In the first few panels, the scene depicted the world as it had been, buildings strange and wondrous, strange conveyances that sailed on the air and over the ground. Great cities that hadn’t been seen in a millennium.
Shea moved along, touching each panel as she spoke. “It was something so wondrous and miraculous that it changed everything. The decay began slowly, so slowly that no one knew what was happening until it was far too late.”
Fallon and Shea stepped over to the next one. This one was simple. Two people, one seemingly dead, cradled in another’s arm, grief written into the person’s body.
From there, the tone of the murals became increasingly dark. Scenes of war and death, the weapons like nothing Fallon and his people would have ever seen. The only reason Shea knew what they were was because they were stored beneath the Keep, locked up, the records of their use written into her people’s historical archives.
The third panel from where they’d started was of a pile of bodies. Unlike the first, there was nothing weathered or worn about it, the faces clearly frozen in terror.
“This is the only panel with beasts,” Fallon said, staring at the second to last panel. On it, someone had carved an army of the most horrifying beasts the Broken Lands had ever seen—some not even known in modern knowledge.
“Yes,” Shea answered.
“What does it mean?” Fallon asked.
She looked at the panel, her eyes sad. “It means that once upon a time, before the cataclysm, before a great and terrible war, there was no such thing as beast. They are a product of our ancestor’s pride, a remnant of their greed for more. More power, more land.”
She finally stopped in front of the last panel. It was a map, one the Trateri would likely not recognize.
“Haliway,” she said in a soft voice. “One united nation that prospered for thousands of years.”
She traced the different lines that divided what had once been. She drew her finger down what became Bearan’s fault, before skating up and marking the outline of the Badlands, the Lowlands and the Outlands. All that was left of that once great nation.
She pointed to a spot deep in the Badlands. “I suspect, once upon a time, your ancestors most likely called this home.”
Gawain drew close. “Impossible.”
Shea didn’t take offense, knowing he meant he thought it was more unlikely, than he believed she had lied.
“How do you know all this?” Fallon asked, focusing on the core of the matter.
Shea took a deep breath before turning and walking over to the spiral staircase. She talked as she walked. “You know we’ve gathered information on our world, recorded it, then passed it down to our children and their children after them.”
Fallon and the others continued up after her, only Van and Caden lingering for another long moment by the murals, taking in details they’d missed before.
“Countless cities fell during the cataclysm. Those who were smart got out, taking only what they could carry on their backs, which wasn’t much. The founders of this guild were different. They saw the writing on the wall long before the end came.” More artwork came into view, this time on canvas or by thread, not the carved murals of before.
“They stockpiled their knowledge and anything they thought might help them after the world fell. Then they waited for the smoke to clear. When it did, they decided to gather what little was left of the once great nation here in this place. This isn’t the only place that acted in such a way, but somehow, they were more successful than the others. It allowed them to survive and prosper while their contemporaries disappeared.”
“What caused the cataclysm?” Zeph asked. “Do your people even know?”
Shea nodded. “They have an idea. It wasn’t just one event, more of a slow decay. By the time anyone wanted to do anything it was too late. The wars came, as did famine and plague. Even if you survived, the world was so drastically altered that they had to learn a new way. Eventually, they forgot who they’d once been.”
Shea stepped over to a painting. It was full of colors and darkness, the subject unclear.
“There was a split in the way of thinking. People disagreed with how the gift should be used. Enough, that eventually, brother turned on brother, mother against daughter, and they went mad, using this gift against each other and reshaping the world into the mess it is now.”
She fell quiet after that, leaving each to their thoughts.
“Why have you shown us this?” Fallon asked.
Shea’s eyes were pained. “My people believe that the past is too dangerous to know. They could have used the tools and knowledge left to them to help the Highlands; instead, they hide in their keep and only send out pathfinders to keep the bargain between us and them active.”
She looked around. “The pathfinders and the rest of the Highlands are dying a long, slow, agonizing death. I fear that what is coming is only going to speed that up.”
CHAPTER NINE
Shea ducked behind a column in the open-air courtyard. Set in the middle of the Keep, it was surrounded by stone walls rising high on all sides. In the middle was a nice sized space of green grass, pebbled paths and various shrubs the pathfinders had planted. There was a covered pathway on all sides, which was where Shea now hid, avoiding a trio of pathfinders headed her way. Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed her before she moved, otherwise she would have been forced to greet them and either endure the cold stares or the uncomfortable smiles.
