Then, he spotted the excubitors. Around the building. Their numbers as such he could barely count them, but a potential guess brought a total of 9. Nine excubitors guarded one man? It seemed a wasteful joke. What terror existed in this place that a man needed nine—and a caster even more?
Merrin ruminated and sensed a troubling peril to needed success. How was he now to get there? There were casted means, but doubts on how well he could handle nine excubitors echoed through. No chance for victory on that path existed. Death was the outcome if he went against them.
A different method…Merrin looked down at the wide chasm. A spread of dark sea, unknowable. Even with his eyes, the pitch blackness within halted any attempts at sight. He could see nothing. Hear nothing.
I need to cross this, don't I? He sighed.
After a collection of impressions and ponderings, a sole method for undetected passage existed. He had to cross the chasm. Likely not was the chance that excubitors monitored the darkness by their sides. And if they did, certain advantages existed as an Ashman.
Being one with the dark and shadow was easier than most.
He leaned, picking up a stray chain and axe. Old, rusted, and worn, but it had to serve. Merrin, of course, attempted a logical course of impromptu casting. It didn't work. The world did turn grey, and the familiar whispers of symbolic knowledge assaulted his mind, but that was the extent of it.
As he stared at the chain and the symbols it encompassed, he then knew the lack of general knowledge on how these things functioned. If he wasn't familiar with or in sight of a symbol, casting it was impossible.
It wasn't like he could create symbols.
Merrin heaved a breath and tied the chains around his waist. Not too tight, as he hoped for a chance for freedom in case he met the gaze of an Excubitor. Faint heat still warmed them, and he found the heat gave him clearness of mind.
Standing at the lip of the chasm, staring into unknown darkness, he had to jump. His heart thumped, and he heard the sound like a nearby drum echoing danger. It begged him to stop, bringing mental solidness to his feet.
The witnesses need me…Merrin recited like an Elvinar (Mantra), and in the next moment, before apprehension could take him, he leaped into the chasm. The wind whistled, and the chains rattled, but this was quickly drowned by the distant bangs of iron against stone, stone against stone, men against men.
His form slapped at the wall of the chasm, dust, dirt, and heat rushing into his embrace. He felt this, but silenced the execution of retaliatory actions. Now, he needed the silence, the invisible calm that would veil him against the excubitor.
All this he needed. Merrin heaved a breath; by the sense of his awareness, he felt the darkness swallow him.
Why is that fool jumping into a chasm?—Words of a slave, unaware of preservation as he jumped into the mines.
Silence. Merrin stayed in the quiet—not of external means, of course, but of internality. He was of silent mind, hand stretched up, gripping tight at the rusted chains. He was a singular rope in the darkness, a slender figure pinned against the scorching wall of the pit.
Merrin knew pain then. He thought a familiarity had already formed between him and the pale ache. A wrongness. This was greater. His chest, cheek, legs—all parts stuck to the wall. He felt the great heat of his body, the itching of his flesh as the torridity ended them.
Worse, he battled within. Every part of himself sought a defiance to the brutal state, but not yet, he had to remain; the pain was great, but the witnesses. Those ones without anything awaited him. He had to endure.
Then, he heard it. The gentle taps of Excubitor boots shuffling away from the chasm's lip. Not long after, he had arrived here, using the axe as a climbing tool and the chains as a safety one. He moved with the steel, and in the eventuality he fell, the chains served the function of a mother's arm.
He tightened the grip, strained his flesh against the chains, then climbed. He scaled them like some animal, and though he was now away from the pit walls, the burning pain remained. Present. An addition to the scars ruling his person.
That didn't matter, though, as his hands reached over the chasm, grasping at the headland. He rolled over, quickly undoing the chains rounding his waist. There was quickness to be achieved if he wanted a safe heist. Slowness risked discovery, and that meant death.
Merrin harbored little illusions that caster status would deter him from a blade to the throat. Hence, speed was a need. He loosed the chains, carefully settling them down. Noiseless. Then, in that moment of pure thought, he gathered blocks of stone, designing a makeshift high stone. One, a collection of rocks upon rocks. This served the function of a cover for the tools within them.
Accomplished, he turned his eyes to the building a few steps away. A square structure of obsidian shade, froststone dotted along the edges of the frame. This gave the dark house a dreamy allure, like a sword whose sharp part gleamed with a blue intensity. Merrin marveled for but a moment, then began searching for means of infiltration.
He touched the walls, felt their tremendous coldness, and cringed at it. Such Coldness was strange, a bizarreness that battled against his cognitive normalcy. He knew the heat and perhaps the milder colds, but not this. This chill brought pain to the touch.
What kind of cold gave pain? Merrin thought, pulling his hands away. Lowlander things. He could only conclude. With this, he lowered his form and began circling the building. Surely, somewhere was a point, a path through which he would gain entry into the house.
At least an undiscoverable entry.
Time ran fast like the wind, and dread grew in his heart. Now, Merrin touched the walls in a frantic race, hands bobbing over the cold surface. He cared little for that now and only sole focused on the means to enter.
There was none. All except the low door in front of the house, there was no entry he could find. The problem with that stemmed from the entourage of Excubitors stationed before it.
How could he get in? How could he deceive the eyes of the mirror men? Merrin, for a moment, entertained the idea of seeking strength in the grayish trance. The point when the world—the symbols, spoke to him.
They carried knowledge, certain truths…Was there some truth to how to sneak into a house? Merrin frowned, the realization of deeper knowledge arresting him. In that moment of deliberation, he came to know something of importance about the symbols.
What if the truth they said was related to themselves? Like a door talking about how doors were made?
He sealed the musings and peeked through a corner of the wall. Outside the rocky floors of dark brown and red, there was nothing. He trudged on, nimble moving, hand feeling for a passage.
A Bump.
Merrin stopped. He had felt something—his fingers had registered an anomaly different from the normal. An oddness different from the familiar smooth form. There was something.
He turned, pressing his face to the wall. Cold. Then, opening his arms to an action of embrace, he pinned to it. Now, he sought. With all his body, he searched for the aberration his fingers had once noticed.
A great deal of false comfortability assaulted him in this state. The cold seemed an infection of the mind—his thoughts, a mover of measured speed. An effect, he realized, an effect brought by casting.
He could dedicate a moment to learning and prying to the symbol, but time, the now precious resource, was something he lacked. Six days to save the witnesses, mere minutes to rob a caster. Time…time.
However, he stopped, realizing the familiar bump. This is it, he freed from the wall, using hands to inspect the strange thing. What weirdness it was to him to feel the bump, a lump of sensations, yet see nothing but a flat black wall. Casting brought instability to the mind, he thought, and pressed in this block.
Sound like soft whistling blew, fortunately mild as a thin line squared into the wall. This line pressed in, then broke into a pile of shattered soot. Startling. Still, there was little time for rumination. Such, without hesitancy, he rolled into the wall, vanishing into that darkness. And….
An Unnerving vastness overtook him. And how large was what he saw that the roof, if there was one, blurred into unknowable heights. The expanse was maddening as it made him small—insignificant. Tiny. Here, he was like an ant thrown into a city, too big to acknowledge the placement in which it found itself.
There was darkness, too. Dreamy darkness lit only by froststones lining many paths on the floor. Queer, black like reflective obsidian. Merrin then realized the scattered stands placed throughout the enormity.
Square glass boxes, blue light shining from within. These things were placed atop small pillars of stone, spreading numberless through the dark hall. Unknowable. Merrin was just there, staring at these things, feeling the ever-cold battling against his cognitive pacing.