Sanctuary

When Mum said she would let me see what the secret task the spell had asked her to complete, I had not expected to have to bunk my morning practice for a mountain trek at the first light of dawn. Supposedly, the mountain range was sealed off since that night, with hundreds of legionaries and sentries patrolling at all times, stopping any man foolish enough to force entry.

At least, that was what I had encountered a few days ago when I had gone to search for the Komainu.

After the night of terror, the guardian beast had run off in the middle of the storm without any word or bark. Well, he could not speak, but he had fought alongside me. I had expected at least ... a fur rub or something before he left for home or wherever he meant to go.

The legionaries had not let me venture further than the foothills where their outpost was located. We did not face the same problem with Master Gaius alongside us. He was missing his squire, which made me believe the secret task Mum was asked to complete was still under wraps.

"They had been on edge since they were deployed here," the elderly man said. "Can't blame them, guarding things that can kill them so unexpectedly."

"Well, it wasn't rare to see rifts acting unpredictably," Mum said. She was the one leading us, and probably the only one who knew the way. "Good to see them taking their job seriously.

"Curious," Sir Gaius asked, "have you gone to see what the situation is up there in the rift?"

"We have," Father answered, exchanging a look with Mum. "The first thing we did after coming to our senses."

"I feared the Daemon was here after what I was meant to protect," she said, faltering to deliberate over the direction. She chose west, towards the chasma. "Thankfully, the Daemon did not seem to have a blighted clue about it."

"Praise the lady!" The elder nodded, without a prayer.

We hurried on, obstructed by thick fog that did not let us see more than a couple of metres. At least the chilly wind was not freezing. Winter had come late this year and seemed to be lingering longer.

"So, boy," Knight Captain Gaius asked as we strode through the mountain pass, "how did you like my gift?"

"A lot," I said, having the answer on my lips. I liked the gift so much that I was thoroughly entranced by it. Not by what it could do, but by the intricacy of its craftsmanship.

Without saying anything, I brought it out from my storage. A pair of black cubes connected by only two strings of chain, small enough to be worn as a bracelet. Its metallic exterior concealed all the magical intricacies ingrained within the device, but even a brief examination let me know the craftsmanship was something we had never encountered. Even Mum said it was a trinket from a forgotten time, and its capabilities, while not completely foreign, we did not have it in pocket pieces.

The Spell's inspection said this little trinket would help me teleport across nearly a dozen miles within a few seconds.

Of course, there were several stipulations to place such a delicate and powerful enchantment within such a small trinket. For example, the fabricator was built like a charm, but not like any charm I had ever crafted or seen. Unfortunately, like many charms, it was a single-use item only.

Once it was used, the Curtailed Traveller would be gone forever.

"Master Gaius, where did you find something like this?" I could not help but ask. "Did you know the artisan who built this?"

In response, the wise man only shrugged. "It's been with me for a long time. I cannot even remember clearly how I acquired it, if I'm honest. Someone gave it to me, or I may have gotten it from some old ruins. Can't recall." He groaned exasperatedly. "This old head of mine only seems to get worse with time."

Well, you could ask the Spell for a divination to figure it out, but I did not say it aloud. The gift was already too much; asking for more handouts would make me much worse than a brat.

After a little more discussion, we quickened our pace, literally flying through the thick covers of fog and shifting mist, since on foot it would have taken all day to reach our destination. Even in flight, it took more than a couple of hours, and the sun hardly penetrated the fog cover in that time. Blighted ashes, in some corners, the fog was even thicker than most, its gloomy presence creating a murky environment akin to the shifting darkness within the blighted chasma.

"I think we've covered this area," Knight Captain Gaius said, pointing to a stunted mountain ridge.

"I've noticed," Mum said, and yet she still took the same direction. "Tell me if you have any problems."

"Where are we going?" I asked. "Is it on the other side of the chasm? It is inside it, isn't it?"

"A valiant guess," Mum smiled. "If you want to hide something from the population, you build it where nobody looks. While the chasma met the requirement, it's too blighted. Something seems to be going on there all the time. And it doesn't have the height."

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"So... we're looking for something high? Like a mountain?"

"Closer."

After a few more minutes, even I noticed that we were circling the same place. But Mum pressed us on, as though that was the right sign, as though our eyes were playing a trick on us. The murky gloom deepened as we climbed. We pressed on even when our lungs began to strangle for breath. Well, mostly mine. Not out of exhaustion, but because of the absence of air. Fabled Class had little to worry about breathable air. Yet after a while, Father seemed to face the same problem, while I almost choked. Instead of air, it felt like I was drowning in dark tar.

To my rescue, Mum's Influence surged to surround us, and finally, my lungs had some spare air to breathe in.

"A little higher from here," she said. "Hold on a bit."

We pressed on, even though it felt like the very nature was trying to strangle us to death. Then finally, through the foggy blanket, Mum struck something. It was like an invisible wall that even she failed to notice, despite her familiarity here.

"Has been a while here," she said, shrugging off the embarrassment. "Anyway, we're here."

My fractal sight awakened promptly as I gazed up at the elusive force field. With magical sight, it was easier to notice. The surprising thing was that I could not find the source of it. By all standards, a force field this powerful and hard to notice would require some grand runecrafts. And they needed to be etched close enough for it to be effective. There was nothing such in my view.

As we landed, Mum began spell-forging. Using hundreds of her essence threads, she poured energy into the barrier, shaping it to form a pair of phoenix wings. For a moment, there was no response, as the golden luminescence was swallowed into the barrier. Then the fog cleared mysteriously, and a gate opened in the barrier, revealing a fortress painted in metallic black before our view. Its sheer presence dwarfed us, mist and clouds swirling about its top.

The gap closed as we entered, whilst the gates of the fortress, if there was one, stood completely sealed. It was like thousands upon thousands of metal columns stacked together to frame the wall, too wide and too high for reasons I could not fathom.

Mum performed her magical unlocking once again, though this time she had to add a bit of her blood to carve out a formation on its metal wall. I did not know blood could be used for something like that, nor did I know the ritual she had performed, but soon my attention was drawn to the thousands of black columns. As I had imagined, they were individual pieces. Drawn by the ritual, they came to life, vibrating from where they were lodged in the ground.

It was like a great wave in the sea. Each of the columns thrummed in undulation until they shuffled and reconfigured without causing any great tremor or the veins in the ground to rupture.

It took a couple of minutes, and finally, the thousands upon thousands of colossal columns reconfigured to form a pair of open palms floating in mid-air. The alien constructs had appeared unfathomable at first, but not to this degree. Even by simply stepping closer to it, I could feel an intrinsic attraction, pulling me nearer. Perhaps the pure and concentrated ambient aether of this place.

"Welcome," Mum smiled, turning towards us, "to the sanctuary."

She gestured towards a staircase etched to the wrist like a vein, and like a vein, as we stood atop it, it lifted us off into the air automatically. I was flabbergasted not seeing any mechanisms at work. There were runes for sure, but it was the esoteric, ancient kind, etched everywhere my eyes could gaze upon on the palatial monument. None of them resonated with the function of the moving staircase, either.

As we climbed up, I noticed each of the columns was octagonal in shape, made out of some reinforced alloy. The sheer magnitude of it. If we cut a finger from the monument to make fabricators out of them, it could easily arm all the legionaries and would still have some left.

"Who even built this place?" I asked in wonder.

The construct, the collection of it at least, covered about a mile of area. Thick layers of mist surrounded it to hide it from anyone's view. To build something like this and keep it hidden for so long would require—well, I could actually fathom what it would take to create something like this, and for what purpose exactly.

"It was built by a group who called themselves the World Shapers," Mum said. "At least that's what I figured from the information etched into the walls."

"World Shapers," I repeated the term. They certainly had an alien way of perceiving the arts. "Why did they build this... uncanny apparatus?"

"To shelter us," Mum said. "And there are nine of these sanctuaries all over the world. But so far, we have only found three."

Ascending along the veins in the wrist, we finally reached the thumb, the right thumb, where I found a stone painting etched in a way akin to a fingerprint. Using the levitation boots, I flew up to get a better view.

It was a humongous visage of a dragon, engraved in white cracks in the black alloy. The deific dragon was crippled, chained and confined with a dozen humanoid figures surrounding it, feasting upon it.

From closer inspection, it was not rune carving that made the painting. It appeared to have been done by sword, as if some great swordmaster had etched a scene from religious mythology. Just by looking at it, a terrible sense of nausea gripped me. And yet I could not look away. The image depicted in the painting was likely the cause of all the misery during the segregation.

Entranced by the intricate cuts, I drew closer and tried to touch the smooth edge. My palm moved of its own accord to touch the indents. At once, a groan escaped my lips.

It was as if a thousand swords pierced my heart, offering no resistance. I fell with a stagger, my vision blackening completely, until a soft hand caught me.

"... blame me," Mum's voice reached my ears. "I should have warned you about the engravings."

I still could not see her face, though the concern in her voice was evident enough. As the blackness cleared from my vision, I found all three of them looking at me worriedly.

"How are you feeling?"

I blinked. "What happened there?"

"You know how your runic paintings draw people's minds into their illusions?" Mum said. "Something like that. Each of the paintings in the fingers here was etched by a world-renowned figure of the past. Most of them achieved even greater accomplishments in runes than even Grand Master Orin, who is the leading figure amongst us artisans in the world."

From there, I could already guess. Although it felt like an aura. Could an aura last such a long time? I turned to Father to pose the question.

Father looked at the painting, even touched it. "They clearly have achieved sword soul," Father added, turning to the Knight Captain. "Say, Master Gaius, can you achieve something like this?"

"Perhaps," the Titan Sword said and then burst into laughter, "but I'm terrible at art."

The thing to take away from his quip was that he did not say no.

"Well," he sized up Father, "you're shaping up well. Perhaps it is only your class that is stopping you from replicating something this outrageous." He gazed upon the image depicted in the painting. "To think, there were knights audacious enough to not only betray their god, but to even devour the divine vestige."

We all took a moment to peer at the scene in silence; perhaps even entranced by it. The gall of us humans.

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