10. Sealed For All Time

Beyond all of Brother Merrin's curricular adherence to the written lore of the Order, the cathedral at the center of headquarters yet stood as the undeniable proof that some claims of the past were in fact based in reality. Thus it happened that one fine morning, instead of beginning the usual dry academic lecture, Brother Merrin brought the class to the cathedral for a tour.

“Since some of you struggle to grasp the relevance of the histories, today we will cover a more visual introduction,” Brother Merrin said. Silane recognized the jab; of all the subjects they covered in class, history was her least preferred—Brother Merrin would have been blind not to notice, despite Silane's best efforts at feigning mild acceptance. The subject repulsed her when told from the human view, a sharp contrast with the mild disdain she held for wisp sciences or the attentiveness with which she absorbed the few tidbits on mana manipulation that Brother Merrin let slip.

In the great cathedral, under the splendor of past heroes and battles painted in midnight and gold across the ceiling, above the chained hunger that yawned eternally below the polished marble flooring, Brother Merrin led them to a ceremonially dressed paladin who stood beside a nondescript patch of wall. Directly above the paladin, the rays of the morning sun spilled across the mural of a weeping woman kneeling beneath the sun, washing the mourner's pale clothes into near invisibility against the backdrop. Such was the tendency of light toward all things: a saturation effect, an erasure of delicate features until only the most obvious blandness remained.

“Welcome, initiates. I am Sir Leid of the Second Circle,” the paladin greeted. He rolled up his sleeve to bare the triangular Mark of a light-specter, pale silver against the earthier hue of his forearm. “Behold: a guardian blessing is the key to the inner sanctum.”

He pressed the silver Mark to the wall beside him. Light flared from the Mark, spreading into the wall to form a high archway with the mourner's mural at the apex. The stone within the arch shimmered and disappeared, revealing a staircase that spiraled down into the darkness below.

Around Silane, the initiates gasped and shivered from some nonexistent chill. Even Aaron, fiery as ever, tensed. Silane couldn't relate. Hunger sang from the darkness, and her entire being sang alongside it. Her borrowed body trembled with the force of her eagerness, mouth watering, heart suddenly racing, and it was all she could do to resist springing free of this mortal prison in favor of the splendid carnage that surely awaited. It would be suicidal. Daylight still reigned, plain as the sunlight streaking through the cathedral; she could not afford to abandon her disguise here.

Sir Leid turned a wry half-smile upon them and raised an oil lamp. He stepped through the archway, lighting up the stairwell with the dim glow of firelight. One by one, the initiates followed him down. Brother Merrin entered last, holding high another lamp to push back the darkness. The stairwell was pitch black for roughly two stories of descent, but then a ghostly blue light emerged from the depths, gradually intensifying until it overwhelmed the lamplight.

The bottom of the staircase ended in a T-shaped intersection with corridors running off in both directions. In the place of torches or lamps, rows of stylized glass mist-binding jars with glowing contents illuminated the corridors. No two jars were the same: some jars held meaty lumps surrounded in a diffuse blue glow like daylight, others had organ-shaped contents swathed in visceral red, and still others carried shards of tooth or bone suspended in yellow fog. One jar had an eyeball floating in the center, emitting a sharp and concentrated pinprick of white light like a solitary star. Standing near a jar of gray-pink jelly made Silane’s extremities tingle as a strange aura of drunken happiness permeated the air. It was almost enough to push back the hunger seeping in from all sides.

“These are mana cores of the fallen: remnants of paladins fortunate enough to persist after death, but not yet strong enough to communicate or manifest their original form. In olden times, Illuminators consumed them for strength or used them to infuse weapons with mana-channeling properties. Nowadays, modern technology has rendered such barbaric methods unnecessary. We keep the cores safe and comfortable within their canopic jars, lighting the way for future generations,” Sir Leid explained. He extinguished his lamp, redundant now with the mana cores providing light, and led the class down the leftward corridor.

The path meandered between natural rock formations and structural support columns, zigzagging to such a degree that Silane lost track of the directions after a half-dozen or so turns. Locked doors lined either side of the corridor at unpredictable intervals. Some passages were little more than rough-hewn holes in the stone, barred with haphazard slats still jagged around the edges with tooling marks; other doors were polished to a shine, frames reinforced with hardwood and steel in keeping with more modern architectural standards. A few doors were blank and nondescript but for a number or text marker. Others had small glass windows or portholes built in, revealing side corridors or storerooms that branched off from the main corridor like capillaries from an artery. Within were stored ancient weapons, used armor sets, gold and jewels of immense beauty, and so forth.

Sir Leid brought them to a viewing window that was broad and low enough for most of the class to see inside without standing on their toes. This storeroom was full of shelves lined with row upon row of glass mist-binding jars. Malice seeped out from the jars, radiating out into the walls and floor with an intrinsic call to violence that made Silane’s blood boil for all the injustice in the world.

“Herein dwell the most powerful of the mist-demons, imprisoned for all time,” Sir Leid said, seemingly unaffected by the miasma of those jars.

Silane pressed her face against the window, straining for a better look at the mist-binding jars. Had any of these prisoners been taken in the invasion of the Shadowed Isle? Sentinel Vala could be here, almost close enough to touch—but where? The contents of every jar looked the same to Silane: black mist steeped in centuries of resentment, coiled like a serpent ready to bite whichever fool came within striking range. No doubt anyone who opened the wrong jar, human or Mistforged alike, would be devoured within moments to sate the inhabitant’s wrath.

“Why imprison demons instead of destroying them? What if they escape?” Aaron asked, an uneasy edge to his voice.

“There is no escape. Beyond the spellwork on each individual mist-binding jar, the storeroom is also itself a vessel that can only be accessed from the outside.” Sir Leid pointed out the faint shimmer of arcane text etched into the glass window and carved across the inner walls: physical wards of sealing, written in glyphs identical to those generated in mana-fueled spellwork. The magic here was powerful enough to contain the bound Mistforged, but it could not fully suppress the imperatives to kill and feed that saturated the air around their prison.

Aaron made a frustrated noise. “What do you mean, no escape? Look there, mister paladin, that jar is cracked. Whatever was inside must have broken out. It could be hunting us right now!”

There were gasps as other initiates looked where Aaron was pointing. Indeed, one jar among the sea of black mist stood broken and empty. This jar was made of brown clay instead of glass, with glyphs drawn across the sides in simple black ink. Its lid sat askew over a chipped rim, and one side was smashed in as though it had been dropped. A dark, crusty residue reminiscent of fossilized ink stained the inside of the jar. No trace of Mistforged essence lingered within. The shelf edge below the jar had a label with handwriting too small to read from this distance.

To the class’s surprise, Sir Leid chuckled. “No need for alarm. That jar is but a replica, kept empty by design as a reminder to beware our own hubris. Long ago and far to the north, in the mountain headquarters of Alta Zhaveir, there once was a young Order initiate who grew impatient with the pace of his training. He snuck into the vaults there and released a powerful demon: the dreaded Ytth Korlich. He thought destroying it in a duel would be the fastest way to skip training and prove himself worthy of becoming a paladin. He didn’t count on that cunning demon turning tail and fleeing to terrorize the local countryside.” Sir Leid shook his head. “Impatience must be overcome in the mind above all; indulgence brings only harm to the self and the greater world.”

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“How was that initiate punished for releasing the demon?” Aaron asked.

“He was not.” Sir Leid smiled. “He regretted his misdeed. In penance, he applied himself to his studies fully. He became a great prodigy of his time, one of the youngest ever to make the rank of paladin. Younger than most of you are right now—and that’s after completing the full Academy curriculum. These days, every school and branch of the Order of Illumination has at least one of those replica jars on display to remind us of how mistakes can be turned into diligence.”

The class jostled each other and muttered skeptically. Here they were, just beginning their first year of study; it was difficult to imagine a student their age making the rank of paladin. And a troublemaker at that! It seemed beyond belief.

Another student gasped. “I’ve heard this story before! Solarion of Alta Zhaveir, the wandering exorcist, seventh of the founding legends. A boy who made paladin by the age of thirteen, praised by all as a one-in-a-million prodigy. He traveled the land with the legendary guardian Altaire and the Heralds of Dawn, fighting the forces of darkness. At the age of sixteen, he defeated the last shapeshifter south of the Whitewater. Alas, but talent doesn’t last forever. He fell off a cliff and died before his twentieth year. Truly an ignoble end for a hero with such promise.”

“Mind your tongue! Speak not ill of the fallen light. Our predecessors are still very much with us,” Sir Leid said. “Not every paladin ascends as a guardian, but those who undertake this responsibility are due the greatest respect. Many distinguished guardians from Alta Zhaveir reside within the Tranquility Gate to this very day, awaiting a worthy paladin to guide in the eternal battle against evil.”

Sir Leid moved on to the next portion of the tour: the aforementioned Tranquility Gate, located within a grand audience hall farther down that same corridor. The hall was almost as massive belowground as the main chamber of the cathedral looked to be above ground; high arched ceilings bore similar murals, and every inch of the walls was decorated with elaborate scenes of heroism and demon-slaying. The Tranquility Gate itself consisted of a stone arch framing a slab of gray stone, startlingly plain in contrast to the vivid colors painted across the surrounding walls. Scenes were carved across the stone slab, equally plain and difficult to discern from afar.

“In ancient times,” Sir Leid said, “demons and exorcists roamed the human world, spreading terror and peace in turn. During the Final Banishment, the Three Martyrs sacrificed their very lives to defeat the Supreme Demon Lords and expel them to the abyssal dark. So strong were our heroes’ desire to protect our world that their death echoes ascended to become the first guardians: Pendarion the Just, Ithyria the Farsighted, and Altaire the Vigilant.” Sir Leid pointed out the corresponding reliefs carved upon the Tranquility Gate: a war-torn battlefield; a funeral; three human figures floating in midair, lower halves trailing into the immaterial ambiguity of mist.

Silane raised her hand. “When guardian and demon both arise from mortal death, what’s the difference?”

Sir Leid frowned, opened his mouth, and closed it again. He turned to Brother Merrin. “Don’t you cover the basics in your class?”

“I do.” Brother Merrin cleared his throat. “As a reminder: their origins are fundamentally different. Demons coalesce naturally from grudges lingering after death, whereas the gift of guardianship is one passed down through the generations. Every paladin is blessed by a guardian for life. When a paladin dies, that blessing becomes the key to ascension. However, only the most noble of paladins, those with an incorruptible desire to continue serving this world, remain sufficiently present after death to become a guardian. The majority of our fallen brethren linger as incomplete mana cores, unable to manifest the memory or image of their former selves.”

Silane did not understand. “How did the first guardians ascend without a predecessor to guide them?”

“That is the miracle of our first founding legend.” Sir Leid pointed at the funeral scene carved across the Tranquility Gate. At the center of the scene, nearly indistinguishable against the backdrop, that same mourner from the cathedral was depicted kneeling beneath rays of light from above. “In the days following the Final Banishment, our benevolent Lady of Guiding Light descended from the heavens to bestow her blessing upon the valorant who drove evil from the land. Alas that the Three Martyrs had already perished by then. In lieu of healing, our Lady granted them ascension.”

The mourner’s pose struck a chord of familiarity within Silane. Kneeling beneath the sun with eyes upturned to that burning light: Silane could not fathom the power a Mistforged would require to withstand that. To sun-watch, to stargaze, one would need strength equal to a Supreme.

Sir Leid continued his tale. The Three Martyrs, kept in this world by their pure and noble intentions, remained to guide and protect their comrades. When their chosen paladins perished, they helped the remnant essences of their old partners ascend to sentience as they themselves had once been helped, thus starting the lineage of light-specters. However, it was soon discovered that a solitary light-specter could not linger long in the mortal world without dissipating or growing corrupted by evil—as in the tale of the Lost Guardian. Only once the light-specters Marked a mortal with the so-called “guardian blessing,” thus tying themselves to the earthly realm, did they remain stable. To preserve unpaired light-specters from the corrupting influence of the mortal world when not actively guiding a mortal paladin, ancient clerics had used a lost magic to lift the Realm of Tranquility out of time. The Tranquility Gate was thus established as a portal between the mortal realm and the time-locked Realm of Tranquility. Similar doorways to this hidden realm existed at most Order of Illumination headquarters and schools throughout the region.

Amid all the rambling tales of ancient lore, one thing was clear to Silane: she needed to acquire a guardian blessing. As the key to the inner sanctum, it was also the key to releasing her imprisoned brethren captured in the invasion; as the tie to a light-specter, it was a direct pathway to attaining the power of sun-resistance.

The soon class moved on from the Tranquility Gate to continue the tour. Silane hid behind a stone column until their footsteps faded into the distance. Then, free from prying eyes at last, she approached the Tranquility Gate, searching the surface for hints on how to activate the portal. The carved stone outlines of the gateway felt smooth and polished beneath her fingertips, solid and unremarkable as any other piece of stone in the underground. She traced the raised edges and swirling depressions of the battle scene ornamentation, mystified. There were no gaps, no hinges, nothing to indicate that the Tranquility Gate was anything but a massive piece of wall art—yet, if Sir Leid’s tale had any merit at all, then Silane had to figure out how to activate it.

“You’re not supposed to be here, recruit,” a stern voice said from behind her. It was the one-eyed paladin from the invasion. He wore a simple beige overcoat instead of full armor; his bad eye was sunken and closed instead of burning with white fire, but Silane could never forget the razor-bright resonance of his life force. Even from across the great chamber that housed the Tranquility Gate, Silane could feel that powerful vitality crackling like bottled lightning, ready to incinerate whichever unlucky target drew its ire.

“Name and purpose,” the one-eyed paladin said.

“Silane.” She despised the tremor in her voice. “I’m with the tour group. I got lost.”

“I see. Not to worry, I will help you find your class again. Last I heard, they were headed for the west stairwell.” The one-eyed paladin’s brow furrowed: pity for the weak. He smiled, softer and far milder than Silane remembered from the invasion. “Silane, named after the moon no doubt. A most auspicious name for an Order recruit—a light to brighten the darkness of this weary world.”

Incorrect, Silane thought, it is Silane for the poison that seeps in through every crevice: odorless, colorless, as death approaches undetectably beneath your very nose…

“Thank you for the kind words, good sir. You are generous and wise,” Silane managed, bowing even though it went against every instinct to take her gaze off the enemy.

“Call me Raimond,” the one-eyed paladin said. As they made their way back to the tour group, Silane’s left wrist felt like it was burning where Sentinel Khond’s empowerment had once lent her strength. In farewell, Sir Raimond said, “Study hard, and one day, you may walk these halls of your own merit.”

“I will,” Silane promised. To acquire a light-specter’s power, to free her brethren, to kill Sir Raimond, she would train to the utmost.