Completed Hanging Upside Down

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen, the truth unbeknownst to her, laughed at this. "All the better should those brutes think as such! Why, we'd already finished our mission. We need only to return to the Academy, not tangle unnecessarily with a rogue band of ogres."

The light of her torch swam across the stone of the underground, coming to reveal a unique door on the left in its glow.

"But I have faith that Aionus—"

And then Kristen saw it, that door. She stopped. Turned and looked.

"—will guide us."

The paint was faded by age, yet still it was a discernible shade of teal. It was a heavy looking door, wood reinforced with metal, and the latch looked to be a formidable contraption. Upon the door as well was a word, archaic in its spelling, for it was a word in older Common. Yet even with this strange arrangement of characters, the word was still clear to at least Kristen's eyes.

Library.

"Delaney," she said. "Could you help me with the door? I...I should like to explore what waits beyond."

Delaney Lennox

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney handed the torch to Kristen and waved her closer so she could look at the latch that locked the door that held the secrets of the library safely behind it. It was easy enough and she let a tendril slip from her fingers into the lock.

A few moments later, there was a click and the locking mechanism dropped to the stone floor. Delaney smiled at Kristen and pushed the door to the library open carefully.

"My lady," she said as she stepped aside to let the Noble enter first.

---

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen smiled. Couldn't help it. In the seemingly interminable first year of the Academy, coming to feel so far from home and everything she knew, being addressed as "my lady" was one of those artifacts of a life far gone in the past. To be called so again was delightful, and rare were the occasions for it.

"Thank you, Delaney."

Kristen took her first few steps into the Library cautiously, as if the ground itself might cave in or there might be some fiend lurking in the darkness awaiting for just this moment to introduce itself. No such thing happened. Instead, there came the musty smell of old paper, of air that had been stagnant for many years. Her nose wrinkled a bit at this, but she pressed on.

The light of her torch revealed rows of shelves, some vacated completely, some with books sparsely and haphazardly laid out on them, a few—curiously—in perfect arrangement still. The Library was no grand chamber, not even all that much bigger from any of the other rooms they had passed by in the underground.

And, toward the back center of the room, a lectern stood. A gleam of metal reflecting the torch's light coming from atop it.

With a glance to Delaney, Kristen proceeded forward. She came around the lectern, standing behind it now as a priestess might just before delivering the word of her gods. Upon the shelf of the lectern, a book. Not just any tome either, by the look of it. Metal adorned its cover, its corners, and it was even sealed shut with a latch that seemed to require a key. A shield, the symbol of Aionus, was emblazoned on the tome's face.

Kristen's touched the book's cover, letting her hand glide down it. "This is...remarkable." And then to Delaney, "Maybe the key is still here? Somewhere?"

Delaney Lennox

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney was going to suggest that her shadows could open the lock but she felt something strange for the first time in her life. Her shadows shuddered. They were afraid. They would not touch that lock or that book. Her brow quirked at the internal dialogue that the darkness was having with her.

After so many years, she had a weakness for her power. Faith.

It made sense now why they were leery of her getting close to Kristen. It was not just the fact that she was a nicer, caring person...it was the fact that Kristen had the ability to bring Delaney to an actual god.

"Kris..." Her voice faltered as the shadows tried to keep her from talking but she still had some control. She laughed out a truly delighted laugh at this realization and she clapped her hands once in delight. "My darkness is afraid of Aionus! I was going to offer to open the lock but the darkness is terrifi..."

Her voice cut off and she just started to laugh again. The secret was out and the shadows were pissed off now.

---

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Delaney's ringing laugh was an odd sound in the library, a place whose blandness and dust-covered ancientness seemed a poor prompt for mirth. Certainly it was odd to Kristen. Her initial thought: Oh, perhaps my eyes of have misjudged the latch on the book, and it needs no key at all. Silly me! That must be it.

Then Delaney started to explain.

And Kristen's heart sank.

Delaney's shadows, those things which spoke to her and those things which possessed her and those things which were only kept at bay by her willpower, were afraid. Terrified, even. Terrified of Aionus, the Holy Sentinel.

(what were they, these shadows? were they otherworldly thralls of the Dark Ones, here to enact their foul bidding upon Arethil? was that why they feared Aionus so, he who had banished them aeons ago?)

Kristen, without even thinking of it, took a cautionary step back. "D-Delaney? Are you...are you well?"

* * * * *​

And, to make matters worse, outside the Library in the underground corridor of the Keep, there was the soft and stealthy patter of sneaking footsteps.

Goblins. Slaves to the ogres, sent down into the Keep to try to flush the two humans out. A dozen of them, meagerly armed, but they didn't need to kill the two magic-women, no. Just flush them out. They were promised a cut of meat if they did, and the goblins were all too eager for it.

And ahead, down the corridor, they finally saw some light spilling out into the hall.

Delaney Lennox

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney was still laughing because she couldn't speak. The shadows were keeping her from saying anymore about their - her - weakness. Faith, prayer, gods...the light and the good...they did not like either of those things.

"Yes, yes, sorry! I have just never found something that they are scared of..." She finally managed to get out because her tendrils had skittered off into the darkness and away from the master for a moment or two.

The darkness roiled up her body again and she tensed as if she had just received some bad news.

"Goblins are coming," Delaney said in whisper now.

---

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Whatever uncertainties Kristen had about Delaney's (mirthful? unhinged?) laughing outburst had for the sake of necessity to be put on hold. Goblins! The ogres couldn't fit down into the confines of the Keep themselves, and so they had apparently sent accomplices.

Kristen snatched up the venerable tome from the lectern right as Delaney's shadows scouted out one of the very exits they had been hoping for. The library so happened to be a room designed for holding out, but it also featured one a secret escape tunnel, a false wall behind one of the heavy bookshelves. It led down to a tight, cramped tunnel network, there being a few other such escape tunnels throughout the Keep's underground. This network all funneled to a single tunnel which spilled out some distance from Sentinel's Home, in a grove with a small pond shielded by a rocky ridge. The hidden door hadn't been opened for decades, and dirt and grass tumbled off of it with the motion.

They escaped! Excellent! Despite the incident in the library, Kristen was relieved and rejoiced with Delaney all the same.

And, the best news, was that their exploration had produced something of potentially great value: the tome for Kristen to study, to attempt finding a way to unlock its latch and delve into the Celestialist knowledge contained therein.

Delaney Lennox