Axel's hand fell onto the hilt of his sword and rested there. The worn leathery grip felt warm and familiar in Axel's palm. Axel's fatigue was washed away by a gentle breeze that passed like a ghost through Axel's mind. Axel stood up easily. His arm and leg still hurt, but his muscles no longer ached, and he was no longer out of breath. Everything but the pain from Axel's wounds and the throbbing in his side had disappeared in an instant. Axel walked towards the gate with a light limp. As he approached, he looked upwards at the castle. Heavily shrouded by the encroaching dark, held back by the light from Axel's fire, the half-ruined upper floors revealed themselves. Gaping fissures in the black brick snaked upwards, growing in number and width as they approached the massive hole in one of the upper rooms facing the mainland. Massive chunks of rubble were strewn randomly around the castle rooftops, smashing through the crumbling tiles in some places and hanging precariously off the edge in others.
Axel's arm reached up automatically and knocked on the door to the castle.
He immediately berated himself for doing something so stupid while he dragged his arm back and leaned forwards to push the doors open instead.
Dust cascaded off of the doors, and rusted hinges loudly protested as Axel put all his strength into heaving the massive wooden gates open, revealing a deep blackness within. Axel brought his white fire inside and peered around closely. The inside was better off than the outside, but only slightly. The rubble had fallen through and smashed cracks in the sparsely furnished hallway. A worn brown carpet was the only decoration aside from various lanterns poking out of the flat, uninteresting black stone walls.
"Seems more like a dungeon than a castle," Axel muttered.
Axel walked inside. The silence of the castle interior was disturbed by Axel's labored breathing and the steady thud of his old, sturdy boots on the carpeted floor. As Axel followed the plain hallway curving gradually upwards and to the left, feeling his feet relax into a familiar plodding rhythm, the castle flickered between two forms. The rubble-filled, partially collapsed reality that Axel now walked through, and a clean, sturdy, dreary image Axel's memory laid atop his vision.
The leftwards curve grew sharper and sharper as the hallway spiraled towards the center of the oddly circular castle, before the carpet ended and Axel was met with a stone wall.
Where Axel's eyes saw a dead end, Axel's body urged him onwards, walking up to the wall and reaching through the false bricks to grab a doorknob hidden behind it. Axel turned the knob and pushed inwards, stepping through a shattered wooden door into what looked like a normal house interior, that is, if a house was built of black stone brick, strewn with rubble, and nearly completely devoid of furnishings.
Axel automatically picked his way through the crumbling passageways, past various rooms with shattered doors revealing storerooms for long-expired food, rotting steadily in their moldy boxes, barrels of stagnant water and unknown drinks, a bare bedroom, and a massive library whose shelves were covered with ashes and remnants of what must have been an impressive collection of scrolls. Axel glanced longingly at the library, wishing he hadn't set the library on fire last time he was there before the memory disappeared and he wondered why he was standing in a room full of charred shelves. Axel wandered back out of the library and up the only staircase in the castle. He pushed open the broken wooden door at the top of the circular stairwell and walked into what looked like a wide, circular study. Broken desks with their mysterious contents thrown onto the ground, shattered glass vials and half-burnt scrolls, shelves and strange apparatus that had been ripped apart, rubble and scorch marks scattered around the entire room, and the gaping hole in the wall, facing the mainland, revealed that a battle had taken place in this room at some point in the past.
I wonder, what kind of past did I have to have gone through this place before?
Axel cautiously picked his way through the debris and cracked ground. His mind was working frantically, trying to pull any trace of the fight from his memory, but the best it could do was a sequence of bright flashes of fire and flying black rubble. Axel ignored his struggling brain as he glanced over the ruined floor, eyes settling on a hole in the ground. It was partially covered by debris and was difficult to distinguish from the various cracks and fissures in the ground, but its distinct rectangular shape drew Axel's attention. Axel walked over, kicking some small rocks out of the way, and looked down at a spiral staircase that seemed to drill into the center of the castle. The upper steps were partially caved in by rubble, and when Axel brought his white flame close to light up the tunnel, he could see scorch marks and scratches from a sword lining the walls and floor. A little bit to the left, across the crumbling brick floor, Axel could see a partially shattered rectangular piece of wood that must have been the trapdoor covering the stairwell. Axel pushed some of the larger rubble out of the way and began to carefully make his way down the decaying stairs. The thumping of his boots on the ground echoed down the stairs, and the light from the flame he held in his hand flickered, casting eerie shadows down the winding stairs. He kept walking downwards steadily, wondering where the end would be.
Axel began to count the number of steps he took.
One hundred steps.
The marks of a fight still persisted even down here. The air felt significantly denser and more stale.
Two hundred steps.
The spiral of the staircase had gotten wider. He was going down slower. Axel guessed that he was deep inside the rocky mass that was the island.
Three hundred steps.
Axel could feel a distinct hum in the air, an unsettling shaking of something intangible that made Axel's flame flicker even more.
Four hundred steps.
The staircase had gotten less steep and was spiraling around in a gradual curve, similar to the one at the entrance to the castle. Axel could no longer tell how deep he was.
Five hundred steps.
The staircase had completely leveled out and was now a passageway that gradually curved to the right. Axel could dimly hear the hum in the back of his mind.
Six hundred steps.
The hum in the air was getting louder. Axel could feel it reverberate painfully through his skull.
Six hundred and seventy four steps.
The passageway ended abruptly. On the right wall was a tall stone door made of the same black brick as the rest of the castle. Unlike the rest of the stairwell, this door had no signs of battle on it. It was sealed shut tightly, with the only trace that Axel had been there before being the scorch marks continuing on the floor under the door.
Axel braced himself and leaned his body weight against the door. Unlike the entrance, this door pushed back. Axel put all his strength into pushing, yet the door barely budged. Axel stepped back, panting, before noticing two large rings attached to the door.
Axel cursed inwardly and pulled the rings. The door swung outwards smoothly.
Axel angrily berated his inability to tell which way a door opened while he walked into the massive circular room. Unlike the rest of the castle, this room was made out of a continuous, smooth, reflective black stone that lightly sparkled in the light of Axel's flame. The roof curved in a wide dome made of the same material, and the floor dipped gradually towards the center.
The steady thud of Axel's footsteps stopped abruptly as he noticed what was at the center of the room, standing eerily and swirling with strange black and purple smoke atop a black pedestal that jutted out of the floor, as if the entire room was carved out of the same single massive boulder.
Axel smiled slightly.
Now we're getting somewhere, he thought. This was the room with the gem that he recalled back in Ezarik's castle. Maybe it would give him a clue to how he got here from the Beyond, or how the growth on his side got there in the first place. It wouldn't be like those random words that appeared in his head every now and then, or even the irrelevant scenes that he saw occasionally. His decision to go find the Gem Keepers later was a good one.
"Hopefully I'll get something useful out of this," Axel mumbled, taking a deep breath.
Axel walked slowly towards the pedestal, eyes locked on the massive black and purple orb as memories began to overtake his mind.
Light footsteps drew Axel's attention behind him. He turned slowly, letting his eyes take in every bit of the scene before him. His mind and his vision saw two different things, but this time, reality and memory were so similar that Axel could barely differentiate between the two.
A tall man with a lanky build wearing a gray long sleeved shirt tucked into his belt, with black pants tucked into his tall black boots walked into the room. His light skin, bright blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes contrasted drastically with his dark attire. His gently smiling face, which would in any other situation attract a great deal of attention for its perfect proportions, seemed to grin eerily at Axel in the dark.
Ah, the acclaimed Paragon of Holy Fire appears before me.
The man's voice was light and carefree, yet carried an edge of wariness to it that forced Axel to crouch into a ready stance.
Alas, you aren't supposed to be here.
The man's face carried some semblance of disappointment.
This place has nothing to do with your goals, so I'm afraid you won't find one of those fights you love much here.
Axel felt his teeth grit as he spoke angrily at the ghost of the past.
"You hid this castle very well. There must be something important here."
Axel pointed back at the orb behind him. The hum of power it exuded reverberated painfully through his head.
"What's this for? Is it the source of power for all of you Dark Lords?"
The man frowned.
That has nothing to do with us. I am protecting it, should it fall into the wrong hands. But enough of that. You narrow-minded Argeanians abandoned your duties a thousand years ago. You no longer hold the right to know about the Elder Dragon's Gems.
"Stop spewing nonsense, Dark Lord." Axel drew his sword and lit it on fire. The man's eyes narrowed.
Don't call me that.
"What?"
That name is childish, like it's right out of a five year old's fantasy tale.
Axel smirked. "Exactly. It describes your kind perfectly."
The man gritted his teeth. His eyes flashed in anger.
Not only do you stand in the way of our noble goal, but you dare insult the High Council of Magic, you ignorant puppet?
The man raised his hand and gathered glowing purple energy into it, preparing to attack, but Axel was quicker. He darted forwards at the man, not wasting any time to gather focus for fear of his opponent's strength, and slashed at him. The man retreated quickly, throwing bolts of purple energy at Axel while protecting himself with a glowing aura that brushed off Axel's flames like nothing. Axel gave chase, pursuing the man as he dashed back up the passage.
Axel blinked, his eyes and mind fighting over what was real and what was not. Axel flinched and dodged to the side during the brief moment when his memory insisted that the man was real, before he recovered and forced his eyes to focus on reality. The doorway was empty. The man was not real. Axel sheathed the sword he had unconsciously drawn and sat down on the cold metallic stone floor. He took a deep breath and steadied his mind, then looked back at the massive orb. The smooth black interior pierced through with gradually swirling purple smoke gave off a head-throbbing hum that made the growth on Axel's side hurt even more than usual.
Axel let out a long breath, then angrily slammed his fist into the stone floor.
"That doesn't help at all!" he muttered to himself with a curse.
But even as his disappointment at not uncovering something that could help the Gem Keepers rose, the anger deep within him sparked and burnt for an entirely different reason.