An Old Legend

I returned to my room briefly to grab the badge-thing I had been given before taking the rope elevator down to the first floor. I had gotten used to using these things in the time I had been here, but I couldn't help but wish there were simple stairs instead.

I was once again in the large empty space that comprised the first floor of the church. While it looked like some sort of castle, this building was, in reality, the central church of the Church of the Serpent. The large space on the first floor was used for the occasional service, but most of the time was simply a public space. Unlike the first time I went through this room, I actually had the time to look around. The most impressive sight was the grand chandelier that hung from the ceiling over the center of the room, although I only realized in the moment that the black stone of the ceiling sloped steeply towards the middle, causing the top parts to be completely shrouded in shadow. The chandelier itself was hung from an array of considerably thin cables, nearly invisible if one wasn't looking closely, giving the impression that the chandelier simply floated in the air.

The actual construction of the chandelier was a marvel itself. It was a multi-tiered design, each branch of it being modeled after a snake, brilliant white fire burning fiercely in each of their mouths. Along each part were intricately carved scales, and as the snakes converged near the middle, they began to wrap around each other like a rope. There were three tiers to the chandelier in total, with each tier having larger branches than the one above it, and each branch being offset so that each source of fire sat between the two below it. The fire in each of the mouths also varied in size along with the size of the snake holding it. The middle shaft of the chandelier resembled a tightly coiled rope that blossomed out along its length. Near the top, the tails of the smaller snakes stopped after a short length, revealing the tails of the medium snakes, which then similarly stopped to reveal the tails of the large snakes, which coiled to a point at the topmost point of the chandelier. The metal the snakes were made of was black, whether natural or painted I wasn't sure, which caused the snakes to seemingly disappear when standing directly underneath, creating the illusion of an unceasing night sky above the church hall.

Thinking on it more, it was clear it wasn't a purely physical phenomenon, that there was some sort of interwoven magic helping to bring the illusion to life. In fact, every part of the church I had been in appeared to be built of the same subtle magic. The way the hallway on the floor I lived on completely nullified sound and reflected light was certainly unnatural, no matter how much the physical construction helped. I hadn't noticed in the time I had passed through before, but standing here I noticed the hall felt strange. It was a weird sense I couldn't quite put a finger on, but there was certainly something, something about how the sound and light moved throughout the space, something about how the walls and ceiling seemed to stretch away the longer I stood in one place. I blinked, and everything returned to normal, but all I could do was acknowledge its existence and try not to think about it.

I started walking for the door to leave, but something caught my eye. The walls around the main hall were covered in intricate carvings, which I had assumed decorative when I first looked at them, however I now noticed there were multiple distinct figures in the section nearest me, and that it seemed to be depicting an event. The inside of the hall was made of the same hexagonal stone pillars that comprised the concentric rings visible from outside the church, and it was on the flat faces of the bases of these pillars that the depictions were carved on. There were dozens of pillars that formed the bottommost ring of the church, and a single face of each was wider than my arm span by a considerable margin. I walked around the hall, observing the carvings. They were divided into four sections, with a single blank pillar separating each section. They started with the one by the door and looped around the hall, with the fourth, blank section being the one on the other side of the front doors. Where there were sections of the pillars cut out to make space for doorways, the carvings were shifted upwards, often incorporating the doorway into the design.

In the first section, each pillar face was filled with people. Each face showed a distinct group of people, shown by how each group was carved with its own distinct armor or clothing design. Some were clad in full plate armor, not even showing their faces nor any part of their body, while others were dressed in scarce clothing, covering only the important parts. Some groups held weapons while others didn't; some groups all wielded the exact same weapon, while some were depicted with each member holding a different one. Above each group was a depiction of a sky vastly different from the ever-present overcast night what hung in the air now. There was a bright sun, its edges and rays seemingly fluid despite being carved in unmoving stone, that hung in the center of this section. There were scattered clouds as well, placed at random across the sky, sometimes crossing over from one pillar face to another. The stone meant to comprise the sky was carved with faint strokes, barely noticeable, but they served to reflect the light of the hall in just the right way to make the stone appear brighter without using any color. The thing that struck me about this depiction was that, despite the clear, prominent differences between each group of people, there was a clear feeling of order and unity amongst them. Within each group, yes, but also from one group to the next.

The middle panel of this section showed a group clad in full plate armor, each holding a halberd taller than them and a half. A faint, almost ethereal fire outline was carved around the group. Behind them stood a depiction of the church, its base spanning the whole width of the face of the pillar, and its central spire reaching far into the sky, above the clouds and nearly to the height of the sun. Behind and above the topmost part of the central spire and even the sun, an ethereal, faint carving of a snake, its width spanning from above the sun to behind part of the tip of the Church, hung above all the people below. As I followed its length, it became clear that this carving continued around the circumference of the room, continued through even the blank separation panels, but stopped at the blank section near the front doors. At parts, where the lighting of the room weakened, it would disappear, only to reappear later out of the shadows.

I walked over to the next section, the depiction carved into it considerably different from the first. In the middle panel of the section, the image of the Church once again stood prominently, towering over the scene below. On the panels to one side of the Church, the side closer to the first section, there were once again depictions of people, but instead of each panel having a distinct group, they were all mixed together and facing the panels to the other side of the Church. On those panels was a fairly similar image, but instead of people, there were beasts. They were spread as chaotic and as completely across the panels as the people they opposed, and just like them, they appeared in a seemingly infinite number of forms. There were beasts I had seen scattered throughout, but the majority of them were things I had never seen, although some did match descriptions I had read of, implying they were all depictions of real beasts. Above this scene, the clouds had become denser and the sky darker; the sun still hung in the sky, but its rays were obscured.

In the next section, the beasts were gone, but rather than a scene of a triumphant battle, the beasts had simply been replaced with people. On either side of the Church, distinct groups of people were once again depicted on each panel, but unlike the first section where they all faced forward, the two sides now had their eyes locked on each other. The number of people comprising in each group had decreased to about a quarter of their original sizes. Above them, the cloud cover had increased, now a continuous line across the sky, blocking out the sun. The bottom edge of it hung just over the tip of the Church's tallest spire.

A deep sadness was interwoven throughout the piece. The other sections evoked certain feelings, but the exact nature of those feelings would vary from person to person. With this one though, despite the relative simplicity of the image, there was a feeling of regret that seemed to jump out of it; the feeling of realizing that which was is no longer, and will never once more be, and that no one seems to realize or care; a bitter nostalgia and a reluctant acceptance.

Then, there was nothing. While I wasn't sure at first, it became clear by the third section these were depictions of history, but it still left me pondering the reason for the unwritten fourth section. Logically, it was meant to depict events which had yet to happen; literally in this case, events that were not yet set in stone. There was, however, a part of me that wondered about the contrary possibility that it had been left blank to hide something. If the events depicted were what I presumed them to be, then there were millennia between the third section and what should be the end of the fourth, while the second and third sections should only depict a few hundred years total between them. The time discrepancy was too large for me to not question it.

As I stood there and thought more about it, though, a third possibility occurred to me. Despite thousands of years having passed since the events of the third section, it wasn't impossible for it to still be a depiction of the present. I contented myself to leave and put the question aside, but as I turned to leave, I noticed there was now someone standing between me and the door, looking at the blank section, and standing close enough to me that I had to stop my turn to not run into him.

He was marginally taller than me, with a head of thick black hair speckled with white. Above his lip sat a thick, black mustache, similarly speckled with signs of age. He stood completely still, staring intently at the blank section in front of him, his arms clasped behind his back. He was dressed in a black robe, edged in grey, with the sleeves crudely ripped off just above the elbow, exposing thick, scarred forearms. It was unfastened at the front, revealing a simple white shirt and rough black pants. His figure was oddly imposing, even though I didn't feel particularly threatened by him.

I took a step back and made to walk around him and to the doors, wondering how long he had been standing next to me. As I walked past him, though, he grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip. I looked down, only then noticing that his hands were at least twice the size of mine, his arms similarly sized. I also noticed his hands were oddly cold, or at least, not as warm as I would've expected from the size.

"I know you have questions, so why don't you ask them?"

I looked up to find him staring at me. His eyes were an uncomfortably light gray, nearly white, and his eyebrows mirrored his mustache in thickness. It made me wonder if he was capable of not having an intense expression, and that thought made me subconsciously lower my guard.

"Do you have answers?"

"Perhaps."

He let go of my arm, and I returned to my spot beside him. He turned back to look at the wall.

"Why is this section empty?"

"Who told you it was empty?"

"There's nothing… on… it?"

"I'd argue there's too much on it."

"How so?"

"You are aware of what stone carving is, yes?"

I nodded.

"Then you should know it to be a reductive artform; only through taking away can something take form in this way. When just enough is taken, the complete image reveals itself. Therefore, I await the day the stone hiding this image is removed, and while I wait, I wonder about the infinite beneath it. It is a blank slate, ready to be written over. Whether what is written on it will take the form of the past, and has therefore been already written, or whether what is written on it will take the form of the future, and has yet to be decided, it is impossible to know, but that, I believe, is a much better question to ask; to wonder about what could be, rather than what is, after all, what is, is finite, and what could be, is infinite."

"Why wonder about something you have no control over?"

"Is that what you believe? You yourself are curious about the nature of this piece, are you not?"

"I am. However, I am content to wait for the answer. Whatever expectation I may set for it, I would inevitably be disappointed."

"Only if you allow it to disappoint you. I see the infinite possibilities, but I expect none, for even if this were to stay blank for eternity, it would still have meaning. As for having no control over it, in my life, I have found things to be far more connected than you give them credit, and it is truly impossible to know the full consequences of an action. If rain falls for an extra hour, standing water turns into a flood, a flood which sweeps away a village, and from then on, a tragedy is remembered. From simple rain to tragedy, such is the world. Don't sell yourself short, you too can cause a tragedy."

"Or prevent one."

"And in the effort, cause another."

"Or not."

"Or not."

"But there is only one thing this could be, right? At the end of the day, no matter what happens, only one event will be immortalized on this wall, and in a sense, whatever that will be, already is. Once it happens, it will forever be that, and therefore, will have always been that."

"I suppose that is one way of looking at it. I would ask you though, if the people who make the decisions that lead to whatever event is depicted believe every choice they made to be of their own free will, are they absolved from the result of their decision? Let us say the event is a tragedy. Should they be seen as being free of blame? If it is a fortuitous event, should they be praised? If us meeting was preordained, but every choice the two of us made that brought us here we made believing it to be of our own free will, would we know any different?"

"I guess not, although I wouldn't necessarily feel good knowing I couldn't avoid it."

"Then believe you could've, if it makes you feel better. If you do something good, choose to believe it was your choice; if you do something you regret, choose to believe it was unavoidable."

"Which way do you live?"

At that, for the first time since we started talking, he turned away from the way to look at me.

"I will allow no one to control my life other than myself."

He turned back to look at the wall. About a minute passed in silence.

"So, who carved these?"

"No one knows."

"No one?"

"Yes. It is truly as if they simply appeared one day, and then there they were."

There was a brief silence.

"Well, if you'll excuse me, I think you've given me plenty to think about."

"You needn't think too much. Moreso, keep it somewhere in your mind, and some parts may assist when you need them."

"Will do. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

With that I left, walking through the open front doors to the church, which I could've sworn were closed throughout my exchange with the man. As I took a step out of the church, I realized I didn't ask the man for his name, but when I turned back, I noticed him catching the rope elevator, quickly disappearing. I sighed and turned back towards the city.

"Strange guy."