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Brian's Coronation Era short story in Urth |
| A darkly clothed and hooded figure moved quietly down the large rough hewn stairs, one black gloved hand lightly touching the wall of native stone to steady himself in the dim light. The other side of the stair was opening into a large storeroom filled with a maze of stacked wooden crates and barrels. He paused to survey the room from above and then quickly took the remaining steps to the main floor. Stepping behind some stacked barrels, the hood and gloves came off and a silver ring with a clear dull gem was fished out of a pocket in his vest. The black gloves matched the rest of his outfit: boots, pants, shirt, vest, cloak and even his longish hair, though it was flecked with a gray like the rock walls. After another quick look around and hearing the complete silence he put the ring on his right hand whispered an unintelligible word and vanished from sight. The now invisible figure moved toward a large arched hallway and slowly and quietly moved down the dimly lit passage. ______________________________ “I saw it!” “Did not.” “Yes! I did!” “So what was it?” This question closed the mouth of the other guard and made the questioning guard smile at his younger partner. “I don’t know. Like I said, it was dark and cloudy with the moons out, but it moved too fast to be anything but... something!” “A dragon maybe?”, the older guard egged on. “Could be,” he said hopefully, never seeing the magically obscured man slowly moving down the opposite side of the underground passage he was supposed to be guarding. “Have you ever seen a dragon, or hippogriff, or even a pegasus?”, the older guard continued his teasing, his hearing never detecting the other footfalls that were not supposed to be there. “No I haven’t, but it was more than a bat or bird, that I know!” “Did you tell the Captain this story? That's probably why we’re down here in this hole, no chances of you seeing any mysterious flying things when you under a castle and a hundred feet of rock!” The younger man’s silence said it all. He regripped his spear and leaned against a huge 12 foot high door that no visible handle, hinges or key holes, but had a geometric design on the top half that the men never even noticed. “Don’t worry lad, I’d rather be down here in the warmth of these tunnels than getting snowed on in the High Towers.” He made a show of dusting off imaginary snow flakes from his shoulder and then walked back to the place just vacated by the invisible intruder and faced his excitable partner. The youngster straightened up into a proper attentive position, realizing his more experienced companion had a good point, then smiled as he had a last thought. “So I guess were down here protecting the coronation guests from the Old Ones?” A long sigh escaped the lips of the other man, but he didn’t answer. The thought of mythical ten foot high reptiles weighing half a ton moving up this passage against him and the boy sent a shiver through his body despite the warmth he had admired earlier. ______________________________ After passing the two guards the invisible man kept walking for another minute before coming to an intersection with a passageway on the left and a door on the right similar to the one by the guard’s post. The intersection opened up a larger area with the side walls being cut away to provide short cuts to the main passage. A dim light came from a shallow alcove to faintly illuminate the entire area and soon showed the black clad man now visible again. He looked back toward the guards he had passed but with the slight curves of the passage way that had taken him further down and to the right he couldn’t see them or hear more than a murmur of their conversation. Satisfied, he quickly found a three foot circle scribed into the stone floor and surrounded by a continuous circle of symbols. Reaching behind his back the man pulled out a plain linen sack and loosened the top draw string and placed it the exact center of the circle. Looking around again at his surroundings he stepped into the circle and repositioned the opening of the flat sack toward the alcove where the light came from. He stepped back keeping his facing toward the circle and the alcove on his left until he had his back to the wall. He undid a button on his vest and pulled out a coin that was brilliant with light and placed it on the floor, quickly stepping on it and temporarily extinguishing its light. Standing with his back to the wall he again went to his vest and pulled out various small items and began to chant a soft set of words over and over until a dark ten foot diameter globe enveloped the circle with the sack in it. Another soft chant began and ended with the man dropping a small feather to the ground. No effect was visible unlike the last spell cast but he appeared satisfied with the results and leaned against the wall to wait, activating the ring to make him invisible again. Minutes passed with the man staying still and undetectable, he kept his concentration on the side of the dark circle closest to the lit alcove. More minutes passed with only a slight sound coming down the passage from the two guards, but he maintained his stare until he got the results he had been waiting for, a puff of white dust erupted from the side of the dark circle that he was watching. |
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