Petyr, Elmyra’s current informant, was more of a cornered mouse than a rat, his eyes darting, his breath fogging in the chill alleyway. He clutched the three coppers Elmyra had pressed into his palm as if it were the King’s own signet, though they would barely buy him a watered ale and five minutes of oblivion.
"Hollowed Vessels, Mistress Elmyra, that's what The Eye called 'em," Petyr wheezed. He reeked of cheap incense and partially digested alcohol. "Three more, just last night. Took 'em down the Undercroft, below the Temple. Stripped 'em bare, they did. Chanting… gods, the chanting…" He shuddered, a spasm that ran through his meager frame. "Said they were being… ‘aligned.’ For the ‘Great Design.’"
Elmyra kept her inscrutable mask, honed by years of navigating the treacherous currents of other people’s desires. The Temple of the Silent Architect. Falazar’s latest obsession, and now, hers. "And these ‘Hollow Vessels’?" Elmyra prompted with a low murmur that wouldn't carry beyond their shadowed alcove.
"That's what they become, Mistress! After the unmaking. After The Eye blesses them with the Chain." Petyr’s good eye – the other was a milky ruin from some past disagreement – darted towards the alley mouth. "They ain't themselves no more. Just… empty. And ready. Ready for the ‘Great Realignment.’" His whisper dropped to a breath. "They say it’s to cleanse the city. To silence the discord."
Silence the discord. An apt phrase for a cult that worshipped an unblinking eye and promised absolute, unthinking order.
"You’ve done well, Petyr," She pressed another copper into his trembling hand. "Go. Forget what you saw. And if you hear more… you know where to find me."
The acolyte scurried away, disappearing into the Labyrinthine’s warren, leaving Elmyra alone with the ghost of his fearful words.
She moved through the shadowed city with an easy, practiced grace, a phantom in the lamplight. Her journey took her away from the Labyrinthine’s squalor through the boisterous, torch-lit chaos of the Lesser Market, and up towards the more respectable avenues of the hilly Merchant Quarter. The buildings were taller, the cobblestones less treacherous, the air scented with southern spices and Verranzan perfumes from the warehouses near the river.
Her flat on the third floor of a narrow but well-maintained building above a reputable weaver’s shop was a far cry from the damp straw pallets and shared attic rooms of her youth, when she’d sold wilted flowers and hopeful lies to passersby.
The lock, a complex Verranzan design, yielded to her touch. Inside, the air was cool, still. Fine Myrish rugs lay on polished wooden floors. A silver-backed mirror, recently acquired, gleamed on a carved oak dressing table. Books of history and a few volumes of Argrenian poetry lined a narrow shelf. A shrine to her success. She rarely spent more than a few waking hours here. Home was a concept she’d learned early to view with a healthy skepticism.
Her early lovers: a callow noble’s son who’d promised the moon, a dashing Meridian captain whose loyalty lasted only as long as her coin, a melancholy poet who’d written her sonnets and then stolen her silver spoons – they hadn’t broken her heart. They had honed her. Each encounter, each betrayal, each fleeting moment of shared warmth and every deception had been a lesson. She’d learned to read the shifts in a man’s eyes, the tremor in his voice, the desires that lay beneath. She’d learned which buttons to push, which vulnerabilities to exploit. Not out of malice, not always.
She shed her street cloak, the unwashed scent of the Labyrinthine clinging to it, and poured herself a small glass of decent Arbor Gold from a decanter left behind by a recent client. She carried it to a small iron-bound chest tucked away in a corner. From within, she retrieved a small, cloth-wrapped bundle.
Unwrapping it, she revealed a chain-link amulet. This new chain was clunkier, less finely wrought, the dark metal possessing a duller sheen. It felt… rushed. She’d lifted it with no small amount of risk from the discarded effects of a fresh "Hollowed Vessel," a young guild apprentice.
She sipped her wine. Cyros Goldenvein. The alchemist would know what to make of this. He had a nose for tainted magic, and an even better instinct for profiting from it. And, according to the coded message his parrot Calypso had delivered earlier that day, he had somehow cajoled Falazar himself into visiting his workshop this very evening.
She re-wrapped the crude chain, tucked it into a hidden pocket of her bodice, and drained her wine. Time to pay a visit to Master Goldenvein. The night was still young, and the shadows of Alkaer held many more secrets to be plucked.
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She found Cyros Goldenvein’s "Curiosities and Esoterica" shop shuttered and dark, but a faint, flickering light accompanied by the unmistakable aroma of brimstone seeped from beneath the back door of his workshop. Elmyra slipped the alley lock, the tumblers yielding with a soft click.
In a chaotic symphony of bubbling retorts, smoking braziers, and shelves overflowing with jars of dubious substances, Cyros hunched over a complex alchemical apparatus, muttering to himself. But he was not alone.
Standing near a workbench was Archmage Falazar. His gaze was fixed on the chain-link amulet from Beryl Lanza, which lay upon a velvet cloth, glowing faintly with a cold light. Griswold, Goldenvein’s ancient dwarven assistant, stood impassively in a corner like a gnarled gargoyle.
Falazar looked up, his eyes narrowing. "Mistress Elmyra," he said, his voice deceptively mild. "An unexpected… pleasure. I trust you bring more than just the night’s chill into this fragrant establishment?"
Elmyra met his gaze, a knowing smile playing on her lips. She reached into her bodice and produced the chain. "Perhaps, Archmage," she said with a silken challenge. "I bring a matched set."
"The Lanza amulet first, Goldenvein," Falazar commanded. "Your… materialistic methods may reveal properties that the Weave itself veils."
Cyros, preening slightly at this backhanded acknowledgment, approached the task with a showman’s flourish. "Indeed, Archmage. While your ethereal perceptions may dance with the ether’s grand currents, my humble crucibles deal with the grit of reality."
He selected a series of reagents with a connoisseur’s care: a vial of fuming crimson salts distilled from volcanic vents, a pinch of powdered moonstone resonating with hidden enchantments, a single, viscous drop of what he proclaimed "Shadowfen crawler ichor, remarkably sensitive to sympathetic bindings."
The Lanza amulet, subjected to these alchemical provocations, reacted. The crimson salts sprinkled upon its dark chains did not sizzle or dissolve; their color leeched away, drawn into the amulet’s metal as if into a thirsty void. The powdered moonstone dusted across its surface dimmed and the drop of Shadowfen crawler ichor, placed carefully on one of the amulet’s central links, simply… vanished, leaving no trace, no residue, only a cold sheen on the metal’s surface.
"Remarkable," Cyros breathed, his eyes gleaming with academic excitement and a touch of fear. "It is… receptive. Almost hungry. It draws power, essence, yet gives nothing back. The metal itself… it defies standard alchemical assays. It is ancient, yes, but unknown. Forged by no smithcraft known to Argren, or even to the dwarves of the deep stone halls of the western and eastern mountain ranges."
Falazar nodded slowly. He extended a hand, palm open, a few inches above the Lanza amulet. He closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration.
What he felt was… emptiness. A void that thrummed with an immense, coiled potential. A conduit designed to receive and transmit a will not its own. The binding magic here was not a crude constraint, but, a pathway to a vast, unyielding intelligence. It felt like staring into the abyss, and being stared back by an indifferent, all-consuming hunger. "The ether… it flows through this," Falazar murmured, his voice barely a whisper, "but it is not of the ether as we understand it. It is a tributary to a different ocean, a darker, colder sea."
Then they turned to the second amulet, the one Elmyra had procured from the "Hollowed Vessel." Its cruder craftsmanship was immediately apparent, even to the untrained eye. The crimson salts sizzled and smoked, leaving an acrid residue. The powdered moonstone sparked with a brief, sickly green luminescence before being extinguished. The Shadowfen crawler ichor bubbled and spat, then congealed into a brittle shard.
"Ah," Cyros said, a note of disdain in his voice. "A construct. A mimicry. Powerful, yes, in its own blunt fashion, but lacking the… elegance… the purity of the first. The binding magic here is but a forceful constraint. See the edges?" He gestured with a silver stylus. "Hard. Angular. Not the seamless flow of the Lanza piece.”
Falazar again extended his senses. The magical signature of the second amulet was indeed different. It vibrated with a harsher energy. The binding here was a tangible force, a psychic shackle. "The magic is… layered," Falazar observed. "As if built upon a pre-existing template, but with lesser materials, blunter intent. It still draws from that same wellspring but the connection is filtered, perhaps even intentionally limited.”
"So, one is a master’s chain, the other a servant’s leash?"
Falazar looked at Elmyra. "An astute, if somewhat blunt, summation, Mistress Elmyra. Yes. It would seem our true enemy employs a hierarchy of control. The Lanza amulet… I suspect it is designed to bind and influence those in positions of power, to turn them into willing, or unwitting, conduits for its will. The second type, the kind these 'Silent Architects' are distributing… these are tools of more direct subjugation. For the foot soldiers. For the… 'Hollowed Vessels.' There is another amulet out there, held by a young girl, ancient, somewhat similar in function, but with an altogether different energy, which muddies the waters even further."
He picked up the lesser chain. "The magic of binding," he mused, his gaze distant. "Essential. Primordial. Its roots run deep. And now it is being wielded in two distinct, yet ultimately converging directions. One, a subtle poison to the soul. The other, a brutal shackle to the will."
Elmyra shuddered inwardly, despite the workshop’s heat. Poison to the soul, shackle to the will. She thought of young Petyr, his eyes hollowed by fear. She thought of the glazed expressions of the Silent Architect’s devotees, their individuality dissolving into that chilling, unison chant.
Falazar looked from Cyros to Elmyra, his expression grim. "And both, I fear, are merely instruments in a symphony of annihilation far vaster, and far more terrifying, than the kingdom has ever faced."
Novicius in Arte Medica A Novice in the Art of MedicineMedical School is a Warzone. Ashrahan was failing. Then, the System woke up.
Quote: Synopsis: Sleepless nights, borrowed notes, and caffeine. When exhaustion drags Ashrahan to the edge, a silent system awakens, transforming patients into interactive lessons and textbooks into living networks of surgical precision.