The Priesthood

Silence followed each step he took, and the darkness around surrounded him even more. Soon, he had only the light that came from above. Shivers ran through his body, and the ever-so-rational mind of his wanted him to run back up as fast as he could.

Soon he stopped and dared not take another step, for the light that came from above no longer reached further. The darkness was absolute, and this was its domain. So Kanrel had to conquer it for himself.

With a quick code, he conjured a ball of almost blinding light that, in an instant, showed him his surroundings. Rooms beneath that were much older than those above, as if all that was above was built on top of the things that he now saw.

Surprisingly pristine and clean was that which he expected to be covered with webs, dust, and decay. A simple corridor that would perhaps lead him northward. All of its walls were adorned with carvings, this time of things that made sense to him.

It was a history that was very familiar to most: the history of how the Angels blessed humanity with magic and how they were saved by that magic. A testament to just how much they owed those heavenly creatures.

There was just one thing that bothered Kanrel: the story was told from the end. The carvings depicted on the walls nearest to the entrance to its abode showcased the moment humanity defeated the Wildkin.

If he went deeper, would he find the beginning of the story he already knew or something alien and different?

"Are you alright?" He heard a yell from the entrance. He looked back and saw Yirn peeking in with a slight worry on his face.

"Stop staring and come done with me!" Kanrel yelled back at him and returned his gaze to the walls around him. Soon enough, he could hear Yirn, followed by Yviev, come down the stairs formed by magic and see what he saw.

Kanrel was personally not in a rush, so as they went further, he took it slowly and kept eyeing the carvings, seeing just how far they would go. How much would he know of it?

By the end of the corridor, it was certain that whoever had carved them knew much more than most of the people alive today, or even what was written in the books or even the Book of the Heralds.

But then again, if this told the story from the beginning of the war with Wildkin until the blessing of the Angels, then it was before the first Herald began writing her book.

There was so much intricate detail: how the Wildkin looked, how their massive armies sieged human settlements, from where they came, and even how they first got there. Just not answering the question: where did they come from?

At the end of the corridor, there was a door, and on that door, there were even more carvings, but in a language he wasn’t able to read. The door was black in color, and it seemed to be made out of stone.

Yirn tried again to say the words they had found above ground, but there was no effect, so they figured that they’d use some less intricate ways to make their way in.

Together, they created a code that would gradually push an object forward; they just had to be very careful that they didn’t accidentally blow the thing wide open or blow it up into thousands of little stone pebbles.

Pushing such a heavy thing took considerable effort, even with the use of magic, and it would open very slowly for them to see what was on the other side.

First just the darkness, then things shown by the light that Kanrel controlled. Engravings filled with red liquid on the floor; a round room with three doors that they could see. They too were made of stone and seemed adequately heavy to push open.

"Just what is this place?" Yirn asked, and with his gaze, he seemed to be analyzing every inch of the room before them, soaking in every detail so that he could remember them later.

Kanrel shook his head and said, "Something never seen before. Perhaps only the murderer had known of this place before us."

The liquid was most likely the blood of the victims. For some reason, the killer had either brought that blood here or performed their act of killing in this room. Perhaps this room was where they had lured those poor souls—to torture and then kill.

The walls in the chamber were once again covered with carvings, but the things they depicted were things no one had ever even heard about. An empire of such grandeur that it was impossible to think it would be something built by human hands, or even by the savage Wildkin that had almost wiped out all of humanity.

An empire that towered even over some of the mountains of the world, an empire that had brought the whole world under its rule. An empire that was no more. An empire that might have never even existed.

Was this perhaps a utopia that some humans had thought of long ago? Or something that had once been but was then wiped out and forgotten? Perhaps the Otherkind? A fantasy at best, it was all that it could be.

Kanrel wasn’t proud of what he was about to do. With a code, he collected all of the blood spilled on the floor, then boiled it until the water in it would evaporate, leaving behind just a dark dust and a strange smell. The dust he left outside the chamber was in a neat pile that he would surely clean later.

The engravings uncovered on the floor were similar to those that had been at the entrance to the secret underground corridor, suggesting that they at least had the same origin. If that origin was older or newer than that of those on the walls, it was difficult to figure out.

There were words on the ground: "To all directions; enter all at once."

"And what is that supposed to mean? After we open the stone doors, or what?" Yirn asked and blankly stared at the door directly opposite him. "I call dibs on that one," he said, pointing at it.

Kanrel shook his head in bemusement and picked the door on the right; Yviev was left with the door in the middle.

"Now what?" Yviev asked while studying the door in front of her. It had the same characteristics that the other stone door had.

"We all enter at once," Kanrel said. "So we take a leap of faith, and at worst nothing happens."

"So we are supposed to walk through a solid object?" Yirn asked and kicked the door; they all could hear his foot hitting the stone door as it caused a loud thumb that echoed in the chamber.

"On three?"

"Sure, why not?"

"One,"

"Two,"

"Three!"

Kanrel counted down, and on three, they all took a step forward. He could feel that as his body went through something that was meant to be solid, a feeling of extreme nausea went through him, and he was sure that he would end up puking.

But when he got through, he was in another corridor with Yirn and Yviev.

Yviev fell to the ground, gasping for air. "I almost suffocated."

"How lovely, I just got punched in the head a good thousand times or so," Yirn said while holding his head; even still, there was a grin on his face. "I never thought that I’d one day walk through solid stone."

Kanrel sat down for a minute. "Let's not do that ever again," he said while holding his stomach.

Yirn shrugged. "You can blame only yourself; it was your plan, and you happened to pick the wrong door."

Kanrel scoffed, "Then if there is a next time, let's switch doors."

Yirn looked at the door that they had all come out of. "Well, there is just one door. Unless there are more to come," he added, shifting his gaze forward.

Before them, the corridor seemed to continue endlessly; the carvings on the walls now told a different story—the story of an empire at its peak—but as they went forward, the story progressed. The empire first shrank, then attacked by creatures with wings, and soon it was demolished. And only rubble was left behind. Before they got to the next door, the engravings became sparse, and soon there were none. Just pristine walls with a story that was left unfinished.

This door was another stone door, and again they had to force it open with their combined efforts in magic. The light breached the chamber, showing them walls that had nothing on them and a floor that was as plain as the walls were. But this time, there was furniture.

A table and a chair, to be certain. On the table were a note and a jar. Kanrel read out loud the words written on the notes:

The truth shall set you free, and this is the truth that is known. The magic we have is not the purest form of it; it is just a perversion of true magic, as you might guess from the elaborate magic that this complex of chambers and corridors showcases.

It is not known who has created them, but it is known that the Priesthood is not to be trusted, for they would try to alter and hide this truth that I have found. The Heralds and their lies are all the same, just constructed by the Priesthood to keep their hold on the people.

The Angels have left us long ago.

The nameless shall rise again, and the truth shall set us all free.

The note was left unsigned, but the contents of the jar were sufficient as a signature: a pair of human eyes with a blue iris. Yirn had already confirmed that Henan’s eyes had been blue before they were removed from their sockets.

"That is some... crazy stuff," Yirn muttered to himself. "I think whoever wrote such things must be insane; there is no other explanation."

Kanrel didn’t answer him; he just went over the note again and again. He even studied the table and the chair thoroughly; they were located in the center of the round chamber, and they were just a normal table and a normal chair. Both were in good condition, so they most likely were from the current decade. Not something old and almost decomposing like the tables and chairs that they had found in the cellars.

"Perhaps," Kanrel ended up saying, as he himself didn’t know what the truth was. The things that he had seen just today, the magic that was more complicated than all the magic that he had seen thus far, not to mention the lack of a disgusting feeling if one doesn’t count the feeling of going through the stone door.

He would need to learn more about everything related to the chambers, the corridors, and their carvings.

Of course, he was disturbed by the things that he had just read about, as they suggested outright heretical things, not to mention that they attacked the very job and existence of his own mother. So it was hard to remain unbiased toward the "truth" that the writings offered.

The only other point of interest in the chamber was another stone door; this one was open, and behind it was a long stairway of steep steps that would take them up. Perhaps back to the cellars, perhaps to another corridor with even more carvings.

They decided against taking the eye or the note with them since they could be, for now, used as evidence against them in the investigation if they were found on their personnel.

So they ascended the steep stairway until they came to a halt. Kanrel went ahead and touched the stoned surface that was in their way, but it seemed to be an illusion, so he stuck his hand through it, and soon enough, his whole body. On the other side, they came out of a large wardrobe into a small room that seemed to be a storage room of some sort.

They didn’t have the slightest idea where they were now. And when they tried the door, it seemed to be locked from the outside. It would be smart to just go through the door, as the person behind the murders could be on the other side.

Based on their knowledge of the murderer thus far, they were dealing with an individual who had a much better understanding of magic and coding than they did, so it was unlikely for them to survive an encounter with that person.

Now all they could do was go back to the way that they had used to enter the chambers in the first place. Along the way, they made some calculations of the width, height, and overall dimensions of the chambers and corridors that they had gone through. They could use this information to figure out from above where the other side of the locked door was that they dared not enter.

Soon, indeed, the truth would set them free.