reasonably certain she’d heard a reference to earth dragons, at the very least, making their way down to Amonite lands in the Deeps, but she was disinclined to argue with the authority deciding if she would get a bed. Besides, nobody believed she was from the surface, where there decidedly were many kinds of dragons.
Eager to earn her keep, Hexadecimal sat down at a table with a reference sheet and stack of parchment, and began scoring the Draconic words onto the sheets. As she did so, she made note of what she was reading, having little doubt she would eventually attend an Oozekennen service and hoping to be less lost than she had been at Temple.
“The Endless, being without end, is without a beginning. Thus it is that all things pass except that which never began at all. To begin a task is to necessarily embrace its end. To create life is to take it.”
“Never take a life, for it could be your own which would have escaped from the Cycle of Eons.”
“The Realm of Dreams is missing, but not gone. Formless, its forms last forever.”
As she wrote, Hexadecimal puzzled over the Oozekennen words. The idea of the unending as One God was not difficult for her, though she wasn’t certain of the corollaries they drew. She remembered her conversation with the old woman Smooth, in reading about the Cycle of Eons. Evidently it was not the ramblings of just one old woman but a serious matter of Oozekennen theology.
Hexadecimal sighed and adjusted her posture. It would take a lot of work to organize her chronicle coherently. She might simply give it up and write chronologically, rather than trying to assert premises and explain the radically un-Wholist theology to her Wholist patron and her readers.
“That which knows what it is to not exist has attained enlightenment and naturally will sublimate—” she had to go have that word explained, evidently it was to evaporate from a solid, or to go from mundane to divine, “—beyond this mortal coil.”
See… how would she explain that to a person grounded in a faith where what lay beyond this mortal coil was the definite reality of the Kingdom of the One God? Hexadecimal sighed and set to her task, earning her keep that she could keep exploring the strange lands of the seventh kingdom.
