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I decided to take another look at the island surface over the Key cavern, just in case I might spot the opening in the ceiling. I did not, but I did manage to find another fractured tablet sheltered in a small tunnel just over the entrance.
Notes on legends of the western clans, by Ret, the scholar of the Summer Islands.
There are numerous legends about the gods of the old clans. One such legend told by some clans in the Far Northwest says that there is not one creator, but two! One who made the realm, which they call the Great Dream. And one who made the world and its inhabitants. They also speak of the “soul pact.” An ancient bond between us and this creator of our world. Fascinating, but hard to believe.
I wonder what this bond would do? A little further along, the island greatly narrowed while extending out a long distance to a wider platform that housed a barren tree. In the middle of the narrow section was a pair of ghosts. “I wish I could just fly over these damned cliffs,” one said. Not a bird shifter, then.
“Just don’t look down, and we’ll be fine.”
I flew to the west, and while the snow did not let up, the wind almost immediately did when I left the area of the Howling Cliffs. A great mountain stood before me almost as a buffer against the wind. A slab to my right, north of the mountain and half as tall, stood at the edge of the same island. The flat side facing the mountain had been painted with an odd pattern, a square spiral at its top and some sort of lightning-like decoration flowing downward from there, squiggling and cris-crossing but only having right angles. A spear was stuck into the snow at its base, a ribbon streaming from its top in the much lighter breeze of the area. Continuing westward, more similar spears seemed to be marking a path for me. On the third archipelago was the remains of a building, the symbols for three ghosts visible within.
“I realize you’ve traveled far, but there is no path up there anymore. The ground has fallen to the depths. Those of us still here are leaving in a fortnight.”
That… makes no sense unless the collapse from the Great Divide was not all at once. In the passing of centuries, it’s certainly seemed that way, but perhaps the collapse took a few weeks. These people would not currently be able to travel more than twice the length of this building without some sort of flight.
The next island to the north of the building housed a ramp, and above that, a set of stairs leading to a tower and a pillar of light. This must be the place to use the Key. I found no ghosts here, but the place seemed to be in excellent shape compared to the entrances of the other two temples.
As Daina had said, the tower proved to be a bell tower, and using the Key caused the bell within to begin ringing vigorously. I heard a rumble and peered around the tower to watch the ice blocking the cave entrance beyond collapse! That is… one way to make a seal. Not as elaborate as the last two. I took a look around the place before heading inside. Beneath the bell tower, I found a small study, with two scrolls laid out on either side of a large table lit by a lantern that somehow still burned.
I am Zuya of the Snow. Today, a priestess from the Far Southeast came to us, telling us of a great war between the cities of Urzha and Onn. Her name was Karah and she requested an audience with the God that is said to sleep here: The Watcher of the Veil. Our master of the scrolls bowed to her and told her if there ever was a God, he must be sleeping so deeply that even she could not awaken him.
But Karah insisted, and he let her into the innermost sanctuary. She stayed there for three days and three nights. No one knows what she did in there. She left us without a word, but her face was sad, and I fear for our people. What can we do but guard the most holy texts of our ancestors? We are but few, and no one believes us. Our whole world has gone mad, and there is no cure.
That is… interesting. There must be a God here, as there was in the other two temples, but perhaps this one is even more securely locked away. As I could find nothing else of note, I headed through the broken ice.
While the bell tower was in good shape, the temple clearly had not been constructed with its location in mind. That, or quite a lot of water had found its way inside over the centuries since its construction, because any lower floor surfaces were covered in ice. Icicles like stalactites hung from the ceiling, and matching spikes rose from the floor. The stairs ahead and to my right had snow on their edges, and a boulder as large as the staircase had covered whatever used to be across from that to my left.
The space was lit by a few burning lanterns—again prompting me to wonder what could still be burning after all this time—and behind the rock on my left, I found a pair of ghosts by some boxes as tall as they were. “Just put them here. Now we have more food than we know what to do with.” The boxes were unopened, however, so something must have resulted in the end of the inhabitants before they ran out of food.
I headed up the staircase and found, after rounding one corner, that this place was also lit by purple rocks. They must just be naturally occurring in the north. To my left was stairs to a podium with scrolls beside it, but nothing laid out on it. To my right, more stairs that led to an active diamond waiting on a lantern key. Activating that lit the enormous chamber of which these staircases ran around the upper edge, making a diamond containing a huge glyph visible on the floor below, at least fifty feet across. The glyph itself resembled a four-pointed star, with a longer point at the “low” end that faced the entrance to the temple, and that point enclosed in something resembling a pair of mountains. The diamond itself was made of four lines of characters, and outside of it, at the lower end, were images of each of the three Keys. The top corner held another image housed in a small diamond, but between the gloom and the unfamiliar shape, I could not make it out. At the top and bottom, doors had opened, though the pair at the bottom were cut in on their inner corners. Putting them together, I suspected I could have entered the previously dark chamber without opening the doors, though I could not have continued onwards.
I moved back to the podium for a clearer look. From this angle, the star and mountains revealed their true shape: a robed person with her arms folded in front! The symbol above her head now resembled a narrow diamond between two wings, and the diamond that was housed in was itself within wings. Curious. The text around the edges, housed in a blue field, was now more easily legible as well.
In the beginning, there was the Dreamer. Asleep in cold eternity, she dreamed all there is. She dreamed a Veil, and behind the Veil, she dreamed the Creator and the world, modeled from a memory of home. The Creator danced into the world and there he breathed the clouds and sang the sun and moon into being. As he danced between the clouds, he took four steps and so made the lands of the North, the West, the South and the East. Then he formed the mountains and filled the seas with water from the clouds; and from earth and water he made animals so land and sea would be alive. From stardust and Eternity he made Gods to walk the lands and look after the world.
I’ve heard that the Creator is the one who sacrificed himself to seal away the Void, but the Dreamer must still be around. But what happens when I receive all the power of the Creator from the guardians I’ve been speaking with?
Back over by the diamond switch, the hallway continued, turning left just before reaching a large statue of a robed person that lacked arms. And in the chamber at the bottom of the stairs here, a lit set of three pillars showed three parts of different glyphs, and the diamond-and-wings image from before was on the floor in front of them. Three short pedestal-in-pentagon mechanisms were before the four pillars, and seeing them told me what I needed to do.
I rotated the pillars to create the symbol on the floor. But it did not simply open a door in this room; a fourth pillar rose from the floor before me! It was offset far to the right, and looking around in the gloom, I discovered three more bumps that would seem to indicate that I could form other symbols. I rotated the pillars to do just that.
The Key of the temple near Onn was set within a rectangle, two small squares protruding from the top right and bottom left corners. Below the Key but within the rectangle, pointed lines resembling pencils led from the edges to the central bottom tip of the Key. A second pillar rose.
The Key of the temple of Twilight Lake sat on the center of what I could only describe as the diagram of a bridge. Each end of the rectangle rose upwards a distance equal to its thickness, and downward-pointing triangles were beneath the rises. A third pillar rose.
The ribbon-like Key of this temple rested atop an image that surely depicted a mountain range. Fitting, considering what I had flown past to get here. A fourth pillar rose.
Thinking back on second and third symbols, they made sense; the temple near Onn had been a library of dream scrolls, and the temple in Twilight Lake had been near perhaps one of few remaining bridges that had once spanned water in this Land of Gods. I heard nothing else happen from my activity, so I decided to simply take a look around the room.
In one alcove, between the base of the stairs and the armless statue, sat a pile of snow with a table and chairs embedded in it. Two ghosts were there, one standing behind the table, and the other in the upright of the two chairs. And the one behind the table was saying, “So, it’s down to the two of us now.”
Oh dear. I wonder what happened.
I returned to the main hall and noticed that, on the far wall, a symbol like the diamond-with-wings, though with some added details including something resembling a trophy stand above it, was now illuminating it. I jumped down and drew closer, and the wall the symbol was on swung open before me as a pair of doors previously hidden by the dim light. Beyond it was a tablet set into the side of a box, unblemished and lit by perfect lanterns.
When the Creator made the world, he woke the Gods to care for it. First swam the Watcher of the Veil high in the skies. A mighty guardian against the black cold endlessness, forever singing soothing songs to the Great Dreamer lest she awaken from the dream of our world.
From the pattern of things, I would imagine that the Watcher of the Veil is the god housed within this temple. I returned to the main hall, then took the door across from the entrance.