Chapter 26
THE ORPHIC BASILICA
TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO
Atticus Walestone had not seen daylight in two months. After his recent breakthrough with purgatory, he suspected it might be another two before he saw it again.
He stood over the untidy but calculatedly placed clutter of unrolled scrolls, documents, sketches—some of which were discarded ideas for a future collection of short philosophical essays by his pseudonym, Razkamun—and stacks upon stacks of books before him.
Then he leaned against his desk, his hands thrust into the inner pockets of his voluminous brown robe, and deliberated.
Either by some divine stroke of fate or simply by a long period of isolation and concentration, Atticus had finally, albeit temporarily, made contact with a ghost trapped in purgatory.
And he’d only had to rip open the sutured wounds of his past to do it.
Well, that was not strictly true. He had first been met by the initially daunting task of looking through the oldest, most esoteric books within the Orphic Basilica for theories and reported sightings of thanatological energy.
That had taken the better half of his first month cooped up in his office.
Then, he’d painstakingly interviewed select members of the Protectorate, who would be charged with the responsibility of trekking across Northgard, some even voyaging beyond the Hasdan Isles, in pursuit of the places Atticus had excavated throughout his indefatigable investigation.
The Protectorate had originally protested Atticus’s decision, claiming that they were librarians, not globe-trotters.
Although after a brief but impassioned meeting, Atticus had convinced them of the prospective expedition’s contribution to his studies.
“And if you ever doubt the mission ahead of you,” he had told them during the meeting, “remind yourselves of what we’re fighting against, but most importantly, what we’re fighting for.”
The Protectorate had collectively bristled at the implicit mention of the enemy, but they remained steadfast. They would not be cowed by the unknown. Every question had its answer. Every problem had its solution.
Atticus repeated this counsel to himself, whispering it under his breath.
“Master Walestone.”
Atticus started, barely catching himself from scraping his boots across the documents directly in front of him.
He placed a hand over his thundering heart, then looked up at the doorway.
“Gods Above, Maude. You gave me a fright.” He stilled, unnerved by the dismay on her typically cheerful face. His stomach twisted. “No—”
“They’re here, Master Walestone,” Maude said. “Mistress Aftford spotted them first, cresting the western foothills. We have ten minutes.”
Atticus’s heart sank for Nemene, his fellow Scribe and his old friend. She had been plagued by nightmares of the enemy for years now. He couldn’t fathom how she must be faring.
A sudden sense of urgency, a need for action, seized him.
Atticus pushed himself off his desk and trod over his meticulously laid out research, strangely indifferent toward the damage left in his wake.
Then he walked to the cabinet on his left, opened it, and pulled down Holyborn, one of the three black-scabbarded swords mounted within.
His expedition teams had unearthed the other two, Valusvar and Kharuan.
Atticus then closed the cabinet and strode toward the door.
Maude stared with openmouthed astonishment.
He’d gotten a good read on his only student throughout the years he’d been teaching her.
She admired his mindfulness and calm attentiveness as much as how unwaveringly he cleaved to the ancient code of nonviolence.
And while she’d known these unduly powerful weapons existed, it was common knowledge that they’d always been a last resort.
We academics are dauntless in the face of every battle, Atticus’s own tutor, the retired Tarnan Eldreave, had once told him. Every battle, that is, except for the one which is fought with fists and swords.
Until now.
Atticus placed a trembling hand on the doorknob, his entire body numb with dread. He had already expected, from the moment Maude had informed him of the enemy’s arrival, that the sight beyond his office would break him. But nothing could have possibly prepared him for what he next saw.
Ten years ago, when he had been instated as an Elder Scribe, Atticus had specifically selected an office on the seventh floor, having taken a liking to its collection throughout his apprenticeship with Master Eldreave.
There was something intimate, something heartening, about the topmost archive.
The zenith of the arts. The summit of all knowledge.
But as he looked down from the balcony outside his office now, Atticus could not help but wince at the young, naive man he’d once been. Great heights did not mean great wisdom. All it meant was you had a better view of the madness beneath your feet.
Brilliant streaks of sunshine spilled through the skylight, flooding the Orphic Basilica in an ethereal, incandescent glow.
But that only made the pandemonium unfolding below all the more evident.
Scholars, professors, and librarians hastened toward the nearest reading rooms and study nooks, either scampering for safety or ascending from one floor and up to the next, borne aloft on glimmering alchemical runes pried from the pages of mystics’ spellbooks and forbidden grimoires.
Tourists scurried aimlessly through the commotion, their tear-laced eyes darting back and forth with confused trepidation.
Two men sprinted toward the stairs leading down to the second floor, one of them clinging to the other and the second carrying their son in the crook of his arm.
A pair of airborne scholars, whom Atticus recognized as Nemene’s apprentices, floated toward the skylight, casting intermittent runes at their feet to propel their ascension.
Once the two made it to the base of the skylight, they peered through the window, scuttling around the edges, until one of them flung out their arm and pointed to the west. The other drifted over to their companion, their face paling with fear.
Maude came to stand beside Atticus, and after a moment, she whispered, “This is it, isn’t it?”
He wanted so badly to give her hope, to assuage the worries no doubt gnawing at her mind.
But what could he say? Maude was no stranger to the nature of academia.
They were, or had at least sworn among themselves to be, the peacekeepers of the realm.
They were not to fight, not to swing swords and spill blood.
But none of them had been oblivious to the doom marching their way.
They had heard whispers of the red-eyed, black-armored devils long ago, but it had only been once Atticus’s chosen candidates had returned from their research expedition, bearing portentous reports of the enemy’s whereabouts, that the academic community had begun to feel true fear, to count down their precious few days.
Before the Reaper could bring down its scythe, though, Atticus had work to do.
“Yes, this is the end,” Atticus said, then clapped a hand down onto Maude’s shoulder, the other clutching Holyborn.
“I have heard stories of these creatures, Maude. Patiny even warned me in this damn poem he wrote, and yet I dismissed it as folly. Their gaze incites madness. It lingers like a sickness, like a disease.”
Maude cried, tracks of gleaming tears swiveling down her cheeks. “Master Walestone, what—”
“I know I have been reticent throughout your apprenticeship, though I promise you, child, this was not without reason.” Atticus spoke with haste, his heart thundering.
“I vowed to keep secret what Eldreave passed on to me, and so I shall, but there is one thing I ask of you. One duty. It will be the hardest thing you will ever do. But do it, and our kind might yet be saved, our knowledge conserved.”
“What is it?” Maude asked, a quaver in her voice.
Atticus looked her hard in the eyes. “I want you to find as many scholars as you can, Maude, and then I want you to run. Run as fast and far as you can. I need the Protectorate and a few other scholars here to fulfill the obligation I was given, but the rest of you . . .” He held back tears.
“Once the Protectorate has engaged the shield, and once I’ve opened the doors to the catacombs, run straight out the front doors.
Lay low and take shelter until the day is done, however it plays out.
Make art—books and poems, paintings and sculptures.
Our history mustn’t fade. If we fall today, all will be lost. Thousands of years of painstakingly acquired information, gone.
I will not, cannot, see that transpire.”
Maude stared at Atticus with a petrifying intensity. She stood stock-still with fear, as if rooted in place by the magnitude of the task set before her.
“Please, Maude,” Atticus implored. “If I could have asked you sooner, I would have, but I have sworn my promise. And now the day has come.”
It took some moments for Maude to recompose herself, but when she did, she nodded with an eerily calm confidence.
No, Atticus reflected, that is not confidence. That’s resignation.
She had known, for years now, the potential price of admittance within the Orphic Basilica.
She had likely faced the same, or similar, abuse as that which Atticus had battled for most of his life.
He hadn’t been privy to the details of his only student’s history and background, for he believed such a breach of privacy to be a transgression of the highest order, a trespassing of the boundary between the domestic and academic roads of life.