[written down by Johana Passerin]
Klaes stared into the gate with wide-open eyes. Before him swayed thirteen eyeless dancers, singing their intoxicating melody: sweet, sweet, sweet is this dance, in which no one is left alone.
Loverd rushed to Klaes, grabbed him by the shoulders, and turned him away from the gate. It was difficult; Klaes stood rooted to the spot.
“Klaes, snap out of it!” Loverd roared.
“Yes, yes, I hear you… you’re there… I understand you, yes,” Klaes whispered absentmindedly.
Loverd shook him and called out, “Vedrax, come help me!”
Taro rushed to help as well. She had drunk plenty of wine, yet she still felt a strange dizziness. Fox stood nearby, completely paralyzed.
Loverd turned urgently to the black knight— “He’s fallen to the Mold! I have no way to light Aurán here now. Use your blood!”
But Vedrax needed no prompting from Loverd. Even as he approached, he was drawing a thin dagger from his belt—the kind knights usually used to stab through an opponent’s closed visor into the eye. He stepped up to the blissfully smiling Klaes, sliced his own hand, and smeared his blood across Klaes’s face.
The blood seemed to close the inner gate within Klaes. The connection to the blissful unity snapped, lingering inside Klaes like painful, fading distant music. The disheveled Yllerian looked at Vedrax: “Why? Why did you give me back the pain! It was gone, but now it’s back. I heard them! It was an invitation. There was no need to resist it.”
“Pain is proof that you are alive. Let us stand together against this infection,” Vedrax countered. “Only a weakling tries to escape pain. Just wait until you learn a bit of the wise lore of the Xalgonian knights—you will come to love pain. That is the right path. That is life. This infection wants to destroy it.”
“Infection? You understand nothing! The world is sick, and this is the cure!” Klaes groaned. His legs buckled beneath him. Genuine misery showed on his face. Loverd roughly grabbed him with both hands by his stiff leather coat and dragged him away. Klaes’s limp legs left two furrows in the soft mold behind him.
“What did you see?” Taro asked curiously once they were out of sight of the gate and had set Klaes on the ground. Several conflicting forces warred inside her. On one hand, she was drunk, cheerful, and naturally curious—amplified by the powerful call emanating from the gate. Rising within her was not only a purely physical urge to just run, jump through the gate, and fall into the soft, sweet, white meadow of mold on the other side, but also a growing impression that Klaes was not delusional, but had instead been granted a true insight into the other side. Yet against these urges, the memory of her besieged home and her dear sister, who was holding back the surge of jelly with the last of her strength, had not completely died. But what if all this misery, affliction, and death arise only because we fight it? If we surrendered to it, it would embrace us with open arms!
Meanwhile, Klaes spoke: “I saw, I heard, I tasted, and my whole body was telling me that this is the answer we were searching for! This is the magical formula that will end all strife and finally establish unity across all of Qurand. I felt the consciousness hiding behind the gate. It doesn’t want to hurt us; it comes offering peace. It wants to heal us.”
“He’s starting to sound like Talantius,” Loverd remarked suspiciously.
“Yes. And it sounds like a description of a hollow death,” Vedrax added. “I see no honor in that. It’s too sweet to be true.”
“Must life really be nothing but pain and misunderstanding? I can’t take it anymore. I’ve seen too much evil, now I want to choose good!” Klaes wailed when he heard what they were saying about him. He sat there, unable to stand. “You ripped me away from that blissful epiphany—but what could I expect when you haven’t experienced it yourselves? It wasn’t some moldy, dead nothingness. It was the exact opposite. Talantius only saw a fragment. But the Elixir caused me to see the whole, I saw everything all at once. It’s a beautiful, geometric order—all consciousnesses are connected there without perishing. It’s a grand network, a great mycelium that thinks and feels in an entirely different way. It isn’t constant competition; it’s cooperation… but words simply cannot express it. You have to experience it firsthand. I’m not crazy, it’s still me, Klaes.”
“It reminds me quite a bit of how knights talk when they surrender themselves too deeply to some demonic lord and fall into monotheism,” Vedrax noted. “They always babble about unity and enlightenment, too.”
Then he turned to Klaes and urged him: “Drink some more wine and remember why we came here: to save the city of Svittynis. Think of our heroic quest. True initiation lies in courageous combat, not in whiny waiting for salvation.”
“But I don’t want to wait for salvation! I just want to tell you that things aren’t as simple as they seem. Something is speaking to us here that we are only beginning to comprehend. When the first Yllerians brought their inventions to surrounding lands, everyone was afraid of them too. They feared the unknown. This is an even more mysterious unknown. Talantius only saw a tiny piece. Old age takes away a touch of sharpness; truth is a walk on the edge of a blade, and I fear that sharpness of mind is precisely what Talantius lost. He believed too soon.”
“I don’t understand,” Loverd said, “but I know why. You’re under the influence of the Mold.”
Klaes suddenly began to tremble again. A tear rolled down his cheek from his eye, leaving a pale track across the still-fresh blood.
“My soul suffers under my deeds,” he said softly. He raised his head and looked at Loverd and Vedrax. “But you weren’t there… Fox… Fox, you remember! What destruction we caused. The people of Arkon left at the mercy of Mrákota. The underground city we failed to help. The slaughter of thousands on the rails. Human sacrifices in the sacred grove. We left nothing but dead bodies behind us… my life is a nightmare.”
He wiped away the tear, and along with it, a part of Vedrax’s blood.
“My hands are bloody! This is the blood of the innocent!”
“I assure you,” Vedrax said in a sepulchral voice, “that this blood is the blood of a murderer crowned with the accursed glow. From my mother’s womb I emerged cursed and consumed by ravenous evil.”
Klaes cast a confused look at him. He still didn’t quite realize what had happened. Soon, however, he sank back into his own melodrama.
“What I saw when I peered into the gate… Ah, now I must only suffer.”
“We’ve heard this before. Suffering is the essence of life,” Vedrax said, toying with his stiletto. “Accept it and embrace it. If you don’t, we’ll probably have to shorten your suffering, much like we helped Talantius.”
Klaes looked at the dagger. Then into Vedrax’s eyes. The eyes of the accursed. Then he looked at Loverd, in whose pupils an unquenchable flame flickered. Then at Fox, who looked as if she were about to vomit at any moment. Even in her eyes he saw no support. The only face that didn’t want to burn him on the spot or impale him on a blade was Taro’s. Taro stared at him attentively, curiously. But also less decisively.
He bowed his head. Inhaled and exhaled. Many lines, voices, and possibilities raced through his head.
Finally, he raised his head and reached out to Taro to help him stand. He wiped the layers of mold off his coat and turned to the Xalgonian knight. He spoke in as sober a voice as he could manage.
“All right. I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by an experience that, unless you’ve had it, you cannot understand. I am not an uncritical admirer of what is happening here. I am not like Talantius. I think this rift is likely warped in some way, probably because it was created by accident. These wretches with claws truly look bizarre. I’m no fan of empty eye sockets and such things. I agree that we must end this here. But I believe it is possible to establish contact with the beings from the south, and I am even convinced that they may truly be our only defense against the New Age and against what they call the Star Devourer.”
“What is the Devourer?” Taro asked.
Klaes looked at her and answered: “It is that which everyone on Qurand dreads. The Shadow between the stars. The Lord of ancient times whose arrival was foretold. Then comes the end of everything.” He nodded his head.
Taro pulled away from him: “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
“Exactly. While we squabble here, something is coming that we ought to be prepared for. That, too, is part of the message from beyond this gate. Those wretches dancing here didn’t have a strong voice, and they drowned in it. But it is a new force that can be negotiated with.”
“What did you see? What’s wrong with this gate?” Loverd spoke up.
“I don’t know. It was an opportunity for dialogue, but it came at the wrong time. Talantius failed; he hit a wall. It just seems warped to me,” Klaes said after a moment’s thought.
“Talantius was attempting some kind of experiment,” Vedrax stated.
“If only we could decipher those illegible notes of his! I bet we’d find out what it was all about,” Klaes said, poorly hidden enthusiasm creeping back into his voice.
“Yes, you’re a great scholar, take another look at those notebooks of his,” Loverd remarked with somewhat crude irony.
Klaes shook his head: “We’ve already tried that once in vain,” he said. His face was still covered in drying blood. To the others, his face looked grotesquely eerie.
If you used the ELIXIR, maybe you could decipher Talantius’s cipher, a persistent thought struck Klaes. Or did he hear some voice from the gate advising him?
“Let’s go into the tower, there’s a vessel with Ignotium there that we’ll need,” Taro suggested when the long silence felt unbearable to her, and when she felt that the voices repeating sweet, sweet were reaching her all too clearly.
“Klaes, take another look at those notes. Try applying the Elixir to them,” Loverd suggested.
“Why not on my eyes?” Klaes wondered and ran his hand over his eyes. He felt his face.
“I have blood on my face! But it’s not my blood,” he cried out and looked around. He spotted the wound on Vedrax’s wrist. “Was it you who sacrificed your prized blood, Vedrax?!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, to tear you from the clutches of death,” the knight said.
Klaes lowered his eyes and stood motionless for a moment.
Taro stood up and picked up Talantius’s notebook. She stepped closer to the gate with it. The closer she got, the clearer the symbols seemed to become to her.
“Vedrax, come here!” she called to the knight and described her feelings to him. “Does the proximity of the gate have this effect on you too? Could you come closer and try to read it?”
“I think we need to deal with those madmen first,” Vedrax said, staying at a safe distance. “They’re synchronized, as if they were one. We ought to clear the gate first.”
“I don’t want to underestimate your warrior skills, but there are thirteen of them, they are taller than us, and they look perfectly armed with those pincer-claws of theirs. We have no idea if they have any other surprises up their sleeve. Something tells me they won’t just stand quietly and let themselves be slaughtered,” Loverd said.
Vedrax inspected the tower once more. The fissure in its outer shell was overgrown with mold, and something akin to foam or snow was spewing out of it. About a third of the way around the tower’s perimeter from the fissure was the entrance leading up to Talantius’s study.
“We would have to lure them away from the fissure,” Vedrax remarked.
Loverd shook his head: “Direct combat won’t help us right now. They clearly outnumber us.”
“And what do you suggest, then?” Vedrax asked.
“First, close the gate. In my opinion, their moldy nature is fed by whatever is coming out of that gate,” Loverd replied. “We should attempt to combine our powers.”
“I have nothing against your spatiotemporal magic, but I will not allow my blood to be burned by the flame of your fire. We must find another way,” Vedrax objected.
“I didn’t mean burning, but a synthesis of sorts,” Loverd mused aloud.
“Absolutely not that either!” Vedrax shouted.
“Not for nothing did Lady Nazqawn—an Arkonian born in Xalgon—bind our fates together. Perhaps the time has come for us to forget old animosities for a moment. Arkon and Xalgon stand together against the threat of total extinction. And you possess the accursed aura; you are no ordinary Xalgonian knight,” Loverd said, striving for as respectful a tone as possible.
“Perhaps there is something to that. Maybe I could offer you a drop of my blood to see if the gate can be closed that way. But I want a guarantee from you,” Vedrax said more mildly.
“What kind?” Loverd asked.
“I want a guarantee that my blood will not be, as you say, purified,” Vedrax said.
“I accept the condition. You have my word. Purification will not be the essence of the synthesis,” Loverd replied.
“Do we need Talantius’s laboratory for this?” Vedrax asked.
“But…” Taro spoke up, “do you now want to follow the instructions of that sorceress we found upstairs in her room? Didn’t it say there that closing it requires much more? A huge amount of energy, far more participants, and some magical ritual? Do we even know how to perform such a ritual? Don’t we happen to need her for it?” Out loud, she did not mention that she would mainly like to find her father as soon as possible, who had left with Lyra.
“Surely many paths lead to closing it,” Loverd said with conviction, seeming not to listen to what Taro was saying. “And we need you too, Klaes. Your powers of vision and your knowledge of Ignotium,” he turned to the Yllerian.
He snapped out of his reverie. “Yes. And we might also need a sample of the mold,” Klaes mused aloud, not taking his eyes off the gate.
“Perhaps the Elixir is still active in your blood while you also carry Vedrax’s blood, so you could approach the gate, collect a sample, and try to read the notes at the same time,” Taro voiced the idea. Even as she said it, it struck her as rather risky.
“That is an idea worth trying,” Klaes said and headed to the upper floors of the tower to find a suitable container and sampling tool. On that occasion, he also took a sample of Ignotium. Loverd went with him, watching his every step and movement.
“Don’t you trust me? Well, I hardly blame you,” Klaes muttered casually. When he came across a sink in the laboratory with a mirror hanging above it and caught sight of himself, he wanted to wash his face. Loverd stopped him.
“Leave it there; it protects you from succumbing to the temptation of the Mold again,” the Arkonian said.
“Temptation? That was more of an epiphany, Loverd. But if you prefer my face bloody, I’ll leave it as it is.”
“Yes, leave it like that. It’s good. I’d also like to offer you something, perhaps sitting by the sacred fire, but there’s no time; we have a mission,” Loverd said.
“And where do you want to conduct the experiment?” Klaes asked calmly.
“Here in the laboratory,” Loverd said.
“Very well. Let’s go get that sample,” Klaes said, hiding his excitement.
“I will accompany you,” Vedrax said, joining them at the door. They took him by the arms to guide him and protect him against enemies, and if necessary, against himself.
They approached the gate in a way that made it clear they meant no harm to the dancers. Klaes clutched Talantius’s manuscript in his hand, glancing at it out of the corner of his eye every now and then. The booklet contained initials, making it possible to tell where the beginning and end were. As they approached the two nearest dancers, it seemed as though they parted before them. They certainly did not block their path, remaining devoted to their tireless dance.
As soon as they passed through their circle, Klaes looked at the manuscript again. And lo—the text seemed more understandable to him. It was as if he were remembering the script. He took two more steps. He already understood half of the symbols, but found that they were not coherent words. He realized that to read the entire text, he would have to go right up to the gate itself and stand knee-deep in the mold.
He looked back and saw that the dancers had eyes inside their skulls and tiaras shaped like mushrooms on their heads. Crimson, green, ocean-blue mushrooms. Their eyes were pale and watery. It was as if he had stepped over a stray root.
“Come, come,” they sang.
He looked back down at the manuscript and leafed through the pages. He tried at least to grasp what it was about. He read the sentence: DIALOGUE WITH MY DISTANT KIN, THE MYKARCHS, concerning the millennial wisdom waiting to fertilize the world.
Loverd spoke to Klaes. He spoke to him, but Klaes seemed oblivious. He stared alternately into the gate and at Talantius’s document. He saw intricate, multicolored structures emerging from the gate: a forest, a city, mushrooms, geometric fractals.
Movement.
Klaes turned slightly and read several sentences in a whisper: “This is the first contact in over fifteen thousand years. The ancient Elven High Kings were right; there is more hidden in the south than we imagined… ah, how the Alliance deceived us… I must open the gate properly, this is merely a slit, invite them in… ceremonial magic… thirteen cultists will open the gate… fifteen will close it… but we won’t need to close it… I will teach my Maghonians to dance the dance of opening… I can’t read any more…”
“That’s enough! Just make sure to get a sample, too,” Loverd urged him.
With difficulty, Klaes tore his attention away from Talantius’s notebook and began filling the containers. It went slowly. Once again, he felt the irresistible temptation to touch the mold and put a piece of it in his mouth. A honeyed scent, sweet, sweet. It was like light, white cloud-honey. He gritted his teeth. It took immense effort to keep working. As if from far away, he heard Loverd’s voice: “Now take that yellow container…”
Yellow. Why yellow?
He carefully filled all the containers and sealed them.
He looked back at the manuscript once more.
“Lyra does not listen to the voice from the rift as I do. Perhaps it is a matter of her youth. I no longer have anything to prove to myself; she wants to conquer her little kingdom… she wants something to belong to her… she wants to fight… she wants to suffer… I will let nature take its course. She knows everything she needs to know. If she gathers the strength and companions to end this experiment, then let her try. But first contact has been established. History has begun its course. The south will meet the north, and Qurand will finally be unified…”
Loverd looked at Vedrax and winked at him. Vedrax nodded. They grabbed Klaes under his arms and dragged him away from the gate.
When they reached the laboratory, Klaes collapsed onto a chair, exhausted. He felt nauseous. They gave him wine. His vision blurred, and he fell into a dazed sleep for a while. Besides, Fox, under the influence of large amounts of wine, had passed out long ago and was sleeping a drunken sleep.
“Taro, do you have any way to connect with your father?” Loverd asked.
“Not at all. We have no telepathic link! But we used to wander these regions together a lot, so I know places where I could look for him. We could head there. He’s been working on that flying machine for a long time.”
“Where is it?” Loverd asked.
“All the way on the borders of Pravent Vezan. He used to go there when he wanted peace and quiet to think. There’s a river flowing there that drops into the valley of mists and leads to those places,” Taro said, describing the landscape northwest of Svittynis.
“We could still take another look at that manuscript,” spoke up Klaes, who had come to again.
“Klaes, you’re starting to look somewhat translucent. Don’t go back to that gate. Instead, we are going to return to Lyra’s notes regarding the closing potion.”
“Those are very brief, after all, consisting only of a list of ingredients for a collective ceremonial magical act. You need 15 people for it—and we don’t have that. Maybe people could be replaced with rune stones. Two to three sources of order two. Better three. Ignotium.”
“The people down here are performing ceremonial magic too,” Taro remarked, looking out the window at the dancers. “Couldn’t we somehow convince them to help close the gate instead of opening it? Klaes, you are somehow deeply connected with the Mold—couldn’t you mediate it in our favor instead?”
Klaes looked out with her. “I like that plan!”
“I don’t like that plan,” Loverd said. “It will expose Klaes to even greater temptation, and that can’t end well. How about touching one of them with your blood instead, Vedrax, just as you did with Klaes?” he suggested.
Vedrax nodded. “Perhaps they would stop opposing us.”
“I’m a bit afraid,” Taro said, “that they are already far more consumed by the other side. Do you really think a few drops of blood can reverse that?”
Suddenly, something changed in the air. The gelatinous environment seemed to thicken.
The singing below grew in intensity and quickened in tempo. Klaes, feeling excitement surge through his body once more, wanted to go look, but Loverd held him back. “We stay together.”
Vedrax and Taro peeked out the window: The pincered hands of the dancers were raised, their voices loud, and a glowing white cloud poured from the gate.
Everyone except Klaes felt dizzy and lost their footing for a moment.
The Yllerian broke free from them and, despite shouted warnings, sprinted downstairs with newly gained vigor. In the gate, he saw a slender figure standing two heads taller than even the largest human. He set out toward it. On the ground was a ceremonial carpet of mold. Just before the gate on the other side, the figure stopped. It was not a human figure. Its head was simultaneously a wide hat adorned with many laces and ruffles. And its body was a long, slender pillar covered in white fabric. It reminded Klaes of a strange, dreamlike princess or lady. Emanating from it was a blend of power, playfulness, slyness, and joy. It waited quietly for a gesture, fixing its attention squarely on Klaes.
Klaes reached for his face with his left hand and wiped off the blood. With his right hand, he touched his forehead and then opened his palm. He gestured to the figure, and with a delicate movement, it glided onto their side of the gate.
Taro came down the stairs as well, watching the entity enter the world. Loverd watched through the window. Suddenly, Fox appeared beside him. “Do you see that, Fox? He has fallen completely for it,” he said.
“We must save him!” Fox snapped disproportionately loudly, like someone who had just woken up from a drunken stupor.
“How do you want to save him? We have nothing?!” Loverd replied mournfully.
“Wine! Oil, fire! Just a moment ago you stabbed an old man here without blushing, so what are you waiting for now?” Fox spurred him on.
Loverd snapped out of it. He began running around the room, throwing flammable materials out the window. Then he threw Talantius’s vessel of oil out there, pouring it over the outlet of the gate where the mushroom-like figure stood. Shortly after, a lit torch flew out the window.
When Klaes realized Loverd was targeting the newcomer from the gate with his attack, he rushed toward her with a desperate cry, trying to push her back to the other side.
The entity began to retreat, but the torch landed before it could manage to do so. Flames spread all around.
Loverd poured some Ignotium into a vial and ran downstairs with it. Meanwhile, the fire danced across the white mold, which blackened and writhed on the surface. Klaes’s coat caught fire. He tore it off and beat at the air around him with it. Just then, the entity’s hat transformed: it shot out in all directions. Twenty or more blue-green tendrils rushed toward each of the clawed beings, as well as into the open spaces between them. In doing so, a sound rang out like someone being cut by paper.
The thirteen figures surrounding the gate suddenly turned and ate a piece of the entity from the other side. They arched their backs and cried out in a single voice full of fury. The entity withdrew toward the gate while parts of its elegant structures were consumed by the flames. Blue-green flames flared up inside the empty eye sockets of the thirteen figures. Three rushed at Taro, three at Vedrax, three ran toward the door upstairs into the tower, clicking their scalpel-sharp pincers. Klaes stood in the midst of this destruction. No one attacked him. Too many things were happening around him all at once. A strange state of detachment washed over him. As if the surrounding world were nothing more than a dream.
