The Priesthood

The things that may or may not be behind him—would he want to know what they were? Or was it better to let them remain as things that had neither shape nor form, to let them remain as nothing other than thoughts and assumptions that the voice in his head fed him—as worries about what there might be.

He could, perhaps quite easily, use magic to lift his body and face the other way, to see that which he could not see before, and to lay to rest the doubts that he had and the imagination that would run wild and unchecked as it tried to fill in the gaps of his own knowledge.

It could be just the same—more bones and skulls—remains of possibly other men that had found their way here somehow. As far as he could tell, they couldn’t be the bones of creatures similar to the one that had fed him—the bones were just too short. But then again, by no means was he an expert on such things, especially when it came to the anatomy or the bone structure of the gray-skinned creature.

Did he truly have to know? He could somehow imagine shivers running down his spine. He couldn’t feel them at this moment, but he knew that they were there; they must’ve been. There was no other reaction that he could have to this eerie situation—this unknown dimension—where he had found himself.

But at least, the things other than that creature had been things that he could name. Well, there was the goo as well, the thing that he had drunk, and the material of the container. A strange dimension indeed.

But he had to know. He needed to know. Not because he had a desire for such a thing—it was all because of this damned sense of self-preservation. It had to be; there was no other explanation for this need.

Would it be dangerous if he formed a code to lift his own body? There were many things that could go wrong with that. He didn’t precisely know how much he weighed at this moment; with a simple code, he might as well splatter his body against the ceiling. He side-eyed the ceiling, trying to figure out if there even was one. And his eyes met the solid gray matter of stone, but there was also a hole, one filled with darkness that looked almost physical.

He gave up on the idea. He didn’t want to begin the fall anew. He had had enough of such a sensation. So instead, he would just as gently as he could try to tip his own body, to force himself to switch the side he lay on, or even better if he could lift himself against a wall, into a sitting position, or something like that, then he would have a much better view of things.

It was much more difficult than he had at first perceived it to be, and now he found himself lying down with his back against the cave floor, looking up, directly at the darkness that he wished to never peer into again.

He felt like a tortoise, stuck on its shell, unable to change its side—of course, a tortoise would be much more talented at getting back on its feet; they didn’t have long necks for no reason, and their shells had enough curvature to make the process not that bad; and besides, turtles weren’t usually crippled like he was or as malnourished as he was.

Kanrel’s body had deteriorated quite a bit; it was like he hadn’t had anything to eat for months. This much, he could at least see. His own fingers were just bone and skin, and their color was much darker than they had once been.

To imagine that his cause of death could be starvation, and to imagine that this wasn’t the first time he battled against such a possibility. His journey to the north so many years ago... How long has it been? Oh, how he would just love to find a cottage in this cave, one where there’d be a man like Rant who would offer him dinner, even if that someone would worry about the possibility of a priest bringing them bad luck…

Even if that someone was even more like Rant, even if they had such a dark secret.

He could remember it so clearly: The God Who Hung, the Atheians, true magic…

Enter? Set it free. The voice of a god echoed near the ruins—even he had heard its whisper. It demanded his entry, stirring within him an impossible desire. He, a priest, felt an urge he should never have experienced.

His eyes were locked with the abyss above. The hole in the roof of this cave, the place from which he fell. He wondered if that hole and its darkness would continue for all eternity, or if there was something like a portal, a dark mirror, or a door at the end of that tunnel. On the other side of it, there was light. And he had reached that light, even if that light was man-made. But in that tunnel, in that abyss, there were no such things, and even when he formed new lights at the edges of that tunnel above, no light could enter its darkness.

All the while, he wondered and began connecting the dots that had come to him in the form of a memory. The voice—he should’ve never trusted the voice. He didn’t know if the owner of that voice was evil; he didn't know what they’d do if he somehow managed to set them free. There was so much he didn’t know, and he couldn’t be certain who that voice might be or if they were somehow related to Ignar Orcun, the person most to blame for the fall of N’Sharan. For that, he was sure.

But everything else—all of it—was just a guess, a feeling he had, something in his gut that demanded him to tread more carefully than he had done so far. The voice was not to be trusted. Not until their connection to Ignar could be fully understood and the reason as to why they were chosen as the warden of this prison. Why did they have to be the one to guard the Atheians?

The creature—it must’ve been one of them. It must’ve been an Atheian, one of the Otherkind.

Locked... imprisoned those you know as the other. Waiting for the lock to open; waiting for their ascension; to break the surface; to usurp those above…

Punished for betrayal; conquered and then enslaved by the shadows; those within, around, and above…

Bloodshed; famine; death. An ending from and for below…

Words on paper most sacred; now clearly imprinted in his memory. He had thought of them so much since then. He had read them over and over again. He had seen them so much and thought about them so much that even now he could remember them perfectly. If he were to live until he was an old man, one with the disease that made a man lose his memories until only those of one’s childhood could be remembered, even then he believed that he would remember that one passage from the Book of the Heralds. There was, perhaps, nothing else that he had studied more—not even magic, not even history.

It must’ve meant this place, these creatures, and the Voice… And if it were so, then it could mean that this cave, and whatever might be past it, could only be beneath the Kingdom and the lands above. But only if his thoughts were correct, and only if one could trust the words of the Angels…

He snorted, almost unwillingly, what a bunch of horseshit this was. No… Everything was horseshit—not just this, but everything that had happened so far. Everything that he had to do. Everything that he had to experience. It was all just horseshit. Yet, horseshit might be more pleasant, in a way. At least that would fertilize the ground beneath; instead, his actions would just further ferment in his mind, until he would lose all faith that he had left. Until he, not Ignar, he, Kanrel, would go through a transformation of sorts. A metamorphosis of one’s beliefs, perhaps even one’s morals, as much of what he and other humans were taught was from the point of view of the Angels, of their morals and beliefs...

Alas, he had no time for such thoughts. No time to gaze into the abyss—there was a wall that needed his attention, somewhere past his field of vision; he’d just have to tip himself over to switch to his other side. Somehow, that is.

Earlier, he had formed multiple codes to ever so gently push himself on his back; now he would have to do that and lift at the same time, but not too roughly, not too quickly, for he didn’t want to catapult himself toward the wall that might or might not be on the other side of him. As far as he knew, there could be a ledge that gaped into another abyss—into another fall he might have to take.

But lifting things, he was familiar with that. He had gotten quite good at it, even. But those were mostly chairs and boulders of different sizes—sometimes logs and bricks—to help masons and carpenters in their work. Such things were sometimes far heavier than what he might be at this moment; thus, caution was the key to success.

But there was a problem. He couldn’t see his sides. He couldn't really see anything else except the ceiling and the maw of that abyss. Well, he could see his nose, kind of, but that was mostly useless.

So to be able to see, there was only one thing that he could really do. He needed a mirror—a reflection of himself. This way, he could technically see, but the work that he might do would always be less than ideal. A reflection could never be as true as the real thing; a reflection could never give him the true location of things. Especially when that reflection, or that mirror effect, would be created by water instead of glass.

He knew how mirrors worked, more or less. One needed glass and dark-coated surfaces on which one would place that glass; of course, that wouldn’t make the best mirror. Using water would work in a similar fashion; thankfully, he had a dark surface right above him: the Abyss.

Could he even ask for a better dark surface for his mirror?

He could create water; he would then just need light from a certain angle so that the reflection would be as perfect as possible, and then a smooth force to keep the water up without it wavering too much. Again, to keep the surface as pristine as possible.

He figured that he’d started with creating a sufficient code to keep the water at a good height, but he scrapped that instantly. He wouldn’t be able to create a steady, constant wind to keep the water up there without it wavering too much, and he was uncertain if matter, like water, would spread around or pool the way he wanted if he reversed its gravity. And he didn’t need to. He had almost gone ahead and wasted perhaps hours trying to create something that might never work.

After all, he could just create ice, and that would serve the same purpose; he would just have to wet the ice to make its surface more translucent.

So, he went ahead and began forming a thin layer of ice, one that covered all of the black surface, while at the same time keeping it suspended by reversing its gravity. By then, he could already see a reflection—a face with an unruly beard, one far too long for his own liking—a face he could hardly recognize. It was him, but it wasn’t. It was someone like him.

But one thing that he could recognize was the expression on that face—the sadness in his eyes. Perhaps if he could laugh, this moment would be quite amusing to him. Nothing had changed; he had just gotten more hairy and lost a lot of weight, but nothing he couldn’t gain back, and a beard he could always shave away. He wanted to do so, as he hoped to recognize the man he met in the mirror and not be so old. By the Angels, he had gotten so old. It was like he had gained at least half a decade, or even more, while stuck in the visions of the past.

Had it been so long? He wondered, and soon he let his thoughts drift to more important matters and tasks at hand. He still wanted to see what was on the other side of this cave.

Somehow, his skills at using magic had gotten better, and he had more knowledge of its nature. But things didn’t come to him at will like they did when he was Ignar or even when he was Hartar. He still had to make a considerable effort to achieve what he wanted to do. And the familiar feeling of nausea would return; the far too familiar experience of wanting to vomit too had returned.

That was something he could do without. At least it was less so than when he had first used magic or when he had first begun work on his coding language. And the more he used his little invention, the less sick he felt, and the more efficient and streamlined were his thoughts, the very creation of magic, and thus the outcomes as well. He had more control, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

He knew that he could do so much more. He could be so much better at it. And for that, he could only scold himself; he had wasted much time on things he didn’t need to, instead of studying further and perfecting his craft.

This new life he had been given, he would use it well; he would spend more time with magic. He would perfect it, for he yearned for a memory he had gained. A memory more or less stolen from Ignar, that feeling of success whenever he perfected and mastered a complicated spell; whenever he used magic to its true potential... The feeling was perhaps euphoric; it was akin to what he had felt as he first learned how to read, or when he first learned the simplest concepts of calculus.

A man would always hunt for an emotion and try to relive the emotion he remembered. One must; there is no other option. You would either yearn for that emotion and that memory forever more or try to at least experience it again. Kanrel knew that it would lead to failure, his hunt for an emotion like that, but it was all he could do. As such, it was just the thing that he must do.

At last, he succeeded in his attempt at facing the other side of the cave, and he even managed to not lunge himself toward that wall that he now could see all too well, that and the floor as well.

The floor wasn’t that interesting to him; there were just more bones and skulls, but the wall... It wasn’t just stone or rough edges; on the contrary, it was quite smooth—well, with the engravings and all. It was massive—a picture or a piece of art, one could say.

In a style that he had seen before, many years ago. In a chamber he had entered, down a flight of stairs formed by the most complex magical creation that he could name that he had seen in this world.

And what was below was something like this—a story, history, and this was that as well:

A creature holding a sword in its hands, with its wings spread and its eyes cast down toward the small figures below, on its face an expression most beautiful, most grotesque, one that held much contempt for those below; one that had brought judgment with it… An Angel who had come to destroy the great empire of the Atheians, the empire of the Otherkind.

And below that huge engraving, there was a text that he could not understand. But he could feel the importance of those words…