Wakespire (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 7), page 19
Then again, Fiyu had been confident in her senses and an Ichili predator had still managed to strike her. Theo kept his cantae ready, just in case.
"Okay, somewhere around here..." Senka perched on his shoulder and shook her head. "There should be a distortion, a bit like a permanent gate. We just need to track it down."
"Why can't you do this yourself?" Theo asked. "I'm not just messing with you, either. Exactly how can you move between worlds?"
"I'm pretty sure I swallowed a weirkey."
With her leaning on his head, he couldn't glare at her. She seemed to understand anyway.
"That wasn't a joke!" Senka tapped where her stomach would have been if she had been a normal living being. "There's a weirkey somewhere in my mangled soulhome. I can use it to move myself, but it takes a real toll on me. I've tried to help you guys with it a few times and haven't managed it."
"You said a weirkey, but you've traveled between multiple worlds."
"Individual weirkeys are beginner stuff. You can do a lot better than that, but that's so far beyond you, there's no point even talking about it."
Instead of answering, Theo stayed focused on the search. The entire region was a bit unnerving, but he thought that was a purely psychological effect. Nothing felt truly unusual until something rippled through the nearby stone. According to his gravity and cantae senses, nothing had moved at all. That couldn't stop the visceral awareness.
"Did you get that one?" Senka asked.
"Were you sensing these from absurdly far away?" he asked. "How?"
"You just have to get a feel for it over a lifetime of experience. You're actually better-suited to this than most, because you survived your encounter with the House of the Lost. They really disrupt the fabric of other worlds."
Now that he knew what he was looking for, Theo could zero in on it. The fluctuations weren't constant, more like an erratic throbbing. He'd been examining the correct spine of stone, but he was too high. It emanated from deep inside the cloud layer, on the other side of a protrusion.
Eventually he reached out and touched the stone. It pressed back against his fingers, slightly wet and cool, as he ran his fingers along the side of the cliff... until they suddenly passed through. He immediately jerked his hand back and checked for any kind of harm.
"Oh, you're gonna lose that hand," Senka said. "It's infected. You'd better cut it off now."
"Shut up. Is this the entrance?"
"That's right. Now, you'd better go in first, since you're a big strong-"
Theo threw Senka against the wall. If she hadn't gone through, she wouldn't have been much harmed, but she passed into the apparently solid stone. He followed soon after, bracing himself against the strange chill. It reminded him of the entrance to the Chasm of Lamentations in a way he struggled to put his finger on, since the experiences were otherwise so different.
The space on the other side was pitch black but dry. Theo released a bit of cantae to light it... and immediately let out his breath.
It was as if he stood in a tunnel between worlds. What should have been cave walls around him shifted in the corner of his vision, twisting like non-space. They might be harmless on their own, but he had a bad feeling that if he stayed for too long, demons would start crawling out of the void.
Worse than that was the other end of the corridor. The entrance and the strange tunnel could be written off as a strange manifestation of reality, but he faced a barrier that was unquestionably artificial. He could barely even see the wall of dark bricks around the entrance. Heavy double doors stood within a massive statue of a face, contorted as if screaming in pain. To enter the doors, he'd need to walk into that mouth.
"Yes, this is it." Even Senka spoke softer as she stared at the entrance. "My memories are jumbled, but I can tell you what this is. A space containing another river, not as dangerous as the Chasm of Lamentations but... in some ways worse. Somebody didn't want it open to the Nine Worlds, so they locked it away here, where they hoped no one would ever find it."
"And now we're going to march directly in." Theo frowned down at Senka. "Are we going to unleash something trapped on the other side?"
"One or two unspeakable horrors, no big deal."
"Has this been your plan all along? You know, on Earth we have a variety of different stories about some unsuspecting human foolishly opening something that was meant to remain closed."
"We have those stories too. They end with everyone living in peace and prosperity, right?" Senka's smile didn't last for long. "I don't know what else to tell you, Theo. I'm incapable of opening this on my own, so this is one of those moments where I hope that you trust me."
"I guess I do." Theo smiled at her and walked to the doors.
His statement would have felt much more meaningful if he hadn't immediately realized that he didn't know how to open the door either. There were no handles and the doors didn't budge when he pushed on them. He did note a dark gemstone that was likely meant to receive cantae into some locking mechanism. The space beyond was too difficult for his gravity sense to parse, so he had no chance of simply picking it.
Up close, he realized that the doors were covered with etchings of faces in agony. Lovely.
"I guess it's harder to get in than I was expecting." Senka hovered beside it, but didn't seem to have a solution ready. "I don't know... you don't have to do this now if you don't want to. I could try to research some sort of key while you look into your old Noveni friend. That was one of your top priorities, wasn't it?"
"No, we'll do this first. I owe you that much." Theo put his hand on Senka's shoulder, trying to avoid gripping her like she was a child. "Besides, when I tried to investigate Brigana, I brought down a huge amount of trouble on myself. This could be just as bad, so I want to deal with other issues first."
Senka turned away and wiped her eyes. "Alright, that's fair. But if we're going to get in, I think we need someone with better senses."
"Not a problem anymore." Theo pulled out his weirkeys again and couldn't help but grin.
Seconds later, he was across the world floating just outside Ugustial. The city had defenses that prevented him from entering directly, but it was a simple matter to fly down to their palace. Reaching Authority wasn't just a matter of power, it meant freedom. If his group could just acquire enough weirkeys, that freedom would become nearly unlimited.
"Oh, Theo." Nauda looked up from her soulcrafting and blinked. "You're not done already, are you?"
"I need expertise," Theo said. "Is Guchiro here?"
"I think they're in the back, in the dark area. But we were actually going to get you next time you came back. Isorales invited us to a big sublime feast."
"Is it literally right now?"
"No, we were waiting for you."
"Then it can wait." Theo was about to say more, but at that moment Guchiro emerged from the wall of darkness leading to the next room.
"What?" He folded his arms and regarded Theo with an expression of utter confidence, even though the two of them were technically both Authorities now.
"I need senses far more polished than mine," Theo said. "We can be across the world and back in minutes if you don't mind."
"My ward has work of her own to do. I am willing."
Guchiro floated up to join him and seconds later they were flashing back across the world. Theo had to wipe the grin off his face when they emerged above the clouds, even though he assumed that Guchiro had already felt it. In any case, it was much easier to find the tunnel the second time, so they both stepped in together and stared at the screaming face.
"There you are." Senka stood up and spat a rock out of her mouth. "Guchiro, do you know about the five rivers? This is the entrance to one of them, or at least its world fragment."
"And you wish for me to open it." Guchiro floated forward to the door and placed a hand against the surface. "It is possible, but you should know there is danger beyond. Not danger of the crude variety that could destroy your body."
Theo could only shrug. "I'm determined to make the attempt, but that attempt doesn't need to be now. If you think it would be suicide, I'll reconsider. If it's possible, I want to try."
Guchiro examined him for several long seconds, then turned back to the door. "Because it is you, it may be possible. But I will not allow my ward to join you."
"Fiyu needs to work toward Authority, anyway."
"Then I will unlock the door."
Despite his confident tone, Guchiro failed on his first attempt. He withdrew his cantae and attempted again, sending a trickle of it through the gemstone into the mechanism. After a pause, he drew his legs up and sat cross-legged in the air, considering with his eyes closed. It required no less than five minutes before a deep click sounded through the chamber.
"I hope you will be fortunate in this unwise endeavor." Guchiro looked at him and seemed disinclined to say more. Since there was no way to reply to that, Theo returned him to Ugustial.
Then it was only the two of them, staring at the unlocked doors within the carved mouth. Theo glanced over at Senka and didn't see any more amusement in her eyes. There was really nothing else to say and he had no idea if there was anything he could do to prepare. All they could do was walk forward.
When Theo pushed through the double doors, he instantly entered another realm. Unlike the broad spaces of the Chasm, he found himself standing in a room of dark stone. The roof was uncomfortably far up, as if the space had been built for giants, but the walls leaned close on all sides.
They seemed like smooth gray walls... until he shifted slightly and the room changed. With a single step, the square room became a pentagon. Or had it ever been square? There was an old wooden door along one wall, but when he turned toward it, the door was gone and three triangular doors appeared behind him. When Theo reached out to touch one of them, the door dissolved into stone and another appeared on the ceiling.
"I remember this place now," Senka said quietly. "Welcome to the Archive of Misery."
Chapter 22
"Alright, fine." Theo tried to look back at Senka, which was unusually tricky with the room constantly twisting around him. "If you know this place, how does it work?"
"That's a bit of a problem. I knew about it, I wasn't a veteran." Senka hovered beside him, grinding her teeth, and briefly looked much older than her impish form. "It's some kind of gauntlet of illusions, spatial distortion, and allegedly misery. I'm immune to some things even now, but it's not helping at all here."
"So what made you think I could get through? Watch us starve to death in the first room."
"Oh, I could survive for at least several rooms on your body. But give yourself more credit than that. I didn't ask you to come here just because you were the only person who trusts me."
"The first problem is just getting to any door." Theo remained very still and pointed toward the door to his right. "What happens if you float over to that one?"
"You see a door over there? Huh."
It quickly became obvious that they were seeing different rooms. For a while they tested different positions, just in case the room you saw was dependent on where you stood. Unless the room was controlled by some sort of unfathomably complex patterns, Theo thought that it was random.
"Okay, we take a step back." Theo closed his eyes and focused purely on his other senses. "They wouldn't have put a lock on the door if they wanted to lock this place away forever. This must be a gauntlet that people made to travel through if absolutely necessary. And if they're people... unless there were people with radically different minds back then."
"I'm not sure how long ago my era was," Senka said, "but people were mostly people. Outsiders like the House of the Lost are about as inhuman as I've seen reality get."
"Then shut up and let me concentrate."
He didn't need to tell her to shut up, but Senka just grinned. With his eyes closed again, he could feel the room around him without it shifting rapidly. Even when he turned, he didn't feel any changes.
Of course his gravitational sense was the most likely solution. The problem was that it told him that there was nothing but absurdly high densities beyond the current room. It was slightly relieving to feel the entrance behind him, so they hadn't been thrown incomprehensibly far into some hellish dimension. But no matter how he moved, none of his senses revealed anything particularly unusual in any other direction.
Actually, that wasn't really true: he hadn't tried to touch anything. Theo kept his eyes closed and walked to one of the walls. For a moment he was happy to feel rough wood, like he'd found a door... but it refused to budge. When he ran his hands over it, the surface changed back to stone. So the chamber was capable of altering all of his senses.
That cemented his theory: this was all illusion, not some more complex challenge. His gravitational senses might not be very useful, but they weren't affected. He used them to guide himself around the chamber, testing every single surface of what proved to be a hexagon. Some felt like various kinds of doors, but it was when he was running his fingers over some stone that he realized that his hand passed through.
"Here." Theo looked, and though his eyes and skin told him he was running up against a solid wall, gravitationally he knew his arm was passing through when he extended it. "This looks like the only door onward."
"It looks like nothing to me," Senka said. "You'd better not be convincing me to run head-first into a wall."
"No, it's really the way out. This isn't so bad. Just like an ancient version of the Wakespire. If we can figure out the tricks, we-"
When they stepped through the door, terror seized hold of Theo's mind. Mindless fear that consumed him, urging him to flee at all costs. He automatically gathered cantae to fight back, even though his mind was telling him that it was useless and that he would die at any moment.
Yet there was nothing. Just another room, with empty shelves along the walls. Waves of terror continued pumping through him with no apparent cause, and they weren't letting up.
"Is t-this..." He hated how his voice trembled, but the adrenaline was overwhelming. "Is it a f-fear room?"
"It's not." Senka wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "Not a trap. Just raw misery. From... from the river."
Considering it that way, Theo realized that she was right. The intense fear wasn't urging him to flee back to the previous room or curl up in a ball or anything that would prevent his progress. If anything, his body was screaming at him to run wildly in any direction, anything other than staying still and dying.
"It doesn't... get better." Theo clenched his teeth and took a shaky step forward. "We can't resist it, so we just move on."
Through the next door, he suddenly found himself tumbling through the sky. He was plummeting, no matter how much he tried to fly. Theo automatically cast a gravitational field, then an anchoring point that should have locked him in place, yet they did no good. He was still hurtling into endless darkness...
Or was he? Free of the illogical terror, Theo focused solely on himself. He was anchored in place, his technique working perfectly. This room wasn't overcoming any of his techniques, it was just another illusion. When he focused solely on his gravitational senses, they told him that he was spinning wildly, but they also gave hints of a door onward.
"They're just challenges," Theo said with a smile. "We've got this."
~ ~ ~
"We don't have this."
Theo sat in front of a series of doors, each made from identical wood. They weren't illusions but actual paths onward. Some were dead ends, some led to more doors, but so far each door had contained nothing but pain. Sometimes he'd be flooded by a sense of humiliation, other times depression, often a self-consuming rage.
At times he thought he heard the flowing of a river, as if he was getting closer, but there hadn't been any pattern he could determine. It seemed like all the miserable emotions were flowing out into the empty rooms. Like this place was a vast emotional dam holding back all the sensations from spilling over. It wasn't a path designed to keep people out, the Archive was designed to keep the river in.
The problem was, the rooms formed a maze and he hadn't figured out any way through except brute force. Experiencing so many different sensations had taken an enormous psychic toll on him, which was why he was taking a break. Senka had done her part testing some of the doors and now lay spread out on the floor beside him.
"You okay, Senka?"
"Urgle."
"Did you revert to your cursed state, or...?"
"I have nothing to say but 'urgle'."
He chuckled, which improved his mood more than he expected. Interacting with Senka, whether it was being amused or annoyed, felt authentic in a way that none of the intense emotions did. Theo smiled and examined the remaining doors. Just a few more minutes of rest, then they'd move on.
~ ~ ~
The sprawling labyrinth of misery finally led him to a different sort of dead end. Theo nearly turned back and closed the door before he realized that the shelves actually contained objects. Sublime materials, remnants of books, an entire skeleton.. the room seemed to have been looted at some point in the past, but what remained might have some value.
"What's this?" he asked Senka, just to hear her voice.
"Guess this place archives more than misery." She walked forward to examine the room. "I don't sense anything strange, so it might be a real storeroom."
"I'm too tired to figure out if any of this is useful. Let's loot everything and keep going."
~ ~ ~
Door after door, room after room. Theo had taken multiple breaks to sleep or eat. He soulcrafted only occasionally to clear his head, and he felt the absence of his usual routine. Assuming that his urge to sleep followed normal circadian rhythms, he'd been traveling through the Archive of Misery for multiple days.
As far as he could tell, they were making progress. Entire branches had been ruled out as completely empty, or at least empty after he took what remained. The problem was that the maze really did seem to shift. It wasn't an illusion like the first room, hallways and doors truly moved in his absence. Senka's theory was that the river itself had a chaotic nature and the Archive that contained it had to shift to compensate.
