Chapter 112: Lore

The curved blade touched Rook's chest without breaking the skin.

The old man drew it upward, following the center of his body until the point reached his throat. Nothing opened beneath it. No blood rose, no cloth split, and the blade left no mark that Mara could see. Yet Rook's back arched slightly from the table as if the knife had passed through something buried much deeper than flesh.

The old man paused.

His eyes remained fixed upon a place somewhere beneath Rook's face. The concentration settling over him changed his entire appearance. The mild amusement disappeared. His shoulders lowered, his breathing slowed and the tremor in his damaged fingers became perfectly still.

"Keep your hands away from the blade," he said. "It will not cut your flesh, but that does not make it harmless. If he begins moving, hold his shoulders and nothing else. His body may react to whatever I find before his mind understands what is happening."

Mara moved closer to the head of the table. "What exactly are you cutting?"

"Nothing yet. First, I need to find where his memories stopped connecting to one another."

The old man turned the blade and pressed its curved edge against Rook's temple.

This time, Mara saw something respond.

A faint material gathered beneath the knife, translucent and almost impossible to separate from the air. It did not emerge from Rook's skull. It seemed to exist behind it, visible only where the blade disturbed its surface. Thin layers folded over one another beneath the old man's hand, each carrying brief traces of color.

A white room, a dark road...someone's fingers wrapped around a metal cup. An unfamiliar face turned away before Mara could recognize it.

The old man moved the knife deeper into that invisible substance.

Rook's skin remained untouched, but the memories beneath it parted around the blade. Some broke apart at once. Others stretched, clinging to the curved edge before slipping free. The old man changed the angle of his wrist by the smallest amount and followed one of those strands through Rook's head.

His brow tightened.

The knife travelled from Rook's temple to the center of his forehead. From there, it moved down across his left eye, along his cheek and beneath his jaw. Every motion appeared disconnected from the shape of the body in front of him. He was not tracing nerves, veins or bones.

He was following something only he could see.

Rook's right hand closed suddenly.

Mara caught his shoulders before the rest of his body could rise. His eyes remained shut, but his teeth pressed together hard enough for the muscles in his jaw to show.

The old man did not look up.

The knife shifted to Rook's chest, passed over the place where the Pale Abomination had crushed him and continued toward his abdomen. Pale fragments appeared beneath the edge. Some resembled broken images. Others carried sounds too faint to understand.

A scream escaped one of them.

It lasted less than a second before the blade moved on.

Mara nearly asked what he had found, but the question stopped before leaving her mouth. Sweat had begun gathering beneath the old man's hat. His breathing remained controlled, yet each movement of the knife had become slower and more deliberate. Even the feline had gone still behind him, its head lowered close to the floor as it watched.

Disturbing a man who was probing through someone's memories with a knife seemed like an especially poor decision.

Rook's body gradually relaxed beneath Mara's hands.

The old man moved the blade back toward his head and began again from another angle.

Mara waited.

Minutes passed without any visible change. The white flame in the hall continued burning, and the blue lanterns along the walls remained steady. Nothing entered the chamber. Nothing moved except the old man's hand and the occasional twitch passing through Rook's fingers.

"You can go now, he won't be moving much, the hard part is done, now the boring bit starts."

Mara stepped away from the table.

"Sure then... don't kill him."

"He's already dead."

"Well, don't kill him more..."

He snorted as he continued his work.

Mara crossed the room quietly and entered the main hall. The feline lifted its head as she passed. Its golden eyes followed her, though it made no attempt to leave the doorway.

Mara felt like a mouse being watched by a cat too full to bother hunting.

That did not make the teeth any smaller.

The creature's tail moved lazily across the stone. It was thick as the trunk of an old tree, and each sweep pushed a layer of dust aside. The motion appeared harmless until the tip struck an overturned metal cabinet and shifted it several inches without effort.

Mara kept walking.

Most of the chambers surrounding the hall remained sealed. Their doors carried markings she could not read, along with small carved symbols that may once have explained what lay behind them. Several had been damaged beyond opening. Others had fused with the walls after the Bastion's remembered structure deteriorated.

The rooms she could enter offered little.

One contained rows of collapsed shelves and furniture covered beneath so much dust that their original shapes had disappeared. Another held empty stone containers, each large enough to preserve a body. A third had a broad table surrounded by chairs fixed directly into the floor, though water had seeped through the ceiling and destroyed everything placed upon it.

Farther along the hall, Mara found a room in considerably better condition.

Its door stood partially open. The dust outside ended at its threshold, disturbed by footprints and by the repeated drag of the old man's cane.

Inside, records covered nearly every available surface.

Stone tablets leaned against the walls. Thin metal sheets had been arranged across several tables, their surfaces engraved with rows of tightly packed writing. Diagrams hung from cords near the ceiling, while larger slabs rested upon reinforced stands throughout the room.

Mara recognized the script immediately.

It was the same writing carved around the repaired Beacon of the Seventy-Second. The same lines appeared beneath the diagrams the old man claimed could restore other Bastions. Some symbols repeated often enough that she suspected they referred to light, memory or the foundation channels, but she could not understand the language itself.

The images required no translation.

The first slabs depicted an Underworld unlike anything Mara had seen since her arrival.

Cities spread across entire regions, their buildings rising around enormous Bastions. Roads connected them beneath lines of lanterns, while bridges crossed rivers wide enough to divide the land. In several images, the Skyraisers still carried structures high above the ground. Their tops supported platforms crowded with towers, homes and more Beacons burning beneath what appeared to be a bright sky.

Reapers walked those roads in long groups.

Their black clothing distinguished them from the souls travelling behind them. Some carried weapons, while others held lanterns or raised banners marked with the symbols of their Bastions. The souls followed in lines that stretched between cities, all moving toward a single destination.

A Gate.

It rose above every structure around it. Its doors stood open beneath a light so bright that the artist had carved away the surface of the slab, leaving smooth white stone where the glow should have been. Reapers gathered on either side while thousands of souls passed between them.

Mara moved closer.

The image of Yama did not appear beside this Gate. Either the carving had broken where she once stood, or the artist had never included her.

Another slab offered a different scene.

A vast horned entity stood within a region of absolute darkness. It was larger than the Bastions carved beneath it, though the scale may have been symbolic. Unlike the veiled woman upon the entrance, this figure carried no light. Its body had been left unfinished except for the long horns, the extended arm and several deep lines carved across its chest.

It pointed toward the cities.

The darkness around it felt like it moved.

Eyes filled the black surface. Arms reached from beneath one another, some human and others jointed in ways no living body could support. Mouths opened between membranes. Limbs, tails and broken faces spread across the land surrounding the horned figure.

Abominations.

Hundreds of them pushed forward in the direction of its hand.

Mara studied the figure's face, but the stone there had been deliberately scraped away. She could not tell whether it had ever possessed features.

The next collection of tablets showed war.

Reapers stood upon Bastion walls while Abominations climbed toward them. Beacons burned above armies gathered in roads and fields. Weapons cut through bodies built from remembered flesh, releasing pale shapes that returned toward the waiting lights.

Several images were badly damaged. Large sections had been broken away, leaving only fragments of battle visible.

One surviving panel caught Mara's attention.

A Reaper rode upon the back of an Abomination.

The creature resembled a long-limbed hound covered in overlapping plates. A saddle or harness had been fixed behind its shoulders, and the Reaper upon it carried a spear directed toward a group of larger monsters. Two more Reapers followed upon winged shapes whose bodies had been carved with less detail.

Mara looked toward the doorway.

The feline remained where she had left it. Only part of its head was visible beyond the wall, one golden eye fixed upon her.

She returned to the tablets.

Other images showed Reapers walking beside Abominations without fighting them.

One depicted a woman placing her hand upon the head of a small creature covered in uneven horns.

Another showed several Reapers feeding fragments into the mouths of beasts gathered around a Beacon.

There were no images explaining how they controlled them.

But this was proof enough, that Abominations could be tamed.