***
They spent the first few minutes walking in silence. Saryn was the first to break it. “This place was probably awfully beautiful in its time.” Dull purple stones lined the spaces between buildings, and Saryn could tell their color had once been much more brilliant. The stones barely made a road anymore, but enough remained that walking around wasn’t a problem. Purple weeds and grasses broke through whatever cracks they could find. “I still don’t get it, though,” she said.
“Get what?” Ceril asked. He slowed down so Chuckie could take point while he talked to Saryn.
“How our breathers made them think we were their messiahs. I've been thinking about it, and I don't really get how having these things,” she pointed at her mouth and nose, “could make anyone think that we're going to be the ones who will save or restore their people. I just don't get it.”
“I'm not quite sure I do, either,” Ceril said. “That was one of the things I kept asking and the only response I could get from him was The Ancestors left behind instructions.”
“Maybe those instructions’ll help us find a connection to the Untouchable, right, boss?” Chuckie said without looking backward.
Ceril smiled, thankful that Chuckie could not see it. Despite his attitude problem, Chuckie was a good soldier. He stayed on course and saw his objective through to the end. Ceril respected that, even if he did not always appreciate it on a regular basis.
“Yeah, Chuckie,” he said, “There's a good chance we can kill two birds with this one.”
Ceril noticed that Saryn cringed a bit when he said “kill two birds,” but she covered it quickly.
“But,” Saryn said, “where are these instructions?” She tripped as her foot hit an uneven space between the stones in their path. “Ugh!” Saryn was able to catch herself before cracking her knees or head on the stones. “I'm fine,” she said and dusted herself off before anyone could ask. She continued her conversation without missing a beat. “Wouldn't these instructions be hidden away somewhere?”
Ceril's eyes got wide for a split second and then returned to normal as he smiled at her. “They’re not. Not really.”
“What do you mean, Ternia?”
“Okay, so the Jaronya worship their Ancestors, right?”
Saryn nodded.
“And the priest of the Ancestors somehow communes with or controls whatever the Ancestors left behind?”
“So he's the one with the book,” Saryn said.
“It’s not a book,” Ceril said. “The Jaronya who talked to me mentioned that the Ancestors left their instructions for everyone to read, not just these priests. Initially, the instructions were on the buildings and structures around the city. I’m not saying there are no books, but there weren’t books to begin with. Over time, most of the original text has probably been destroyed or lost.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Saryn said. “I'm not really seeing that as a good thing for us, though.”
“It's not,” Ceril continued, “in general. But from what the Jaronya told me, the Ancestors were the kind of builders and educators who wanted information prominent at all times, not just when someone felt like reading it privately.”
Chuckie looked back over his shoulder and said, “So you're saying that these Ancestors, instead of writing books or creating data feeds, just took whatever they had to say and then plastered it all over the place? Like advertisements?”
“Very similar, yes,” Ceril said. “Though I don’t think they were advertisements exactly. Carving messages on monuments or buildings isn’t unheard of on Erlon. I mean, there are many places in Yagh and Ferran that did it until very recently. If this civilization was once connected to Erlon, those instructions really are going to hold the key to our mission. That’s where we’ll find mentions of the Untouchable, if there are any.”
“What makes you think that? Why don’t we just wait until we see this priest and ask him about it?” asked Chuckie.
“The major part of the research I’ve done for years was figuring out how Ferran, Yagh, Bester, and Ternia were connected through myth. You see, those particular countries are unique on Erlon in that they all have Instancing capabilities and are considered civilized. The uncivilized parts of Erlon don’t have Instance portals anywhere near them.”
“So what?”
“I’m getting to that, Chuckie. What’s even more interesting, is that each of those countries has legends and stories about heroes and gods with different names. What really struck me is that all those heroes, all those gods, did kind of the same stuff. This one brought a guy back from the dead, that one killed a dragon with nothing but his bare hands.”
“Again, I ask, so what?”
“The more I traced them down, I realized that the stories that were similar all originated at roughly the same time within each culture, give or take a few hundred years. More than that,” Ceril continued, “the names of the characters in these myths were vaguely similar—not exact, but similar. The only ones that traced through mostly unchanged were technomage names.”
“Like Vennar,” Saryn said.
Just hearing the name made Ceril’s shoulders tense up. He had not been able to deal with what Roman and Bryt had told him about his grandfather. Not yet. Gramps of all people was a Charon—an ancient Charon—who had stories and myths written about him in every single place Ceril had studied so far. Damien Vennar, Ceril thought. It just sounded so wrong.
“Just like Vennar,” Ceril said. “He’s probably the most frequently mentioned person in the myths, actually. Lots of stories in Yagh talk about him like he’s a villain—”
“I know,” Saryn said. “I grew up with them.”
“—but a lot of them from Ferran or Ternia have him being a pretty decent guy. Bester’s legends don’t mention him much, actually.”
“What does all this have to do with us, though, boss?”
“I’m getting there, Chuckie. Basically, you can infer that all the civilizations on Erlon were, at some point in the past, much more similar than they are today. They wouldn’t be able to have stories and myths that parallel otherwise. If we can find some of the myths from Jaronya, that connection might be here, too. We know that they know about Charons—they have Flameblades, after all. So if they have something written about the Charons, or about,” he swallowed, “Vennar or one of the other technomages, there’s a good chance we’ll find something written about the Untouchable, too. I mean, the guy responsible for all the violence on Erlon for the past few years appears to be playing off the old stories and legends.”
“What if the old Untouchable were from here?” Saryn asked. “What if he were one of these Ancestors?”
Ceril thought about it, thought about Cernt Academy. “It makes sense,” he said. “We have no idea how long this Instance has been around, and we know even less about the Untouchable, the old one or the…terrorist one…”
“You okay, boss?” Chuckie asked.
“Yeah,” Ceril said. He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry about that. Just thinking about something. Look, there’s no guarantee this priest of the Ancestors is going to cooperate with us—”
“Then we take the books or whatever from him when we see him!”
“No, Chuckie. We don't,” Ceril said. “We ask him if we can see the instructions and explain our mission.”
Saryn frowned. “He's not going to let you see them, you know.”
“Why not?” Chuckie asked.
“Why would he?” Saryn countered. “If he's built a life on being the only person with enough knowledge and favor to be able to read and interpret them, there's no way he's going to give that up.”
“Even if he thinks we're the messiahs?” Chuckie said.
“Especially then. If we’re seen as their messiahs, it means he loses the power he's held over the people for so long. He would be our servant, literally, instead of our servant in an abstract sense.”
“I think we're going to have a bad time these next few days,” Ceril
said, and he ran his fingers through his hair.
“You really have all this figured out, don't you, boss?” Chuckie said.
“Okay, Ternia, let’s say that you somehow pry these instructions from the priest’s purple fingers. You get your hands on them, your eyes on them, whatever.”
“Okay.”
“Can you read them?” Saryn asked.
Ceril kept walking and bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he finally said, not looking at either Chuckie or Saryn. “I doubt it.”
“Then why do you even want to find it?” Chuckie asked.
“Because I have hope that the language it’s written in will be based on something I've seen before.”
“You have hope?” Chuckie sneered.
“Yes, Chuckie, I do,” Ceril said, doing his best to keep his voice as calm as possible, which was an easier task to think about doing than actually following through with when dealing with Chuckie. “Roman and the other professors would not have sent us to make connections between the Instances if there were no connections to be made.”
Chuckie harrumphed. “We'll see.”
“Yes, we will,” Ceril said. “I'd like to have something to be able to defend ourselves with before we go before their leader, and we have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Should we split up?” Saryn suggested.
“No, absolutely not. We’re already split without Harlo and Swinton, and I’m not taking any more chances. I'm pretty sure we're safe for the moment, but I would rather we don't take any unnecessary risks. And since they took our weapons…”
“They didn't take our nanites, though. We can still Conjure,” Chuckie said.
“Maybe. It depends. I can’t summon my Flameblade, but that’s a little different. And besides, Conjuring is what got us in this mess to begin with. We need the breathers still, but let's try not to Conjure anything else that might draw undue attention. And using nanotech to blast one of them out of the sky is probably a bad way to plead our case that we're not here to hurt anyone.”
“Point taken,” Chuckie said.
Saryn said, “Have any idea where to start, Ternia?”
“Yeah, I do. The angel I was talking to earlier pointed out an obelisk to me. He made it out like some of these instructions were written on it, but that they were reserved for the priest. I say that’s our best bet to start.”
“Now you tell us,” Chuckie said. “Lead the way, boss.” He bowed slightly in deferment.
Ceril glared at him. It wasn’t worth the wasted time.
Saryn just nodded and fell into step beside Chuckie.