Ch 25: Repository

Knowledge is a dangerous thing even in the right hands.

• Cyrus Feln, Lead Inquisitor

The rest of the week passed with Solomon spending his mornings managing the estate and then travelling into town to work out of the Watchmen’s office. He approved of each of Vantus’s chosen guards. With them he had now personally secured the jobs of a plurality of them, which would help him maintain control. He also managed to find a suitable secretary, Feist, an older man who had once been a teacher before no one could afford to pay him any longer. With a secretary in place Solomon would have more help keeping things organized and he could return more of his attention to larger problems.

At night Solomon would continue his search through his uncle’s journals. He continued focusing on mentions of the repository, but while it appeared a lot it took three days to find any explicit mentions of how Victor accessed it.

…had to replace the apparatus I had used to access the repository. Knowing that M was searching for it made it important to change it. Luckily, since I know something of his true nature, I can be certain he won’t be able to locate the replacement I have hidden within my secluded study…

Solomon blinked. He was in what he imagined to be his uncle’s secluded study. He stood up from the desk he was sitting at and grabbed the small candle holder and lit candle. He began sweeping the room. He started at the table of alchemical reagents, searching for anything that was glowing with mana, but he found nothing. He went back to the desk and searched the drawers again, finding nothing new. He began to walk along the walls, eventually finding himself behind the corpse of the god. He scanned the walls and saw the slightest spark of mana emanating from one brick. He would never have seen it standing on the other side of the god, but behind it the glow of mana was clear.

He gently placed his hand on the brick feeling a mild tingling through the tips of his fingers as it activated. A number of other bricks around it separated and revealed a small chamber. It was filled with the glow of mana. He stepped into it carefully, staying just outside of the small summoning circle he saw on the floor. In the center of it was a plinth on which rested a spherical crystal within which clouds swirled and convulsed. The circle, the plinth, and the sphere were the only things within the chamber.

Solomon felt a sudden chill and cursed the draft that seemed to settle over him out of nowhere. He knelt, careful to keep himself from stepping on or in the circle, and looked at the runes written on it. He recognized a few from his studies of the runes on the other circle. Soul and Transport were frequently interspersed all throughout. Victor’s diaries had mentioned that it was a method for accessing the Repository remotely. Could it be in the same way that he had been transported to the Arcana meeting? He’d seen no runes on the hermit statue when he’d studied it more closely, but perhaps the fundamentals were the same.

Unfortunately, he had no way to fully decipher the spell. He lacked the knowledge necessary to fully analyze it. There was no reason for it to be trapped. Victor had seemed very confident that it couldn’t be found. He was also on a timer. He grimaced, he preferred to be prepared, but sometimes a leap was necessary.

He stepped into the circle. Nothing happened.

He placed his hands on either side of the orb. Nothing happened.

He began to push mana into it.

He felt the sensation of falling for a few moments. Lights exploded within his vision interspersed with a darkness so deep it seemed as if it would swallow him. He was unsure of how long this lasted, but it seemed to end very suddenly.