Eldritch Guidance

There was a feeling of cold water dripping onto Scarlett's face, rousing her from her slumber.

She felt awful. Her body felt heavy and her joints ached. There was a desire to return to her slumber, but more water continued to drip onto her face, making it impossible for her to go back to sleep. Opening her eyes she looked up to see where the water was coming from, but only saw darkness.

Scarlett slowly picked herself up. Upon doing so, she felt the cold stone floor beneath her and she finally realized that she was not in her bed. She was in a dark chamber with stone rubble all around her. The only light in this chamber was the small amount that came from a single hole above her.

While trying to sit up, she felt restraints pull against her wrist and ankles. It was then that she remembered what had happened.

She wanted it to be one of the many nightmares she had while sleeping in the Wildlands, but between awakening in an unfamiliar environment and the feeling of rope around her limbs, she knew it was not that. It was a memory, a memory of her disciples trying to sacrifice her.

The pain from that betrayal made her tear up a little, but she managed to swallow it back. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she then focused on her restraints.

She worked on them for a few minutes and was able to slip one of her hands out of the bindings. From there, it was easy to untie her other hand and ankles. She then lastly untied the collar around her neck.

Once it was off, she got a better look at the collar that was sealing her magic. From the little light that was in this chamber, she could tell that the Jinsil that was wrapped around her neck were pieces of equipment made of Jinsil that they had brought on the expedition. It was tied together to make a makeshift collar.

She threw the collar on the ground and tried to create a flame in her hand. It was still quite dark in the chamber, and she was trying to make a light source to get a better view of where she was. Scarlet concentrated, but the aether wouldn't flow into her hand like it normally did. Something was wrong. She was struggling to focus even the smallest amount of aether to produce any fire.

“When that ritual pulled out my aether, it must have damaged my aether veins.” Scarlett thought to herself.

Aether veins were special pathways in people that aether flowed through. It was what allowed one to gather and focus aether for spellcasting. If someone pushed or drew too much aether too quickly, it could damage them. Scarlett recalled the ritual forcefully drawing out her aether, and assumed that it must have damaged her aether veins in doing so.

It would take her months and some expensive drugs, but she knew she could recover from this. However, she needed to get back to civilization first for that to be a possibility.

She concentrated intensely for a minute. It took a great amount of effort, but she managed to gather enough aether to create the tiniest flame on the tip of one of her fingers. The flame was no bigger or brighter than a pocket lighter, but even this small light was hard for her to maintain. Beads of sweat were forming on Scarlett's brow from the effort she was exerting to keep the little flame alight.

Knowing that she couldn't maintain the flame for very long, she did a quick look at her surroundings. The light had not revealed much she did not already know, except for the collapsed stone walls all around her. She was trapped. Entombed by her disciples somewhere. This was all she could make out before her flame started to fade.

The flame Scarlett had made flickered then extinguished itself. She was left back in near complete darkness, except for the tiny amount of light that shined through that small hole.

The hole was at the top of a nearby pile of stone bricks from a collapsed wall. It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone to climb and reach the hole. Scarlett was unsure if she would be able to widen the hole enough for her to crawl through, but she had no other clear options so she started climbing.

Slowly, she made her way up the stone pile. Halfway through, she put weight on her right foot and it dislodged one of the stone bricks she was pushing against. It caused her to slip and slide downward. She barely managed to catch herself. Unfazed by her fall, she corrected her footing and continued her climb. As she got closer to the ceiling, she could hear the sound of rain.

“Rain? So that's where the water that dripped on me came from. It must be seeping through the ceiling. That’s good. It means the ceiling must be shallow where they buried me, this will make it easier for me to dig myself out.” Scarlett thought to herself.

Scarlett eventually got to the top of the pile of stones. She then stuck her face into the four inch hole in the ceiling. She was trying to see the area outside where she was buried, but the hole was facing upwards and only showed her gray skies.

There were a bunch of bricks and random stone pieces lodged against each other around the hole. One by one, Scarlett would slowly and carefully pull and dislodge the stone. She was trying to widen the hole without causing the ceiling to collapse on her.

By the sixth stone she removed, it caused a chain reaction of stones to fall out of place. Parts of the ceiling collapsed and crumbled into more stone bricks. One of the bricks above Scarlett dislodge and fell onto her back near her right shoulder. She yelled out in pain and lost her grip in her right hand. Scarlett slid downwards again, but this time she swung to the left side and was desperately clinging onto one of the protruding bricks with a single hand.

The sudden shift in her position saved her, as more of the ceiling collapsed and tumbled down towards where Scarlett was previously holding onto. Little by little, the ceiling around the hole fell to pieces and rolled down the stone pile towards the floor of the chamber. Dust was stirred up in the chamber from the commotion, choking and blinding Scarlett. It took another few seconds before the stone stopped falling.

Scarlett coughed to clear her throat from all the dust she breathed in. She then rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her clothing, trying to get the dust out of them and clear her vision. Once she could see again, she looked around to assess the damage.

The room was now much brighter. The hole above had been widened to five feet (1.5 meters) in diameter, allowing more light into the chamber.

Looking down, the chamber was covered in more debris. It was already a mess when Scarlett woke up, but now it was even worse. While looking downward, Scarlett noticed something she had failed to see when she woke up. There were symbols on the ground. She had felt like she had seen them before. She scanned the floor with her eyes and was met with the markings of a familiar arcane circle.

It then dawned on her that this wasn't just any abandoned tomb she was in, it was a chamber at the top of the ziggurat. The place her traitorous disciples tried to sacrifice her.

“That’s impossible. The structure should be indestructible, yet it’s now in such disrepair.” She thought to herself.

Every stone of the ziggurat had a very powerful enchantment on it. It was the same enchantment that was holding it together and making it impossible to damage or modify. Days prior, Scarlett with all her magic and knowledge couldn’t even move a single brick from the structure to analyze, now they were practically falling on her.

Things weren’t making sense to her, but she knew dangling from the wall while staring at the ground wouldn’t give her answers. So, she shifted and swung her body back onto the stone pile and resumed climbing.

It was much harder this time to scale the stone. Her right shoulder was badly bruised from the rock that had fallen on her. Every time she tried to pull her weight up with her right arm, there was a sharp pain that shot through her shoulder and right side of her back. Through the pain, she eventually made it to the top and carefully pushed her body through the widened hole.

She climbed out of the hole and was met with gray overcast and a light drizzle of rain. It was relieving to be out of that dark chamber, despite the dreary weather. From where she stood she looked around and her face turned pale with shock.

“How is this possible…”

There was no doubt about it. She was at the very top of the ziggurat, but it was in ruins. The once pristine building was no more. Large chunks of the structure had collapsed in on itself, revealing chambers that Scarlett previously didn’t know about. Some of the various support pillars she could see were still standing, but looked like they were about to crumble under the weight above them.

Scarlett was now getting a sense of how precarious her situation was. Even from where she was standing, it didn’t feel stable or safe. The whole structure could collapse any minute. She was extremely lucky that it didn’t collapse on her while she was unconscious.

Unable to rely on her magic to get her out of this situation, she ever so carefully and quietly climbed down the ziggurat. Afraid that any noise she made would cause the building around her to collapse.

There was an intensity in her movements and actions, they were deliberate and accurate. She knew that one wrong step risked her being buried alive. Even with her caution, she accidentally dislodged a piece of the stonework and it fell to a lower level. When it happened she held her breath, scared that the ziggurat would fall apart and collapse around her. Luckily, nothing happened.

Eventually, she safely made it to the bottom at the base of the structure. She had never felt so happy for her feet to be on solid ground. She breathed deeply with a sigh of relief as the rain gently fell upon her.

As she stood there in the rain recovering from her ordeal, something caught the corner of her eye. She saw an old crone in a nearby puddle. Scarlett thought she was seeing things again. She felt that this place had been playing tricks on her mind ever since she came here. Carefully, she approached the puddle and leaned in to get a better look.

In the puddle was an old crone with white hair and a wrinkled and weathered complexion. The woman was staring back at Scarlett with curiosity.

Scarlett: “What in the world…” She said as she unconsciously reached her hand out towards the puddle.

As she did this, the crone matched her movements. When that happened, she shifted her focus to her own hand. Both the crone's hand in the puddle and her own looked the exact same, weathered and wrinkly. Scarlett immediately reached up and touched her own face, the skin felt loose and wrinkly. The wizened crone she saw in the puddle was not a delusion or trick, just a simple reflection. She had failed to notice the change in her appearance till this moment. Scarlett somehow now appeared much older.

Scarlett was only 46 years old, but now she looked well over 90. Her once vibrant red hair was now gray and ragged, her face sallow and weathered.

It felt more than just a simple change in her appearance. She had somehow been aged, years of her life gone. The severity of what happened to her was tenfold from what she thought it was.

Scarlett, in her years of study, had never heard of magic that could age someone. Such magics that could do so were entering the realm of gods. This was something that humans shouldn’t be able to do. To be able to manipulate someone's age was impossible, it invalidated fundamental laws of magic and the world. Yet, that ritual Rana performed may have done just that.

“Could the ancient civilization have discovered a way to manipulate their own age?” She thought to herself as she shook in distress.

Scarlett doubted that Rana herself had discovered a way of manipulating a person's age. It was more likely that her former disciple had discovered some secret to the ziggurat before her. The magic ancient civilizations used was not well documented, so she thought that maybe it was lost magic.

Regardless of how Rana did this, Scarlett was demoralized.

She just sat there, looking at her reflection. As she did so, the sound of stone crumbling and shifting could be heard from some distance away. Another chunk of the Ziggurat had collapsed somewhere, but she didn't care.

Scarlett had a clear path of action to take before this, but now she was at a loss.

There would be no known treatment for what was done to her. If it was the ziggurat that was responsible for aging her, it would also be the ziggurat that could reverse it. However, it wouldn't be long before the ziggurat was gone and replaced with just a pile of benign stones. She doubted that the structure still had any power left to reverse this curse now. Any way for her to come back from this was currently crumbling right before her.

She continued to sit there for what felt like an eternity to her. Eventually she would pick herself up. In a daze, she made her way towards the area where the camps were set up. On the surface she seemed composed, but she was anything but that. She felt like a machine just going through the motions. She didn't know what she should be doing, so she continued with her original plan of getting back to civilization.

Part of her original idea was to scour the campground they set up. She would be looking for any supplies that may have been left behind. Scarlett imagined that with one fewer person to help carry the supplies, they would have to leave some of them behind.

Sure enough, she was right. The campground was mostly cleared, except for two tents that were still standing as the rain lightly fell upon them. Based on the shape of the tent, it looked like her former disciples didn’t even bother to clear it out. She could still see the outline of some furniture pushed against one of the tarp walls.

She slowly approached the front of one of the tents and parted the fabric that was covering the door. As she peered inside, the fake composure she was somehow maintaining crumbled.

Scarlett: “No no no no no no, please no!” She begged as her eyes started to water.

Lying on the ground in the tent before her in a pool of their own blood was Jere and Chelsie. They both were tied up and their necks were brutishly slashed open. Both of them were holding each other's hand while crimson staining their clothing from the neck down.

She rushed over to them with tears rolling down her face and her hands trembling. Scarlett frantically checked for their pulses and was desperately trying to perform first aid on them. She knew it wouldn’t do any good, their faces were pale and drained of life. Anybody who saw the wound on their neck could tell that it was fatal. She did it anyway, hoping that some miracle would happen.

Some time went by before she eventually stopped trying to apply aid.

While leaning over her students, she cried. Tears rolled off of Scarlett and onto the faces of her students, all while they looked up at her with their lifeless eyes.

These two were not present during that damnable ritual, and now Scarlett knew why. There were no words to describe the hopelessness she felt at this moment. A bitter sadness was all that filled her being.

While the rain battered the tent, an old, defeated, broken Scarlett held her beloved students in her arms. Begging anything or anyone for it not to be real. She wanted nothing more than for this all to be another nightmare, and that she would soon wake up.