12-68. Threads of Truth
Elijah refused to touch the food laid out before him.
Not because it didn’t look delicious. It certainly did, with platters of glistening meat, crisp vegetables, and doughy bread filling the long table. Neither Benedict nor Hu Shui had any issues with it, and they’d both dug in the second they’d laid eyes on it.
But Elijah knew the truth that they refused to believe. Everything was made of djinn. All the meat. All the produce. The bread. Even the lights hanging above were organic, having been grown from the natives’ flesh. That wouldn’t have been so terrible – Elijah wasn’t averse to eating sentient creatures – but the issues stemmed from the fact that everything was still alive. It could all feel. It could all think, after a fashion. It all had a soul, which was in turn connected to everything else.
Elijah had spent nearly seven hours studying the apartments they’d been given. While the others rested, he had worked tirelessly in an effort to disprove what he already knew was true. And he’d come away even more convinced than ever that their hosts were monsters of the worst sort.
They hadn’t come to that state through instinct. It wasn’t their nature. They’d chosen the path of their own accord, likely making thousands of choices over the years that sent them careening into monstrosity. And Elijah could not accept it.
The djinn were polite but evasive, redirecting any questions they were asked. Often, they simply said that everything would be revealed in the future. Elijah believed they were being fattened for sacrifice, but that made little sense. After all, that kind of thing failed to follow the pattern he’d witnessed.
Whatever the case, he was more uncomfortable now than he’d been in the vacuum, and he found himself longing for the days when a trip into a Primal Realm meant unimaginable pain and hardship, rather than the disgusting setting in which he’d been stranded.
“You do not hunger?” asked the djinn.
Elijah answered as truthfully as he dared, saying, “Not for this.”
“Our resources are limited, but our Chefs can prepare –”
“I’m good, thanks. Why are we here? What do you want from us?”
“Want?”
“Of course. Why are you keeping us here?”
“For your own safety,” the djinn answered. “The outside world is unsafe. Surely you realize this, having taken refuge in the Aureum. We have made many sacrifices to save our people. You may yet become one of us.”
Elijah would rather die, and not just because he was attached to his dragonhood, which seemed superior in every conceivable way. Instead, he rejected the very notion of becoming a djinn, largely because of what he’d seen within the Aureum. With the context of their people’s extinction, some of it made perfect sense. However, that made little difference to Elijah. The whole place was disgusting, and he’d only scratched the surface of its nature. He could scarcely imagine what horrors he might discover next.
The one thing he knew he could not dispute was that there was no chance he could ever trust the creatures. Perhaps they had good reasons for what they’d done. He could acknowledge that much. But if they could go down a path that would see them turn still-sapient creatures into building materials, then there was no limit to what they might justify.
The solution was obvious. First of all, Elijah needed to escape – preferably with his companions, who even after having everything explained to them, weren’t nearly as horrified as they should have been. They both agreed that it was unacceptable, but they were reluctant to do anything drastic.
In retrospect, their reactions made perfect sense. Hu Shui was so fascinated by the magic involved that he couldn’t bring himself to focus on anything else. And Benedict? Well, he ran a city where ritual sacrifice and cannibalism were widely accepted. Doubtless, he’d become inoculated to the natural horror that came on the heels of such practices.
The second phase was where things got tricky. While Hu Shui and Benedict both still wanted to leave – once they’d gotten all the benefits they could from the scenario – they saw no reason to destroy everything. Elijah disagreed, and fervently enough that he didn’t care if they were on board. He was going to kill every djinn in the city, destroy the Aureum, and feel satisfied on his way back to the real world.
That was inevitable, and his companions had a choice of whether they wanted to follow him, sit it out, or die trying to oppose him. There were no other options, as far as Elijah was concerned.
So, after spending an uncomfortable couple of hours enduring the feast, Elijah and his allies were shown back to their assigned quarters. To rest, their djinn guide had insisted. Elijah saw it as confinement, though he didn’t give voice to his discomfort with what amounted to imprisonment. Undoubtedly, they were already on guard due to his inability to disguise his disgust. He didn’t want to alert them further.
Once back in their quarters, Benedict and Hu Shui occupied themselves with a discussion concerning the patterns they’d beheld. Both were infatuated with arrays and ritual circles, so that wasn’t surprising. Regardless, they soon wore themselves out and retreated to the provided beds.
That left Elijah alone.
He meditated for a few hours before he felt satisfied with his solitude. Then, without further hesitation, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and embraced Guise of the Stalker. He felt camouflage envelope him like a comforting blanket, but he didn’t immediately set out.
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Instead, he waited.
Minutes passed like hours, but he still didn’t move from where he’d planted himself in the center of the room. And for good reason, considering he had no idea if he was being watched. The fact that he could use Guise of the Stalker at all was a hint that he remained unobserved, but Elijah couldn’t bring himself to underestimate the djinn. With their magical prowess, anything was possible.
So, he waited.
When roughly two hours had passed, he decided to trust the instincts telling him that no one was watching. With that surety enveloping him, he set out, reaching the balcony only a moment later. Then, he climbed onto the bannister and, using Absolute Grasp, descended vertically. As he ran along the side of the building, he was inundated by the feel of the life all around him. Every tree. Every bush. The building materials.
It was both overwhelming and disgusting in equal measure, but Elijah forced it all into separate facets so he could concentrate on the task at hand.
Soon enough, he reached the ground, which was characterized by a series of wide avenues that separated the buildings. However, on closer inspection, Elijah realized that even those had multiple levels, and the true ground was dozens of feet below his landing point.
At first, he expected a situation like the one in Seattle, where they put their undesirables underground. But he quickly discovered that that was not the case. The djinn traversing the streets below were no different than the ones above. They all seemed equal in terms of power as well, which definitely didn’t fit Elijah’s preconceived notions.
Still, he descended to the lowest level, believing that if he was going to find answers while avoiding detection, it gave him the best chance.
What was as expected was the prevalence of vegetation. The blue stems and trunks clashed mightily with the green leaves, but that was nothing compared to the dissonance Elijah felt when he remembered why the blue pieces existed. He ignored them as best he could, though with them lining the streets and clinging to the underside of the paths above, it was very difficult to pretend they didn’t exist.
Otherwise, the city seemed much like any other. People went back and forth on various tasks. Elijah wasn’t sure if they worked. In fact, they all seemed so similar to one another that he wasn’t even certain if they saw themselves as individuals. But even with that uncertainty clinging to his thoughts, he couldn’t deny that the rhythm of the city seemed distressingly normal.
Thankfully, Guise of the Stalker proved entirely worth the evolution, and he remained undetected. So long as he didn’t bump into anyone, they had no idea he was among them.
For a few hours, Elijah continued to explore, finding nothing of note. But just before he was going to turn back, he sensed something different. It only took a few moments for him to home in on the origin and follow the dissonant thread of ethera to its source. As it turned out, it led him to a narrow alley.
He crept down the passage, keenly aware of the claustrophobia building in his mind. It was barely wide enough even for the Shape of the Scourge to traverse, and it wasn’t long before his shoulders brushed against the walls. Thankfully, they were entirely inorganic – an oddity in the city that only spurred Elijah’s curiosity.
Only after a few moments did he realize what the thread of ethera represented. Instead of the pure, unattuned energy that suffused the rest of the city, it was more like what he felt on Earth. An amalgam of a number of attunements, all twisted together until they merged, becoming something wholly different.
He’d felt its like back in the chamber hosting the roiling ball of ethera and the gates to the various other realms. It had the flavor of Mortalum about it, which Elijah suspected would be important.
He followed it through the city, and as he went, the alleys grew closer and closer until he was forced to abandon Shape of the Scourge and resume his humanoid form. Even then, he had to turn sideways just to barely fit.
Still, he pushed forward, feeling the thread grow stronger with every passing foot until, at last, the alley opened into a wide plaza.
It was at least a hundred yards across and perfectly square. It also hosted an inverted pyramid, with each step descending a dozen or so feet until the next one began. On and on it went for twelve levels until it culminated in a ten-by-ten pad at the bottom. There rested a pedestal, above which was a glittering swirl of ethera.
Elijah leaped down, almost mesmerized by the display. Still, he couldn’t help but notice that the stones comprising the surface of the inverted pyramid were entirely devoid of runes. Not even the nearly microscopic ones existed. It was just inert, mundane, and inorganic stone.
That changed when he reached the pedestal.
It was nine feet tall and made of pure gold that was so densely inscribed that Elijah couldn’t even discern where one line ended and the others began. He reached out, touching it before he even realized what he was doing, and he was rewarded with a shock that sent him flying backwards until he hit the wall of the last step, and hard enough to break even his bones.
He mended them with a quick cast of Nature’s Bloom, still transfixed by the pedestal – or more accurately, the swirling cloud of ethera dancing above it.
Then, it suddenly stopped, sending out a subtle pulse of air that took his breath away. Elijah gulped as his lungs deflated, and the panic he’d felt during his first foray into the vacuum returned full force. Thankfully, it only lasted a few seconds before everything went back to normal.
But when it did, the swirl of ethera had changed, coalescing into a tiny ball the size of a marble. A second later, another layer manifested less than an inch from the first. And another after that. Over and over until it was the size of a beach ball.
And then, another pulse hit Elijah. When the resultant lack of air faded, the marble-sized orb had returned.
Elijah continued to watch it for more than hour as the cycle repeated itself. It never stopped. It didn’t hesitate. It just kept going. And in that time, he began to see it for what it was.
The first hint was the massive void between the second and third levels, but it wasn’t until he saw the corkscrew shapes dotting the entire structure that he realized precisely what he was looking at.
It was the Aureum.
Or maybe the plans they’d used to construct it. Maybe it was even a hint laid by the system itself so he could better understand what was going on.
It didn’t work.
Even as Elijah stared at it, he had no clue why it was important. However, one thing was absolutely certain. The city, which stood on the second layer, was not the core of the Aureum. There was a lower level, and when Elijah looked closer at that very first marble-sized bit of ethera, he sensed something that suggested a series of circles.
Before he could figure anything else out, an explosion erupted in the distance.
Elijah was thrown from his feet by the resultant shockwave as dust filled the air. The ethera model flickered out of being, and even as Elijah pushed himself upright, another explosion swept through the city.
Then, he sensed movement. A second later, he saw a group of automatons, each one more than fifteen feet tall and glistening with ethera, lining the top of the inverted pyramid. And this time, Elijah only had one life to deal with them.