Beneath

Beneath

Blena peered into the opening. Soft green light shimmered somewhere below, faint but steady. She took a crystal from her belt and held it high. 
“I’ll go first.”
“Well, One. Of course. And two. Please do. It is really dark down there.” Tajan wasn’t scared of the dark and she could summon fire but she was cautious and this moment seemed like the perfect time to practise that skill.  
Light from the crystal in Blena’s hand illuminated the spiral stairway that wound down in a tight turn but its destination was still hidden in shadows. As she went deeper and made a turn those who had not yet entered had to rely on daylight as they wound deeper into the darkness. 

Finally, you reach a small rectangular chamber which holds a white stone sarcophagus in the center and a small statue on top of it. It is illuminated by soft green light that was emanating from the roots of the tree that had broken into the chamber and were exposed. In the center statue of an angel was magnificent, hewn from white marble and crystal with veins of gold running through it. The angel's  wings outstretched as were her hands,  the heavens.
“How far does it go?” Kaelen yelled down into the dark.
Still at the surface waiting his turn Plant Master Skan placed one cautious foot on the first step. “My knees are too old for this but my heart says I have to see what’s down here. I think stairs are apropos to danger just to let you know... most household accidents happen on the stairs?”
Anderix who was directly in front of Felib turned his head to send his voice backwards, “Don’t worry, If you fall, fall forwards and I’ll stop you.” Anderix observed. “And these stairs are made of stone they are very sturdy”
“They aren’t when roots keep breaking through them.”
The steps narrowed as they turned and were more and more uneven. In places, the walls pressed so closely around them that Drue had to turn sideways to squeeze down and his head was at a tilt forward so as not to bump his head.
“Whoever built this stairwell had a very poor opinion of shoulders and definitely didn’t expect visitors,” he muttered.
The air grew stale as they descended. It smelled of damp earth, old stone and something faintly sweet that even Alster could not identify. Thick roots pushed through the walls at first, pale tendrils thicker than an arm. Deeper down, they became as thin as fingers and then the width of a grass stalk with white tendrils, winding through the masonry as though the tree above were slowly reaching for something buried beneath it.
Green light flowed through the roots in gentle pulses.
Tajan stopped to watch one pass beneath the translucent tendril.
“That is not reflected light,” she said.
Anderix leaned closer. “No. It appears to be moving through the root itself.”
“Is that normal?” asked Kaelen.
Felib was almost excited to answer and jumped in before Alster could. “Not of any plant in Virielia but there are some with bioluminescence in caves in the Sylvan Watch. We received seeds from them a few years back but couldn’t recreate the conditions they needed to grow.” 
“So that is a Virilian way of saying no?” Kaelen asked to confirm.
“It is a scientist's way of saying I do not yet know. The distinction is important.”
At the bottom of the stairwell, the walls opened into a small rectangular chamber.
They all entered one at a time and fell silent and stacking up at the doorway like time had stopped at the bottom and they weren’t able to move. 
A white stone sarcophagus rested in the centre of the room. Thick mats of fine white roots had broken through every gap and space between stone in the ceiling and spread across the walls. Their green pulsing radiance filled the chamber with a soft, living light.
Upon the lid of the sarcophagus stood the statue of a woman.
She had been carved from one split piece of stone that was white marble and quartz crystal, with slender veins of gold running here and there through her robes and outstretched wings. Her face was serene. Her open hands were lifted towards the heavens as if she were receiving something from above or offering something back.
The quartz lines of stone and precious metal in her body caught the light from the roots and carried it from her feet to her fingertips.
Felib, last to enter and squarely at the back slowly pushed through after completing the descent and being forced to stop. 
“Oh, my Veyl,” he whispered once he was within view. “The Angel of Amaryn.”
Kaelen turned towards Tajan.
“I think it looks like Syterra.”
Tajan studied the figure’s face, the fall of its robes and the wings.
“It really does. Well, at least what we expect her to look like.”
Felib took a cautious step towards the sarcophagus. “She is a beacon of hope and strength for the people of Amaryn.”
Blena circled the tomb. She looked carefully at the stone walls at the back of the rectangular crypt. “No one has been here for a very long time.” Then waving her crystal over the rocks for better light she saw indentations in the stone. With her hand she brushed out dust and wearing grit from age and three symbols emerged from the stone. Each represented one of the elements Syterra was said to have mastered.
Beneath them was a fourth shape: a circle surrounded by lines that spread outward in every direction.
“Plant Master Skan,” Blena said, “is this symbol part of the legends?”
He joined her and stared at it.
“I have never seen it before.”
Kaelen moved closer. The circle reminded him of the Aethoria as he had seen it depicted in the halls of Kefar. A circle in a circle and lines connecting the through the axis.
The lines entered the circle but were not in symmetry and crossed the edges so that uneven quadrants were drawn. “It isn’t a crown,” Tajan murmured.
“No,” said Blena. “It is a crossing.”
The green light intensified.
A pulse traveled through the roots, entered the walls and passed beneath their feet. The golden lines in the statue answered with a faint glow.
Peace settled over the chamber.
It was not peace in that they felt relief like the kind that followed danger or the quiet satisfaction of finding shelter from the cold. It came too quickly and unnaturally. The tension drained from Kaelen’s shoulders. Blena’s guarded expression softened. Drue ceased fidgeting. Even Felib’s laboured breathing became slow and calm. They stared at the statue.
For one impossible instant, Kaelen felt as though the chamber had become bigger than it was like it had opened around him.
He couldn’t see beyond the chamber walls, yet he became aware of vast distances. Something like knowing that the mountains, the oceans and the divided lands of Aethoria were nearby. He felt like he knew how to get there on lines without roads or paths without clearings but it was so unclear. They passed through places of power and continued far beyond them. Some shone. Others were dark.
The Heartwell appeared in his mind, not as the beginning of those pathways and not as their end, but as one brilliant point among many.
“The Heartwell is not alone,” he whispered.
Blena’s eyes remained fixed upon the statue.
“It was never alone.”
Tajan stepped closer to the sarcophagus. Green light reflected across her face.
“The tower at Ruodoon,” she said. “The Helios Spire.”
“The shrine,” Drue added.
“Places on the same paths,” said Alster.
Their words came slowly, but they did not feel like separate thoughts. Each voice continued something the others had already begun.
Kaelen could feel the pattern without understanding it. He sensed openings where energy should have flowed and empty spaces waiting to be filled. The end of the Heartwell was not merely the failure of a single crystal. It was one break within something immeasurably larger.
“It is incomplete,” he said.
“Disconnected,” Blena answered.
“Waiting,” whispered Felib.
Drue stared into the crystal face of the statue. “For what?”
No one answered.
For an instant, Tajan thought she saw something beyond the pattern. Not another place exactly, but another side of the same creation. It pressed close to Aethoria, separated from it by a distance too small to measure and too vast to cross. Then the impression vanished.
“The lines go farther than Aethoria,” she murmured.
Kaelen turned towards her, although his eyes remained unfocused.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“The water and lava in crystal joins them,” Blena said.
“No,” said Alster. “They are talismans that fill the vessels.”
Anderix looked from one tranquil face to another.
He did not see distant pathways or darkened points beneath the world. He saw five companions and an elderly shrine keeper staring at a statue in tomb while speaking with the unnerving harmony of a rehearsed choir.
He clicked his fingers in front of Tajan’s face but she didn’t even blink.
“Tajan?”
“The energy must move,” she whispered.
“Yes, very profound. Also extremely concerning.”
He rushed over to Kaelen and waved a hand before his face.
Nothing.
“Oh, excellent,” Anderix muttered. “A room full of people agreeing with one another. That is never natural.”
He removed a small brass device from his backpack. It had a squat circular body, three folding legs and a metal arm positioned above a shallow plate. Anderix placed it on the floor and unfolded its legs. He wound the key at its side, stepped back and released the catch.
The metal arm struck the plate in a repeated rhythm.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Plant Master Skan flinched.
It was unceasing. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Blena’s eye twitched.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Drue slowly turned towards the machine with an expression of growing hatred.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Anderix raised his voice over the noise. “Everyone out of the chamber.”
No one moved.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
“I said out.”
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. 
Blena turned the palm of one hand towards the device as though she might command it to stop through fury alone.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
The rhythm gradually slowed, leaving an increasingly long and dreadful pause between each strike.
CLANG.....CLANG..... CLANG....
“I will throw that thing into the ocean,” Drue said.
“Excellent. You are forming independent thoughts again. Stairs. Now.”
Kaelen blinked. The vast pattern vanished, leaving only the stone chamber, the shining roots and a dull ache behind his eyes.
“What happened?”
“Some sort of hallucinogen or airborne poisoning would be my guess. We can argue about the preferred explanation outside.”
Anderix took Tajan by the arm and guided her towards the passage. Alster helped Drue to the steps. Blena followed, although she looked back repeatedly at the statue.
Felib was the last to leave.
He placed his hand against the edge of the sarcophagus and gazed at the Angel of Amaryn. Gratitude and longing passed across his face. The calm of the chamber began drawing him back almost immediately.
“Plant Master Skan,” Alster called from the stairs, clapping his hands at him.
Felib closed his eyes. With visible effort, he removed his hand and stepped onto the first stone tread. The climb seemed longer than the descent.
When they finally emerged behind the shrine near the etheria tree, cool dusk air washed over them. The last sunlight was fading from the garden, and the tree’s glowing canopy appeared brighter against the gathering darkness.
They stood silently, breathing as though they had surfaced from deep water.
Drue rubbed both hands over his face. “I feel as though I am recovering from a night of wheatwater, except I had none of the wheatwater and none of the frivolity.”
Anderix leaned against a stone and inhaled deeply. Even he felt light-headed now that they were outside.
“There may have been gas trapped in the chamber,” he said. “Possibly pollen or some other compound released by the roots. Limited ventilation would allow it to accumulate.”
“Gas did not show me the Heartwell,” Kaelen said.
Alster couldn’t help himself. “Certain gases can show you almost anything. I’ve seen a medic use a gas emitted from a toxic plant to make a patient sleep while performing surgery on them.The patients even dream happy dreams while they have a surgeon's blade inside them. ”
Blena had regained enough of herself to examine what they had seen without the chamber’s influence. She looked from Kaelen to Tajan and then towards the hidden entrance.
“That statue was Syterra.”
Felib lowered himself onto a stone bench. “It was the Angel of Amaryn.”
“It had Syterra’s face,” Blena said. “It bore the three elemental symbols, and the figure was standing on a sealed sarcophagus.”
“Standing over it,” Drue corrected.
“You know what I mean.”
Alster looked towards the earth beneath their feet. “If the statue is Syterra and that is a tomb...”
No one completed the thought.
Blena waited, hoping someone else might say it first. When none of them did, she folded her arms.
“I think we found the tomb of Syterra, Mother of Magic.”
Silence settled over the garden.
Felib looked up into the radiant branches of the etheria tree. Everything he had been taught about the shrine remained true, yet it now seemed very different. The Angel of Amaryn might still have been a story of hope to his people, but she may also have possessed another name, another history and a connection to every Crestrealm.
“We cannot tell anyone,” Alster said.
Drue glanced at him. “Whyever not.. This is huge.”
“It will ruin everything.” Alster turned back towards the covered entrance. “If word spread that Syterra was buried here, people would come from every crestrealm. Pilgrims, scholars, treasure hunters and merchants selling commemorative tomb cakes and winged dolls and statues. This garden would be trampled into mud.”
Felib nodded. “I have kept this shrine and these gardens for most of my life, yet I did not know what lay beneath it. I can protect its secret but not alone.”
“You will not have to,” said Kaelen. “No one outside this company learns what we found.”
One by one, they agreed.
Anderix crouched and drew a circle in the soil with one finger. He added lines entering and leaving it.
“You all described the Heartwell as though it were part of a larger mechanism.”
“I would not call it a mechanism,” said Blena.
“Only because you have not yet accepted that nearly everything is a mechanism.”
“What we saw was filled with light and energy and life.”
“Many mechanisms are alive. Bodies, forests, economies.”
He added several smaller circles along the lines.
“You mentioned Ruodoon, Helion and this shrine. Those locations have all experienced unusual crystal activity. If they are connected in some manner, then the Heartwell’s decline may not be an isolated failure.”
Kaelen studied the crude diagram.
“In the chamber, I knew that.”
“And now?” 
“Now I only remember knowing it.”
Tajan knelt beside Anderix’s drawing. “Some of the points were bright. Others were dark.”
“Were they producing energy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Receiving it?”
She hesitated.
“Perhaps both.”
Anderix stared at the diagram. For once, he had no immediate answer.
Blena looked back towards the etheria tree. “Whatever connects these places has been broken.”
“Or switched off,” Anderix said.
“Can it be repaired?” asked Felib.
Anderix smoothed the soil, erasing the lines.
“Not until we learn what it is.”
Felib considered this. “The oldest records of Amaryn are held in the Veritas Temple Library. Some predate the shrine, although they are poorly kept and thus few people are permitted to examine them.”
“Then we begin there,” said Kaelen.
Drue pushed himself away from the tree. “We begin with the fish vendor outside. Knowledge is important, but he had an excellent pepper glaze and looked close to packing up.”
Alster slapped him on the back. “I am really beginning to like you, old man.”
“Old?”
“And since we are taking care of our bodies,” Alster continued, “I need to pee.”
“That confidence was brief but inspiring,” said Blena.
While the others restored the covering over the hidden passage, Alster disappeared behind a sourfruit tree. His father had always insisted that relieving oneself beneath such a tree improved the fruit. Alster had never investigated whether this was horticultural wisdom or simply a strategy for keeping children out of the house.
By the time he rejoined the company walking away Drue put his arm around him and asked. “So it was gas or it wasn’t gas?” 
Night was falling across Amaryn. Beyond the garden walls, lamps flickered to life along the houses on the street. Cooking smoke drifted between the buildings, carrying the scents of spiced fish, hot oil and sweetroot cakes.
Kaelen paused beneath the archway and looked back.
The etheria tree glowed peacefully above the buried chamber. Beneath its roots lay a woman who might have been worshipped under one name in Amaryn and remembered under another throughout Aethoria.
For a moment, he almost felt the hidden pattern again.
Not a collection of isolated crystals, towers and sacred places, but parts of something once whole. Something built to carry power across distances no road could cross.
Then the ground trembled.
The movement was slight, but deep. Dust slipped from the garden wall, and ripples spread across a basin of water near the shrine.
The leaves of the etheria tree shivered although there was no wind.
Anderix looked down at the stones beneath his boots.
“The Veritas Temple Library,” he said. “We may wish to begin quickly.”

Thy Quest: The Secret of the Tomb
If you had discovered what Kaelen’s company found beneath the etheria tree, would you keep the tomb a secret or tell someone? Explain your decision. If you would tell someone, identify whom you would trust and why.