Chapter 61: Ch.56: Wrong Passglyph!

“We lived alongside them, you know. At least my clan patriarch did. He saw the folly of their ways; of a people who grew too proud, reaching towards the sun like the sprout of a plant's first greens. But their hubris was their undoing. Unfettered, they grew too fast, with no reservations for the damage they were doing to the land. They were warned but, success after success in their magitech blinded them. However, there is a time when even a gambler of fates must cede a loss to the whims of nature. And to them, devastation came so fast they didn’t even see it coming. We…our bloodlines survived merely because we lived beneath the ground; some of them anyway, bless Eog’s Great Beard. As a seeker then, it is my sworn oath to sniff out their artefacts, from their dust blown ruins, beneath the sea of sands or in the Nether damned trap rigged contraptions they call dungeons. The Dreimarch exists for the sole purpose that no civilization would use such outrageous magics and magitech to bring about the end of a people “-Gindalvan Ruinwend, Dwarven Antecessor Archeologist and Seeker of the Dreimarch.

---

Arthur's stomach lurched as the sensation of inertia registered in his sudden teleportation. He stamped down the feeling of bile crawling up his throat as his head swam with vertigo—after all this time, translocation magic was something he hadn't gotten used to.

Unlike the last time however, there was no stumbling around in the dark; his exit point was lit from rune workings fading away beneath him and the chromastone shining in the vestibule he’d arrived in.

But that in and of itself, was already cause for alarm. For a moment, he held his breath thinking something had definitely gone sideways as he brandished his magelock pistol and threw up [Gust Shield] expecting what? Murderholes spitting magic at him?

On second thought that would have defeated safely translocating him just to kill him off. He could have just easily been dropped into a pitfall of spikes; or been disintegrated into nothing by a literal [Disintegrate Ray] spell which would have cost just about the same amount of mana. The evidence on the latter had been right outside the gate for all to see.

‘Guess that is what the guild girl tried to warn me about,’ Arthur sighed, his awareness panning out. Magically, his surroundings were almost too calm. There was no build up of spell nor any rune workings flaring in his mana sense.

Nonetheless, the question that dogged Arthur was how the translocation array had been in working condition for so long. While the chromastones were low cost and could subsist on ambient mana, translocation arrays needed a stable mana source. That went doubly so for the artifices at the gate, as well as the wards that covered the estate. Arthur had the answer to that query, or so he thought—

“ Yea, definitely a magier core. I don’t see his building standing right here if the Mage Guild were to know about a leyline,” Arthur muttered. He was almost breathless, partly out of expectation and because of the stale air inside the vestibule.

Thirty heartbeats, forty five, sixty, seventy five, a par passed with nothing jumping at him. A relief for him because the space was not large to manoeuvre if evasion was needed. Though smaller, it was similar to the Faeriegate’s platform at Elder Volemhir’s Grove with the exception that two more statues of the oriental mythical beast were staring him down on either side. The aisle was clear―

‘Arthur!’ a voice echoed in his head.

‘Gah! Nora, don’t scare me like that,’Arthur started. He never realised how strung up he’d been.

‘Thank the Primals you’re alive,’ Nora transmitted, relief palpable in the link.

‘Of course,’ Arthur replied, stepping down. ‘ Would you have expected otherwise? What is going on out there?’

‘Arthur Sturm Löwenmaul! Do not get snarky with me…for a moment there I thought ―never mind that. The others well…’ she chuckled mirthlessly. ‘ Only Margaery and the centaur remained behind; the others left in fright,’

‘Oh,’ Arthur thought. He checked the magazine tubes for the magelock pistol, grumbling about his lack of enchanted munitions as he advanced past the aisle. As he passed beneath the perceived gaze of the guardian statues, his skin prickled as if their stony indifferent facades were watching him. Yet, he couldn't shake the fact that he knew them from somewhere.

“Well, that just about confirms it,” Arthur whispered under his breath as wrestled with the feeling of what he would find.

‘Did you say something Arthur?’ Nora put across.

‘Sorry about that Nora, I must’ve let my thoughts stray into the telecast again,’ Arthur sent.

‘You do not feel like yourself… what’s happening? And I can’t seem to [Shadow Walk] past the wards either.’

‘It is fine, I’ll disable the wards from the inside. Just…give me some time’ Arthur trailed off. It was there, about to roll off the tip of his tongue but he dared not give voice to it for fear that he was dreaming.

Warmth began to blossom behind his eyes as he saw the ornate frieze of an oriental staple he wouldn’t have mistaken for anything else. Life-like carvings of bamboo, pine and free flowing depictions of dancers with fans, parasols and billowing clothing flowing in unseen wind. Arthur didn’t realise he’d come to stop until Nora resignedly sent another hail.

‘I will be waiting,’ Nora telecast as the link went silent.

“ Just who are you, Ascal Cornieva?” Arthur sighed, as looking down the hallway.

---

 

The interior of the house had been modelled after sylvani ildsteds; that much could be seen from the tambour doors, lunette vaulted ceilings and the almost organic motif of rounded off corners and oblong rooms. And rather than being built from the ground up it seemed to have been incorporated into the manor style of the building through renovations.

Most disconcertingly, the manor was clean, and the pygmy frost pines that decked the hallways looked to have been trimmed and watered. The air had a pine needle smell because of them.

The chromastone on the branch-like chandeliers responded to his prompts and Arthur was almost inclined to think that the house had a hearth spirit. However, he had no inkling of how the spirits manifested and put it out of his mind. First he had to turn down the wardstones to let Nora in.

‘Right,’ Arthur muttered, retrieving the keystone made of agate. It could ‘ping’ with the wardstone via some sort of magical resonance Arthur blinked, letting [Draconic Sight] fade in so he could see where the ethereal string led.

What he was not prepared for were the questing tendrils running inside the walls. The mana was not wisping in the air as it should, in fact, he’d barely felt it. It was as though it had been intentionally confined.

‘For what? Efficiency?’ Arthur asked no one in particular. Unfortunately, the range of his skill did not allow him to see how deep it went. It seemed to disappear somewhere at the centre of the building. With the subdued mana in the air meant he could see the gossamer trail of dashes blinking dowards the wardstone akin to chaser lights.

At his entrance, he'd arrived through the main foyer from the basement and briefly peeked into the living room and what he thought to be a billiards room. He found both rather austere except for the barest furnishings typical of a sylvani ildsted. Either its owner had been a minimalist or their unseen caretaker was a perfectionist.

The keystone’s periodic pulses led him back to the foyer where a butterfly staircase led the first floor above. In the middle of the two wings of ascent was a double door of iron wood that was so nondescript that Arthur had missed it on his way in. The door gave easily to the pull of its flushed handle and Arthur stepped into a marvel.

Inside was a library of wall to ceiling shelves of books spiralling three levels. The library ceiling was a mural of glass that depicted constellations and nebula careening across the sky.

Closer to the first level were scroll wheels holding several tabs of open scrolls, maps and other large sheaves of parchment. There was a faux hearth, crackling with illusion enchantments, cornered by a chaise and a lazy couch. Arthur let out a whistle of admiration; if no other room could beat it, the library was the most opulent room by far.

Nonetheless, even amidst the thrumming enchantments safeguarding the books, the keystone’s link pulsed every brighter as it led to the first level of the library. It was there that Arthur found a closed off room, also obscured no less than a panel of ironwood that opened like one of those secret entrances he’d seen in a film one time.

Behind it was a private study and like the rooms he’d seen before, everything had been kept in order; untouched by time and dust like its owner had never left. There he found one of the sylvani tambour doors that led to an alcove. Behind it was an ornate contraption of glass and brass. Fretwork of oriental origin ensconcing the thing like the largest decorative jar.

The folding grille slid to the side via a series of clockwork gears and revealed the space within. Arthur eyed the levitator sceptically, muttering about being too trusting of a sentient house that had probably killed people but stepped in anyway. There were three foci on the levitator, and one of which resonated with the keystone.

Counting from the top most floor, Arthur thought that it was superfluous to have a levitator with a meagre three floors. However he was unsurprised when the levitator took him not up but down into the bowels of the manor. The intensity of the mana conduits in the walls became a full blown mycelial network of electrical blue.

It must have taken a few heartbeats or the levitator was agonisingly slow. Perhaps the amber foci meant express passage but Arthur would find out because the levitator stopped at another vestibule. Not very keen on disembarking unprepared, Arthur had his magelock pistol at the ready.

Where the levitator came to a stop descended a small case of stairs. A ramp abutted the stairs, perhaps used for trolleying things into and out of whichever room required a full vault door in the shape of a yin and yang symbol.

“ And that confirms it, Ascal Cornieva changed one, or two of his names,” Arthur murmured. He had theorised that Ascal could have been an Earther like him or from other multiverse, with an eerily similar Earth. However long he’d been around he’d obviously entrenched himself on Eryth to the point of having a long running association with Elder Volemhir.

‘Now that right there, explains things,’ Arthur thought. ‘The Elder was indifferent, about Earth. No doubt, he’d quizzed the guy for whatever he needed already. Well, hindsight is 20/20’ he shook his head with chagrin. The dissenting echoes that told him it was only wishful thinking had long been drowned out and now, the moment that cemented it all was at hand.

Coming to a stop, Arthur looked up at the vault’s doorway. Then he looked at the passage behind him and the ceiling above with wonder, burning his passage into memory. There was no coming back from whichever encounter awaited on the other side of the vault.

And as though intuiting his anticipation, the keystone in his arm palm grew warmer, itching to be used. Wary of traps, he pulsed [Diagnostics] on the door. He got no feedback whatsoever; the door was heavily obfuscated and warded; he could recognise sylvani handiwork when he saw it. That said, the lack of an accompanying foci with which to interact with left him at an impasse.

‘Petrified enchanted wood. The sylvani helped him set this up. But how am I supposed to use this?’ Arthur thought of scrutinising the smoothened disk of the agate keystone. But just as he was about to run [Diagnostics] on it, the keystone buzzed and wrenched itself out of his palm. Arthur recoiled, swearing as the keystone flew into the black part of yin―and disappeared.

‘Frag, an illusion. There goes the keysto―' he swallowed the rest of his expletives as the sounds of things whirring, grinding and hissing echoed through the passageway. The sound eerily reminded him of the time he’d worked with hydro-mechanical circuits.

“ Magic and hydraulics!” Arthur exclaimed as the two halves parted with a pneumatic sigh. The air that billowed from the entrance was cold and literally misted forcing him to flex a bit of [Aer Mastery] to clear the way. He stepped into the threshold and came to a stop at the landing.

Before him, a room that looked like someone had tried to mesh a tech mogul’s research lab with a hobbyist's workshop. With the amount of arcanery thrown in, it might as well have been a mad wizard’s dream lair.

Arthur gawked as the chromastones lit up, laying bare the warehouse-sized cavern that could easily contest with the one back at Sturms Keep. Judging, from the scoria-like brick associated with old dungeons and ruinsm it seemed to have been an old structure that had to have existed before the manor was even built. It had been quite a while since the workshop had been used but an exotic smell of alchemical substances, metal and wood suffused the cavern.

Evidently, one side was devoted to alchemy and sported racks of vials, alembics, retorts and even a whole distillation tower. Inside oily jars were crystalline eyeballs and other arcane materials of monsters and plants. There was a glass vat of an amorphous blob of see-through jelly in another set up while a whole pipe of water protruded from the ground and flowed into the walls.

The rune crafter's station had articulated magnifying mirrors and looks like a jeweller's workstation. It had every tool for delicate gem setting and rune etching― few he’d come across while others he’d yet to encounter.

Barrels of what were clearly spent mana crystals and enchanted reagents were locked behind a warded glass to prevent thaumic reactions or the magic from leaching.

After that was, not surprisingly, a full stocked forge. There were two anvils, a multifarious selection of hammers and all sorts of tools a smith would use. Adjacent to said section was a rack of exotic weapons and armour of oriental make. Katanas, Odachis and a set of samurai armour with the horned helmet and mask, seemed to be on prominent display.

‘ By the Blue! Guy went ham as though crafting is going out of fashion,' Arthur marvelled as he walked among the workstations. Though he had reservations about intruding in someone's manor he was beside himself with excitement at all the enchanted knicknacks.

As he was passing through the woodworking and pottery section, all the cheer suddenly went out of him . A palpable sense of unease gripped him as he laid his eyes on the covered silhouettes that lay on enchanted island tables. They were distinctly humanoid in shape and his first thought was that they were persons who'd dared the manor's wards and met a less…pleasant end.

Still, that left the question of who had gone through the effort of putting them there in the first place. It was already known that Ascal, if at all that was his name, had been missing for close to a quarter of a century—

‘Don’t bodies still stink after a while?’ Arthur swallowed dryly, suddenly wary that someone or something was inside the manor with him.. Maybe that explained the cool air and the enchanted table. He knew [Stasis] enchantments existed but, what could one possibly gain from storing the bodies unless they were a [Necromancer]? Arthur shuddered as his hand twitched towards the telecry sitting on his ear, ready to tell Nora if things went to the Nether Pits in a handbasket.

Morbid curiosity urged him to peek at what he presumed to be a dozen corpses laid supine. Brandishing his magelock pistol, he unfurled the first body that he came upon—

And released a shuddering breath.

”Golem...human sized golems,” Arthur muttered unfurling more of them— porcelain faces and wooden golem frames with androgynous features. Argerum tracery etched circles on the sides of the jaws, flowing upwards towards shut doll-like eyes akin to tearlines before again curving up the bridge of the nose to form eyebrows. There were also two ovoid embellishments on their foreheads, as well as cat-eye shadows in vermillion.

It was the subtle differences and etchings that distinguished them. Otherwise, Arthur would have been experiencing the dystopian levels of uncanny one got from looking at clones sharing one face. Looking at the written script branded onto their sternums, Arthur intuited the numbers in the third row.

“Uh, so that's the last of them (四)…four, (三) three, (二) two—” he paused.

He shuddered as a chill crawled up his spine.

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“I swear that was there just a few pars ago, ” he whispered.

He looked askance at the orientation of his shadow from the overhead chromastone. A second shadow moved―Arthur whirled, throwing up his defensive spell.

[ Gust Shield] burst into existence as he drew a bead on his target with his other arm.

“Okaeri, goshujin—” the golem trailed off, their ceremonial bow cut short. Blue gemcut eyes stared down the barrel of his magelock pistol. If the golem could have facial expressions, it would have been frowning right there and then.

Its head remained facing him, as it drew itself back up in a motion too mechanical to be natural but too smooth to be anything controlled by another—it was wearing what appeared to be a marriage of a folk costume and an asian dress not unlike the sylvani’s attire. A motif of cherry petals repeated itself on the seams and the butterfly sleeves and atop its head an ornate headdress. It also had on, of all things, a frilled apron.

“Anata wa masutāde wa arimasen. Mimoto o kakunin shi, gesuto no pasugurifu o teikyō shimasu ka?” the golem said, lips still unmoving. It tilted its head to the side…and strode towards him, unheeding of the weapon pointed its way.

“ I'm sorry, I do not understand what you're asking?” Arthur put across, inferring the tone in its voice. ‘Wait, before that, are golems really supposed to talk?’

“ Junkyo dekina. Pasugurifu no rikuesuto?” It tilted its head the other way. Wary of action that might be considered a threat Arthur slowly backed away . He watched for its hands, hidden inside its kimono but the two pins tying back its ebon black hair might have well been stilettos.

” Hold on that language? Can you please repeat that? ” Arthur asked, half in disbelief that he was talking to a human sized ceramic doll. He kept his distance, leery of letting it get close. He could not discern its inner workings as it was outside the 1.5 metra range of [Diagnostics]. He had the appraisal loupe in [Inventory Chest] but of course, any sudden movements might have been misconstrued as threats.

“ Junkyo dekina,” It answered, righting its head in that eerie manner.

’ Okay, that sounds like a no? How do we deescalate this? I don't want to break it if I can help it. It might hold the key to Ascal or whatever his name is—didn't he speak English? That doll looks and sounds Asian ―like a geisha?

“ Shikō shūryō, Kauntodaun kaishi…juu, kyuu, hachi—” it added. Then its pace picked up. Stoic and impassive, it glided across the floor as its wooden clogs let out the staccato echoes of a gavel beating throughout the workshop.

Arthur’s eyes went wide with alarm. “ Oi, there is no world where a phrase like countdown could be anything pleasant,” he started as his mind worked in overdrive. Then it dawned on him.

“…nana, roku, go…” it counted down.

‘Gesuto and Pasugurifu;Guest and Passglyph,’ he mentally facepalmed. ‘ Where on Eryth did Elder Volemhir write the passglyph?! Was it just some random passphrase, like a greeting or something?’

“Ni ha—” Arthur went to say. But he was cut off as his ring of obfuscation warmed up scaldingly hot.

“ yon, san, ni…”

‘ Ow, ow ow! Wrong country!’ Arthur hissed, flicking his arm.

“...ichi, ” the countdown ended. Arthur gulped as he saw the golem's doll-like gem eyes turn from an electric blue into red.

“Hikensha, Asa Shu—shu—shu,” it stuttered , coming to a stop. It regarded Arthur with an intensity that made his skin crawl—and that was not from the obfuscation enchantments fighting off an attempt to peel away his identity. Arthur grit his teeth as the ring grew uncomfortably hot.

“ [Kyosei Terepoto]” it said, throwing out its arm. Mana built on the tiles. “ [Tāgetto o māku; Asa shu- shu…

‘Oh no you don’t…’ Arthur swore. “[Dispel Matrix]!” he countered. The air fizzed and crackled like paper ripping. The golem recoiled as if struck—Arthur reeled, feeling the cost of forcibly trying to dispel a rune working backed by an entire network of mana conduits. A migraine pulsed between his brow and he felt as though someone was stabbing behind his eyeballs with an icepick. It was a warning that he'd overextended.

‘ Something teleport and [Mark Target]! Damn it [Rosetta Stone] do your thing!’ Arthur grunted as he cradled his throbbing temples. He took the chance when the golem had been stunned to vault over the unoccupied table. He was beginning to tease out the language but just had to remain out of sight and keep it talking. He had to stall―

“I thought non-elemental golems are not supposed to do magic, ” he hissed in exasperation. With a flick of the hammer, dialled down the lethality of the magelock pistol, thankful that [Aer Shot] could be useful in moments like this―

All of a sudden, he was staring up at the pale ceramic visage of the golem. He’d barely felt it come through his magical perception when it was already on top of him. Not that it would have been of any use as the ambient mana was too noisy for that.

“ Scat!” he cursed, fumbling on the draw.

Faster than his eyes could track, the golem’s brass and porcelain palm backhanded his pistol, sending it skittering across the faux wooden floor. Arthur grabbed its billowing sleeves intending to tie it down― the golem one handedly flipped over him, giving him a faceful of its billowing dress and a pair of elevated wooden clogs as it twisted to land behind him.

“ Ugh,” Arthur exclaimed as his hand caught in the folds of its sleeves. He gulped in alarm as the golem pulled it over his shoulder placing him in a chokehold with the crook of his own arm.

It was not much of a chokehold but the awkward position caused him to lose his balance, slamming his back against the floor and knocking the air right out of him. He reached out with his other arm but the golem kneed him in the wrist, pinning it against the floor. Now he looked like someone trussed up on a curtain.

“ Frag!” he yelled, more out of indignance than hurt. But for the lamellar sleeve on that arm, he would be nursing bruises. He had no time for that as the golem was either trying to strangle him, dislocate his shoulder or both.

Amidst the chaos, a certain esoteric skill kept him calm and Arthur couldn’t have been more grateful for it. He leveraged the island table using his foot to wiggle out of the golem’s knee as he watched the glow intensify in its eyes. The mana was concentrating on his location so much that he could taste its electric buzz. Arthur went cross-eyed as the golem extended a porcelain finger towards his forehead.

“[Tāgetto o māku; Asa shu- shu…”

Arthur didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that both the translation of his name and his heavily obfuscated identity was causing a deadlock. His guess was, without his name, he could not use [Mark Target] for whatever manner of forced teleportation was to happen next―his contemplation was interrupted by the heat again rising in his ring of obfuscation. He bucked, renewing his attempts to extricate himself from its hold but it wouldn’t budge.

“Shu-shu-shu” the golem was stuck in the same instance, voice becoming an incessant mess.

“Aargh, fraggity fragging frag that burns!” Arthur howled, bucking against the golem’s hold. He reflexively let loose [Spark Bolt] within his restrained hand, aiming to burn off the cloth and stun the golem into faltering―it did nothing. He wasn’t the only one who’d invested in steel-silk and even though the golem had brass joinery and argerum, it was insulated from earthing by its wooden clogs and ceramic build. And that is when Arthur snapped.

“Frag this!” he yelled, recalling Overkill from [Inventory Chest] into his trapped hand. The enchanted dagger sheared through the silken steel sleeve liberating his hand. Driven by pure indignance, Arthur spared no time capitalising on the opening.

Before he knew what he was doing, he was casting another [Dispel Matrix] and knocking the golem aside the head with the pommel of Overkill. The golem’s head whiplashed like a crash-test dummy in a high speed collision.

“Take that you oversized tea po―” Arthur bit his tongue as the magical working he’d forcibly interrupted, rebounded. The air popped and crackled and then the world went white. The backlash threw both Arthur and golem away from one another like pinballs.

Arthur went tumbling across the floor, almost fetching up against the wall. Fortunately, his instincts from his sparring took over and he was able to hit the ground in a controlled fall.

A bout of sudden mana sickness hit him right as he got his feet under him and stumbled right back down; sound roared in his ears. He dry heaved and groaned. Never had Arthur expended so much magic in one go. It made him feel as though his guts had been wrung like a dishcloth. Blood splattered onto the floor.

‘Guh,gross…let’s not do that again,’ he moaned, wiping off the blood from the corner of his lips. He winced as, feeling [Regeneration] stitching back his finger where the ring had seared him and wherever else he must have been injured.

Cradling his stomach, Arthur blinked the stars away from his eyes to regard the golem. The other victim of the explosion picking itself in rickety motions like the malfunctioning automaton that it was.

With a hiss, Arthur picked up his dagger , grateful to have had it outside of his stomach. From between slit-lidded eyes he also cast about for his magelock pistol.

‘Arthur? Arthur?! What the blight did you do?’ Nora’s voice reverberated through his head.

“Ugh, Nora. Not now….talk later,” he found himself drawling―

“Haha, they felt that too?” Arthur murmured. Balefully removing his ring of obfuscation, he magicked away the artefact into [Inventory Chest]. Finally he found his magelock pistol and swayed towards the golem fighting its own case of vertigo.

“ Gyros are shot huh?” Arthur chucked deprecatingly. He brandished his magelock pistol towards the golem and tripped it back to the floor. It fell and then, to his surprise, instead of engaging him, pitifully started crawling away like a wounded animal. The chromastones flickered―

Arthur grumbled at his flickering vision as he drew a bead towards the golem’s back. And when he least expected it, Nora hailed again. Though her voice came in spurts and starts.

‘A….thur….Wha…. is happening to the wards?! I sense…ur diss...ess. Garde…stones are flicker..ing ’

Arthur held the back of his palm against his forehead at the realisation it wasn’t his vision that had been affected. True to Nora’s words, the overhead chromastone had been intermittently flashing. And that is when Arthur realised that the golem and the house were inextricably linked. If he had the passglyph from the outset, the wards would go down. The golem was just a mobile focus that served as a point of interaction with the house of the wards―

‘Kind of fragged up here Nora. I need a fragging passglyph I cannot remember,’ Arthur griped.

‘Huh? Oh, I meant to tell you incase you hadn’t noticed,’ Nora sent back feeling sheepish. ‘ You didn’t read the back of the letter did you?’

‘ Great, now you tell me. After I’ve done gone and almost had it handed to me by a golem ’ Arthur chuckled, coughing more blood in his mouth.

‘ What?! Why didn’t you say anything?!’

Arthur flinched as Nora’s shriek echoed in his skull.

‘ I am sending you the passglyph―’

The pressure behind his eyes prevented him from flinching.

‘ The passglyph is―’

“ Clear Mornings Make Known,” He repeated verbatim. The golem’s motions suddenly stilled as it went slack. The chromastones all shut off plunging the workshop into blackness.

“ Oh c’mon!” Arthur threw his hands in exasperation as he yelled at the dark.

Somewhere else in the manor, machinery that had long lay dormant woke. Unbeknownst to him, the magical rebound had set up another unprecedented chain of events.

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