Slowly and lazily, Ahmren awoke to the sounds of children playing, adults working, and birds singing along outside. He knew that he should have been awake long ago. the day’s work was surely already underway, the construction of the new houses could use another pair of hands. Ahmren could scarcely bring himself to care, however. Neld had created dreams to be savored, after all, so he gave himself a moment to try and reflect on the one he had just awoken from. As soon as he gave thought to the dream, it escaped from his mind, like a rabbit that had been suddenly startled by the knowledge that a predator had turned its attention to it. He vaguely remembered that he was on some great adventure, doing battle against some impossible foe. “A good dream, indeed,” He murmured to himself. He turned over in his bed and stopped abruptly. Staring back at him from the bedside table was a small, heavy-looking pouch with a scrap of paper attached to the drawstring. His heart started racing, for reasons that he couldn’t discern. As he opened the pouch, he found that it was full of money, far more than he had ever seen in one place at one time. He opened the note with trembling hands. “You don’t remember me,” the note said, “but I wanted a chance to give you this, and to say goodbye.”
Ahmren’s mind went blank. He was sure that he knew the writer of the note, but what he didn’t know was the person themselves. He could almost see the writer’s face in his mind’s eye, but that too fled his mind as soon as he thought of it. Ahmren’s breathing became short and fast-paced. He was terrified of this thing in his hands, terrified of its hidden implications, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why.
Ahmren used his right hand to wipe a torrent of sweat from his forehead and placed it back on his shovel. The Desert-man and the Sorcerer had been digging for two days, trying to clear the sand that blocked the entrance to one of the tombs. With a full dig team, it may have taken the better part of a day, but with only two men, progress was nearly invisible. As soon as they shoveled sand out of the way, more took its place. Exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on them both. Ahmren’s arms could barely lift the shovel, much less penetrate, lift, and throw the sand. Jacobson noticed. “Go ahead and take a break back at the camp. I’ll take notes on what we’ve uncovered so far.” Ahmren almost instinctively prayed his thanks to Neld the Respite, until he remembered whose company he was in. He trod back to the campsite, eager to collapse onto his cot and relax as much as he could. He collapsed much sooner than he expected, however. As his feet dragged through the sands, something stopped his left foot, and caused his momentum to send him tumbling downwards. He turned his head to see what caused him to fall, and was greeted by gleaming metal. The object was cylindrical at its base, tapering into a rounded cone with many grooves at its tip. Strange runes covered the surface, similar to the ones marking Jacobson’s garb. “He’ll probably know what it is.” Ahmren muttered to himself.
“I have no idea what it is.” Jacobson remarked as he inspected the object Ahmren had brought to him. “It’s certainly not Egyptian, that’s for sure.” He continued to study the object, reading the runes inscribed into its surface. “These are old Sorcerer runes, maybe two hundred years old.” His ungloved hand scanned the surface of the object. “This one is the Rune of Soul, this one means ‘Prison’, and this is ‘Key’.”
One of Ahmren’s eyebrows tilted upwards. “So it’s the key to a prison?”
“That seems to be the most likely explanation. But what does the ‘Soul’ Rune have to do with it?”
“Perhaps it’s a soul that has been imprisoned through magic?”
Jacobson’s laughter was somewhat unsettling. The sound was familiar, but Ahmren couldn’t see the mouth that produced it. “I’m sorry,” Jacob apologized through a chuckle “There’s no way you could have known, but no magic can affect a soul or mind, human or otherwise. Soul magic is nothing more than a theory, added to the Runes of Magic as more of a forward-thinking formality. The Higher Beings may claim to be all-powerful, but your mind is safe from them. And, I suppose, from me.”
Ahmren took a little comfort in this, but the Key still taunted him. “So why did the old Sorcerers put it on this Key?”
Jacobson looked up from the Key to the rest of the Valley, expecting an answer to appear from the tombs, the sand, or even the sky itself. “That’s an excellent question, my friend.”
Jacobson was pulled awake by some unknown intuition. He leapt out off his cot and out of his tent. His initiative was rewarded with a bright, white light peering over the mouth of the Valley and lighting the night sky. He rushed to Ahmren’s tent and shook him awake and quickly explained what was going on. Still half asleep, but understanding the urgency, Ahmren grabbed the Key from under his cot, along with a small digging pickaxe and a bag of other excavation tools. The two men climbed out of the Valley as quickly as possible and rushed to the light. The light seemed to beam upward into the sky, with tendrils that danced lazily around. As soon as they had reached the source, however, the light faded from view. “What happened?” Ahmren wondered aloud. Jacobson was about to reply when his footing shifted beneath him. He looked down to see a small hole in the sand, slowly growing in size beneath them, which lead into an abyss of darkness. “Run!” Jacobson yelled, and started running back the way they came, but the sand flowing into the opening pushed them backwards into the dark maw behind them. Ahmren fell into the darkness, and Jacobson helplessly followed.
Jacobson fell for far longer than he thought should be possible, until his body collided with the ton of sand that had fallen before them. “More is on its way.” He thought, pulling himself to his feet and desperately searching around for Ahmren. He found Ahmren lying on the sand a few yards away, unconscious, and being slowly buried alive by the sand coming from above. He pulled Ahmren with all of his strength, with no destination in mind, only the driving instinct to survive. He pulled Ahmren away from the sand and onto the stone floor nearby. The circular opening they had fallen through began closing slowly above Jacobson, trapping the Desert-Man and the Sorcerer in total darkness beneath the ground.
Jacobson’s hand extended upward, the Rune of Energy on his glove glowed gently, and a ball of light coalesced above him. He studied his surroundings: a massive circular stone room that stretched upward for about 50 feet. To his surprise, intrigue, and confusion, the walls were covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sorcerer runes, and finally, at the base of the room, dozens of computer monitors, long since deactivated. Before he could think about the room, Jacobson’s light was extinguished, and a white, glowing face, covered by an Egyptian burial mask appeared before him. A commanding, otherworldly voice boomed throughout the room, blocking out all thoughts but that which it was communicating. “I AM TSET, THE FORSAKEN. BRING ME THE KEY TO MY PRISON, MORTAL, OR I SHALL FLAY THE MEAT FROM YOUR BONES.” Jacobson lashed, out intending to unleash a blast of energy at the figure, whatever it was, but as soon as the bolt shot from his hand, it fizzled into vapor and harmlessly drifted upward towards the ceiling. Brilliant white spectral chains suddenly bound Jacobson’s hands, preventing him from taking action against the foe. “YOUR MAGIC CANNOT DEFEND YOU HERE, SORCERER,” the face mocked, “I POSSESS POWER OVER ALL THINGS HERE.” Jacobson had no intention of freeing whatever the thing in front of him was, and his mind quickly formed a plan. “You said you have been imprisoned here,” Jacobson stated, “but by whom?” The face was silent for a few moments, and even though it remained expressionless, Jacobson thought that it may have signaled confusion. “OF WHAT CONSEQUENCE IS IT TO YOU, SORCERER? YOU ONLY DELAY THE INEVITABLE.” Jacobson raised his hands in confession. “Forgive me. I may be a Sorcerer, but I’m also a historian.” He slowly moved to one side of the room as he spoke, and the face followed him with its gaze. Jacobson glanced to the side of the room which had previously been behind the face, and saw the machine that projected the image into the air. The face began to indulge Jacobson with its story. “I WAS ONCE A HIGHER BEING. I WAS GOD OF THE GREAT YELLOW, BUT THE SORCERERS TRICKED ME, AND TRAPPED ME WITHIN THIS PRISON. YOUR PREDECESSORS HAVE COMMITTED A MOST GRIEVOUS SIN AGAINST THE HIGHER BEINGS, AND THEY ALL SHALL BE PUNISHED WITH A SEVERITY UNSEEN BY THE UNIVERSE UNTIL NOW. BRING ME THE KEY TO MY PRISON, AND YOUR TORMENT WILL BE LESSENED IN SEVERITY.” Jacobson shook his head. “There has never been a Higher Being named Tset. The lore inscribed with Runes on the Key say that The Higher Beings imprisoned you here, not the Sorcerers. They trapped you here, and deceived you into thinking that the Sorcerers imprisoned you, making you their greatest weapon against the Cult of Archaeon. A weapon that desired revenge on its own. I’m sorry Tset, but you’ve been lied to.”
Tset seemed to be stunned by the revelation, because it was silent for around five seconds. But five seconds was plenty of time for Jacobson’s plan. “NOW!” he screamed. And before Tset the Forsaken could understand, perceive, or react to what was about to happen, Ahmren swung his pickaxe into the projector with all his might. Tset screamed, whether in pain (if it could even feel pain) or in rage, as Ahmren wildly and mercilessly slammed his digging pickaxe into the machine over and over. Finally, the screams subsided and Tset the Forsaken’s holographic face faded from view, to be forgotten by a world that never knew it.
The spectral chains also faded, freeing Jacobson’s hands. Ahmren panted heavily, leaning against the crackling, smoking machine he had just destroyed. “How did you know I would sneak up on him and break the machine?” He asked the Sorcerer. “I didn’t.” Jacobson replied, while simultaneously reigniting the light Tset had dispelled. “But you were all I could count on anymore, so I had to believe that you would.” Ahmren, exhausted, struggling for breath, raised a thumb up to signal approval of their teamwork. Jacobson raised his own in response. “Now, do you want to hear what I actually think this place is?” Ahmren’s face scrunched up in confusion. “You mean that what you just said…?” Jacobson finished his sentence. “A lie, yes.” Jacobson reached a hand out for the Key, which Ahmren gave to him. “This rune means “Prison”, yes, but I had forgotten that these are Old Sorcerer runes. Not only does it mean “prison”, but also “a place to safeguard something valuable”. The Sorcerers later created a separate rune for that concept, but that hadn’t been developed by the time this was made. That thing,” he said, pointing to the scrap heap Ahmren had turned the machine into, “must have been its guardian. However, it seems like it’s memory was corrupted because of the expanse of time it spent down here unmaintained, and it began to believe that it had been imprisoned here against its will.”
He scanned the room, and found what he was looking for. A console with a slot for a circular, conical key. The Key fit perfectly into the lock, and as Jacobson turned the Key, every monitor in the room began to whir to life. Jacobson typed a few commands, stumbling over the Old Sorcerer language a few times, but eventually successfully commanded the silo. A set of spiral stairs raised itself up out of the ground, allowing them to escape. Jacobson looked through the data in the ancient computer and apparently found what he was looking for. “Here it is. Data for a spell that the Old Sorcerers were developing with these computers.” Ahmren blinked at the monitor, unable to understand the language he was looking at. “What kind of spell is it?” He asked. Jacobson paused. “I don’t know. I can’t tell from what’s on-screen now. There’s only one way to find out.” He looked at Ahmren for a moment, but shrugged. “Well, I trusted you with my life, it’s not like my face is any more valuable.” He pulled the chrome helmet off of his head, revealing the face behind the voice that Ahmren had come to know. Jacobson’s face was different than Ahmren had imagined, but Ahmren remarked to himself that he didn’t know what he expected. Jacobson attached a cord from the ancient computer to his helmet and started the upload. The process took a few hours, and even Jacobson seemed to think that this process was longer than it should be. At last, the upload was complete. “Let’s find out what all this fuss was for.” Jacobson said as he re-donned his helmet. “What is it?” Ahmren asked eagerly.
Jacobson’s stomach sank as he read his list of spells on his display, and he wished that he hadn’t put the helmet on again. Before he could do anything about it, though, the spell’s mnemonic was implanted into his mind, branding it with its terrible power. His head began spinning, and he stumbled backwards into the computer as he re-read the spell’s name, desperately hoping that each time he read it, the text would change: “SOUL: ERASE MEMORY.”
Ahmren saw Jacobson stumble and grabbed him before he fell further. “Are you alright? What is it? What’s happening?” Jacobson accepted the help, but immediately felt guilty. “I can trust him with my life,” he thought, “But not with this. If the Higher Beings found this, they could use it to rewrite all civilization, wipe out all memory of a time without them. If they find out that he knows about this, he’ll be tortured… or worse.”
Ahmren was becoming desperate. “Jacobson!” He cried, fearing that his friend was in danger, “What is it?! Say something!!” Jacobson slowly stood up on his own. He drew in a deep breath. “Ahmren,” He spoke, before suddenly gripping the desert-man’s head with both hands. The Rune of Soul began glowing on his glove. “Forgive me.”
The sun beamed through Ahmren’s bedroom window and onto the paper of the note. “You don’t remember me, but I wanted a chance to give you this, and to say goodbye.” Ahmren stared blankly at the note in his shaking hands, and became increasingly angry. Not angry at the writer, but at himself for not remembering. A shout broke him from his concentration, and the rage, the mystery, and the fear all faded away like the dream. He dressed himself for the day of work, and dropped the note to the floor. Whatever it was, it wasn’t important.
Jacobson trudged through the sand. A bag full of charcoal rubbings, archeology notes, and unused digging tools clunked together against his back. Ahmren’s village was now bustling with life behind him, and every sound filled him with grief and guilt. He betrayed his friend’s trust and had invaded his mind. But worse would happen if Ahmren remembered. However horrible a thing Jacobson had done to his friend, it was for his protection. With Ahmren’s memory wiped and the computers in the silo burned to ash, Jacobson remained the only being, living or mechanical, that was aware of the existence of Soul magic. Within Jacobson’s memory lay a series of numbers which, to most in the System, were meaningless and random. But Jacobson knew what they were, and how important it was to keep a secret. He looked back for one last time at Ahmren’s village, nestled cozily against the River of Blood, glowing brightly from the Sun that shone down upon the little community and the rest of the Great Yellow. He turned his back to the village and began striding through the desert and towards the horizon.
END OF BOOK 1: THE HISTORIAN
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