Leim glared at him, teeth bared like some wild beast. They were brown. He should brush them. Of course, if it were a normal situation, Merrin wouldn't take little time to remark on his brother's hygiene, but now was not the time. A shaman was here.
Seated at the opposite end of the stone square desk, the old man, black-haired, braided, and long, smiled with closed eyes. "I understand your reservations," the shaman said. "But he has the eye."
"There's no proof of that!" Leim screamed again. What was he, some kind of wild creature? Why couldn't he address the shaman with proper respect? Maybe he was a beast wrapped in human flesh… or perhaps, it was envy eating at him.
Merrin's eyes sharpened.
Leim seemed to notice but paid little attention either way. He turned back to the shaman, who said in a slow, soft voice, "It is undeveloped."
"That's because it doesn't exist!" Leim retorted. "All this is doing is feeding into his delusions."
How is showing my greatness pride? Merrin thought, genuinely confused by his brother's words. He looked away, staring at the brownish ash-smeared walls. There was little steam in the room… they needed more.
His eyes shot open. Where was he? Merrin groaned in pain, his hands, legs, and back churning with a mixture of it. He was standing… somehow. No, he wasn't.
He cast a glance to the left, where the rough-hewn wall seemed to retreat with a steady motion. Around him, several excubitors stood, their features obscured by unnervingly smooth, glass-like masks. And then he realized—he wasn't moving, not in the way he expected. Merrin's gaze dropped downward. His feet hovered above the ground, suspended in the air.
He was floating!
His heart sank, eyes twitching. He wanted to move, but as soon as he attempted to do so, a burning pain came over his hands. He grimaced, and a voice responded beside him.
"Three strikes. Means you either get to be bait or a mechanism." It was an excubitor. The voice? It seemed similar to the one that had 'handled' him back in the halls of the mines. Was he following him or something?
"What does that mean?" Merrin asked, biting his lips against the roaring pain.
The excubitor seemed to scoff. "First, you violated the line; second, you stopped before the gate instead of moving, and finally, you tried to escape."
What is he talking about? Merrin frowned. "I didn't try to do anything like that." Where would he even go if he did?
The Excubitor's voice turned frigid. "By the oaths! A liar?" he growled, his helm reflecting Merrin's pale, taut face. That made him flinch. "You bolted from your cave all the way to the back gate—the only exit from the mines, and forbidden to all."
Merrin studied the figure before him…if he could even be called a man. He understood now. He had done exactly that, but not for the reasons they assumed. He could try to explain, but what would be the point? Let fate take its course.
He averted his gaze from the Excubitor, fixing his eyes on the narrow passageway that looked as if it had been clawed out of the earth. It was dim, stifling, with lamps flickering along the base of the walls. What now? He wasn't even troubled by the fact that he was floating. It was likely a cast... And, much like his current situation, there was nothing he could do about it.
So why worry?
Yes, he loathed them for wielding the Almighty's power, but what choice did he have? Confronting an Excubitor was suicide.
So he simply closed his eyes. He wanted to dream—he heard casters dreamt…But he couldn't. Even if he did, what would it look like? How did men see reality within their minds?
Odd
Not long after, his gentle drift came to an abrupt halt, head snapping forward. He slowly opened his eyes. Somehow, Merrin had been brought into a shadowed hall. Vast, with a ceiling that soared beyond anything he had ever witnessed—it was a truly colossal space. Even larger than the Mines. How was that even possible?
The hall was illuminated where the walls met the ground by white, buzzing lamps, stretching in an unbroken line. The walls themselves were dark, jagged, and uneven, as if hewn crudely from the surrounding rock. Yet, in certain places, their surfaces rippled like a disturbed lake—Eltium.
Scattered throughout the hall were various Sisters, their faces obscured by the black veils. They would either be leading a certain terrified slave or carrying a particular charred body of one. Some of which were still smoldering with black smoke. His gaze lingered on the smoldered corpses. How did that happen?
His heart was speeding up…A foreboding thought crawled into his mind.
He distracted himself with something else. Something Massive. There were three vast contraptions at the far end of the vast hall. They looked like an enormous X, its surface appearing to be Eltium from the faint ripples, though some were a bit old, which Merrin, after seeing a few, could vaguely guess. The more brittle they are, the older they are.
The Vast Xs were on top of a stage of three steps, while an open space in the stone ceiling rested above them. A drizzle of rain poured from that oval hole, wetting the eltium in a constant downpour. The booms of lightning were also present—sometimes loud and bright enough to illuminate the wholeness of the giant cruciforms.
A slave was being led there by a Sister. He was quivering, shaking, and frantically looking around. Why was he scared? Is he scared of the sisters? Merrin didn't see why. The Sisters were the hands of the church, the theocracy, the Almighty, what was there to fear from them?
He watched silently.
The man was brought to the platform, his clothes, hair, and face gradually getting drenched by the drizzle. He seemed horrified, pale, and erratic. What was going to happen to him? Surely nothing bad since he was held by a Sister.
Merrin Hoped. The nauseous feeling was beating against his heart.
The man had his back turned against the contraption. The Sisters, like a rehearsed action, took hold of the ropes hanging on both sides of the contraption. Quick with a meticulous grasp, they tied the ropes around the slave's hands.
With that completed, they took a couple of unified steps away from the slave, then one of them reached for a lever a few meters away from the X and pulled it down. The rope around the slave swiftly tightened, and he groaned—but that short exclamation was nowhere near the dread that was written on his face.
As the ropes tightened, the man was slowly dragged up, his body pulled by whatever means the sisters had employed. He kept ascending, but eventually stopped at the center of the X, at the point where the two lines crossed.
One of the sisters stepped forward, bent, and picked up an odd-looking thing. It was crudely shaped, round, with bumps all over. The thing had a transparent sheen to it, as though it was nothing but clear water. Whatever it was, the sister knew of it as she carried it to the base of the cruciform. There, they were hooked into a somewhat small orb chamber.
As it fitted in, the sister retreated, watching calmly at what was supposed to happen. Merrin waited also, his heart pounding at the dread the man wore.
The man strapped on was shaking, growing increasingly frantic and frivolous. He kept looking around and down at those who looked up to him. The rain was beating on him so much that even the froststone on his left chest began to grow faint.
What's happening to it? Was it getting weaker? He had never heard of rain weakening the will in the stones?
Is somethin--
There was a sound, then a flash of white descended from the open sky, cutting and smashing into the two poles of the giant X. The surface of the contraption rippled violently as if a thousand or so rocks had been simultaneously thrown into a lake.
The man hoisted up, trembled, his head swaying back and forth in a manic pace. A shrill scream reverberated from him, spreading through the hall like a cold wash. Merrin felt his skin bump up—shivers washing down to his bones.
They were killing the slave!
The feeling settled like a boulder in the heart.
"NOOOOO!" Merrin screamed.
The sound of the lightning soon descended, booming like a thousand crackling claps. It shuddered through the hall, causing the lamps to brighten up, or to eerie dim into darkness.
Merrin cupped his hands against his ears, buckling to his knees. The floating cast had ended with the lightning. The sound was horrific: the voice of a man being shocked to death, the booms of lightning, and the heightened buzzing of the lamps. It was as though he had joined some choir of damning tunes. It was bone-chilling.
However, the horror did not last long, and soon the bright room dimmed once again—returning to its previous tenebrous state. Even the sounds, the scream had all quelled. He resisted the first urge to open his eyes. What was he going to see? He didn't want to see it.
But I must…Bear witness.
He slowly opened his eyes, blinking away the tears before looking up at the contraption.
A part of him was terrified at what he would see. And indeed it was.
What was left on the cruciform was but a shriveled corpse. Charred, with fumes of smoke rising from the body, though, the drizzle was quickly calming the heat, leaving it simply charred black.
That man was alive…Just seconds, he was ALIVE! And they had killed him.
Mist this!