Day 51 Yuxa's Season, 11654
Nearer to the base of the towering monolith of black stone the air grew humid and damp— dozens of tiny streams scattering across the land, feeding ponds and puddles. Hidden by the press of young, thin trunked trees growing so dense their canopy appeared like a carpet of moss from a distance the watery terrain was a riot of flourish life. Fat, muddy frogs snatched plump insects from the air and brilliant hummingbirds fluttered from flower to flower. Small darting lizards lounged in scattered spots of sun and lapped from the puddles and streams.
Ghyran and
ghur were thick in the air; mixing with
ulgu in the shadows as the hungry churn of new life finding its feet, and with the
hysh and
aqshy in the light of the sun to become the fierce struggle for survival. Breezes carried in
azyr and flushed out lingering motes of
shyish.
Ecu'otta observed the Winds as they went, feeling them press against the edges of his body and soul with every step they took towards the monolith. Atahuinqua and their young troglodon led the way ahead, slipping back and forth through the small jungle with ease, a troop of saurus cutting down trees at the oracle's command to clear a path forward.
Behind him the three warmbloods chattered excitedly.
"Astonishing," whispered Tyrecmion for the seventh time.
Just a few steps away Isobar stooped to examine a line of reddish-black ants climbing up the trunk of a tree. He glanced over at Ecu'otta.
"You said this was the site of an orcish encampment?"
"Indeed. One of their, mmm, ah, shamans was… studying the site," he laughed at the thought, the flesh of his stomach shaking as the sound emerged like a roll of stones down a mountainside.
"And this is part of Zlatlan's cleansing effort, I see. Rather clever to ground the magic in something like this; though I might suggest a few modifications, nothing too drastic, what you have here is all very cleanly done— but, well greenskins magic can be…
sticky."
"Mmm? No. Everything was burnt to the ground. This, ah, mmm, is a curious development."
Unforeseen. Macuiltotec had led the expedition which had cleared the uax from the site of the monolith and this did not bear the mark of his hand. Some of his subordinates had stabilised the blackened earth and ash with spells to swiftly grow grass.
But that could hardly have led to this.
Isobar blinked in surprise, turning away from the line of ants and standing up straight.
"This is
not your doing?"
Ecu'otta shook his head, "Given the previous reductions in, mmm, uax population such efforts were not judged necessary. Mmm, too great an outlay of time and effort."
He began to suspect something of the manner of the situation though. Old One monoliths were rare, there were only two that he himself knew the locations of; the one here and the other at the southern peninsula of Chuqitzan'xlamund'botl. And the latter had been destroyed in the Great Catastrophe.
Shattered by the dying curse of a pox-sorcerer even as Xuaxumal led the forces of Xlanzec to shatter the host of the selfsame sorcerer. From reports prior to the sinking of Chupayotl the monolith seemed at times to act on its own to aid the defense, though the accounts were confused and uncertain.
"Some manner of aethyric resonance," suggested Tyrecmion, "Burnt you said? Large enough latent heat, combined with an inflow of cool wet air from offshore could have created the micro-climate we see. Under the right conditions a stable system could form."
Amnil frowned from beside him, "Quite unlikely."
In response Tyrecmion merely gestured to the jungle around them.
Before the other warmblood could respond, Ecu'otta said, "We shall learn more from the monolith itself."
Wrapping around the bottom of the monolith was a narrow strip of clear, shallow water criss-crossed by a loose weave of trunks or roots, or perhaps enormous vines, that rose to a scattered, patchwork canopy. Colored greyish-green, some vines were nearly a meter and a half wide and the entire network grew to eight or nine meters in some places. Here and there the interlaced wood grew thick enough to support the firing platform of a greatbow, and dense beds of moss and clusters of orchids clung to every available surface.
Beyond the waters and vines the monolith stretched high into the sky, eighty meters of black stone etched with geometric patterns and glyphs that glowed with an inner light. No gold or gemstones decorated its surface. Just plain polished stone, black as the night sky. Some of the glyphs carved into its surface were four or five meters tall, others no larger than a handspan.
And all around it, invisible to those without aethyric sense but still perceptible by the way the sheer concentration acted upon the world itself was a whirling gyre of the Winds. Meeting at a point some ten meters above the ground where a single large groove worked its way around all four sides of the monolith, forming a small ledge, the Winds were pulled into complex orbits around one another before they sank into the stone itself and effectively disappeared. Ecu'otta could only dimly perceive the magic as a faint vibration and pressure as it flowed down through the monolith towards a point somewhere below.
"We will establish an inner camp here," he said to Atahuinqua.
Most of the expedition had been left behind at the ring of spiked skulls. Though they would need to approach closer to establish a proper perimeter they would be safer remaining away from the monolith itself.
Temple-guard were well-acclimated to magically dense environments and Atahuinqua knew better than to act without precise directions— he
would need to keep a close eye on the warmbloods to begin with. Until he knew better what had happened Ecu'otta would simply bear with the complaints from his temple-guard, he did not want the distraction of so many variables.
Day 51 to Day 54 Yuxa's Season, 11654
Isobar, Tyrecmion, and Amnil spent much of those first days furiously making observations of the flows of the Winds around the monolith; noting how they shifted and changed over the hours and from day to day. By the first day they had made as many notes as they had over nearly the rest of the journey down. It was quickly apparent that, despite the artifice of their scrolls condensing what they wrote, at that pace they would soon run out of scroll to write on.
Thankfully after the first two days they settled into a more sedate rhythm.
Largely because they had taken all the notes they needed to on the general behavior of the flows themselves around the monolith and once again turned their focus on the flows of the Winds on a border scale. Which they had long ago learned to condense into key observations. Direction, composition, relative speed, and so on.
But while Amnil and Tyrecmion focused on Winds around the monolith, Isobar turned his attention to the object itself.
55 Yuxa's Season, 11654
Lord Ecu'otta had been deep in meditation for the past several days, his temple-guards standing guard over his still form at the edge of the water. It would be at least another day before he returned.
Perhaps as many as three. Such a concentration of magic made reality thin and muddied the course of the future, it had slowed down all their work. Atahuinqua might have the north face of the monolith done by the time Lord Ecu'otta awoke,
might.
Wading through the ankle deep waters the oracle caught sight of movement through the weave of enormous vines and stilled, hand falling to the bronze knife at their side. Behind them Tenqu'itt tensed and sank to her haunches, a tendril of anticipation shivering across the bond, ready for the hunt.
From behind a knot of vines and moss emerged the form of one of the elves, Isobar, staff in hand and robes shimmering with magic as the water at his feet bulged out in a bowl, forming a circle of semi-dry ground half a meter around his feet.
He should not be here.
Pulling on the strands of fate swimming through the air Atahuinqua cloaked themself (and Tenqu'itt) in the uncertainty of unknown futures— color bled from the world and the water at their feet grew ice cold. Whispering sighs echoed on the wind.
Stalking forward the water parted before their steps, silent as silk, without a splash.
Isobar was only a head taller than themself, quite short for an elf, with a loose mane of auburn hair and blue eyes. His blue on white robes stood out amongst the green of the jungle behind him, making for an easy target once spotted.
Once positioned directly in his path Atahuinqua waited until Tenqu'itt had pulled alongside them to drop the pall of fortune they had wrapped themselves in.
Immediately the archmage stopped, a frown appearing on his face as he blinked at the sight of skink and troglodon suddenly appearing in his path.
"Where do you go?"
"To the monolith," he said, pointing over Atahuinqua's shoulder.
"Your companions are back that way."
He blinked blankly, staring at the skink for a long moment, "Watching the Winds around the monolith. I wish to examine the thing itself… that is what we came to do after all. Do you object?"
Atahuinqua felt something clench in their stomach. They did object, very much so. Even the most minor works of the Old Ones were sacred, not for the hands of lesser beings— it was the greatest of privileges to be allowed to interact with them, and this was not a minor work.
There was
power here, buried beneath dirt and stone and time. Deep.
But, the warmblood was right; it
was why they had come here. Lord Wik'keer'mal himself had approved of the expedition and Lord Ecu'otta had
not forbidden them from approaching the monolith. What right then did Atahuinqua have to bar him? None.
More than that, if it was the will of the slann that the warmbloods be allowed to examine the monolith did not Atahuinqua have a duty to be certain they did so safely? Works such as this required secret signs and keys, the uax
shaman had spent decades fruitlessly butting heads with it and managed to steal only the smallest fraction of its power. And done, who knew how much damage in the process. How much more damage could an archmage of Saphery do?
Much more, certainly. Though not quickly.
Better if Atahuinqua ensured it was none, "No," they said at last, "Follow. Touch nothing, work no spells."
Isobar raised an eyebrow but said nothing. With a nod the oracle turned and began stomping their way across the waters towards the monolith.
For the next two days the pair gradually worked their way around the northern face of the monolith. Seemingly cut from a single block of stone, each of the four sides measured roughly ten meters and rose at a very slight incline, barely perceptible from ground level. At roughly hip height a pair of angle grooves were carved into the stone, no marking or glyph or pattern existed below that height, with clusters of etchings spaced approximately a quarter of a meter apart at chest height and one meter at shoulder height.
Most groupings were composed of a central glyph surrounded by three to five smaller glyphs with one or two distinct geometric designs connecting them together. There were resemblances to the glyphs and geometric designs of Zlatlan, but only that. Visual inspection was insufficient to assess damage.
Divining rod in hand Atahuinqua pulled on the strands of fate coursing through the monolith, watching to see if any caught on particular glyphs or clusters of markings. Hardly an exact method.
Isobar, it turned out was quite helpful.
"Do that again," he said late in the afternoon of the second day.
Atahuinqua had just finished examining a cluster of two-thirds of the way down the length of the face at shoulder height—- a large circle, radiating seven spikes, surrounded by smaller glyphs; something like a pair of crossed claws, another circle with a crescent cutout, several thin triangles arrayed in two curving rows pointed tip to tip, and something like a forked tongue or perhaps a water droplets with its end split. Nothing had happened after several repeated tests, the quavering lines of fate had settled back into place each time; echoes of dead-tongues fading into silence and dust.
Glancing over at Isobar the oracle caught a glimpse of shifting shadow and light before they flinched and released the magic. Color flooded back into the world, light simultaneously flaring and fading away. It was always disconcerting to observe warmbloods from up close and leave Atahuinqua feeling vaguely sick. Souls should not be so… smudged.
"Whatever you just did, do it again. There was… a flutter?"
They made a motion with their hand, holding it flat for a moment and then shaking it back and forth.
Pressure and heat had built up behind their eyelids, too much time spent pulling on fate. But another few moments would not be too dangerous.
Turning back to the black stone, Atahuinqua once again raised their divining rod and let magic flow through them. Shadows deepened and stretched as the world was leeched of color. From behind the faded mask of the world emerged the taut grey-white strings of fate.
With a tug they pulled on the same strand and just as before it flexed and then slowly returned to its former position, oscillating gently over several seconds before finally coming to a rest.
"Yes. There it is, an instability in… "
Notes: No vote this time, didn't quite get to where I wanted to, the characters got a bit in the way here. Comments, critique, etc.
