The tower was vibrating wildly in the deepest parts of his brain but he just couldn’t understand what it wanted. He was terribly out of practice at gleaning meaning from what were, in effect, blots of ink across the pages of his mind. The constant pressure would only give him a headache, certainly not a sudden burst of arcane knowledge.
A headache was the last thing he needed right now: he had been pulled through the Rift and the person responsible was speaking to him. The Crystal Exarch, she called herself; a small hooded figure in complicated robes with an arm of blue crystal and an air of mystery.
He needed to focus on her words, but the tower would not stop reverberating between his ears. For nearly two years the tower had asked nothing of him, its only desire having been satisfied when the doors were sealed. But now. Now… It needed him to know something, desperately. Something important about this place--something the Exarch was hiding.
But it was akin to hearing an argument in another room--muffled thumps and shouting, completely indecipherable except for tone. The images it was showing him were no more helpful, like being ilms away from an impressionist painting; staring at brightly colored daubs on canvas and totally unable to perceive the larger image due to an incorrect perspective.
Frustrating, yes, but he would get to the heart of the matter sooner or later. He was not G’raha Tia, Student of Baldesion, Archon, Historian, Last Prince of Allag, and Substitute Warrior of Light for nothing.
“Clever, eccentric, stubborn as an aurochs arse and twice as ugly,” as Krile was fond of saying.
He kneels as she finishes giving him a tour, filing away his irritation at the tower and himself for later examination, “My lady, I thank you for your hospitality and the opportunity to learn more of your people and this place… but I would beg a boon. If I may?”
The hood inclines in assent, but she remains silent.
“When you brought the tower to the First was there someone sealed inside? A woman, by the name of Stelmaria Meioh. We had been close…. before… and I have not seen her for two years.”
Two years.
Two years since he had last paid the tower any real heed, most of the intervening moons being spent in service to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn by gallivanting hither and thither across the whole of Hydaelyn.
Two long years of liberating nations, striking decisive blows at empires, and felling gods with the sliver of power the tower allowed him to use even as it slept--a reasonable facsimile of the blessing of light. At least until the Mothercrystal had seen fit to bless him with the real thing a little more than a year past.
Two years since his lover, the Scion’s previous champion, had chosen to seal herself inside Syrcus Tower on his behalf. The very same tower that now stood at the center of this city: an alien city on an alien shard where the sun never sank below the horizon.
Her sacrifice still pained him, partially because she had stolen an opportunity that was his by rights and partially because there had been an unspoken thread between them, an unexplored territory. When she left him, he decided that it should remain a mystery: he would allow no one else to come so close to unraveling the skein of his heart as she had.
The Exarch looks down at him from the shadows under her cowl, thinking, and the tower takes the opportunity to press on his mind again. He nearly clutches his head in pain, as he had done so long ago when both his eyes had become the red displayed by the bloodline of Allag, but he does not trust this woman enough to show such weakness.
The searing in his skull reaches a crescendo when the stifling breeze shifts to carry her scent in his direction: along with the hot, dry air there is the unmistakable scent of orange blossoms, a hint of rosemary, and the suggestion of lavender. He feels completely untethered from reality, mind reeling even as the tower rejoices at his recognition and ceases tormenting him with its noise and pain.
Stelmaria, do you think me a fool? What in Azeyma’s name are you playing at?
Finally, she opens her mouth to speak just as the inescapable certainty that the next words out of her will be a lie settle heavily in his gut like lead, “I am not familiar with that name. Is there something I should know?”
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