Light Sources, Dark Visions
Glig 13:3
It was the biggest lock Glig had ever seen.
Layers of tightly fitted gear work overlapped inside the heavy bronze doors. The front of the door was solid, but the back was open, the pins and rods and other mechanisms proudly displayed to anyone on the inside of the vault. It was so complex Glig could barely comprehend it. He vaguely understood how normal locks worked, but this was different. Among the tumblers and bolts were strange runes, glass filaments, and other things that Glig didn’t understand at all.
“Abjuration, I think.” Mahani said, studying the lock.
“Breep?” asked Glig. He hadn’t heard that word since his mother’s magic lessons.
“You know, protection magic. This is an arcane lock. When the key is turned, these plates rotate. Like this. Wait.” She scratched her head, clearly not understanding the locking mechanism any better than Glig. “Well, somehow. But when they do, these runes on the plates line up to form a completed abjuration spell.” She traced her fingers on the runes. “A barrier of some kind. Oh, right. Of course.” She knelt down and looked closely at the stone of the doorway, “See, these bricks have silver dust in them. I bet every brick in this place does.”
Glig knelt down beside her in the doorway. The bricks sparkled like river rocks. “Breep?”
“Exactly. When the door is locked, the entire structure is magically warded. The walls become indestructible. No one can break down the door, or tunnel in, or anything.” She paused, looking at the glass filaments. “Huh. These should be lit up though. Maybe they aren’t getting power?”
Glig filled with dread. The godstones. Chael had said this place was powered by godstones. Mahani had said that godstones were valuable and that Sal might have been on her way here to steal them. But now they were pretty sure Sal had already been here, and was on her back home when she was killed.
“Breep.”
“What? No. Glig. If Sal had stolen the godstones then you would have found them on her when you searched her body, right?”
Glig spun through the terrible memory. Blood everywhere. His hands shaking as he looked over his shoulder for returning giants, desperately digging through the carnage for something, anything that could help him get home.
“Breep?”
Mahani was shaking her head before he had finished. “No. No way. People like Sal don’t sell godstones. They sell other things so that they can buy godstones. There is nothing more valuable to a spellcaster than a godstone. If she didn’t have them on her, then she didn’t take them. And if she didn’t take them, then they are probably still here. Okay? You can’t worry yet. We don’t know anything until we go down into this place and look. Right?”
Glig looked down the dark stairs. “Breep.”
“Good. The lock doesn’t tell us anything.” Mahani picked up her pack, “Sal could have just broken it when she came through. I don’t know why, but, you know.”
Glig looked at the cold, grey glass. Why would Sal do any of the terrible things she did? He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help thinking that Sal had done all this to him purposely. That she had planned to bring him here all along. That she had prepared for his arrival by coming here to this vault for the sole purpose of destroying what might be his only way back. He stared at that dead lock and imagined the dead portal they were going to find, Sal’s dead face smirking at him.
Mahani’s glove started glowing and Glig jumped.
“Don’t worry,” said Mahani, seeing his look, “Nothing’s wrong. I just can’t see in the dark like you can, remember? Well, without star thistle and a hog’s tooth I can’t.”
Glig had almost forgotten. He had been amazed to learn that Materians, for all their advancements, were half blind. Or rather, blind half the time. They could see fine in the day, but at night, or while hidden away from the sun, they could barely see at all. Even more amazing to Glig were the complex and often ingenious ways they compensated for this disability. Hooded lanterns. Street lamps. An entire lighting industry. There were people whose entire job was making candles. But now Glig was watching Mahani conjure the most elaborate work-around yet.
Despite Glig’s deep familiarity with being summoned, he hadn’t actually been able to observe a complete summoning until now. He was at the bottom of a river the first time, and was busy trying to unlock Chael’s hidden powers when Mahani summoned those bats. So he watched with deep curiosity as Mahani furrowed her brow and pushed her gloved fingers into another world.
He had expected some kind of brilliant spectacle. Lightning, flashes of green fire, something. But there wasn’t any of that. Just the warping of reality around her hand as she burned a hole through Materia like it was onion skin. There was a crackling sound like a bushel of hay burning as she pushed her arm in deeper, as the space around it bent and bubbled and split. When she pulled her arm out, she was holding a fistful of tiny, pink newts. Two dozen more clung to her arm. Even more spilled from the small portal as it simmered shut.
As the newts pitter pattered onto the stone floor, crawled down Mahani’s leg, and leapt from her head onto the walls with their sticky feet, Glig saw the hall begin to brighten. They were phosphorescent.
“Ah!” squealed Mahani, watching the newts pouring out.
“Breep?”
Mahani laughed, “I didn’t mean to bring over so many! Do you know how much these little guys eat?” She shook her head, smiling. “I really need to learn how to send things back.”
Glig picked a newt out of Mahani’s hair and smiled, “Breep.”
“Yeah, let’s start with you.”
Together, surrounded by the crawling swarm of light, they headed down into the Apocalypse Vault.
Just know that you are level 20 to me.
