NOVEL NEXT Chapter 33
The cave emitted a jazzy, discordant hum, the kind that set teeth on edge without quite crossing into a melody. Unlike mere howling wind blowing through crevices, it carried the distinct sound of plucked strings and trilling flutes, but to no discernible beat.
The sound reverberated off the stone, shifting subtly with each step Logan took. As he approached the entrance, his eyes fell on the skulls set atop crude pikes. At first glance, it was an ominous warning. But up close, the bones were too smooth and uniform. Fake. Probably a local scare tactic to keep curious adventurers at bay.
Logan put aside conjured thoughts of ghost stories told around campfires, but didn't let his guard down completely. The steady, whispering breeze curling through the cave's mouth brushed past him with the scent of damp stone and minerals. That meant there had to be an opening somewhere deeper inside.
He passed the threshold.
The first cavern opened into a grand chamber, far larger than he expected. A towering statue loomed in the center, a weathered figure carved with meticulous detail, arms stretched as if commanding an unseen audience. Carvings of instruments and dancers covered every visible inch of the walls, although time had worn most of the illustrations to vague suggestions of what they once portrayed.
Logan exhaled in quiet awe. This was a shrine to some deity if he had ever seen one. Which, actually, he hadn't. But he still stood by the impression. "What is a place like this doing in the middle of nowhere?"
Gnashridge Heights had been a backwater town, and Farrowstead was a fraction of its size. And this was in the outskirts. I guess everybody talks about the Ruined Wilds. Considering the Boundary allegedly ran through here at some point, that made sense.
His gaze fell to the far wall, where an unnaturally smooth arched doorway cut into the rock. At the foot of the archway, a slab of stone had clearly sunk into the ground, leaving behind faint scrape marks and dust-lined edges. Glowing runes lined the frame, pulsing with a faint ethereal hue, but the alcove inside was empty.
Aetherlens.
Despite the obvious involvement of magic, there was a notable lack of ambient mana in a cushioned vaccuum around the passage entry. Perhaps the sigils' presence was to prevent the door from opening to magical probing. But if that was the case, how had the door been opened in the first place?
He scanned the rest of the open space, walking around the central statue. What he had first dismissed as simple decorations on the floor he now noticed was a gridlike system of patterns, with each tile bearing a different design. Some of the tiles seemed movable with scuff marks showing signs of being pushed, but right now they formed a coherent pattern.
Crouched, he slid one tile, and a slab of stone sealed the sigil-inscribed doorway.
When he moved it back, the door rumbled and reopened.
He repeated the process a few times, testing the interaction with Aetherlens. Depending on what symbol was present on the moved tile, the striations of ambient mana shifted. But only when the tiles were in place did all the ambient mana balance out and the door open.
Separate from the alcove linked to the puzzle, a different exit led deeper into the cave network. Logan approached it and wandered through. The eerie half-formed melody grew slightly louder, as he neared its source.
The next chamber bore another puzzle, its solution already completed. But this one was different. Carved along the walls were busts of various people and creatures, all apparently enamored by a snakelike person with arms holding an accordion. Serpentine. That was a race, wasn't it? Intricate markings adorned its hooded crest in place of hair.
Even the stony admirers boasted ornate detail, to the point Logan could make out the thick flowing beards of dwarves and the finely textured downy barbs of feathers on what he believed must be an aerudine. One bust demanded attention, though: the one showing a goble.
Unlike the other figures, crude graffiti covered the goble's face, proving that vandalism transcended worlds. Someone had scratched deep gouges into its eyes and scrawled symbols across its cheeks in a visceral reaction of dislike. It wasn't just a one-off prank, either, and spoke of a sentiment carried by a society.
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Logan frowned. His mind flickered back to the captured goble, the way the drummer and the fiddler had spoken about it with outright disdain. Yes, the goble had planned to eat them, but this? This was something deeper.
Moving past the statues, he turned his focus to the puzzle. Faceted gemstones were set into various pedestals, each refracting a beam of light. In its current layout, the final beam struck the center of the Serpentine's accordion, casting coruscating rays like sunshine hitting a waterfall.
A shaft in the cave ceiling was the origin point of the light, with plenty of reflective surfaces inlaid within the tube to filter sunlight regardless of its position in the sky.
He waved his hand in front of one beam, cutting off the carried reflection to the accordion, and every door slammed shut.
"Well that's disconcerting."
He withdrew his hand, and the doors reopened. Logan exhaled, tension easing. That explained the drummer's order that he return before sundown. If the sunlight faded, he would be locked in here, which meant he had limited time.
Another alcove with a sigil-surrounded frame sat at the room's rear, but it was empty, too, so he advanced to the next room. Once again, the acoustics shifted slightly, the distinction between individual clashing notes growing more notable
Not only was the inscribed doorway here closed, but its sigil inlays differed from the other rooms. Instead of a monotonous hue glowing from the cryptic symbols, the symbols on the left shone green while the rightmost half emitted orange light. It wasn't an equal dispersion, either, and reminded Logan of a speedometer, with the orange at 45% capacity and green at 55%.
The back wall displayed a striking depiction of a night sky with unfamiliar constellations, and two sides of the floor had a stash of stone cubes, lightly hued green or orange, with speckling that resembled patches of the starry clusters.
Logan tried to push a cube, but instead of sliding, it flipped onto a different face. He startled at noticing a cube on the other side of the room move in the opposite direction. It was as if an invisible force had mirrored Logan's actions on the other object. As he did this, the sigils rotated as if they were attached to some great circle set into the stone. Now the split was 40-60, favoring green.
"So," Logan mused, "solving one side unsolves the other?" More graffiti donned the backwall, and even the rotating sigil band itself. Logan inspected it. Some messages were scrawled in response to former vandals, and others professed undying love while others derided apparent enemies. He focused only on ones that seemed to relate to the puzzle itself.
Green is empty, don't waste your time
easiest joke, solved green ten minutes
ORANGE IS BOUNDARY! MT LOVES BD!
orange has ghosts
"Such trolls," Logan said, shaking his head. After pausing briefly over whether trolls actually existed in this place, his mind turned to a different flaw in the graffiti artists' logic. No matter which runeset opened the door, wouldn't the chamber beyond it be the same? Or did the chamber beyond it rotate in correspondence to the circular frame? It was a trippy thought.
Either way, he figured he might as well try to solve the green runes first.
He flipped boxes into position, occasionally moving one out of a correct setting to complete one of the inner designs.
When the last of the orange sigils slid beneath the ground, the haunting music in the air cut off completely and the green symbols flared brightly as the stone slid open. The sudden silence shocked Logan more than the opening door, but the exit back to the forest remained open, so he didn't worry.
A small altar sat in the middle of the now-exposed room, where the Serpentine bard—was that the deity of this place or something?—regaled his audience. Again, the goble numbering the listeners was defaced, and taunts and scribbles like "Too late!" and "Victory!" and "Useless" riddled the area. But Logan's attention fell to the bottom of the altar, where a much neater hand appeared to have transcribed some of the ancient text etched into the altar's base. It appeared to be a summary with small notations.
The Bard sings of Five Sages (Time, Gravity, Dream, Void, Life?) and the Eight Guardians. Sealing of the Devouring Coil nearby. Beneath the valley? Dead or asleep? References of the unhatched brought to life. Who is Elevated Kindred?
Logan squirmed. Mariv had mentioned a Tale of the Eight Guardians, thinking they related to the Kalashi brothers. Plus, Logan had encountered them in a ceremonial chamber.
And did the mysterious scholar's ending note mean Exalted Kin?
He ran a hand over the stone, tracing the carefully etched letters. The rest of the altar's base held deeper carvings, worn soft by time, but the translation was recent. Someone had been here not long ago. Had they figured something out? Had they left to follow some clue beyond this place?
The mention of the unhatched lingered in his mind, uneasy and familiar. His thoughts flicked to the dragon egg still tucked safely in his storage ripple. It was because of the egg's prompting he had accepted the quest that brought him to the caravan and, in turn, this cave. And the scholar's notes hinted at something more than a lost history.
This wasn't just about the past. It was a warning.
New quest available!
Unveil the importance of the Devouring Coil and the threat it poses to you! Might want to hurry before existence unravels.
Accept?
Error. Quest already accepted upon summon.
Quest accepted!
Logan swallowed hard and ran a hand through his hair.