When Lieze and Drayya emerged from the Portable Home, neither of them were certain what to say to one-another. Their exchange had come to an abrupt end when the passion of the moment faded away, and now there was nothing but a lingering embarrassment between them. Lieze would have liked to pretend that the exchange had meant nothing to her, but even she couldn't get away with such a blatant lie.
As if to cut off her escape from the topic, Drayya reached out her hand to intertwine their fingers. The blush on her face added some much-needed colour to her pale features. "I wasn't joking." she asserted, "Don't do this anymore. Try to embrace yourself, even if it's only a little at a time. It hurts me to see you suffering when I know you can be happier."
Lieze's reflex was to denounce any hope of reciprocating Drayya's feelings, but the two of them had been through that song and dance more times than she cared to remember. Perhaps it was time for a change, she thought. "You're too soft for your own good, Drayya."
"Soft!?" She repeated, "Don't get it twisted - I'm no less a necromancer for wanting to be a little bit more in-tune with my emotions!"
She took offence to the term not out of malice, but a desire to remain at Lieze's side. Her tone was almost pleading, laced with a faraway worry of being replaced with someone far less troublesome. Lieze had never been able to perceive that side of her before. "I won't make any promises that I'll be able to live up to your expectations." she said.
"You said you wanted to give the cultists more independence, didn't you?" Drayya asked, pulling their bodies close together, "I want to see you doing that to yourself. You're already quite the talented necromancer, but I can tell you've been holding back recently."
"Holding back…"
What did that mean? She had spent her time away from the Order sowing chaos within Tonberg and beyond. She had orchestrated the fall of a long-exalted dynasty, and eradicated from the face of the world a pious institution whose origins dated back to ancient times. Her hands were stained with the blood of more innocent people than she could ever hope to count.
And yet, somehow, Drayya was correct. She was capable of more - always more. As her power grew, the scope of her goals ballooned with it. All Lieze needed, as she had been reminding herself, was a concrete reason for it all. A reason free from the lies upon which her faith was built. And that reason, she hoped, would be discovered beneath the tower.
With Drayya and the Void Beast in tow, she wandered into the Sage's home armed with the knowledge of his elusive failsafe. After deciphering the tomes, she was able to discover a mechanism by which the tower's traps could be deactivated. Namely, by speaking aloud a particular incantation no shorter than 80 words, most of which Lieze had never heard in her life.
Once she correctly repeated the incantation (after correcting a few pronunciations), the air in the subterranean hallway shivered and crackled, before fizzling out with a blast of acrid, violet smoke. It didn't appear any different than before, but throwing a stone as far as she could down the passage revealed that the traps had, indeed, been deactivated.
Quest 'Panic Button' Complete!
Reward - 3,900xp
Level Up!
You are now level [49]
HP+5 MP+50
MIND + 1
"I hear it's a lot more difficult to set up a spell as a trap than to cast it normally." Drayya waved a hand in front of her face to dispel the smoke, "-And considering those spells were powerful enough to disintegrate anyone or anything that strayed too close, they must have taken years for Sigmund to create."
"Almost as if he had something of grave importance that he needed to protect." Lieze didn't waste any time stealing down the corridor, "Let's see what he was so keen on forbidding."
The passage veered to the right, obfuscating the prize that awaited them at the end.
The strange sound that had been worming into Lieze's ears since she descended the ladder was soon revealed to be an enormous, spherical contraption surrounded by interlocking rings of brass, hidden behind a cylindrical grate which stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the chamber at the end of the hallway, creating a circular 'walkway' rounding the centre.
Lieze peered through the curling gaps of the grate to see a few more desks surrounding the humming orb of bronze. She searched the perimeter for an entrance, but there was nothing to suggest that the interior could be reached.
"Alright…" She sighed, "I've had enough of playing these games."
A single thought was all it took to communicate her intentions to the Void Beast, which morphed its tail into an axe blade and swung its body around to tear a convenient hole into the fragile grate. Lieze couldn't have cared less about preserving the chamber's immaculate construction when there were questions to be answered. She stepped through the newly-formed passage into the centre, where the spheroid mechanism continued to hum away.
She turned her head, "Drayya?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders, "Beats me. Maybe it's just a decoration?"
"It was important enough to hide from prying eyes, so I very much doubt that's the case." Lieze replied, "Let's have a look around."
Most of the tomes half-opened on the desks were written in that same esoteric tongue. Lieze gave them a once-over to see if there was any pertinent information lingering on the pages before shovelling them into her Bag of Holding. Drayya, meanwhile, directed her attention at the sphere, standing clear of its whirling rings to avoid being clipped while examining it for any kind of mechanism.
"Why do wizards always have to make everything so complicated?" She wondered, "Even their books are written in a language only they can understand."
Lieze was only half-listening to her spiel. Her attention had been grabbed by something else - namely, a strange glow that was emanating from her scale. Somehow, she could feel a distant connection to the sphere, much like the sensation experienced right before the terminal moment of communion. There was magic at play in the air.
She took a few steps towards the sphere. As if shunted by her very presence, there was a sound like grinding metal from below the floor. The twin rings enveloping the contraption came to a halt, flanking the sides of the sphere like the shelf of some distant planet. The upper hemisphere cracked open, revealing a set of vibrant, amber crystals positioned atop a cluster of iron sceptres poking up from below.
Drayya paused, "...Did I do that?"
"No… it reacted to my scale, I think." Lieze replied, "Are those crystals supposed to be magical foci? I've never seen such impeccable craftsmanship. They must have taken years to create."
Drayya blinked, "Wait- did you say that this thing reacted to your scale?"
She nodded and raised her hand, revealing the now-blinding glow shining out from her palm. Drayya lifted an arm to cover her eyes, "Ah! Watch where you're pointing that thing!"
"Sorry." Lieze's apology was unbecoming of her, but it slipped from her lips like it was the most natural thing in the world, "But, if my scale is responsible for 'activating' this contraption, then it must share some connection with the Scions."
"Hm… I told you we would find something, didn't I?" Drayya smirked, "I know - try holding that light up to the crystals. I'll give you a boost."
She turned around and placed her hands behind her back. "Come on!" She beckoned.
Lieze ignored her. The two rings hovering around the sphere made it simple enough to hoist herself onto the contraption. Much to Drayya's dismay, she was in no need of a piggyback ride. Lieze leaned down, balancing herself with one hand on the rim of the half-sphere while raising her palm to direct the light into one of the innumerable foci.
As soon as she did, its glossy interior was suffused with a sunset glow. The crystal's immaculate purity reflected the light into its siblings, causing a chain reaction as the sphere's interior exploded into a kaleidoscope of garish colours. Lieze hopped down from the rings before the sight could blind her, observing as the light emanating from her scale began to dwindle.
The result of decades' worth of deliberate and impeccable organisation allowed the sea of colours to mingle above the sphere, morphing into the recognisable - if slightly off-colour - visage of an elderly man whose beard was too long for the projection to conceivably display. Lieze's first thought was that she didn't recognise the face.
Then, beyond any feat of preparation, it began to speak.
"The beacon has been activated." The old man's voice was followed by a dry, atrophied cough, "...And so soon? Our predictions were far from perfect, but this is unprecedented."
Lieze and Drayya flinched when the projection's crimson eyes scanned them with unmistakable intent and purpose. Lieze only realised it just then - that the miracle they were witnessing was no mere magic trick, but a conscious entity aware of their presence.
"Black robes… necromancy, and… an inkling of transmutation." It paused, "Members of the Order of Necromancers? Either that, or the heretical cannibals of the Wildlands. One or the other."
Lieze took a step forward, "You can hear us?"
"Hm… white hair, but young… apathetic." The projection continued its doddering analysis, "An artificial human? Passable, considering the state of alchemy these days, but lacking in several areas - poor magical aptitudes, avoidant, psychopathic… maybe intentional?"
She waited for his tirade to end before continuing, "-And I suppose you must be Sigmund?"
"It would be reductive to label me with a name." He replied, "Beyond the realm of material possessions, beyond the limitations of the flesh, there is only knowledge and the unending abyss of time. There was once an occasion where I may have been called something similar, but that memory is little more than a droplet in the sea of our limitless existence."
"How fantastic is this?" Drayya's words were optimistic, but her expression couldn't have been flatter, "Another self-righteous fool allergic to the concept of brevity. We're going to be here for hours if we let him prattle on about every little thing."
"I agree." Lieze nodded, and turned to the projection, "What is the Light in Chains?"
"You are aware, then?" The old man stroked his beard with a hand that materialised out of the light, "Of the sickness that poisons this plane."
In place of an answer, Lieze raised her hand to reveal the scale. The projection's eyes lit up at the sight, but they dwindled just as quickly once some scrutiny was applied.
"Ouromaedr." He said, "-But corrupted. You have accepted the bargain of Bueram, and in doing so placed yourself on the path of destruction. This is not ideal."
'Ouromaedr' meaning the Gildwyrm, and 'Beuram' meaning the Blackbriar, Lieze recalled. The Gods had names of their own which had only ever been revealed to her. Somehow, that made them seem more personable and less immortal - like heavenly beasts instead of faultless deities.
"The Blackbriar resurrected me." She explained, "I didn't have much of a choice."
"Yes… yes - it matters not." Sigmund said, "You were able to seek the beacon regardless of your perceived allegiance. We are sworn to accept the first vessel, not the ideal vessel."
"I'll ask you again-" Lieze began, "what is the Light in Chains? That's all I came to find out."
There was silence for a moment. Lieze wondered if the old Sage even understood what she was talking about. There was a glint of distracted understanding in his eyes, as if he was contending with the forces of the universe simply to remain as he was.
"The Light in Chains…" Sigmund repeated, "You have already discovered it."