Noble Arcana

Knowledge is a dangerous thing even in the right hands.

Cyrus Feln, Lead Inquisitor

The rest of the week passed with Solomon spending his mornings managing the estate and then travelling into town to work out of the Watchmen’s office. He approved of each of Vantus’s chosen guards. With them he had now personally secured the jobs of a plurality of them, which would help him maintain control. He also managed to find a suitable secretary, Feist, an older man who had once been a teacher before no one could afford to pay him any longer. With a secretary in place Solomon would have more help keeping things organized and he could return more of his attention to larger problems.

At night Solomon would continue his search through his uncle’s journals. He continued focusing on mentions of the repository, but while it appeared a lot it took three days to find any explicit mentions of how Victor accessed it.

…had to replace the apparatus I had used to access the repository. Knowing that M was searching for it made it important to change it. Luckily, since I know something of his true nature, I can be certain he won’t be able to locate the replacement I have hidden within my secluded study…

Solomon blinked. He was in what he imagined to be his uncle’s secluded study. He stood up from the desk he was sitting at and grabbed the small candle holder and lit candle. He began sweeping the room. He started at the table of alchemical reagents, searching for anything that was glowing with mana, but he found nothing. He went back to the desk and searched the drawers again, finding nothing new. He began to walk along the walls, eventually finding himself behind the corpse of the god. He scanned the walls and saw the slightest spark of mana emanating from one brick. He would never have seen it standing on the other side of the god, but behind it the glow of mana was clear.

He gently placed his hand on the brick feeling a mild tingling through the tips of his fingers as it activated. A number of other bricks around it separated and revealed a small chamber. It was filled with the glow of mana. He stepped into it carefully, staying just outside of the small summoning circle he saw on the floor. In the center of it was a plinth on which rested a spherical crystal within which clouds swirled and convulsed. The circle, the plinth, and the sphere were the only things within the chamber.

Solomon felt a sudden chill and cursed the draft that seemed to settle over him out of nowhere. He knelt, careful to keep himself from stepping on or in the circle, and looked at the runes written on it. He recognized a few from his studies of the runes on the other circle. Soul and Transport were frequently interspersed all throughout. Victor’s diaries had mentioned that it was a method for accessing the Repository remotely. Could it be in the same way that he had been transported to the Arcana meeting? He’d seen no runes on the hermit statue when he’d studied it more closely, but perhaps the fundamentals were the same.

Unfortunately, he had no way to fully decipher the spell. He lacked the knowledge necessary to fully analyze it. There was no reason for it to be trapped. Victor had seemed very confident that it couldn’t be found. He was also on a timer. He grimaced, he preferred to be prepared, but sometimes a leap was necessary.

He stepped into the circle. Nothing happened.

He placed his hands on either side of the orb. Nothing happened.

He began to push mana into it.

He felt the sensation of falling for a few moments. Lights exploded within his vision interspersed with a darkness so deep it seemed as if it would swallow him. He was unsure of how long this lasted, but it seemed to end very suddenly.

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He found himself standing before a massive bookshelf. He saw withered old scrolls, tomes wrapped in black leather, stone tablets, and even flayed skin with tattooed words across them. The shelf itself was plain brown, and the floor beneath it was tiled in alternating squares of tan and white.

He tried to crane his head upward and look at the top of the shelves, but he found that his head would not move. He blinked, but found that he couldn’t do so. He tried to take a deep breath and found that not to be an option either. He assessed himself, realizing that all of the discomforts he’d been feeling earlier had vanished. He was no longer hungry, or tired. It was much like how he’d felt when he’d been transported to the Arcana meeting.

He attempted to move his arms, and found that after exerting a bit of force he could move them forward. He then used them to push himself out of whatever it was that was holding him. He looked up, seeing that the bookshelf in front of him seemed to have no limit, and above that he saw what appeared to be clouds, gently floating across the sky.

Solomon stared for a few moments before turning his attention to himself. He brought his hands in front of his face. They were made of wood. He bent each of his fingers, finding them to be fully articulated. He then looked down at himself, finding his chest, and legs were also made of wood. He was a puppet. A very finely crafted one.

He turned around to look at what he’d come out of, finding a coffin standing upright that was filled with a vaguely yellow substance. Solomon moved forward to touch it and realized it was wax. He looked to the side and found more than a dozen other coffins. Each of them was also standing upright and holding a wooden puppet. This must’ve been his uncle’s solution. Solomon couldn’t help, but to marvel at it. He imagined that this was an example of Soulamancy and teleportation magic, both of which were listed as forbidden. This seemed much more interesting to him than simply firing flames from one’s hands.

He looked around the puppets, finding a desk and chair, though nothing was on it. He’d hoped for a moment that whatever his uncle had been last looking at might still be sitting open upon it. He turned and moved to the puppets and coffins. The coffins had a number of runes carved into them, many of which matched the circle his true body was standing on. The puppets themselves didn’t have any runes on them, but they were certainly magical as well. Even just studying them and their creation would likely teach him a great deal. He’d have to hold off on that avenue of research for now though.

Solomon turned to look at the shelf in front of him. He marvelled again at the scale of it. He approached it more closely, finding that there were no seams to the shelves themselves, as if they had somehow all been carved from a single piece. He doubted that though. In reality a shelf built this high would be doomed to fall. In fact the entire space made no sense. It was magic, or perhaps the work of a god, or both. His uncle had mentioned not being certain of its origins, but he was certain he’d had some theories on it. He hoped they were mentioned somewhere in his journals.

Solomon looked at the shelf in front of him. He was tempted to grab the nearest scroll, one that looked to have been sewn from flesh, as he presumed it was likely to have the kind of forbidden magic he was looking for, but decided he wanted to play it a bit safer than that. He reached for a simple brown leather book. It looked to be the kind one would keep as a journal. He carefully peeled it open.

Two hands exploded out of the pages and grasped the sides of his head, claws gouging deep rends in the wood of it. He pushed away from them, trying to throw the book away, but they were too strong. In the center of the book, between the pages, rows of gnashing teeth suddenly manifested, moving in alternating directions that reminded him of the motions of Barnabus’s saw as he used it. He continued trying to push away, but it was hopeless, and his head was jammed into the book, then everything went black.

Solomon found himself back in the chamber, his hands clutching the orb. He felt as if the mana he’d pushed into it had vanished, likely still with the chewed puppet. He had thought he was being cautious, but clearly looks could be deceptive within the repository. He channeled more mana into the orb and found himself transported again.

As before he pushed himself from the wax coffin and took a few steps forward. He could see the chewed puppet from before, its head cut in two, the book wasn’t next to it. Instead he saw that it was back on the shelf where he had grabbed it. He dragged the puppet body back to the coffin and then decided to go with his first instinct. He grabbed the scroll of flesh and took it to the desk. There he carefully unraveled it, ready to throw himself back if necessary. Luckily, nothing happened. He looked at the text of it finding to be an old dialect of Drakthic.

Foalicsh Realu

It meant Blood Control.