Beneath the Stone
1067 Words
The staircase wound off downwards in almost pitch darkness.
There was only a thin line of light that passed through c***k of the ceiling way above them. The air was getting colder with every step, heavier, not to be disturbed by the sound of the Academy. It was long since the sounds could be heard and heard, and the alarms were in deaf silence.
Aria gave the wall a light touch on her fingers so she would be on her feet. The tempest in her had subsided, but it had not been dissolved. It felt coiled now. Waiting.
"How far does this go?" she asked softly.
To the bottom archives, Kael answered. The majority of the students are not allowed to the third level. These tunnels are still older than the Academy itself.
"Older?" she repeated.
He nodded. Something was built on that the Academy. No one talks about it."
That did not comfort her.
They came to the end of the staircase and got into a long passage running underground with stone columns. Dust covered everything. There were iron lanterns on the walls, which were unlit. Kael held a little blue fire in his hand, and it was sufficient to see.
The shelves made right out of the rock reflected the light. Scrolls. Books. Boxes with an insignia of the Academy coded.
Aria imagined that there was something in the air.
Not wind.
Recognition.
Her skin prickled.
She proceeded slowly, and was attracted by a part of the archive which appeared to be unutilized. The shelves in this place were of a later kind, the notches varied. A spiral crossed with a jagged line was cut into stone instead of the crest of the Academy.
She instinctively made an appeal.
An electric pulse responded to her touch when her fingers touched the symbol.
Kael saw it too. "You felt that."
"Yes."
He came closer and observed the carving. It is a symbol that is no longer used.
Aria rolled his eyes to the scrolls below it. One was half unsealed, and drying up. She took it and laid it out very tenderly on a table nearby.
The writing was dark and visible.
Storm lineage according to the decision of the High Council.
Her heart skipped.
She scanned further.
Storm wielders protest the forms of suppression by the Councils. The second containment measures were updated after the Second Fracture.
She looked up slowly. "Suppression methods."
Kael's jaw tightened.
She kept reading.
Conclusion: Storm energy is immeasurable, in unconventional binding tariffs. Recommendation 1 outgoing and early containment.
Aria's chest felt tight.
"Containment," she whispered. That is the reason the troops arrived that quickly.
They had not been surprised, Kael told himself. "They were prepared."
She stared at the words again. Storm wielders resistant. Impossible to control.
The ritual circle.
The runes had blazed even more brightly under her feet.
They changed the cult, they changed the cult, she said. It was not all about exposing things. It was to identify threats."
Kael did not argue.
Somewhere overhead they were heard to walk, with footsteps. Distant, but real.
They did not have much time.
Aria went farther into the section of the archive. There was a great iron door at the rear of the room that was built in the rock. This did not have any marks of the Academy as the others did. It was the same spiral-and-lightning sign that she had felt.
The atmosphere in it was electric.
"Kael," she said softly.
He joined her at the door. "You think--"
"Yes."
She put her palm flat in the middle of the symbol without exactly knowing why.
During a moment nothing happened.
Then the metal was made warm in her hand.
A hum shrilly vibrated along the passage. The ceiling was trembling with dust.
One hand instinctively grabbed back her waist and Kael was trying to hold on as she felt the ground start to move under them.
The deep metallic sound of unlocking the iron door occurred.
It did not swing open fully. Only a c***k.
Darkness waited beyond.
Aria hesitated.
This was not addressed to students, Kael said.
"No," she agreed. "It wasn't."
A heavy grinding sound was heard somewhere high above - as though it were the movement of great gates.
Kael stared into the staircase. "They're sealing sections."
Trapping them.
Aria pushed the iron door ajar to allow them to creep in.
The room on the other side was also circular and much older than the archive halls. The symbols in the walls were not known to her. There was a stone platform in the center, which was vacant except to chains that were attached to it.
Not decorative chains.
Restraints.
Her breath caught.
It was a compartment, Kael said.
And they were storm wielders, she said.
Her stomach turned cold.
The fact that it destroyed cities made the Council not to fear the storm.
They were afraid of it since it was not easily controlled.
A barely breathing wind blew against her. She turned slowly.
On the opposite side of the room ran another passageway, which was even narrower and fell down still farther.
The iron door behind them was banged before she could make up her mind what to do.
It was a sound of final sentence.
Kael called blue fire at once, and lighted up the room entirely. "That wasn't us."
Aria jumped to the door and thrust. It did not move.
Stone grated here and there in the walls. Mechanisms respectively snapshacken.
They were sealed inside.
Panic threatened to take its turn back in a second.
However this time she experienced a different thing.
Not fear.
Awareness.
The tempest within her aroused once more, not ferociously, but intelligently.
As though it were familiar with this location.
As if it had been here before.
Kael came beside her near enough that she could have sworn she felt the constant warmth of his flame. Not overwhelming. Not consuming.
Grounded.
They wished to keep you in, he said to himself. What it means is they have done it before.
Aria stared at the restraints in the middle of the room that were empty.
"Yes," she said.
And there, farther on the other side of the stone walls, still than the Academy foundations, something answered.
A faint vibration.
Not thunder.
Not wind.
Something older.
The hunt above continued.
But below ...
Something had awakened.
- Writer
