In which Jerich enters a cave of crystal and finds something astonishing.
Part One: Crystal Halls
Jerich shambled through the crystal cave on sore feet, surrounded by shimmering lights and visions of the past.
When he’d first set foot in this cave, it had startled him to see old memories play out before him in the multifaceted walls of crystal glass. Amid the blends of purple, green, and brilliant white had been swimming sights of days gone by:
His life in Brambsburg as a child.
His father’s fingers stained blue, green, and red from his occupation in the dyeworks.
His first day on campaign, carrying a spear that seemed heavy in his hand.
The death of his troop mate Callandhi. He still carried the jovial man’s by-knife in his boot.
A reprieve at a monastery. The monks had had a strange humor, but were kind enough.
And then the day he refused to remember. Horrific for him, glorious for the war band.
He’d shied away when that memory had shown itself, preferring almost to return to his lord emptyhanded. But the man had commanded him to come up here, claiming he of all people could seize the power that lie therein, and Lord Welkind was not a man to be crossed.
So enter he did, averting his gaze every time that horrid day showed itself. Thankfully, the crystal tunnels seemed to respond to his desires, shifting from unpleasant times to fonder memories as he travelled through their glittering paths. After some time, he’d stopped noticing the visions altogether. It was as if the walls were merely an extended field for his mind’s eye, his imagination surrounding him rather than playing within him.
A distant ringing filled his ears, and every scrape and crunch of his footsteps echoed sharply through the crystalline halls, ultimately joining the quiet sound that enforced a solemn reverence in the cave, a reverence that his own noise seemed to violate.
He winced at every noise he made. Every feeling in his mind told him he was intruding on something sacred, long undisturbed by man.
The walls began to close in, bringing brittle stalagmites and stalactites into closer contact. A stray vision of the first girl he’d courted crossed his path in the countless sloping facets of the floor before him, and his helmeted head struck something with a loud crack.
He halted, looking up to bring his nose within a foot of a sharp stalactite. The tip had cracked off, going dull as it had fallen to the ground, but Jerich paid that no mind. Instead, he caught his breath upon seeing thousands of glittering points suspended from above, every one of them gleaming with a promise of swift death to any who disturbed them.
A deep breath in, then out in a cloud of mist. Slowly, gently, he wove around the looming stalactites, stepping as carefully as he could among the stalagmites thrusting up from below. Once the steel chape on his sword’s scabbard struck a stalagmite, making him flinch, but he pressed still forward, hand on the pommel. As he went, the floor rose and the ceiling sloped down, all while the walls closed in around him. Points from above and below began to vanish as they fused together and eventually crowded into little more than a crack, a thousand glittering teeth lining the only way forward.
He paused, staring ahead in ragged fatigue, wondering if the way back would still be any easier than the path forward.
A vision of that fell day loomed before him as if in answer, and he averted his eyes.
Looking backward, the path opened into thousands of giant, crystal lances spearing from above and below, all framing a cowled figure.
Jerich started, stumbling back into a stray stalagmite and cracking its point. Blood seeped from a scratch on his hand as embarrassment flushed his face. It had only been a memory of the monks. The hooded shade turned away down a corridor found only in memory, dusting as he went.
He turned back to the crack before him. The vision was gone, replaced by a spring day from his youth that danced among the glittering teeth of the way ahead.
Heaving a deep breath and trusting the thick linen jack he wore, he thrust himself forward through the gap. Time after time, his clothing caught on this or that point, and it was a chore to extract himself without causing an avalanche of tiny crystal daggers.
After some time of worming his way through the glittering knifepoints, the way began to widen ever so gradually. At that moment, as he forced himself forward with renewed vigor, his sword belt caught on a stalagmite, tugging him to a stop.
He turned as best he could in the enclosed space, feeling his belt constrict about his waist with the pressure. The strapping on his scabbard had become entangled around a robust trunk of crystal.
He tried pulling the thing over the crystal point, giving the belt some slack to get the weapon through, but it was stuck fast, held in place by the tunnel’s jaws and its own looping straps. After several minutes of finagling, he finally unbuckled himself, letting the weapon tumble into a cluster of stalagmites.
It was probably better off there for now. He’d retrieve it on his way back. Hopefully.
Turning forward, he weaved another step around a crystalline pillar, and slipped as the floor suddenly opened up before him.
The narrow tunnel became an open chamber, all glittering with purple-green light that blurred around him as he tumbled down through shards of crystal that crunched and crashed under him. An impact with a solid glassy spear erupting from the ground halted his downward descent, and he lay dazed a moment, his panting breath erupting in misted bursts.
The solemn ringing, stronger than before, filled his ears, and shimmering mirages of memories past swam above him in a distant, glowing ceiling. As his eyes refocused, he heaved himself up onto his heels.
The sight took his breath away. It was vast, far more than any king’s chamber, but beyond that, it radiated glory.
As his eyes traced the facets of the vaulted ceiling, he fancied some tendril of this cavern had caught a rainbow from the surface and channeled its light down, allowing it to rebound in luminous echoes among the stalactites above and the thrusting stalagmites below, lacing along the glassy mounds that encircled him. It was brilliant as the noonday sun shining through a thousand chandeliers, and for a moment, the visions fled as the glorious sight before him filled his heart and mind, even as the low, vibrant ringing overflowed his ears.
“By Stearis and Fallar,” he gasped, the gods’ names escaping his ecstatic tongue.
The ringing stopped, cut off by a crystalline clatter to his left.
He looked and started, falling back among the dun crystal shards of his descent.
There, staring at him, was a massive opal eye.
Next up is Part Two: Paraxyl
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