The Tears of Kas̆dael

"Hear anything?" Ihra closed her eyes and concentrated, but she could hear nothing on the other side.

"Not that I can hear, but the doors might just be too thick," she warned him. After escaping the chimera ambush, they'd continued down the hall until it dead-ended into another massive gate.

But this gate was different from the others they had passed through. The previous doors had been made of wood gilded with elaborate copper and golden bas-relief panels, but though these shared similar decorations, the doors were faced entirely with pure, white marble.

Assuming the marble was merely a veneer, Erin had tried to pull on the gates, only to realize there wasn't a sliver of wood in them. The doors were solid stone and, at nearly three stories high, Ihra couldn't fathom how much they might weigh.

They'd tried, of course, to open them, but even dumping half of her health into The Still Pond hadn't been sufficient to even budge them. And yet the single track of footprints preserved in the thick dust of the hall, that disappeared behind the gates, indicated that someone had recently passed through them - a set of footprints that was distinctly humanoid, and thus did not belong to either the chimeras or dino-centaurs they'd encountered thus far.

Unable to open the doors, they followed the tracks down the hall, an effort that quickly proved fruitless as the path ended at an exit into the temple's courtyard. Whoever had made the tracks had come from the city, but with the strange, alien storm raging outside, there was no chance they could follow the path any further. Thus, they'd circled back to the stone gates.

"There's got to be another way of opening these, something we're missing," Jasper sighed.

"Could it be another puzzle?" Ihra asked, thinking back to the magically sealed gates in Naḫas̆s̆inu that had protected Ayāllu's legacy.

"Maybe, but I don't see any obvious triggers," he replied dubiously, squinting up at the stone gates.

She didn't see any either, but it was the only explanation that made any sense. The footprints were human-sized, so unless their owner was at a positively monstrous level, she doubted he could have opened the doors by pure strength alone. There has to be a trigger.

She spun around slowly, scrutinizing the hall for anything that stood out as unusual, but if anything, the only thing about the chamber that stood out to her was how comparatively plain it was. There's not a spot of gold in here, she realized, slowly expanding that list to include all metals as she completed her survey of the hall.

It stood in stark contrast to the gaudiness of the other rooms they had passed through, but if there was some deeper meaning there, she couldn't divine its intent. She was about to give up when her gaze snagged on the track the mysterious stranger had left in the dust.

The owner of the track had clearly known where they were going, making a beeline straight from the courtyard entrance to the stone gates, but as she followed their tracks again, she realized there was one place where their footprints overlapped each other. They paused there, but why?

She could see nothing particularly unusual about the spot. The plain white wall seemed a little more weathered than the rest of the temple, with its paint peeling to reveal the dark, granite slabs beneath, but that was the only oddity. Still, she jogged over and began to examine the wall, pressing on the rough stones in search of a switch.

"Did you find something?"

"I don't know. I thought I did; this is the only place our mysterious guest stopped, but there's nothing here."

"That is odd," Jasper agreed, staring down at the tracks. "It's almost like he stopped for a cigarette break, but that isn't a thing here." He joined her at the wall, scraping at the peeling paint, but the only thing it revealed was more granite.

She straightened up with a sigh, ready to give up, when she recognized a familiar glint in his eyes. "Have an idea?"

"More like a Hail Mary," he scoffed, "but anything's worth a try at this point. Take a step back, won't you?"

Flames coiled around his hands, and she stepped aside quickly, letting him bathe the wall in the flames. The white paint continued to curl as the flames lapped at the stone, shriveling into long, thin strips, but that was the only change that appeared. "Huh, maybe I was wrong," he sighed, letting the flames lapse.

"What were you hoping would happen?"

"Something, anything," he shrugged. "This part of the wall is clearly more damaged than the rest, and there's no weather in here to cause it, so I figured maybe our mystery guest hit it with some sort of magic. But I guess I was wrong."

He stopped talking as she grabbed his arm, pointing to the wall. "I think you spoke too soon."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Small motes of light now glowed on the granite's weathered surface, slowly coalescing into a jagged, harsh script that was quite unlike the language of the Empire.

"Damn it," Jasper cursed. "It didn't even occur to me that it would be in a language we don't know. We found the bloody trigger, and we still can get through the door."

Ihra was about to agree when her eye caught on one of the symbols near the end. A tightly coiled spiral was overlaid with a triangle with its sides curving inwards, while a long, jagged line exited from the lowest corner. "Wait a minute - this looks familiar." She pursed her lips, unable to place it, and then she realized there was only one possible answer. "I must have seen it in Aphora's grimoire."

Dropping her bag on the ground, she rooted through it until she found the old book the elf had given her. She felt a touch guilty as she pulled it out, realizing she'd been neglecting her studies, but, then again, it wasn't like she had a lot of downtime recently. Maybe I'll get a chance after this bloody business with the capital is over.

She quickly flipped through the rituals she had used, confident that it wasn't among them, and slowed down as she neared the middle of the book. "Let's see…"

A few minutes later, she stood up, holding the book out to Jasper triumphantly. "Look, this is the same sign, isn't it?"

She had to admit, there were slight differences in the styling between the rune in the book and the symbol etched in the granite, but the primary lines remained.

"Looks pretty damn similar," he agreed. "Do you know what it means?"

"It's one of three signs used in a ritual that's, uh, supposed to enhance male, uh, health," she replied awkwardly.

Jasper stared at her incredulously, before breaking into a light chuckle. "So, magical viagra," he summarized, spouting his usual gibberish.

"If it's just one sign that's shared, then it's probably a benediction for health," Tsia interrupted them, peering over her shoulder at the book with interest. "I remember my mother talking about these, back when she tried to teach me how to use rituals."

"You didn't want to use them?" Ihra asked, somehow not surprised that the princess hadn't wanted to put in the effort. She felt bad for the thought a second later, though, as Tsia shook her head.

"I can't even channel a trickle of the energy needed to activate the rituals," she said sourly. "You didn't think you were the person Aphora wrote that book for, did you?"

Ihra immediately lost all regret. "Better-"

Jasper cleared his throat noisily, cutting them off. "Let's keep focus here - do you know how to read it or not?" he asked Tsia.

"Not a clue, but as I was saying before I was interrupted," she scowled at Ihra, "I think I know what it is. Mother said that just like there used to be more people capable of doing magic, there used to be more people who could use rituals, so temples would sometimes set up simple formations for health or fertility."

"But if that's the case," Ihra argued, "then why take pains to hide it?"

The girl shrugged. "I don't know; maybe this one was only for the priests. There's a way to find out, though," she looked at Ihra meaningfully.

"Are we sure that's safe?" Jasper interposed. "I mean, we don't know what it does."

"Hopefully, it opens the door, and whatever else it does, it probably isn't going to hurt me. Our mysterious stranger walked away, after all," Ihra reluctantly backed Tsia up. She wasn't thrilled to power an unknown ritual, but she knew they couldn't afford to delay; Ardul wouldn't be able to hold the portal forever.

A cloud of dust enveloped her as she plopped down in front of the formation and closed her eyes. She was used to the energy that powered the rituals being a distant thing, like a storm a few miles off that one had to coax to come your way, but the energy here was different. Strong and eager, it flooded through her body faster than she could channel it into the formation, spilling out wastefully on the ground around, to the surprised shouts of her friends.

But she kept her focus on the formation, willing the energy through the twists and turns of the half-dozen emblems etched into the granite until they shone so brightly that she could see them clear as day even though her eyes remained closed. She nearly lost her concentration, though, when the floor began to shake, followed by the screeching sound of stone scraping against stone.

"You did it, Ihra - the gates are opening!" She lost her connection as Jasper shook her shoulder excitedly, but as she opened her eyes, she could tell that the doors had swung wide enough to let them pass.

"I guess that wasn't so bad," she admitted as she picked herself off the ground, only to nearly fall over as she realized there was something wrong with her balance. "Selene's grace, I must be dizzy," she grumbled as she caught herself on Jasper's arm, but she knew she was wrong as soon as she caught the look on his face. "What's wrong? What did it do?" she asked urgently, patting her face down.

"It's not bad; it's just…" She scowled as Jasper started to laugh.

"It's just what?"

"I wondered what medical viagra would do for a girl. Turns out, there's more than one way to get horny."

My antlers. The problem with her balance suddenly made sense as his meaning sank in, and she frantically pawed at her head. "How big are they?"

"Don't worry, they look great," Jasper reassured her, reining in his laughter. "But I'm afraid you aren't going to be able to hide them under a hat any longer. They've at least doubled in length."

She frowned as she carefully felt out the new length of her antlers; having to relearn her center of balance was an inconvenience, but she supposed it was hardly the worst thing that could have happened. "And that's the only change?" she asked suspiciously.

"I mean, it also cleaned you up," he shrugged. "We look like a bunch of murder-hobos," he gestured at his blood and dust-stained garments, "and you look like you just stepped out of a spa, but the antlers are the only real change I see. Who knows," he added with a smirk, "maybe once the ritual has ended, they'll shrink back to their normal size."

"Their size doesn't matter," she replied dismissively. "I'll get used to it."

"Are you sure?" he fell into place beside her as they started walking toward the now open doors. "I always thought that was just something people with small 'horns' told themselves to feel better. Although speaking of small horns," Jasper's levity fell away. "It looks like we found our missing blood mage."