“So none of this was here when you were last here?” Boggy asked.
“No idea, but I think that if it had been installed at that time, there would have been a lot of dead bodies lying around. The demons that lived here would not have let an Etonian in, I can guarantee you that.”
“So what’s behind the fancy door?” Rupert asked.
“Up for another try?” Antefalken asked.
“Uhm...” Estrebrius made a hesitant motion. “Perhaps it’s locked up for a reason? Maybe it’s dangerous?”
“Dangerous for whom?” Tizzy asked. “I cannot think an Etonian would try to protect demons from something.”
“I find this very disturbing,” Talarius said. “I must confess, I am very curious. I am also very hesitant, but this should not be. It’s very wrong.”
“Okay, so I think we open it,” Tom said. Antefalken and Rupert shot him big grins.
Tom stared at the runes. They looked exactly like the runes downstairs, so while he knew how they were pronounced, he had no idea what they meant. He decided to start by just reading the runes aloud.
“Darwaltho omnibois pertuum, fetenagathan larthow mewem. Dest naturume sanct vastros deum. Narth faltosth agck demolscrius bitem. Saveros tootos freeyum nathos, eternolom cretenexos verum. Argwolo beat sact fetenagathan. Barthfarlon omnibus bitem,” Tom intoned.
Nothing much happened. “That didn’t help.” He walked up to marble vault wheel and examined it. Clearly it could turn, and probably released giant bars inside the door. At the center of the wheel was a small insert, almost like a screw hole; probably the axis the wheel turned on. Tom passed his palm over it and pushed the arrowhead into the hole. He was still attached to arrowhead and so it took no time for him to start sending himself into the stone axis.
At first, he didn’t detect magic per se, but then suddenly he hit against what he guessed was the door itself. It flashed against him painfully. The door was definitely alive with magic; much more magic than the runes below. This was heavy magic; it vibrated with power. He closed his eyes to try and feel the power. Yes, the vibrations resonated with the magic in the arrowhead. This was Tiernon’s magic. He needed more of it. Tom reached back to what he imagined in his mind was the wad of divine mana within himself; that which he had taken from the umbilical cord but still had not digested, so to speak. He pulled on it and let it suffuse the threads of his own being, much like infiltrating the priests. This he sent up against the magic wall.
In his mind, his mana stream flattened against the wall of magic, the two sets of mana not quite in sync. Very close to being in sync; just not quite. He tried spreading his flattened-out stream, imagining it as a coat of paint upon the mana wall. He imagined his coat of paint absorbing the vibrations of the mana wall, synchronizing with them, relaxing and oozing into the pores of the mana wall until they were one. Relax, let go, sink into the wall of mana. We are one.
There — he was the mana wall, at least the part near the handle. He carefully let more mana, both his own natural and the undigested god mana flow into the wall, a trickle of animus riding along to guide it. Flowing, engulfing, becoming one with the mana wall, one with the door and the runes. At the edge of the door the mana vibration changed. The magic in the doorframe was different; it was locked firmly to the door’s magic, but different.
Tom tried to do the same thing again. It was exceedingly tricky, much harder this time, as he had to maintain the same frequency, or whatever it was, as the door, but also try to match the doorframe to infiltrate it and keep it all as one piece. It was hard, very hard. He could see what he needed to do, but trying to balance three different frequencies was extremely taxing.
He had no idea how long it took, but suddenly he was in. He could feel himself and his mana inside the doorway. He let more mana in. It was slow going because he had to shift and match frequencies, but soon he had engulfed the doorframe’s magic.
Now, he could see clearly what he needed to move the giant rods within the door; he needed the frame to let go. There — those were the rods he needed to release in the frame, pinning the doors in place. He suddenly realized that the archway was connected to the room. He could feel the room. The magic wall of the doorway was part of the overall magic wall shielding the twenty-by-twenty-foot room on the other side of the door. He could not tell what was in the room, but he could tell its size.
Tom willed the room to relax, to rest. He realized he needed to synchronize the magic of the room/doorway with the door. If he did that, he could make the pins slide and the door open. Relax, calm, and synchronize, Tom thought, willing the three parts of his mana self. Over and over, like calming a puppy.
There! They were all synched. He willed the doorway pins to move. Slurk, slurk, slurk... a fury of noises came from the wall as he did so. Tom began turning the wheel, now suddenly aware of the room and of his friends standing up after having been seated on the floor during this long ordeal.
The pins rolled back into the door. Now he needed to pull the door open. It was heavy and he had to push against the floor hard with his legs, but it swung open very smoothly. A cloud of very stale air escaped the vault as new, fresher air entered.
“Wow, how long was that?” Tom asked, slumping against the door. He had to slowly withdraw himself from the room and door. He palmed the middle of the wheel and willed the arrowhead back into his hand.
“About an Astlanian hour, I think,” Rupert said. “We watched you with demon sight. It was pretty wicked.”
“It felt like I was doing a bank job,” Tom said with a laugh. The others looked at him strangely. “Never mind. What’s inside?”
They all peered into the room. It was, as Tom had seen, a twenty-by-twenty-foot room with nothing in it except at the very center. There were two marble blocks covered in runes about six feet apart, linked by a black metal bar that seemed fatter on one end than the other. It looked as if the blocks had been formed around the two ends. Almost as if the bar had been set in concrete that was allowed to harden. Except that the blocks were marble, not concrete.
“All that, for this?” Boggy asked, clearly disappointed. Tom had to agree. A dull metal bar encased on its ends in rune-covered marble. What could make a metal bar that important? Or was it the blocks? Tom reached out with his mental fingers. No, the blocks were Tiernon magic, like everything else. The bar was something else; something very different. It did not like the Tiernon magic, but whatever it was, it was very weak at this point. It did not actually seem to have much, if any, magic in it. It was more residue at this point, a faint trace of past power.
“I think whatever it was, it’s harmless now,” Tom said. “The runes on the blocks are Etonian, like the locks and all. The bar is different, but there is not much of any magic left in it. I would say a small residue, but no real, active mana in it,” Tom said.
Antefalken was peering at it more closely. “See these two lines that entwine the bar?” He pointed to two parallel lines that striped the bar, sort of like a barber pole if the red line were composed of two different colors. Although at the moment, both were pretty dark. “They are crystalline, and each appears to be an unbroken single piece. That is very unusual. The only place I’ve seen anything like it was in the Crystal Caverns, but those were straight lines. How you would get crystal to grow like this is beyond me.”
Antefalken stood up. “Of course, that might explain the residue of mana you sense,” Antefalken said. Tom looked at him curiously. “Crystals are often used for mana pools.”