Then, he spotted the excubitors. Around the building. Their numbers as such he could barely count them, but a potential guess brought a total of 9. Nine excubitors guarded one man? It seed a wasteful joke. What terror existed in this place that a man needed nine—and a caster even more?
rrin ruminated and sensed a troubling peril to needed success. How was he now to get there? There were casted ans, but doubts on how well he could handle nine excubitors echoed through. No chance for victory on that path existed. Death was the outco if he went against them.
A different thod…rrin looked down at the wide chasm. A spread of dark sea, unknowable. Even with his eyes, the pitch blackness within halted any attempts at sight. He could see nothing. Hear nothing.
I need to cross this, don't I? He sighed.
After a collection of impressions and pondering, a sole thod for undetected passage existed. He had to cross the chasm. Likely not was the chance that excubitors monitored the darkness by their sides. And if they did, certain advantages existed as an Ashman.
Being one with the dark and shadow was easier than most.
He leaned, picking up a stray chain and axe. Old, rusted, and worn, but it had to serve. rrin, of course, attempted a logical course of impromptu casting. It didn't work. The world did turn grey, and the familiar whispers of symbolic knowledge assaulted his mind, but that was the extent of it.
As he stared at the chain and the symbols it encompassed, he then knew the lack of general knowledge on how these things functioned. If he wasn't familiar with or in sight of a symbol, casting it was impossible.
It wasn't like he could create symbols.
rrin heaved a breath and tied the chains around his waist. Not too tight, as he hoped for a chance for freedom in case he t the gaze of an Excubitor. Faint heat still ward them, and he found the heat gave him clearness of mind.
Standing at the lip of the chasm, staring into unknown darkness, he had to jump. His heart thumped, and he heard the sound like a nearby drum echoing danger. It begged him to stop, bringing ntal solidness to his feet.
The witnesses need …rrin recited like an Elvinar (Mantra), and in the next mont, before apprehension could take him, he leaped into the chasm. The wind whistled, and the chains rattled, but this was quickly drowned by the distant bangs of iron against stone, stone against stone, n against n.
His form slapped at the wall of the chasm, dust, dirt, and heat rushing into his embrace. He felt this, but silenced the execution of retaliatory actions. Now, he needed the silence, the invisible calm that would veil him against the excubitor.
All this he needed. rrin heaved a breath; by the sense of his awareness, he felt the darkness swallow him.
Why is that fool jumping into a chasm?—Words of a slave, unaware of preservation as he jumped into the mines.
Silence. rrin stayed in the quiet—not of external ans, of course, but of internality. He was of silent mind, hand stretched up, gripping tight at the rusted chains. He was a singular rope in the darkness, a slender figure pinned against the scorching wall of the pit.
rrin knew pain then. He thought a familiarity had already ford between him and the pale ache. A wrongness. This was greater. His chest, cheek, legs—all parts stuck to the wall. He felt the great heat of his body, the itching of his flesh as the torridity ended them.
Worse, he battled within. Every part of himself sought a defiance to the brutal state, but not yet, he had to remain; the pain was great, but the witnesses. Those ones without anything awaited him. He had to endure.
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Then, he heard it. The gentle taps of Excubitor boots shuffling away from the chasm's lip. Not long after, he had arrived here, using the axe as a climbing tool and the chains as a safety one. He moved with the steel, and in the eventuality he fell, the chains served the function of a mother's arm.
He tightened the grip, strained his flesh against the chains, then climbed. He scaled them like so animal, and though he was now away from the pit walls, the burning pain remained. Present. An addition to the scars ruling his person.
That didn't matter, though, as his hands reached over the chasm, grasping at the headland. He rolled over, quickly undoing the chains rounding his waist. There was quickness to be achieved if he wanted a safe heist. Slowness risked discovery, and that ant death.
rrin harbored little illusions that caster status would deter him from a blade to the throat. Hence, speed was a need. He loosed the chains, carefully settling them down. Noiseless. Then, in that mont of pure thought, he gathered blocks of stone, designing a makeshift high stone. One, a collection of rocks upon rocks. This served the function of a cover for the tools within them.
Accomplished, he turned his eyes to the building a few steps away. A square structure of obsidian shade, froststone dotted along the edges of the fra. This gave the dark house a dreamy allure, like a sword whose sharp part glead with a blue intensity. rrin marveled for but a mont, then began searching for ans of infiltration.
He touched the walls, felt their trendous coldness, and cringed at it. Such Coldness was strange, a bizarreness that battled against his cognitive normalcy. He knew the heat and perhaps the milder colds, but not this. This chill brought pain to the touch.
What kind of cold gave pain? rrin thought, pulling his hands away. Lowlander things. He could only conclude. With this, he lowered his form and began circling the building. Surely, sowhere was a point, a path through which he would gain entry into the house.
At least an undiscoverable entry.
Ti ran fast like the wind, and dread grew in his heart. Now, rrin touched the walls in a frantic race, hands bobbing over the cold surface. He cared little for that now and only sole focused on the ans to enter.
There was none. All except the low door in front of the house, there was no entry he could find. The problem with that stemd from the entourage of Excubitors stationed before it.
How could he get in? How could he deceive the eyes of the mirror n? rrin, for a mont, entertained the idea of seeking strength in the grayish trance. The point when the world—the symbols, spoke to him.
They carried knowledge, certain truths…Was there so truth to how to sneak into a house? rrin frowned, the realization of deeper knowledge arresting him. In that mont of deliberation, he ca to know sothing of importance about the symbols.
What if the truth they said was related to themselves? Like a door talking about how doors were made?
He sealed the musings and peeked through a corner of the wall. Outside the rocky floors of dark brown and red, there was nothing. He trudged on, nimble moving, hand feeling for a passage.
A Bump.
rrin stopped. He had felt sothing—his fingers had registered an anomaly different from the normal. An oddness different from the familiar smooth form. There was sothing.
He turned, pressing his face to the wall. Cold. Then, opening his arms to an action of embrace, he pinned to it. Now, he sought. With all his body, he searched for the aberration his fingers had once noticed.
A great deal of false comfortability assaulted him in this state. The cold seed an infection of the mind—his thoughts, a mover of asured speed. An effect, he realized, an effect brought by casting.
He could dedicate a mont to learning and prying to the symbol, but ti, the now precious resource, was sothing he lacked. Six days to save the witnesses, re minutes to rob a caster. Ti…ti.
However, he stopped, realizing the familiar bump. This is it, he freed from the wall, using hands to inspect the strange thing. What weirdness it was to him to feel the bump, a lump of sensations, yet see nothing but a flat black wall. Casting brought instability to the mind, he thought, and pressed in this block.
Sound like soft whistling blew, fortunately mild as a thin line squared into the wall. This line pressed in, then broke into a pile of shattered soot. Startling. Still, there was little ti for rumination. Such, without hesitancy, he rolled into the wall, vanishing into that darkness. And….
An Unnerving vastness overtook him. And how large was what he saw that the roof, if there was one, blurred into unknowable heights. The expanse was maddening as it made him small—insignificant. Tiny. Here, he was like an ant thrown into a city, too big to acknowledge the placent in which it found itself.
There was darkness, too. Dreamy darkness lit only by froststones lining many paths on the floor. Queer, black like reflective obsidian. rrin then realized the scattered stands placed throughout the enormity.
Square glass boxes, blue light shining from within. These things were placed atop small pillars of stone, spreading numberless through the dark hall. Unknowable. rrin was just there, staring at these things, feeling the ever-cold battling against his cognitive pacing.
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