Roy took up his sword, Percival mirroring him with his own. They nodded at one another, then twisted the hilts and scabbards of their respective weapons in parallel directions, making sure to point the blades downward. Then, as one, they unsheathed them.
As his sword fell to the ground, clattering, Roy pivoted, shielding himself from the force of its deadly yet intoxicating power. An unworldly hum, like the reverberations made by metal ringing against glass, filled the air and set the windows a-shiver. He heard screams from the sword too, rife with torment, but they were nowhere near as loud as that ethereal chorus.
Roy looked over at Percival, who had placed the sword with the skeleton-shaped hilt on the desk. The silver iridescence that had once outlined the entire sword now only gleamed dimly near its hilt and the tip of the blade. He hadn’t seen it in the room in the museum, but there was a slight curve to the black metal, as though intended to carve around the waistline. And indeed, incised into the flat of the blade was a chain of luminous symbols, written in the same eldritch language as the symbols on the metal shards.
Almost as soon as Roy had made this comparison, the symbols etched into Percival’s blade shone brighter and brighter, glaring furiously, and then the same happened to Roy’s. He drew closer. After a moment, the symbols disappeared, replaced by a variant vaguely similar to its predecessor. Again, it faded and was substituted. The cycle went on, each symbol bearing an equivalent structure but with the slightest of modifications: an accent over one icon; a line struck through another. One of the variants was slanted and bold, while the next stretched along the blade, elongating like a whip unfurling. They seemed nearly similar to the cryptic symbols Roy had seen upon the books in the catacombs.
“Get back!” Roy ordered, grabbing Percival around the waist. “Getback, damn it! Getback!”
“The swords will not attack us,” Percival said, placing a hand on Roy’s, which were clasped around his middle. “I... I think they’re trying to speak to us.” He withdrew from Roy’s hold. “Wait. Roy, look.”
Reluctant, Roy glanced at his sword and saw that the alternating symbols had begun to slow. Rather than twice every second, the languages changed within every few seconds now: sleek and elegant; stout and dense; high and curvy. He hadn’t known that there were so many languages in the world...If, Roy thought with a sense of deep foreboding,these languages evenbelongto this world.
At long last, the symbols stopped at a language and froze. One word was engraved into the blade, in the common alphabet learned across Northgard:
KHARUAN
And on Percival’s sword:
VALUSVAR
He recalled both of the names instantly. When he’d skimmed through the piles of papers and texts which had ended with books on thanatology, he’d come across a volume he’d previously thought unrelated to the Old Ones.The Blades of Tangrorby Leopileus. And the names of the blades themselves? Malevoli, Kharuan, Cephius, Valusvar, Parlikeves...
Roy grabbed his scabbard from the floor, then sheathed Kharuan. “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t think it was important,” he said to Percival, “but I have definitely seen these names before.”
“Both of them?” Percival asked, observing Valusvar with an unsettled expression.
“I have no doubts about it,” Roy said, then paused. “But why were they in the catacombs? Did the Scribes consider them memorabilia? Spoils of war?”
Percival picked up Valusvar from the desk, sheathing it. “All solid questions, darling. Why don’t we go ask someone who might be able to answer them?” He smiled. “How do you fancy another stroll with the dead?”
* * *
Roy had feared that something might have happened to the crypt since they’d entered it, that it had collapsed beneath the winter-rotted foundations of the library, but everything remained the same: the books displayed behind glass, the congregation of the entombed Protectorate; the seven sarcophagi of the Elder Scribes, the cracked lid of the central one lying upon the great dais, where Percival and Roy had left it.
“We need to get their attention,” Percival said, sidling up next to Roy. “How should we go about this?”
“It’s safe to say that the Orphic Basilica repurposed this space in the crypt as a shrine to the Elder Scribes following their deaths,” Roy said. “In my eyes, if something were to happen to the ones it buried, if someone were to trespass on their resting place, the consequences for such an act of sacrilege would be severe.” He smiled.
“And . . . ?” Percival asked.
“And I intend to see what those consequences are.”
His smile fading, Roy wrapped his hand around the sleeve of his tunic, curled his fingers into a fist, and then pummeled the glass, striking it over and over, hard and swift. Percival did not stop him, not with a hand on his shoulder or a cry of protest, but he did raise his arm over his face, sheltering it from the glittering shards of glass that soared at him and then fell at his feet.
Once the hole in the glass was large enough to thrust his arm through without cutting himself, Roy reached inside, grabbed one of the books—engraved on the cover of which was one of those strange symbols he’d seen,Neil Eldreaveimprinted beneath it—then turned on his heel and hurled it at the wall. A cloud of bone-dust, grit, and ash ballooned outward, concealing the book as it crashed to the ground. He retrieved another from the shelf he’d ransacked and flung it against the lid of the nearest sarcophagus, which it struck with a loud thud.
“See me!” Roy bellowed. He pulled a third book out and threw it at the coffin of a member of the Protectorate. “See me!”
Percival cautiously removed a book himself, one only a little larger than his hand, and pitched it against the wall, where it exploded into a whirling confusion of ink-stained pages. He blinked in amazement at the destruction he’d caused, then returned to the shelf and ripped out another.
As the book smacked against the wall, sending up curls of earth and dust, Roy followed it with another. The breeze within the chamber stirred quicker and quicker, rising from their feet to their waists. He grew peripherally aware of a chorus of screams, then saw the pale gray fog ascending from underneath the ground. Fear twisted within him, sharp as thorns, snatching at his breath and roiling through his stomach, but he only gritted his teeth tighter and ran back to the shelf, hauling stacks of books into his arms and pitching them in twos and threes against the wall. Percival was right on Roy’s heels, screaming and hollering with him.
“See us!” they shouted, nearly overriding the pandemonium of noise. Roy was half surprised that Percival was voicing the chant, as he probably had no clue what he was doing but simply felt good doing it, but Roy didn’t let Percival in on his plan. Some reckless part of him wanted to see the look of bewilderment on Percival’s face.“See us for who we are, you cowards!”
They did not cease their looting and littering until there were no more books on the shelf, and even then, they carried on with their summoning. They reprimanded those who were unable to respond to their grouching, those whose souls had long departed this life.
Perhaps most egregious to the sanctimony of a library, they made a ruckus. Percival dashed to the lowermost of the coffins of the Protectorate, which were on the walls surrounding the sarcophagi of the Scribes, and shook them, sweat percolating on his brow and dripping down his temples, his cheeks red as roses. Roy threw book after damaged book at the lids of the Scribes’ sarcophagi, his voice going hoarse as he shrieked blasphemies, droplets of tears and perspiration running down his face. When he eventually tired of damaging sacred property, he lumbered around the exterior of the cairn, panting and clutching his stomach, and flung his fists weakly at the walls. Blood beaded from the cuts he’d made on his knuckles, peppering the backs of his hands.
