Chapter 16 The Heart #2
“Every choice you make is either right or wrong. The right ones bring you closer to being the petty part in the machine you were meant to be, and the wrong ones have to be punished, hard and fast. None of this is designed to be fair or kind. I don’t even know if it is designed at all, or if it’s just the natural tendency of people making other people miserable.
Not because they are bad, but because it’s easy.
Well. I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to be what’s expected of me, which, at this point, is dead.
And I certainly don’t want to do that to other people, too.
I want to be free. Free to follow my dreams, to be with the ones I like, and free to be myself. ”
Even though he consciously tried to avoid it, his gaze lingered on Valir’s deranged face for longer than he intended at the last sentence.
“And if that means I’ll have to damage a little bit of the order meant to keep things as they are, if that means I’ll have to take a risk and change things up… so be it.”
A moment of coldfire silence followed.
“Aaand you really want to know what’s behind that door, right?” Dagna grinned, considerably less concerned than the human. “I’m in!”
“Yes, that too,” Kraghtol admitted. “But we’re here together, and you are my friends, the only friends I have ever had. If you don’t want to go in, we don’t.”
The inner fire had receded, but it was still burning. He meant everything he had said, though, including the last part.
“Yeah, I want to know, too,” Valir said quietly.
“You make some compelling arguments, Kragh, and I’ve got nothing except ‘it feels like a bad idea’.
And the worst part is, now I don’t even know if that feeling is mine, or if it’s just what I’ve been told my entire life.
It’s just that… I think we might be in over our heads. ”
He straightened his back and collected himself — a simple gesture he probably didn’t even consciously notice. “Alright. Yes. Let’s do it. Take a risk and all that. We started this, so now let’s go through with it.”
Kraghtol felt his eyes fill with moisture at the reaction.
Quickly turning around to hide his emotions, he mumbled a thank you before inspecting the seal again.
Unlike the one in Bronzebreak, this one had no runes or symbols, but was just a large, crystalline disk.
Still, it felt even larger and more powerful than the metal one.
It should be easy. It’s just a matter of resonance.
He touched the smooth crystal again and closed his eyes.
The association was clear. One half of his being despised everything about it.
Smoothness, reliability, symmetry. His Orcish mind, feverishly at work for the last days, trying to find patterns in the swamp’s chaos, wouldn’t have any of it.
But there was another part in him, the human part, which was tired and sore from all that was happening around him.
And for this part, the even surface was soothing and healing.
Kraghtol tried to tune out the Orcish half, remembering how he had felt after taking the potion. It was surprisingly easy. For once, that part of his mind was satisfied and didn’t resist letting the rational, the ordered human side take focus.
Everything about this seal was predictable.
It wasn’t made of metal because it represented another Principle — the Principle of Order.
The milky white on the surface was pure only at first glance.
Hidden below was an intricate structure of straight, parallel lines, right angles and clear surfaces, refracting the light until it became uniform white, no matter the individual color it might have had before.
That was oddly compelling. Despite his speech just a minute ago, Kraghtol could feel that.
Individuality was not ordered. Being just like everyone else was easy, liberating.
Hadn’t he wished to be like that for almost all of his life?
No need to think or to decide. Once everything was in order, there was no uncertainty about anything at all.
His human side was humming in comfort on a deep, primal level that went beyond his rational control.
This was it. He was vibrating, just like the extra strings on Valir’s lyre.
It would be easy to shatter the crystal now, but did he really want to?
What he had felt was good and beautiful. Why would he want to destroy that?
Because it’s a lie. Nothing was ever as perfect as this crystal, nothing living anyway.
Carefully balancing on the narrow line between his order-loving and his chaos-embracing side, he reached into his pocket, taking the remaining Activator into his hand.
He had one try, and one try only, but he wouldn’t need more. For once, he was certain.
He opened his eyes just as he threw the powder on his hand touching the crystal seal.
The Activator sparkled for a moment in the white light, before the entire thing erupted into a cold, blue fire.
It’s a lie! Dissonance disrupted the false harmony within himself, and just as he had resonated with the crystal, the imperfection propagated back to the perfect white object.
A single crack appeared right under his hand, sharp edges that broke the white light into a colorful rainbow.
For a heartbeat, both were there, Order and Chaos, but that couldn’t last. Accompanied by a loud and bright clinking sound, the entire seal burst into a billion shards, raining down and breaking again and again until they landed on Kraghtol as dust he had to wipe from his eyes.
Where the disk had been, there was a dark hole gaping in the giant door, which was slowly opening to the inside by the force of the blast, in unsettling silence.
The way was clear. He looked left and right.
Even Valir had a determined look on his face.
In silent agreement, they stepped forward into the darkness.
The inside of the building was similar to the outside in one regard: it was huge.
Without so much as a corridor, the door led directly into a hall so vast Kraghtol couldn’t see any walls except for the one they came from.
Darkness fled in all directions, broken only by occasional stone columns shooting up to an unseen ceiling, and the only indication he had that it didn’t go on forever were their footsteps echoing loudly.
Just like in his dreams, the thick walls dampened the sounds of the swamp until they were drowned out completely.
Behind them, there was movement as multiple large bodies poured into the building after them, still holding their distance. Valir flinched at the sound, and Kraghtol felt his heartbeat quicken, but he had the odd certainty that they were not in danger.
“I think it’s the demons,” he whispered, which didn’t seem to make the noble any happier.
“Demons, as in multiple of them? Just wonderful, I always dreamed of ending my life in a dark room with savage demon beasts.”
“They won’t attack. They’re probably just… drawn to this place,” Kraghtol answered, leaving out the ‘Just like me.’
“It feels kind of ominous,” Dagna chimed in, sounding uncharacteristically nervous as well.
“There’s a large temple in Greylune, where the elves pray to their moon god,” Valir said. “I’ve visited it once, and this feels… similar. Only way eviler. Are you sure we should be here, Kragh?”
The half-orc didn’t respond. The truthful answer would have been no.
He wasn’t sure. He was torn. One half of him couldn’t be more excited, even though he could not tell why.
The other half was abhorred, agreeing completely with Valir on wanting to turn around and run.
It wasn’t hard to understand, not after what he had just done to get here.
This place was brimming with the Principle of Chaos. Of course, Valir didn’t like it.
“It will be alright,” he finally whispered. “It’s just like in my dream.” Somehow, his hand had found Valir’s in the darkness, and he gave him a reassuring squeeze. Then, louder, he turned to the darkness surrounding them.
“We’re here. Are you there, oracle?”
“You have come.” The voice echoed from the walls and seemed to come from everywhere at once. Kraghtol had expected this, but Dagna and Valir almost jumped.
“Who’s there?” asked the dwarf, looking around in the darkness.
As before, it was hard to tell if the voice was old or young, but Kraghtol was reasonably sure by now that it was female. And she seemed amused. “Your friend, the alchemist, has called me oracle. And in a way, that is true.”
“You know, it would be rather nice to actually see who we are talking to,” Valir called out. Kraghtol could hear his tone trembling, but it was every bit his official noble-born voice.
“It has been quite some time since last someone laid eyes on me. I shall grant you your request. Step towards the light, my friends.”
Suddenly, torches lit up far into the hall with a flash of blue fire before turning yellow. They illuminated a small island in the sea of darkness. Valir muttered something about ‘friends’ under his breath, but now that they had a visible destination, the three of them approached the light.
In the middle of the spot stood a chair.
No, Kraghtol corrected himself, not a chair.
It was a throne, made of the same stone as the surrounding hall.
Next to and behind this throne, he could finally see the demons.
Not two of them were alike; he thought he recognized the one which had attacked them, but there were more: masses of limbs, maws and claws, sitting or standing at attention like well-behaved puppies.
Their focus was not on the approaching group, however, but on the person in front of the throne.