6. The Girl
Chapter 6
The Girl
T he girl’s soul appeared in the Room of Knowledge just beyond the hidden Seeing Room where her body currently resided. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed while she was in Solace, but it was clear that the soldiers that brought her great-grandmother and mother down into the basement were still waiting on Lord d’Refan to join them.
Her mother’s body was propped against the wall on one side of the circular room, most of her weight supported by a soldier who didn’t look much older than the girl. Her mouth was open, blood still running freely from her jagged teeth and broken nose, and it dripped obscenely down her chin and neck, pooling at the collar of her kaftan. The girl’s great-grandmother stood a few paces away in stock stillness, her body stooped and leaning heavily on the cane she always carried. Her gnarled hands shook with small tremors, whether from fear, adrenaline, or something else, the girl couldn’t be sure. A second soldier—this one older with greying temples and lines around his eyes—stood behind her great-grandmother, hands resting lightly atop her shoulders. His expression held something akin to discomfort, as if he regretted his role in this entire ordeal.
But the girl couldn’t find it within herself to offer any type of pity or empathy toward the soldier. He, like anyone else who wore black armor today, condemned himself to death. Whether willing participants or not, the girl simply did not care. As a unit, they had brutalized and systematically eradicated her people. If they wore black, they subscribed to the same ideals. As a collective unit, they were heartless creatures, and the girl promised to show them the same mercy that was shown to her people.
The girl’s bodiless eyes gazed around the remaining space. There were a handful of other soldiers—some old, some young, all in that cursed black tunic and pants—stationed around the exterior circle of the room, leaving the middle open. The girl knew from experience that the runes inscribed on the stone circle in the very center of the room would, when activated, reveal an ancient book—a sacred tome that was entrusted to the Keepers by the gods themselves. The girl had never seen the book before, but the importance of keeping it safe was impressed upon her at an early age.
They must be here for the book. That was the only thing that made sense. But why would they kill all her people?
The soldier who had brutalized her mother’s mouth paced in front of the entrance to the room, constantly toying with the dagger. He seemed on edge, like a predator caged. Abruptly, he stopped his pacing, sheathed his dagger, and turned to face the entrance to the Room of Knowledge. The girl heard footsteps and tried to move to get a better angle to view the scene in front of her.
To her surprise, her ghostly form responded to her wishes. The girl wondered if it was because she was watching the last of the Keepers, or because the life light had combined right before she touched it. Either way, she was grateful for the ability to move about. She tried to touch her mother and great-grandmother, but her hands passed through their forms and neither outwardly reacted to her presence.
As she drifted across the room, she felt, rather than saw, another presence enter the space. The girl could literally feel the energy of the magic emanating from the newcomer, and it made her soul shiver and her stomach revolt. Whoever this person was, they were powerful . The girl turned her ghostly body toward the entryway of the room just as two men strode through the doorway. There was a confidence in the way they moved, both of them assured in their bodies and status. The soldiers in the room straightened, their eyes and heads tracking the movement of the two men.
On closer inspection, the girl realized the power signature she initially felt was actually two different signatures, and it fell in waves from both men. The pair came to a halt at the entryway, just inside the Room of Knowledge. There was a synchrony to their movements, as if they knew exactly what the other would do before it even happened. That type of understanding came from years of living with and understanding another person, and the girl would have thought it beautiful if the men weren’t the key to the destruction of her people.
The men surveyed the room, calculating eyes taking in every detail and cataloguing it for use. The similarities between the two were almost eerie and, on initial inspection, the girl assumed they were siblings. However, a closer look indicated that while similar in appearance and mannerisms, there were stark differences between the two.
Lovers, maybe? She thought. Despite her hatred for these men and their army, the girl couldn’t help but be drawn to them.
Both men were tall with hard muscles pressing at the edges of their tunics, the age of time not yet settling into their faces. They both sported dark, full beards that were neatly trimmed and matched the almost coal-black of their hair. The man in front was slightly shorter than the man in back, the top of his head cresting the top of the other man’s chin. Their eyes, though, were where the girl noticed the biggest difference. Where the man in back had vividly emerald-green eyes that seemed to sparkle with intelligence and curiosity, his companion’s were almost black and sparked with malice. They pinged around the space, never quite fully settling on one object or person, and it gave him a slightly crazed appearance.
The two men surveyed the scene, eyes finally coming to rest on the girl’s mother and great-grandmother. They both, thankfully, skipped right over where the girl was standing between the two Matriarchs.
“What happened to her mouth?” The question came from the man in front. His voice was smooth and low with a lilt of barely constrained violence. The girl shivered involuntarily. The man was dangerous.
The pacing soldier stiffened before bowing at the waist. “Lord d’Refan, she was uncooperative and antagonistic. She needed to be taught a lesson.” His response was clipped, and he once again fiddled with the dagger at his waist.
The man—Lord d’Refan—turned his gaze from the girl’s mother and focused on the pacing soldier. Nothing else moved aside from his eyes, and the effect was unnerving. Apparently, the soldier thought so, too, as his nervous fiddling increased once the man’s gaze fully rested on him.
“Under whose authorization?” There was no bite to Lord d’Refan’s words, no forced aggression, but they carried an undoubted air of authority.
“Well, mine, my lord,” the soldier bit out. Lord d’Refan raised his eyebrows minutely and the soldier straightened before continuing. “As the leader of this outfit and particular mission, I was given the go-ahead to do whatever was necessary to bring them to heel. She was a mouthy bitch, sir, and needed to be taught her place.”
Lord d’Refan cocked his head in thought before taking a small step toward the quaking soldier. “Is that so, General?” The question was thrown over his shoulder to the man standing at his back.
The General looked almost bored by the inquiry and shrugged noncommittally.
“He appointed himself leader.” His voice was quiet and flat. And while he seemed less murderous than Lord d’Refan, there was still an air of danger that surrounded him. The girl shuddered and was glad that her physical form was tucked away in the secret room.
Lord d’Refan’s gaze flew back to the soldier and settled there. “Self-appointed, hmm?” The softness of his voice was lethal.
The soldier audibly gulped, his normally pale skin paling even further as sweat dripped down his brow and he began toying with the dagger at his side in earnest.
“Y-y-yes,” he stammered as he took slow shuffling steps away from his lord.
“Then you will be held accountable for everything that went against my express orders.”
The soldier held up his hands in a placating gesture as words rushed from his mouth in a constant stream. “We were told to gather the Matriarchs and bring them down here! That was all! They’re still alive, still breathing. We were told to keep them alive!”
The girl took immeasurable joy at the look of unadulterated horror on his face.
“Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?”
The soldier relaxed a fraction at his superior’s words, though the girl mentally chided him .
Never relax around a predator that is bigger and more powerful than you. Which is exactly what Lord d’Refan was in this situation.
Lord d’Refan flexed his fingers and cocked his head to the side before taking quick stock of the people pressed against the circular walls of the room. The girl’s mother and great-grandmother stood still, meeting his probing stare head-on, unlike his soldiers who visibly cowered and shrunk from his gaze. She couldn’t help but feel a rush of pride and warmth for the Matriarchs.
“I only see two Keepers. You’re missing two generations.” Lord d’Refan’s eyes came to rest on the soldier again, the air crackling with anticipation.
“Well, the one bitch was already dead by the time we located her. And the other just...disappeared.” The soldier’s fake bravado returned as his body eased back into a state of false relaxation.
“What do you mean . . . disappeared?” Lord d’Refan cocked his head again, his eyes whizzing about angrily.
“Her signature tracked here, but then just . . . poof .” He extended his fingers up and away from his hand in emphasis.
Clearly, one of the runes on the rug encased her magical signature, and the girl was inherently grateful to her unknown ancestor for their addition.
In a movement so quick the girl almost missed it, the Warlord—as her grandmother called him before her death—grabbed the offending Mage by the throat and dragged him close, their noses almost touching.
“Let’s see the truth of that, shall we?” he growled before pulling a short knife from his waistband and slashing the Mage’s neck.
Blood spurt from the wound, covering both the Mage’s tunic and the Warlord’s face. But there was no remark of revulsion, no move to wipe it away.
Instead, much to the girl’s horror, the Warlord’s tongue shot from his mouth and licked his lips, a slightly audible groan leaving his throat before he pressed his mouth to the wound in the man’s neck and sucked.
The Mages in the room diverted their attention from the spectacle while the General’s eyes stayed glued to the Warlord. No emotion passed across his face, but the girl was almost certain she saw a flicker of sadness before he schooled his expression once more.
Her mother and great-grandmother stood shocked and transfixed by the sight in front of them, neither daring to breathe as the Warlord continued to ingest the Mage’s blood.
Abruptly, the Warlord released the Mage and his body fell to the floor with an audible thunk . The room was utterly silent apart from the Warlord’s various grunts as he shut his eyes, seeing something only he could see.
When he reopened his pitch-black eyes, they were still, the constant and unnerving whizzing noticeably absent.
“She’s down here, but we cannot access her. She disappeared from their sight as soon as she entered this space,” he intoned, suddenly sounding tired and maybe even a bit drunk. “Her reckoning will come soon enough.”
He gestured for a cloth, which the General procured from one of his pockets. The Warlord wiped his face before throwing the cloth on top of the Mage’s corpse, blood still oozing from the wound in his neck into a puddle on the floor.
“You’re not the only ones with god-given gifts, Matriarchs. Kaos felt it would . . . even the playing field so to speak.” He grinned toothily at the two women.
The girl’s mother and great-grandmother let out identical gasps. Though, they were less alarmed by the soldier’s death, and more fixated on the Warlord’s admission.
“How?” The question was a whisper from the girl’s great-grandmother. “How? That shouldn’t be possible!”
The Lord turned a serpentine grin toward the girl’s great-grandmother. “Shouldn’t it? Were we not meant for more than these forms?”
These forms ?
Her mother hissed through the blood in her mouth, causing some to splatter out onto the floor.
“No.” The word was a sharp crack across the space. “ No ,” her great-grandmother repeated. “We were not meant for more. There needs to be balance , Alois.”
Alois . The girl catalogued his name at the top of her list of those who would pay for the crimes against her people.
“This IS balance. Don’t you see that? That is where you’re wrong, Great Mother. I know we’ve always had our . . . differences. But it’s long overdue for us to set aside our petty arguments. We have a mutual respect, a mutual understanding.” Alois moved quickly to where he was towering over her great-grandmother.
Her great-grandmother scoffed. “No, Alois. We’ve gone far beyond understanding. Eradicating my people in some deranged effort for more power. You won’t win, Truthsayer. Even with the information in that book, you won’t win. Then what will all of this be for?” She gestured one of her shaking hands around the space.
Alois seemed to contemplate her words for a moment before jerking his head toward the second man. “General d’Alvey, if you please.”
The General stepped forward, procuring a gleaming dagger from his waist as he moved. He clutched it almost reverently in one hand as he gestured with the other for the soldier holding the girl’s mother to step aside. The soldier bowed his head and moved to the other side of the room, away from the inevitable carnage.
The General gripped her mother’s shoulders and gently, yet firmly, pushed her until she was standing over the stone circle in the middle of the room.
“Recite the words. Unlock the door, willingly, or I will spill every drop of her blood,” Alois said almost lackadaisically. Silent tears tracked down her mother’s face as the General lifted the blade to her neck.
The girl’s great-grandmother sighed and met Alois’ dark gaze with her own milky-white one. “I may not have the truths that you do, Alois, but every personal future I’ve seen ends here. You will kill us both; slowly or quickly it does not matter. Each vision showed the same outcome in a thousand different ways.” She walked away from Alois and toward the girl’s mother. Her gnarled hand reached out to stroke the tears away from her face. “I am sorry, my child.” She pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before stepping back.
“May I?” She gestured to the blade in the General’s hand. The girl’s breathing came in fast, shallow pants as she watched her great-grandmother grip the dagger as the General stepped back from her mother.
“I will see you soon, my dear,” her great-grandmother whispered as she plunged the dagger in between the girl’s mother’s ribs, angling it so it hit her heart. Her mother whimpered once before her body slumped to the ground, as lifeblood pooled around her body and over the runes. Her great- grandmother removed the dagger from her side with an accompanied gush of blood, before slicing open her own hand.
The Matriarch didn’t flinch, didn’t even watch to see the length and depth of the cut. There was little care in the way she opened her hand, blood dripping down her fingers and dribbling onto the floor.
“Here,” she said, voice hard and devoid of emotion as she shoved the dagger back at the General.
The General apprised the girl’s great-grandmother with a look that carried an immense weight of respect. He tilted his head slightly to the side and offered an almost indecipherable nod. Her great-grandmother gazed into his eyes, uncaring of the wound that was spilling blood onto the floor. The General didn’t break eye contact with the Matriarch, even as he cleaned the dagger on his pant leg before sheathing it.
Their locked gazes seemed to stretch for infinity, the other soldiers becoming restless with the way the girl’s great-grandmother was reading their General. Even Alois seemed slightly uncomfortable with the sudden turn of events, if his shuffling body and gentle throat clearing were any indication.
The Matriarch ignored them all, suddenly reaching her bloody hand out to grasp the General’s face as quick as a viper. The girl heard a few soldiers shout and begin to move toward the General, swords drawing from sheaths with a cacophony of rasps.
“Relax,” Alois drawled, “there is no magic she possesses that can hurt him.” He waved the soldiers off, and they slowly sheathed their swords, but most remained poised to strike, hands still on the pommels of their weapons.
The girl drifted closer to her great-grandmother and the General. Her great-grandmother had a faraway look about her, as if she were reaching through Solace. But that couldn’t be right. The girl was more connected to Solace than ever before and couldn’t feel the Matriarch.
Her great-grandmother hummed as she smeared her blood across the General’s face. The girl gave the General a begrudging form of credit—he stood stock-still, eyes locked with her great-grandmother’s, letting her probe him. The girl thought she was having a vision, or maybe multiple, as the time seemed to stretch for eternity .
After a few more tension-filled minutes, her great-grandmother startled and took a deep breath, her eyes refocusing before she moved her second hand to grasp the other side of the General’s face. He moved both of his hands to rest over the top of hers.
“How interesting that as I face my death, your future is what I see,” she mused aloud. “There is so much more to happen, the roads of Fate open and constantly branching. But one thing remains certain.” She paused to stroke her thumbs across his cheeks before pulling his ear to her mouth and whispering, her next words for her and the General only.
“You are not what you seem, and she is not what she seems. When she comes, welcome her. And when she leaves find her. It is of paramount importance that you are the one to find her.”
She pulled back suddenly before gazing once more into his eyes. The General said nothing, simply dipped his head in acknowledgment.
Alois harrumphed. “What did she say to you, Rohak?”
Rohak . The Warlord finally provided the girl with a second name for her list.
Her great-grandmother held a small smile as she released the General’s face before turning to Alois. “You, of all people, know that what is said between the Keeper and their subject is for their ears only.” She raised an eyebrow in challenge. “He couldn’t speak of it even if he wanted to. He’s forgotten what I’ve said.”
The General furrowed his brow, trying to remember what her great-grandmother had said just minutes previous. He shook his head with a confused look across his face.
“I . . . I can’t recall, Alois,” he admitted while rubbing his temples as if the inability to recall the exchange caused him a headache.
It was then that the girl noticed the rune drawn onto the General’s cheek with her great-grandmother’s blood. The girl allowed herself a smile. Even in the face of death, her great-grandmother was sneaky and clever. The rune would prohibit the General from accessing the information given to him until a certain time as designated by the rune’s creator. It was a beautiful thing, really.
Alois seemed to consider the General’s words for a moment before nodding his head. “You speak the truth, old friend.” The General let out a noticeable breath at that admission before rolling his shoulders and stepping away from the circle on the floor. The soldiers also visibly relaxed when they noticed that their General was unharmed.
The girl took note of that action—there was more loyalty to the General than there was to Alois. She could use that.
Her great-grandmother knelt on the outside of the stone circle before lifting her head to the soldiers at the wall. “Could one of you remove my granddaughter’s body, please? I will need this space to access what your lord so desires.” The soldiers gazed about nervously, none making a move toward the Matriarch until the General spoke up.
“Zaire. You have a full Air crystal on you, yes?”
One of the soldiers, a blond boy who couldn’t have been much older than the girl, gave a curt nod before grasping something in his pocket.
“Please, aid the Matriarch,” the General said as he gestured toward the body.
Zaire stepped away from the wall and approached where her great-grandmother sat before reaching a hand in front of him. Pale, almost translucent wisps gathered in his palms before they sprang from his hands and gently twined around her mother’s body, carefully lifting it and carrying it across the room to rest against the wall nearest the alcove the girl was currently inside.
Zaire released his hold on the element, and the air seemed to quiet once more. There was a slight sweat on his brow, indicating that the act took some effort on his part. He stood back in line with the soldiers, wiping at his sweaty face, the spent crystal lying dark and drained on the floor. Alois came and stood in front of him, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Crystals can only store so much power for you. It will get easier once you Bond a Vessel and have unfettered access to your element,” he encouraged. Zaire nodded his head and Alois clapped him on the shoulder once more before standing next to the General, behind the girl’s great-grandmother.
Her great-grandmother took one last lingering look at the girl’s mother before releasing a breath. She turned her attention to the stone circle of runes, quickly highlighting a pattern with her bloody hand that even the girl had trouble tracking. As soon as her movements stilled, a grating noise came from the floor as the middle portion began to retract. The Matriarch pushed herself from the ground as a small circular pedestal rose, a book resting atop.
The girl cocked her head, confused by the sight.
On top of the pedestal was a plain book bound in worn leather, not much larger than a pocket journal. There was nothing extraordinary about it, no waves of power, no otherworldly eminence. Nothing.
Realization slowly dawned on the girl and a wicked smile spread across her face.
Clever woman.
The Matriarch grabbed her cane before leaning heavily on it, looking more tired than the girl had ever seen.
As soon as the floor stopped moving and the book was visible, Alois moved with confident strides and scooped it from its resting place. A look of excitement crossed his face and the air vibrated in anticipation. He wrenched the cover open and began shuffling through the pages.
As he flipped through the book, his eyebrows drew together and his initial look of excitement passed quickly into confusion, then anger. He paged through the book faster and more aggressively until he reached the end and snapped it closed.
“What is this trickery?” he shouted at the Matriarch, gesturing wildly at her with the book.
Her great-grandmother smiled. A true genuine smile.
“The book will only write itself once there are no more Keepers who can access Solace. As long as my bloodline is alive, that book will stay empty, and you will not be able to access the knowledge you seek. The other artifacts will remain hidden, as they should.”
The look on the Warlord’s face was purely murderous.
“Kill her,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
When no one moved to follow their lord’s order, he screamed again, “Kill her!”
This time two soldiers shook themselves from their stupor against the wall and cautiously approached her great-grandmother, drawing swords as they went.
The girl’s breaths started to come faster as she watched the scene unfold. She knew what was going to happen. When she touched that life light she knew she would see the deaths of her mother and great- grandmother. But now that the time had come to say goodbye to the last of her family, she realized she was not as prepared as she originally thought. She reached out a hand to her great-grandmother and time seemed to slow, then stop.
Her great-grandmother turned her head toward where the girl was standing and smiled sadly at her.
“It is time,” she whispered, her eyes never straying from the girl’s. “Remember what I told you. Remember what happened here today. Remember us.” The scene started moving slowly again, as if time were righting itself once more. “The next part will be painful. You must survive it. You must become better from it.”
The girl blinked and time moved again, but it was like she couldn’t hear anything that was happening. One of the soldiers gripped her great-grandmother by the arms, her cane clattering to the floor, while the other brought his sword up and quickly pressed the tip through the back of her great-grandmother’s neck. Blood ran from her mouth in a river, staining her white kaftan and gushing to the floor. Her body fell from the sword with a slick sound before crumpling to the ground. As soon as she fell, a light detonated in the space from where her body lay, causing the men to lift their hands to their faces with a cry.
The light pulsed, staying contained near her great-grandmother’s body, pushing away anyone who dared get near. No sound accompanied it, yet it drowned out all other noise in the room—the soldiers’ exclamations, the General’s shouts and orders, the Warlord’s cursing—all were muted as the light continued to pulse.
The girl felt a pull in her chest as she gazed at the light. It felt like it was beckoning her closer, and she was instantly reminded of the life lights scattered throughout the dark room in Solace. The girl felt her soul drift until she was standing directly in front of the light.
“It is time, child ,” a voice that was simultaneously familiar and undoubtedly foreign said in her mind.
The girl reached out her hand and brushed against the life light. The light latched onto the girl at the smallest of contact, pulling her back into Solace and out of the Room of Knowledge. All at once, images exploded across her consciousness. Visions floated through her mind at the speed of light. Thousands upon thousands of lives flashed before her eyes—those of the ancient past and those of the future all combined into a steady stream of images. The girl gasped and felt like her soul was torn into a thousand pieces as the speed of the images accelerated until they coalesced into one blur. Despite the speed at which she saw everything, the girl inherently knew that she would retain it.
For what felt like years, the girl’s hand remained encapsulated by the light while she was inundated with visions of the past and of the future. The girl tried to wrench her hand away, afraid that her mind would burst from the pain in her head, but the light held tight.
“ Look!” it said, “ see what has happened and what will happen, child. You are the last of us. The Last Keeper. The Last Matriarch.”
The girl let out a bloodcurdling shriek and was thankful that one of her ancestors had the foresight to create a Sound Blocking Rune on the carpet in the seeing chamber. Her mind latched onto that memory, and she saw her four times great-grandmother sewing the rune into the carpet, the thread thick with the blood that had gushed from her nose when she had bound herself to Solace.
The memory ended and floated away while others continued to assault her consciousness. The girl felt too full, like any more information would surely cause her brain to burst. The memories slowed to a trickle, and the girl was able to latch onto a few as they floated past. She distinctly saw the faces of six people, and catalogued the memories and futures directly attached to those six faces into their own room in Solace, saving them for when she had the ability to further dissect the images.
Eventually, the memories and futures ground to a halt, and she opened her soul’s eyes to see that no time had passed inside the Room of Knowledge. The light from her great-grandmother waned and died, taking the bodies of both her relatives. The girl found that she didn’t feel any sadness at their loss. They were with the goddess, now. They were at peace.
Much to the girl’s surprise, her soul was not thrust back into the room containing the life lights of her people upon the deaths of her remaining family. Instead, the girl found she was able to move freely about the space and she floated over to the General, studying his face before touching his cheek where the rune was. The blood, and rune, had absorbed into his skin when her great-grandmother died, hiding itself until the time was right .
The General shuddered at her touch. The girl pulled her soul’s hand back as if burned and a sequence of visions pulled across her mind.
He was one of the six. She let out a low hiss, disappointed that Solace demanded he live when he had helped cause the destruction of her people. She searched her futures, desperate to find one where he wasn’t alive, and could not find it as a possibility.
She floated away from the General toward a raging Alois. He was shuffling through the book again at lightning speed, beyond frustrated at this point.
“That bitch ! It’s not here! There is nothing here!” he screamed at no one in particular. Alois wrenched his gaze from the book, eyes wild as he searched for her great-grandmother’s body. “The magical signature of the Last Keeper!” He whirled to face one of the soldiers. “Where did it disappear?” He crossed the room in three great strides and picked up the soldier by his collar, throwing him against the wall.
“D-d-down here! Down here! She is in here somewhere!” He clawed pointlessly at Alois’ hands wrapped around his neck. The Warlord released the soldier and frantically ran his hands over the walls, looking for a place where the girl could have hidden.
“You will not find me here,” her soul said in a voice that was somehow hers but also not . The Warlord instantly halted his frantic searching and pivoted to gaze around the room.
“Where are you? I hear you.”
The girl cocked her soul’s head to the side, quietly regarding Alois. He could hear her?
“SPEAK TO ME,” he demanded, spittle flying from his mouth as his face turned red, hand clutching the book. The Mages remaining in the space took an involuntary step backward, away from their raging lord.
“No,” she said simply. The Warlord growled in frustration.
“You’re not here, are you.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement that rang with truth and knowledge.
Truthsayer .
“No, Truthsayer. I am not,” the girl said. It wasn’t the truth but wasn’t a lie, either. Her physical body was here, but her soul was in Solace.
He searched around the chamber again, looking for her .
“Sir?” The quiet question came from the General. “Who are you speaking to?”
Alois’s gaze snapped to the General and he gave him a feral smile. “The Last Matriarch, General. She is not here, but we will not stop until every one of her people is dead. You hear me, Keeper?” he shouted the last part. “I will kill every. Last. One of you until you present yourself to me.”
She didn’t deign him an answer. The Warlord huffed and shoved past his soldiers and General, making for the entrance of the room.
“Sir?” the General asked quietly again.
“Torch it. Torch it all. But leave the bodies for carrion. If the Last Matriarch refuses to give herself to us, then she shall not see her people returned to Solace,” he said. “And we’re keeping the book,” he added petulantly while striding from the room, not waiting for his General’s response.
The General tilted his head back, breathing deeply with his eyes closed before gathering himself and facing his men. He clutched something in his pocket before releasing it just as quickly.
“You heard his orders,” he said tiredly. “Torch it.” He gestured to one of the soldiers, a Fire Mage, who let a ball of flame flicker into his outstretched palm. The General indicated for the remainder of the soldiers to precede him up the stairs.
The Fire Mage walked slowly around the room, touching the paneled walls and books until each wall contained a small flame. The General nodded at him to exit the chamber. The Fire Mage left, which left the General alone in the small space.
He gazed at the flames licking the books on the wall. The girl’s soul watched as all written histories began to fall to the flames. Again, she felt nothing.
What was the destruction of knowledge if her people were gone?
Besides, all of that information was tucked away in Solace now, easily accessed by her at any time.
Just as the General turned to exit the room, the girl felt a strong pull to one of the books on the wall. A strange energy radiated from it, and the girl knew it must be saved. Her soul quickly floated to it, pulling it from its place on the shelf and letting it drop with a thump to the ground. The General quickly turned, scanning the room, but finding only flames. Just as he turned to go, his gaze caught on the book the girl had pulled from the wall .
He bent and quickly picked it up, trying unsuccessfully to open it.
“It is not for you, but you must keep it safe,” the girl said into his mind. The General jumped slightly, eyes wildly searching the room before he nodded and tucked it into the belt at his waist. “You will know whom to give it to, and when.”
He nodded again before continuing up and out of the Room of Knowledge, thick black smoke billowing in his wake.