TSC - Chapter 7: Shattered (5) - The Heist (2)

Chloe reacted instinctively, there was something about the way she moved that seemed confident. She pulled her hood over her head and in a deep, crackled voiced alarm and anger.  The words she spoke rang two more guards out from the room although a little more alert but not by much. The threat of Silas smacked them into sobriety as they questioned their arrival. She convinced them that the bucking footstool was an animation of an intruder they were attacked by and in failing to protect them they have failed Silas. The footstool careered down the staircase; stumpy limbs flailing. The two guards grabbed their hilts and dashed for the staircase pleading with them to take their friend upstairs to rest and not  pleading not to report them. Xera rubbed his eyes in disbelief. There was to him, no possible way for her to sound as she did. It was then that he noticed that she had her hand around her neck as she had taken off her hood. The necklace that she was wearing had become a choker around her neck. All the while she was slowing rubbing the crystal and by her reaction, now seemed to loosen.

He didn't know whether to be concerned or astonished, if Eryn and Chloe hadn't realised they were all on timer, they did now. Eryn took it upon himself to bring the other guard up the stairs. He had by now, stopped speaking gibberish the corner drooling and had now passed out cold slumped over Eryn's shoulder. Upstairs was a small storage room and what appeared to be the leftover meal of the night before.   Xera spotted a chest large enough to dump the guard's body into and picked the lock and left Eryn to sort out the rest. Inside, was mostly silk sheets and pillows, however there was a polished silver lightning bolt that had hardly any weight yet was leaving a heavy imprint in the fabrics.  He placed it to one side, banging on the wooden floor.

 Xera jumped mid-way through skimming over some of the journals that were spread out across the room. If Dehart's information was correct then somewhere in this tower there was a clue to its location. The manuscript he had now returned to laid out a small part of the power structure of House Lyathra. Through the use of a device that only worked on blood relatives of House Lyathra, members could master the art of insubstantial  transmutation of the body. However such mastery came with a price, permanently un-phasing with this reality, and therefore unable to be seen or communicate. The book detailed that if a family member was to go through this, and was somehow able to show a manifestation, then they would be considered the master of the house. If there is no one able to fit this description then it falls onto the corporeal elders.

 The pages onwards from this were torn out, although there was the inking of the letter 'm' scrawled over the top. Xera ran his thumb over the bindings of the book, a small detail he appreciated in fine craftsmanship. It was as expensive as the paper felt and he could only presume the gold on the leather cover was real. In fact, upon closer inspection, the gold banding around the edges of the book were very familiar. He shivered for a moment, they were the same symbols that the men who attacked him and Saifu. He tossed the book over to Eryn and with a few moments of looking over the bindings, he to agreed on the conclusion; The Rings of Melch. It was plausible that the reason Zarik had a Whisper Network wooden box was that the family had splintered while sharing the same supplies. If the tome was to be believed however, and Melch was indeed a true leader of the house, then his form naturally would be human. Eryn realised that that only he Chloe and Lily had seen was could have possibly been Melch; a writhing mass of bloodied flesh with a singular, enlarged amber eye.

The Rings of Melch would never have seen that, only the 'shadow' seen with the king. The fact that the Whisper Network and the Rings of Melch were one and the same was an unsettling conclusion. They had to press on, time was running short. Chloe  bundled up the bolt and the book while the Eryn and Xera scouted upstairs. To Eryn's horror the room was  a floor full of books with parchment strewn all over and a thick layer of all pervading dust.  One false move from him and the entire room and anyone in it could go up in flames. He stayed situated in the stone stairwell while he let the other two carry out the research. Chloe could not understand half of what she was looking at, even the drawings confused her. Xera on the other hand was finding out a companion to his own research and that of Melvile's.  There was mention of a resource known as Nychthemeron along with more equations. Some were more rudimentary workings, while others were far more complex.

They were all parts of the same equations he had been working on but parts of it were in code of some sorts. A circle with a dot in the middle and a vertical line with two diagonal lines in the middle going from left and up to the right.   He remembered that this was the ingredient Dehart had transported into the city but he had given no clear definition of what it was. Panic set in as he turned the page. Someone had sketched a picture of it. A bulbous creature with tentacles at one end, floating tail up while its tendrils web over a metallic orb that punctured, in glowing spikes, the end it was attached to. The tips of the limbs were needles and syringes. The metal was the same kind as the orb, as well the barnacle mechanical nodules that adorned the higher floating top half. There was also a helpful image of a researcher standing next to it. Not only did it dwarf the man but floated entirely off the floor. It was going to be impossible to get it out secretly, let alone staying alive. A fact driven home by more documents detailing about project Harvest and numerous 'failed' test subjects.