The enclosed space behind the waterfall nearly immediately opened up, showing clearly man-made structures forming the floor of the natural cave. Lanterns akin to those in Karah’s Shrine lit the path downward into a water-covered area sprinkled with lilypads lit by a combination of candlelight and the sunlight that somehow found its way through gaps I hadn’t seen from outside. Ahead stood two more mechanisms clearly beckoning the use of a lantern key, the left one decorated with half-suns, the other with half-moons. On closer inspection, each panel had four symbols around their edges, each distinct from the other, with an arrow in the center pointing to one of the symbols. I stepped up to the moon panel and held up the Lantern over the lit arrow-shaped podium, and found that turning the Lantern would allow me to rotate the much larger plate, ninety degrees at a time. The left-pointing arrow in the center of the plate probably needed to match with the moon symbol that was reflected outside of the cave; I moved it so that the two matched. Next, I moved onto the half-sun plate, and repeated my actions with its right-pointing arrow. When the symbols matched those from outside of the place I decided to call a Vault, a path of light glowed between them and forward, further into the water-covered floor. At the end of the path, a massive, three-story-high door opened, and beyond it glowed a strange symbol made of three vertical shafts: one long in between two shorter ones, with all of their tops level.
I held up Karah’s Light to the strange symbol—it was far larger than that of any ghosts, but perhaps it was simply a large ghost? But then the Lantern floated out of my hands and set itself before the glyph, and the glyph… dissolved into the light of the Lantern. When the symbol had entirely disappeared from its place over the pedestal, the Lantern returned to my hands. Not sure what to make of what just happened, I moved to leave the cave. But the entrance was blocked by a many-tailed white fox, not unlike the one depicted by the sunken statue in Karah’s shrine. A Spirit Animal!
“Hello, little wanderer,” the fox spoke to me. “You took your time. Were you perhaps led astray?” I grimaced inwardly. “Or just followed by the slow one? I think his name is Medvin. Slow as few shifters I have met. But sharp - intelligent.
“Do you know what it is you found? You hold both light and key, to lead you into twilight. Both dusk and dawn, I believe. Southwest of here there is a temple, the silhouette of the setting sun. You will find more answers there. Go now, Bird-Faster-Than-Medvin. Secrets await you in the deep. Seek counsel from the ones who slumber.”
The Spirit Animal appeared to be finished speaking, so off I went. He had spoken of twilight, reminding me of the Twilight Lake. Sure enough, beside a very large circular platform in the middle of the lake, a somewhat smaller platform held a large version of the symbol taken by the Lantern. I held out the Lantern, and it floated away once more.
The large circular platform was not simply that. In its center was the same sun-and-moon motif that I’d found at the waterfall, a pillar with the carving atop it standing in the center. The Lantern shone a brilliant beam of light at the pillar, and the platform below it visibly split down the middle, left and right halves receding into the steps around them that prevented water of the lake flowing into the now enormous gap. Within the gap, I could see the tops of several trees poking through, just barely low enough to not scrape the opening doors. And around these trees ran a spiral staircase I could use for my descent.
The Eventide Sanctuary—as that is the only thing the massive structure could be—did not seem to have been built for people that were human-sized, with its impressive archways and other structures. Only the size of the stairs betrayed that notion, along with the presence of many ghosts, all of them apparently moving into the Sanctuary. “We will be safe here,” one of them declared, holding out its arms as to guide the others further inside. However, with the previously closed door and the clear state of disrepair of the structure (while the trees may have been in the entryway originally, the floor around me was broken by grasses and shrubs, water flowed in places not designed for it, and several large pillars were cracked and lopsided) this must have been very long ago: perhaps even before the Great Divide. After all, Daina said that Karah sealed this temple. She wouldn’t have guided people to this place as was said in Aram’s scrolls. Along the path towards a more central hub, a tablet stood beside a door.
The Twilight Guardian opened her eyes at the light of sun and moon, shining together. She sat down and calmly took both in her sky hands, bringing balance to light and shadow. With her right hand she releases the sun to let people back from the dream; with her left she flings the moon into the night sky, so that people may dream at all. She is the heartbeat of the seasons, at the center of the world, the breath of life and order.
I supposed that explained the motif outside. I made my way past the cracked and broken doors, one lying on the floor beside a group of butterflies flitting over some flowers and ferns, and into the sanctuary proper.
Inside, several ancient tents were set up beside a purposefully flowing shallow river of water. A gathering of ghosts were playing in front of a large stone monument, not carved, but with letters painted on one side.
Man has paws that cannot run, but chases longingly the sun. Man has wings that cannot fly, but he will always seek the sky. Man has eyes that cannot see, but watch eternity. Man is lost, unknowingly in danger. To his own mind, always a stranger.
An interesting poem. The item about wings that cannot fly originally made me think that it was very ancient indeed, but the next line convinced me that this was more of a religious poem. I wonder who it was for?
I continued up the large number of stairs to find an altar beneath another sun and moon carving, with two scrolls upon it. The left read: “I am Karah of the Thunder Islands.” The Karah!?
I had a strange dream that I will record here so that others may perhaps understand its meaning as I did. I had come to study the holy carvings in the Lighthouse in the Land of Gods, trying to understand our heritage. As I reached out to touch some of the runes, it suddenly felt as if a warm hand passed over my eyes, and I fell asleep upon the sacred stone.
In my dream, it seemed to me that the stone beneath me glowed from within, forming a staircase up into the starry sky. Far away on these steps, a golden light grew and drew close. Stars flew from the sky and became someone who had the shape of music and was gentle and sad.
That didn’t seem to be all of it. I moved onto the other scroll.
The God spoke to me not in words, but in memories and feelings. He warned me of a terrible greed from beyond, a Void in the hearts of men. As he showed it to me, I felt it stir and come between us, darkening the golden steps like a storm cloud, cold as Eternity. Terrified, I cried out at the pull of this dark Void, and I woke. I could not speak for three days, but I set out to the ancient temples immediately. If what I have seen is true, the Gods are alive, and they need our help, as we need theirs.
I’m not certain what any of this means, but… the mention of a Void stands out to me. Is that what caused the collapse of Karah’s Shrine? I did see that dark place just before it was shaken to pieces. Was that the Void?
Seeing no path forward, I descended the stairs again and found my way into a room on my right, a glowing square on the ground asking that I again pull out my lantern key. In the distance, I could see a door respond to this, lighting up one of five diamonds on its frame. With that information in mind, I sought out the other four glowing squares in the large and mostly-destroyed (by plant life, mind, not some malevolent force) room, and the door opened. On the other side, a short hallway fractured by still more plants and running water led to one more lit square. In a practice that was swiftly becoming habit, I allowed the Lantern to activate the device, causing the wall in front of me to pivot downwards so that it formed a ramp to the scroll-bearing platform from before. Now where to go from here?
I descended the stairs once more, but having already explored the room to the right, I continued straight, now noticing an open doorway before me decorated with mushrooms many times my size. How had I not seen this before? It was simply the continuation of the shallow river I had noted; the water ran through the doorway and down the ramp beyond, on the left side of a railing along the steps. At the bottom, the water flowed off to the side and did not enter the next room, which housed pillars that responded to my presence. Or to the presence of the Lantern? I put the Lantern away, but they did not sink into the floor. To me, then. The pillars may have been rising and falling, but they did not all have the same maximum height, thumping into place as they rose to form a gigantic staircase, so I climbed them with a light application of skillful jumps. At the top, I found another light square, and activation caused the door before it to open… back into the main hall of the Sanctuary. Well. At least I would not need to climb the pillars again?
Back inside, a spiral staircase around the square room led to the tops of the enormous lopsided pillars of the main hall, which now appeared to have once been a great walkway, now fissured and sporting grass, shrubs, waterfalls, and even a tree. Curiously, some parts of this were not supported at all! They simply floated in place. I suppose this entire structure is in an island floating in the sky. I simply am not used to other things floating inside of the islands. Across the walkway and down a short hall, I found another wide open space, with a section off to the side sporting a few more painted stone slabs, with some ghosts in front. The one standing closest appeared to be teaching the others, who were sitting on cushion-sized stones on the floor, and some rolled-up scrolls were on a table before the slabs. I moved to the leftmost one to read it.
When the world was still new and the Creator had drawn the lands, the Spirit Animals gathered to talk. A fox said, “There are new animals around. They walk on two feet.”
A crane said, “A new bird?”
The fox shook its head and said, “They have no wings.”
A monkey said, “I have seen them, too. They are without fur and they cannot climb well.”
An owl said, “They fear the night and drive it away with fire.”
An otter said, “They build nests on the land, but they are not one with it.”
A deer said, “They are loud and do not know how to walk in the woods.”
A bear said, “They are like cubs who do not know the way home.”
The fox cocked its head and said, “Yes. That is why we have to help them.”
I had a feeling that I knew where this legend was going, but I read on anyway. It was always nice to read histories and legends.
“Help them?” The other animals looked stunned.
“Yes,” the fox said. “Their minds see eternity, and they are lost and afraid. They need something to hold onto, or they will harm themselves, the lands and us.”
“What do you propose?” asked a hare.
“I propose a pact,” said the fox. “If one of them can talk to us, we offer him a bond with the land.” The fox continued: “If he accepts, he can take the shape of one of us, the one he made the pact with. And he will be one with the land, and still see beyond the Veil, and he can guide and guard his people, and so we will all be at peace.”
The other animals saw the wisdom in this and agreed to it. And so, some humans can become one with the world, and the chosen were called Whisperers.
The fox from before called me a Shifter, but it was clearly about the same thing. Some of the wording here reminded me of the first painted stone: “Their minds see eternity.” In light of that, I felt I understood better what the first had been getting at.
Back to exploring the path forward, the mushroom-covered hall continued. It forked a short way down, but part of it had collapsed on the left, forcing me to take the right fork into a room with more water, though this water appeared to be flowing through a channel. Some brown rocks jutted from the floor in such a way that I couldn’t be certain they weren’t originally there, though it would be an odd architectural choice to leave them. I found a locking mechanism at the end of the hall that left me wondering just who built this place. Anyone with a lantern key could open it, but you would need to be able to work out the puzzle. Was that common back then? At any rate, this one required activating devices to rotate the central pillar, such that it would shine a beam of light at a large diamond on the wall. The puzzle was that each device could only rotate the central pillar by a specific, differing amount; the proper combination of devices would be able to rotate the pillar to the correct position. When I had solved the puzzle, the mechanisms deactivated, but it seemed I would need to move backwards to continue.
Back in the hall with the scholars, I found that the beam of light had split, allowing two more devices to light up. However, this provided a puzzle that I had already solved once, back at the vault. The difference in this was simply that, instead of two massive disks to rotate, there were two smaller light projectors. The solution, of course, was the same, and solving it caused a floating bridge to rotate and allow me passage forward.
The far end of the bridge had me meet not with a door, but with a collapsed structure around a door. While not as easy as walking through a door, the structure’s members still provided a navigable path over what remained of the wall, up and around the room until I saw an entry into the waterway that flowed throughout the walls of the Sanctuary. Those allowed me back into the room I had just left, but by a light square ninety degrees to the bridge I had crossed earlier. Nearby were some ghosts lamenting the state of the Sanctuary, though perhaps not in quite so bad of a condition as the version I was exploring: “It seems as if this door has been stuck for a very long time. Wonder if there even is anything on the other side?” The door in question, for me, was not merely stuck shut, but had piles of rocks and dirt blocking it off. The light square rotated the bridge for me once more, finally reaching a light square and raised ramp akin to the sun-marked one opposite my current position above the scroll platform. Lowering this ramp caused the moon marking to appear over it, and a bridge extended towards a door that opened to reveal a figure shrouded in—was that sunlight? No, it couldn’t be. There was no such large opening in the underside of the Twilight Lake. A sun carving shone overhead, and a pair of rings decorated with yellow diamond carvings rotated around the figure. I ran towards it, curious what my labors had unveiled.
The moment I entered the room, the figure split apart into three entities: two three-fingered hand-like structures made of an assortment of floating rocks with a sun-filled hole in the palm of each, and one serpentine figure covered in a purple cloth decorated with a thin golden pattern. No features were evident on the purple-clad figure; it almost resembled a robe hung out to dry, though it put off an air far more noble than that description. The rocky hands flowed out to the sides, flapping as if they were unattached wings; on closer inspection, the left held the symbol of the moon, and the right, the sun. From earlier descriptions… this was the Twilight Guardian!
When I drew so close as to stand on a pedestal with the symbol of the key to the Sanctuary, the purple-robed figure greeted me. “A very long time ago, your people addressed me as the Twilight Guardian. Sitting at the border of dusk and dawn, ensuring safe travel on the paths to the land of dreams and back again. Even after the Great Divide I was there, watching as your priestess Karah led her people to safe shores here in my temple. A long time I have waited for this moment to come. I have grown weak but for the power I was lent, tethering me to your world. Listen carefully, little bird!
“Once again, The Void has awakened with great hunger. This time, to devour all that is left of our world. But there is still a chance to stop him. The priestess Karah hid three fragments of great power, one in each temple. You have to make the three fragments one again. I will give you the part I was given for safekeeping. Without it, I will fade into oblivion. It has been my link to this world since the time the gods were lost to the minds of men. But we cannot wait.” The Twilight Guardian hesitated a moment, perhaps to steel itself for what it was about to do. “Please accept my fragment, and finish what was started so long ago.”
When it finished speaking, an enormous… tablet? Appeared before it. It was merely a fragment of the tablet; parts were clearly broken, some smaller pieces floating beside the largest part. It appeared that when complete, it would form a circle, though this was certainly less than a third of the whole. Decorations appeared to cover both sides, from my angle, though only one side could be seen clearly. Red lines and triangles formed a pattern radiating from what would be the center of the whole, highlighting white text I could not read. Rather than flow into the lantern as the key had, however, this tablet flowed into me.
And then I was in the dark place again.
Faster than before, the place began to shake as I turned to face the glowing angle of red. Its motions indicated to me that it must form two sides around the top of a triangular head, if it could even be called a head. Nothing else was visible, save for a black mist that flowed in to envelop me, causing me to black out.