Chapter 92: Diagrams

"It wasn’t us," the Manager replied.

Rook’s attention returned to her.

She opened a drawer beneath the desk and removed several sheets of brittle material. They resembled paper from a distance, though their grey surfaces appeared closer to thinly cut stone. Cracks spread through their edges, and faded lines covered both sides.

"Someone reached the Seventy-Second before any of us," she said. "They left records inside the Beacon chamber."

She placed the sheets upon the desk.

Rook leaned closer. The writing had been formed from symbols he did not recognize. Parts had flaked away, leaving entire sections unreadable. Between the damaged passages were diagrams drawn with enough detail to survive the loss of their labels.

One depicted the lower structure of a Soul Beacon.

Concentric rings surrounded a central core. Lines extended from it through the Bastion’s foundation, connecting the tower to several smaller structures beneath the streets. Another diagram showed the same core split into sections, with unfamiliar measurements and symbols recorded beside each piece.

Mara stood to see over Rook’s shoulder. "Can you read any of it?"

"Almost none," the Manager said. "Some symbols resemble the oldest records kept by the Forty-Second, though the language is different. Without information and records from other older bastions I can’t understand most of this."

She turned over one of the sheets.

The diagram upon the opposite side showed several fractured sections of a Beacon being connected by thin black lines. One portion had been shaded more heavily than the others, with a series of arrows leading toward the core.

"I understand enough to know these concern repair," she continued. "Someone studied the damage inside this Beacon, replaced parts of its structure and restored enough of the core for it to produce light again."

Rook’s expression changed as he examined the drawings.

"That’s a major discovery."

"I’m aware."

"No, I don’t think you are."

The Manager looked up sharply.

Rook tapped one finger beside the diagram. "Every surviving Bastion would fight to possess this. Some would trade entire territories for it. Others would kill everyone here and bury the Seventy-Second again just to keep the knowledge from spreading."

Frederick studied the records from the opposite side of the desk. "If dead Beacons can be restored, the destroyed routes between Bastions could be reopened."

"More than the routes," Rook said. "The darkness could be pushed back. Reapers could travel without spending half their time avoiding whatever lives between patches of light. Wandering souls would have safer roads toward Yama, wherever the Gate decides to appear."

"Then why would bastions try and destroy this?"

"Not all of them serve Yama and the Brand," Rook said. He then was almost about to add something, looked at Mara but decided not to.

Mara would frown for a bit, but decides not to ask, especially since the rogue reapers they met back at Eighty-Six were not very fond of reapers from lit bastions.

Mara looked through the office window. Pale light continued spilling from the damaged tower across the underground settlement.

"How many abandoned Bastions are there?"

"No one knows," Vanessa replied. "Tens, hundreds, the highest Number I’m aware of was eight hundred thirty three."

"I’ve seen one in the nine hundred, only the bastion’s number though... no structure." Rook said.

This gave everyone pause, after all, Rook was the oldest one here.

"And all of them could be lit again?" Mara asked.

"If the repair works upon other Beacons," Frederick said.

Rook gathered the fragile sheets carefully. "This changes the entire Underworld."

"That is why I haven’t pushed harder to leave," the Manager replied. "I need to find whoever repaired it."

"Who was here when you arrived?"

"More than thirty Reapers and close to a hundred wandering souls. Some had lived inside the Seventy-Second for months. Others were driven here shortly before my group arrived."

"None saw the repairer?"

"I questioned everyone. The Beacon was already active when the earliest group entered the cavern. The records were lying inside the chamber, and whoever wrote them had taken every tool used for the work."

Frederick lifted one of the stone sheets toward the light. "They left the instructions."

"Fragments of them. Half the diagrams refer to parts we haven’t found, and the remaining text may contain warnings we cannot read. I won’t allow anyone to dismantle the Beacon to test incomplete instructions."

Rook returned the records to the desk. "Whoever repaired it could still be here."

"We searched every building and every passage we could reach."

"And found nothing?"

"Nothing human."

Mara looked between them. "There’s another problem."

Rook already knew what she meant. He turned toward the map upon the wall, where the Seventy-Second occupied a cavern beneath the Dark Hollow Road.

"You said this Bastion was abandoned," Mara continued. "Rook said it wasn’t supposed to be in this region."

"It isn’t," the Manager said.

Frederick frowned. "What do you mean?"

"The Seventy-Second originally stood south of the Eleventh, closer to the Eighty-Second. Every surviving route record places it beyond the Silent Sea, far from the Forty-Second and farther from the Dark Hollow Road."

Mara stared at her. "Then how are we standing inside it?"

"That is another question I cannot answer."

"Can Bastions move?"

Vanessa rested both arms against the back of her chair. "I’ve never heard of one moving."

"You sounded uncertain."

"Because we’re inside one that apparently did."

Rook shook his head. "Bastions have disappeared before. The Seventeenth vanished with everyone inside it, and no one found the ruins. That doesn’t mean it moved. The ground could have swallowed it, or something could have destroyed it without leaving enough to recognize."

"The Seventy-Second is intact," Frederick said. "Most of it, at least."

"And it crossed the sea," Mara added.

No one offered an explanation.

Rook had travelled through enough of the Underworld to know that roads shifted and the Silent Sea carried travelers toward destinations that refused to remain still. Entire regions changed after powerful Abominations claimed them. A Bastion was different. Its foundation connected to the Soul Beacon, and the Beacon anchored remembered space around itself. Everything built within its light relied upon that stability.

Moving one should have been impossible.

Repairing a dead Beacon should have been impossible as well.

The pale glow outside the window made both arguments difficult to maintain.