The bird flaps its wings.
What else can I do? I'm also just a darkCrown. Damn the power, it's nothing without knowledge. And only the brightCrown has that. Merrin grits. It's not my fault.
Weakness.
It cannot be my fault.
The failures.
It must never again be my fault!
And he sees something from the bird.
The four kings of the Old epoch, known as the greatest humans ever to exist, are all indeed casters. To some liberals, this means Casters are the greatest humans. And then they argue. What nonsense—recorded from the journals of a female sun Witness
Merrin floats in the gray world, somewhat resolute, the bird rounding him. Dark clouds like vast petals about him, thunder charged—a strange itch running down the back of his spine. He tastes the ash in the hair, drinks the soot of it all. False, as mentation provided. This world, as it turns out, conforms to the El'shadie's wishes. Thus, ash and soot are born when the El'shaidie is an Ashman. What, he wonders, was this world to his predecessors?
Lightning claps in the distance, slashing current through the tumultuous world. Enjoyable, it feels. A sweet moment of peace before he returns to the real world. Though that definition was an oddity, considering the gray world was as real as reality.
He doesn't chuckle at the quip. Cold, internally, that is all he feels. A depthless strength, almost alien to him. Not that it mattered. The future awaits.
"Why couldn't I find Moeash?" He says, fiddling with a bead. Near ceaselessly, he sought the man-child, never found him. In the end, it was the other witnesses, the ones taken by Yeimen, who, for some reason, had taken the role of a priest. For these discovered ones, he showed miracles. For those ones, he allowed brief access to the gardens of the created world. One called it Paradise.
Someday, that could be a fitting name.
The bird responds, "I don't know." It spins in the air, "Maybe he's dead, or simply too distant."
Tongue clicks. "The witnesses confirmed he's with them."
"You should figure it out yourself, then." It takes away, like a flash of blackness, blurring in the distance.
What a useless thing. Merrin drifts, playing still with the cold, dark bead. A symbol. Like the dream castle, like the ring. All symbols. What uses do they have other than the assigned ones?
Then, his mind shifts to the veilCounsel. Its power and promises. That is what I need to be able to save my people. I need power—no more words. No more believe in me as you die.
Power!
Strange, he surveys the internal self. Doubt rises.
He wonders where this conviction came from. The burning desire. Always it was there. Not like this, however, this was a stronger flow. Powerful. Poised with immense conviction.
Mist flowed from the nostrils. Does it matter?
No
Power does
He recalls the brightCrowns' words—rearranging the symbols in his awareness. The first, the Twilight, the dullness.
A breath draws in, sinking into the pounding heart, pushing in with the internal reverberations. A moment, and he is pulled into a trance-like awareness. Let me do as the bird had said.
Learn in the gray world.
Of course, the needed symbols did not truly exist here, but the familiarity—the instinct of instantaneous casting could be honed. Grow it here, then in real space, the actualisation would be done in swiftness.
Using their defined forms, he marshals the gray world into obedience.
Suddenly, all things grow darker, the clouds deepening in their blackened hues, the sky, the vast greyness veiling over by an inky obsidian.
This was good.
He learns.
The El'shadie grows.
---
The world blurs before him, a swirling thread of light thinning out by the second. He rears, hands cutting through the web of radiance. That, and reality unfolds around him. A dark tunnel, vast, bigger than the other. Calmer, too, as the walls were carved with rusted metal glyphs. Images. He recognised one.
A woman, fissured pale skin, draped in an odd red dress. Behind her stands another familiarity. A giant stone beast, winged. It's skin, a cracked pattern. Three-eyed.
That's the stone titan Auwale, killed. He considers. Does that mean it has been here for more than 100 years, or whatever long this place has existed?
Something of curiosity burned within.
He looks away, considering the scattered witnesses. Men, women, slumped over the dark walls, asleep. The rest, as it appeared, smudged by soot, proved too weak to praise their god, as they often did.
A good thing in a way.
He smiled to those who would see it, moved past them, drawing closer to the silent Ron. The giant sat cross-legged, cradling the dozing Catelyn. Like father and daughter. They both shared the silent sleep. All did. For the first time, perhaps, Merrin observed the hall….There was a totality of silence in it.
They slept.
They deserved it.
Then, his thoughts shifted to the low pain through his physicality. Dull, weaker than the roaring agony it once was. An acceptable stark contrast.
Was this what Auwale did? That cocoon of light, it healed me? Eyes move to the distant edge of the tunnel. At the bed of his rise. Nothing. No light. No remnant.
Could I have studied the symbol? Merrin clicks his tongue. Next time. Perhaps I would meet him again. He takes a moment to study the self-state. Scarred like before. Turns out, outside the quelled pain, the injuries remained as they were before. Charred flesh. Rather odd for the supposed mighty shaedoran.
He trails to a younger witness, shirtless, froststone glowing blue on his trousers. He sleeps alone, often wincing as his back touches the heated walls.
Unlike the rest, he was yet to adapt to the pain and heat. Likely was a new slave to the mines. Merrin surges, and the world turns grey. Symbols fade into the ocular world: shapes, whispers, lights, all booming in the collective everything.
His eyes drift down towards the stone fitted on the boy's trousers. Outside the usual fumes of transparent light, the froststone had symbols hovering about it.
The chilling symbols. Blueish angled, multi-pointed circles. Swaying about it, as though struck in some odd miniature orbit. Force ripples out from him, a tide of translucent energy, swirling around the pointed loops. Like a swarming wave, the power battered against the symbol, as water clashing over the shores of stone.
Quaking, the symbols trembled in resistance to the force. This filled his mind with countless thoughts, worthless notions imprinting hard into his inner awareness. He grits, pressing on, the force growing into a wall of awesome power. It crashes into the shape, drowning out the rebellious symbols.
He feels the new control swell within him.
A thought and a tunnel within the tumultuous shapes, dragging the cold symbol within it, through the greying world of constructs and concepts. It smashes into another. A dark oily wall, rippling, not eltium, but a symbol of similar states. Sinking in, the oily wall quivers, turning a pale blue hue, pointed shapes rounding in and out of the wall.
It is done.
He breathes, slowly pushing the boy against the wall, allowing the needed rest. It works, the boy escaping a soft sigh, sound asleep. Good. They deserved a night of non-fire. He smiles, stands, sauntering further into the hallway, stone crunching beneath his heels.
What a loud sound! He fears it will awaken his people. An unwanted desire, so steps switch to the slow padding of Ashmen motions. Swift, calm, and deliberate, he moved gracefully across the rocky earth, soundless. It is muscle memory to move as this. Days trained in the stormy peaks, days, starved, pinned against mountain sides. One learnt to move before the mind.
Strange, given now it was the other. The mind must ponder, consider before the allowed motions. Not the instant movements. He exhales white, lungs dryer than remembered. Who knows how it was for the others?
They need to escape this place.
Luckily…Merrin stared at the round metal door before him. Hardened metal rimmed by the solid walls. Once sleek, now rusted with scars marring the surface. It is old. Impossibly old and damaged, yet how beautifully relevant it seemed to him.
He says, "I thought I was soft moving."
A man steps beside him, tall, imposing, shirtless—eyes a soft gazed thing, black hair, bearded with strands of silver-white. Arms folded, he smiled. "Ground…wall got cold."
"I thought you people deserved a cool sleep."
"You, too, deserve." Ron smiles, warmth in his tone. "We found them." He points to the wall. That oval, dark, brittle gate. Much of this place happened in circles.
"I know." Merrin listened, the whispers sneaking out from the invisible cracks of the walls. Within, they prayed, chanted self-created mantras in his name. Bizarre what delusions humans would create in pain, fear, and death.
And I allow it for them…He thinks. It keeps them safe and sane. Soon, they would forget it. Once they escape this place, the mines. Once they have tasted freedom, they would do what all devoted do when at peace: God becomes irrelevant.
"What you do now?" Ron's breath is hoarse. "They soon awake, and we cross."