Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
The space in this next room was dominated by a set of six bells, set in two rows of three with platforms beside them such that you could get to each bell without stepping on another. Visible past them was perhaps the reason for these platforms: three sets of six dots, laid out identically to the bells, with one dot in the left set shining brightly. I had to chuckle to myself; this puzzle-lock was, perhaps, a little too obvious. The sets of dots were flanked by great statues of robed figures, alike in every way, and I suspected I would find more of the same type as I progressed. Before jumping on the first bell, however, I looked to my right—and on the wall there were three more sets of dots, set vertically as to match the bells viewed from this angle. A different bell from the first set was lit on that wall, and I decided to follow its pattern first: bottom left, top left, top right, with another dot lighting as I stood upon each bell. Curiously, though the mechanisms appeared identical to the ones in the Key shrine, the bells did not ring out; yet a door below the wall patterns opened after I stood upon the third bell, and the platforms rose to their original positions, ready for another pattern to be input to the bells.
The space beyond that door, visible from the bell platforms, held a peculiar image of a downward arrow of pale blue upon a dark background. A downward triangle was above the arrow and two additional picture frame-like triangles were at the base. Curious if there was another pattern, I looked around the room, but did not find one. But behind me was a door that had been open before I even entered, and so I decided to explore in that direction first. This was going to take a while.
The room past the already-open door first held a smaller version of the robed statues immediately in front of me, almost as though to bar the way. There was plenty of space around it, of course, but it was striking that it was directly through the center of the entrance. And everything around it was covered in multiple feet of snow, and lit by purple rocks. With the light of the Lantern assisting me, I made my way up the cracked and crumbling floor and into another room even bigger than the one with the legend of the Dreamer.
The first thing inside this room was a burning lamp of the same type and size as all the others, and to its left and right, across a slightly lower floor, was another large statue. It was here that I found my first ghost in a while, standing and wordlessly praying with its head bowed on a square platform before the statue on the right, which I found to actually be the center of a trio. The room was lit by more than just torches, with skylights above, and the door that would complete the pattern with the one through which I entered was shut. However, another door was slightly ajar at the far end of the chamber, and through it I found a diamond switch.
Activating the diamond switch opened a small, person-sized door to my right, set into a fence-like structure of thick posts between horizontal top and bottom bars with thinner ones between and—oh! I was back in the bell chamber! The diamond switch had opened a shortcut, and I could return to the bells, or to here, by taking a set of stairs that had been beside one of the statues. A great monument to my left had been shattered but still held its shape, the pieces floating in place. Its center held the diamond-with-wings, the center of the diamond completely missing, and the cracks of the shattering crossing the perimeter of the diamond on its top, right and lower left. A plaque at the bottom held a legend.
When we die, our souls rejoin Eternity of which they were made. Our souls are stars that the Creator took and set in our heart. So from Eternity, each time a child is born, a new star descends into its body and fills it with eternal light. Until such time as the body dies and becomes dust again, and the star flies back to the skies, behind the Veil, to dream. When the Gods left us, they went amidst the stars to search for a new home, and when they find it, there too will we be born again.
A pleasant tale. Not one that I could count on within this present world, with my present task, but a hope for a future and less broken world all the same. Continuing forward only found closed doors for me, so I went back and used the door that I had opened with the pattern of bells earlier.
And to my right, through an already-open door, was the room with the patterns on rotating pillars.
This was getting confusing.
The image I had spotted before was across a floor of ice, and at its base sat a structure akin to a large crown, with eight spikes rising around a central table sporting an orange octagon on its recessed surface. The middle rose again in another octagon, and in its center was nestled a sphere one third as long across as the table in which it sat, and twice as tall. Or I supposed it was a sphere; I could only see its top half. The sphere was orange, but showed no obvious purpose, though from this close I could now see a crack running down the center of the pale blue image; it must be the face of a special door.
To my left from my point of entry, stairs descended to another door bearing the glowing symbol of the diamond-with-wings below the trophy stand. Approaching the door caused it to open and reveal yet another diamond switch. This one’s activation caused a great rumbling above me, and I looked up to see beams of stone shooting across between the walls above! I thought about where I had been, and where I now stood. Tracing my path… the closed doors beyond the monument of stars would perhaps be open now. Only one way to find out.
On my way back, I remembered that there was another pattern of bells I had yet to use, and so I did: lower left, lower middle, upper middle. These indicators were above yet another door, another path I had yet to take. There were too many options, and I felt compelled to take them all. But I remembered what I meant to be doing, and I returned to find that the doors had indeed opened with the bridge now formed between them.
The other side held four flights of stairs, up and up, unbroken, though I did pass upended pottery on the way. The top held a closed door before me and some sort of wall behind me that seemed mostly made up of shattered glass; the frame consisted of a diamond that started six feet off the ground and extended upwards another ten, but I couldn’t quite jump high enough to clear the gap. When I turned around again, I noticed another item: a small pillar, about the same size as myself, simply floating in the middle of the hall, directly in front of another statue. The center of it held a brightly-shining diamond on each side. But I could not do anything with it, and had no choice but to return once more to the hall of bells. Time to descend!
The door below held within it many more of what I assumed to be food crates, along with a pair of ghosts leaning against them. “The entrance gate is frozen shut. There is no leaving now.” I thought that the seals had all been intentional. The Key certainly was. But perhaps, in this case, it was only a failsafe? That, or whoever sealed this temple failed to tell the inhabitants beforehand. From what I read… was it Karah who did that? Why would she?
I turned and headed up a short flight of stairs to one more huge room. This one held before me a set of three interesting objects: a diamond switch, a pillar with small diamond decorations at least twenty feet up, and a pillar-like embossment with a diamond at the same height as those on the much larger pillar. And more interestingly, the embossment was producing a small ball of light every few seconds from its diamond, and it traveled to the matching diamond on the pillar before it. I activated the diamond switch, and the pillar’s base and diamonds lit up, and something more happened with the ball of light. As I watched, it now passed through the pillar, forward and into another small floating pillar like the one I had noticed before… and then its path angled upwards along a flight of stairs to another large pillar. And beside that, another diamond switch.
Another activation caused the balls of light to continue upwards again, though the staircase here was severely broken. I needed to jump from the top of the section that had yet to crumble onto a fallen rock, and up again to reach the next switch. And the next section was so badly collapsed that I needed to move under the staircase before jumping on top of it from behind. The light path turned to the right and proceeded through some broken glass panes that looked awfully familiar. Time to head back down and up again!
The door that had previously barred both my way and the path of the light was now open, the small orbs progressing into a room that housed another floating pillar… and just stopping there. What? I used the nearby diamond switch, but nothing seemed to happen. Then I looked down through the grating that was the floor.
Oh. It was the room with the blue-patterned door. The ball in the table was now glowing like a small sun—and floating—and the door was open, though from this angle, I couldn’t see what was beyond it. It didn’t help that I must have been at least fifty feet up. But thankfully, I did not need to fear a fall, and so I simply jumped down to the floor below, as my task here appeared to be finished. And beyond that special door was another room of endless sky, decorated by an aurora across its upper reaches.
As I ran through the door, a black figure appeared in the distance, soaring… No, swimming closer, its shape distinctly becoming something much more appropriate for a large creature of the fabled seas of old. A… whale? I think? There are no seas in this present world of sky, so I only have ancient pictures on which to rely. Its mouth was wide open and almost appeared to be smiling at me, and very different to the previous two guardians, it was a pale blue akin to the color on the door. Its tail was the white of snow and patterned like a great spiderweb, a circular snowflake of criss-crossing lines and circles. It almost looked like a compass, with four triangles pointing away from the center at right angles, one at the point where it attached to the rest of the body.
“Come closer, little champion,” it called to me before I stood upon the glyph of the Key. “I won’t ruffle your feathers. I am the Watcher of the Veil. I guard this world from Eternity.
“But I have spent many years trying to close the rifts that threaten this world. Now, without the faith of your kind, my powers are almost gone. There isn’t much left of the first dream of the Great Dreamer. The dream we call our home. Did you know, that the first dream brought forth the Creator?” I did. It was written in this very temple. “His only weakness was his tender spot for your kind, little human. To create you, he linked his heart to yours.” Oh! Ret wrote about this. “But your hearts grew empty.
“Shocked by the emptiness dwelling in himself, the Creator ripped The Void out of his heart. But time changes many things, and a new little champion stands before me. A human one, even. Listen now, champion. These are my last words.
“This is the last fragment of the three Kara left in our care. There is only one step left now. Return the three fragments to the Lighthouse in the very south, where your people have built a camp. It will show you what’s next. It all rests on your shoulders now, little champion.”
As before, the medallion fragment appeared. But instead of falling away, the Watcher disappeared, head to almost-tail, leaving the tail behind, though only for a moment. Then the tail exploded, and then the medallion entered me.
This time was much different. The two edges of light in the deep green darkness were well aware of my presence and moving directly towards me. The mists were not so thick, and I could see four limbs below the light, though no body that they connected to, just the head. And the limbs had human hands at their ends, all four of them, and they were crawling, stomping towards me. A pair of wings floating to its sides manifested as it drew near, and just as it reached out a hand to grab me, everything went dark.