NOVEL NEXT 37. Stillness
Excerpt from Master Sanriyi’s ‘Worlds Beyond.’
“One such thought, of worlds beyond our own, posits that there must be reflections of time, space or both—fragments of our own reality recorded indelibly in the infinity of existence. What forms could these places take? Could we ever reach them? If one could bridge the gap between the world and its reflection, would that necessitate an unperturbed reflection of that reflection, or would all reflections have a copy that has been altered in every conceivable way? Lingering upon infinity often invites madness, as to consider infinity is to realise that there are infinite recursing infinities within every infinity, and that we can never hope to understand it all.”
Stillness. Perfect stillness.
Everyone and everything in the room had frozen in place, as if the scene had been caught by a painter’s brush on canvas. There was a surreal quality to it all—made stranger by the fact that Yenna realised she could still move. It felt as though she was pulling herself out of some deep, sticky mud, her muscles straining momentarily to escape. Yenna pressed herself up and leapt, a subtle, muffled pop behind her followed by the clatter of her hooves landing on the wooden floor. Everything felt cold, though perhaps more from fright than the atmosphere—before her strength could leave her again she carefully set aside her fears, calming her breathing and taking stock of the situation.
Yenna had heard of spells that stopped the flow of time. To cast such a thing was an extraordinary undertaking, the kind of thing reserved for wizard-kings in old legends. Even then, it didn’t make sense to allow someone else to move within your frozen time—why waste all that energy and expertise for the sake of someone else? With that in mind, Yenna decided that the spell had likely not been intended to stop time. Leaving the question that if that was the case, then what was it intended to do?
The realisation of what was happening crashed into Yenna, nearly shaking loose her sidelined panic. This was no time to be wondering about the specifics of why the world was as it was—she needed to take advantage of it, and do something about this beast! Is this why the priestess gave her that coin–
“Argh, the coin! Where…?” Yenna mumbled to herself, her voice oddly muffled as she glanced at the coin.The coin had been in her hand when everything happened, and when she looked it was still there—in a manner of speaking, at least. There was a silvery imprint on her palm, an exact replica of the coin at full moon, glowing gently. Yenna ran a finger over the mark and only felt the texture of her skin. It was akin to a tattoo, as though the coin had been absorbed into her.
The beast loomed in the corner of her eye, and Yenna focused on the real problem. It was unlike any beast Yenna had ever seen, though it did bring to mind a few possibilities. There were tales of beast-men, people cursed to turn halfway into the form of a beast and rampage about on moonless nights, which reminded Yenna in turn of the recollections of the water elemental. It had attacked the town after an encounter with a ‘Man who was a Beast’, and the mage hesitated to believe this was a coincidence. However, that recollection also spoke of that beast-man baring fangs, which this particular beast did not have at all.
Trying her best not to focus on the carnage the creature had already caused, Yenna looked the beast over. As she had noted before, it had the body of a large, hulking yolm man—its skin was a glossy grey, reminiscent of polished stone. Its head resembled a bird’s, covered in black feathers with its black beak open and silently screaming. Its eye glowed a sickly green, and Yenna had the unnerving feeling that despite its motionless state, it was watching her. Putting aside her growing anxiety, she moved on with her investigation.
Eone and her mother cut an impressive figure—barely moments had passed since this beast appeared and the pair were already in the process of leaping to their feet and drawing swords. Across the room, Narasanha looked twice as horrific as the beast itself, akin to a hawk diving towards her prey. However, Yenna knew they wouldn’t be fast enough. The claw that was currently sweeping through…Yenna steadied herself, and made herself look. The priest had taken a rather grievous wound, a possibly fatal one, but had barely slowed the beast-man’s claw. In its current arc, it would swing directly through the priestess Suee’s head and straight into the path of Eone’s side. Even if Eone could get up in time to dodge, Suee would be dead.
Speaking of Suee, and to an extent the three noble guests of House Stormsea, there were a couple of spell effects playing out. A pale, silvery glow surrounded the priestess’ hands, wisps of magic extending out to generate an unknown effect. Meanwhile, a blast of dark red flame had simply erupted where all three of the Stormsea nobles had been sitting—all three had ducked it just in the nick of time. It felt odd how off-target it was—the beast’s claw had been levelled at the priest as soon as it teleported in, but the blast of flame that could be traced back to its other hand was barely a warning shot.
Of the noble trio, the elder sister Seve had leapt out of the way and was reaching into a pocket. The second eldest had ducked into a ball to cover his head—the youngest had rolled to the side towards his sister. Up until this point, Yenna had not interacted with this frozen environment, except to carefully step around it—but curiosity got the better of her. Somehow, out of all the things going on, the identity of what Seve was reaching for called to her. It was a small pocket, sewn just inside the neck of her outfit. As Yenna reached in to open it, she blushed slightly—it felt a bit of an invasion of privacy to pull open a woman’s shirt. Still, she reached gingerly and grabbed the edge of the fabric, pulling on it.
To Yenna’s surprise, the fabric moved with only a slight amount of resistance. She could feel it pulling, trying to reset back to where it was, but it didn’t take any effort at all to open. Inside was a tiny pocket, holding a small glass cylinder—a reliquary of some kind. Yenna could feel some kind of magic to it, but it was foreign to her. Her best guess was that it was a contained contingency spell—one broke the glass to release a captured, pre-cast spell in case of emergency. If she could use her magical sight–
Yenna felt stupid. Genuinely daft. She stepped away from Seve, found a blank wall and leaned her face on it. There was so much going on, so many things to look at, that she had somehow forgotten about her own magic. Looking within her mind, she could see why—the emotions of anxiety and fear were growing stronger, threatening to spill out and run havoc over her rational thoughts. The last thing she needed was a repeat of the lightning incident, especially right now. Yenna took a few moments to calm herself down.
“This is just another puzzle,” the mage murmured to herself. “Step back. Observe the conditions, the pieces. See how they work, how they fit together. One piece at a time, until the end.”
Yenna breathed in deep, filling her lungs with cool air before letting it all back out. She still felt a little overwhelmed, but the buzzing in the back of her head had subsided and her nerves were back under control. It was time to be more methodical, not bouncing aimlessly from subject to subject.
The first thing to do was to cast the spells required to give her more information. Yenna didn’t get the feeling she was on a time limit—nothing had moved in the several minutes she had spent looking around and quietly panicking, so she figured she had time to set up a longer lasting, more effective magical sight spell. It was a similar affair to the bubble method, of creating a kind of lens over one eye, though it needed more setup. Yenna created the bubble-lense between the forefinger and thumb of her left hand, then used another spell to solidify it into a glassy, oily material. A temporary enchantment around its edges meant that it could hover in place relative to Yenna’s face and be moved with a thought, and a final spell activated its magic-translating properties.
Strangely, Yenna could see that the magic in the air wasn’t moving at all—except for a small bubble immediately around Yenna. It was a highly unusual situation, but not entirely unheard of—in certain places, sealed away for a long time, the magic in the air could grow stagnant enough to go still until disturbed by movement from the living. Similarly, Yenna was intruding in this world of stillness, disrupting a glass-smooth lake surface with minute ripples. Of special note was how this bubble was larger around her hand imprinted with the coin, giving support to the theory that the coin itself was protecting her, or enabling her movement in this frozen space.
On that note, Yenna had an idea as to where she was—it was likely a separate place from where she was before, a halted snapshot of the reality she hailed from. It still barely narrowed down the list of possibilities—a pocket dimension, a planar reflection, possibly even some impossibly complicated illusion, all were possible, but Yenna was leaning towards a kind of reality sub-layer.
It wasn’t exactly a popular theory, more of an idle curiosity for most academics, though it did have its fierce proponents. The theory, as Yenna understood it, was that reality was divided into a nearly endless series of layers—the ‘material’ realm where people resided was but one of them, with other layers explaining the existence of the place spirits resided, or the conduits that let magic flow. Sub-layers existed as a metaphysical ‘dip’ in reality, where one layer partially overlapped another, and the rules and formalities of those realms coalesced into a new form. Magic still worked, and there were still fundamental concepts such as gravity, just…everyone but Yenna was frozen.
Considering it wasn’t getting her anywhere. Yenna turned her magical sight towards the various spells in the room. The teleportation circle under the beast-man was a complicated piece of work at first blush, but only half of it was really relevant—the half of the circle that wasn’t dedicated to the transporting effect was part way between a spell that would copy the circle into a remote location, allowing teleportation in the first place, and a series of hastily-done obfuscations. Whoever had made this circle didn’t want anyone figuring out where the other end was, but didn’t believe that anyone would have the time to study the circle in detail before it made itself vanish. A one-way trip, with an unfortunate amount of the spell circle already degraded beyond deciphering. Still, it had to have been local, and well-planned in advance.
The flames weren’t much more than what they seemed. Pulling on her knowledge of the six colours, Yenna realised that this flame was the same one that she had burnt herself with—dark-tinged flames of Wroth. It was possible this beast man had a grasp of the powers of witchcraft, or something similar—she would have to talk to Lumale about this, when she could.
Finally, the priestess’ spell. Despite the simplicity of its appearance, it was the strangest spell of all. Yenna couldn’t find any obvious runes, symbols or even simple directing lines amongst the magic—not even lingering traces in the stillness surrounding the spell. However, to her magical sight, Yenna could tell that it had a very pronounced pattern. It was a circle, filled with a complicated assortment of linked points. Puzzling over their meaning, the revelation caused Yenna to audibly gasp—these were constellations. It had been a subject of passing interest—something she had focused on to an extreme for a week and then practically forgotten afterwards—but Yenna recognised the stars. What appeared here was the view of a very specific angle of the sky, at a very specific time of the night and year. The actual significance of the view was lost on her, but the names of the constellations told a story.
At the centre there was the Night Grave, a collection of stars related to an ancient folktale told about the aftermath of a horrible war—in it, countless heroes died to end an endless night, and were buried beside each other on the following natural night. All around the constellation were the heroes involved, from tiny two-star implications of a bit-player in the story, to sprawling, practically divine artworks of the heroes at their greatest. What was most telling about this collection of constellations was not the heroes themselves, but the stars that lingered at the edges—of heroes who lived, and finished the work, defying the idea of the impossible for the salvation of all.
This was not a spell, Yenna realised. This was a prayer—an offering to a higher power, a wish spoken in the language of the night sky. A prayer for help despite the odds.