The Dark Vault

The evening of 25th day came and finally time for the trio to begin their after hours raid on the Dark Vault. After classes, Mortius packed up his belongings and noted the time as he went on his way to the Third Floor. 4pm, so this gave him a three hour window to find out what he wanted to know from the Dark Vault. There was so much time in his hands, Mortius only grew more and more adamant that he wanted to search around. Nothing delighted him more than getting answers to his questions and it was about time that he started unlocking some of the many mysteries that this place had to offer. More than that, learning secrets about his own culture would really make for some good stories to tell his mother when he went home after the academic year ended. Getting into the elevator compartment, he pressed the metal plate and made his ascent. The elevator continued upwards after he got off and stopped at floor five and six. Descending back down, it stopped in front of Mortius again and Saminha and Clive disembarked, already engaged in an argument, as Mortius expected.

“You’re an Angel! You know how to use magic, you have your ball, just grow a spine already!”, Saminha almost shouted.

“Look, I’m just saying that this is a really bad idea!”, Clive timidly retorted, though making his argument less impactful by looking away from Saminha and lowering himself physically, as if to avoid being hit.

“How about both of you stop arguing and increase our chances of not getting in trouble before we’ve even done anything!”, Mortius yelled in a whisper, getting in between the two and halting the argument. The pair stopped for now but it was clear they would start again at some point during this adventure. Looking upwards at the levels above, Mortius tried to remember from the tour which level the Vaults were on.

“The Dark Vault is up on the Fifth Floor, isn’t it?”, Saminha asked, looking around.

“Wrong. Six”, a tiny voice said nearby. Everyone turned to face Mortius as he jumped up and yelped in surprise. Hovering behind his head was his guide Winkle, with crossed arms and looking very disappointed. Mortius tried to think of an excuse for their discussion but he didn’t even get the chance.

“Didn’t I tell you that the Dark Vault was forbidden?!”, she said angrily.

“Really? Forbidden? I thought you said ‘for everyone’ so, you know, I assumed I could take a quick visit!”, Mortius replied in an innocently chirpy voice. Winkle wasn’t fooled in the slightest, and ordered the three to leave.

“We are just going for a quick look! It won’t take too long!”, Mortius tried to convince her again.

“I told you! For-bid-den. Now, get to your dorms or I’ll call the boss and he’ll have the High Scholar over here in an instant!”, Winkle commanded.

“Well, we’ve been caught, better get going”, Clive said, not sounding as stymied as he tried to be, turning and walking towards the elevator. Mortius, however, wasn’t ready to give up on this as easily, grabbing Clive’s collar and shepherding him back into the fold.

“Hold on. What’s the price… erm…”, Mortius began.

“WINKLE!”

“Yeah, Winkle. What can we do for you that will let you just close your eyes and pretend that you didn’t see anything here?”, Mortius asked. Winkle stared at the group for a moment, seeming to be unwavering from her staunch and unwavering authoritative command. Yet, something in her eye gave the idea that she was considering the proposition. Her eyes kept darting in between Mortius and Saminha and after a few minutes of her mulling it over, she sighed and unfolded her arms.

“Alright. I’ll say nothing of this under one condition… I get to see her in a wet shirt”, Winkle said finally. Everyone was silent and wondering if they truly did hear what they just heard. Mortius was staring in disbelief at Winkle and a thousand different thoughts were running through his head. Clive was looking very inhibited and inside himself as he kept trying to look in all different directions other than in the direction of Winkle or Saminha. Then there was Saminha who was staring directly at Winkle and looking ready to rip her in half.

“Okay, done”, Mortius said blankly.

“Whoa! Hold on! What?! I’m not whoring myself out to a perverse Fīalde for this!”, Saminha protested. All three of the others then looked at her with a great look of disbelief.

“You’re a D�"mon, right? Isn’t your whole existence all about whoring yourself to people?”, Mortius responded, trying a little bit to hide the sass and amusement behind his statement.

“PEOPLE MY SIZE!”, Saminha continued to object to the proposition. Winkle sighed comically and began to slowly flutter away, taking out her notebook and pen and beginning to write.

“Wait, hold on! She will agree! Right, Saminha?”, Mortius tried to persuade her again.

“Fine… once. That’s it”, Saminha finally agreed and Winkle happily flew back to the group.

“Oh and I get to go with you”, she added, flying to Saminha and landing directly on her chest. She looked at Mortius and tried to protest but all he did was shrug and get into the elevator. Reluctantly, Saminha followed and Clive held up the rear, pressing the button for the Sixth Floor and they began on their quest. Arriving up on the floor, Mortius looked ahead and saw the two archways, one emitting faint light and the other shrouded by darkness. On the right side was the Dark Vault where they would find their clues to the Warlock cult group. Walking up to the vault, Mortius held out his staff and began moving it toward the archway. The purple-black swirling stuff inside seemed to move like sludge, almost similarly to the Void Pools, bending inwards at the touch of his staff until it flopped backward and his staff was engulfed in it. In the next second, Mortius was pulled inward and the rest of them gasped, with Clive walking forward to check out the space.

“Mortius?! Are you okay?” he whispered loudly.

“It’s fine, come in”, said Mortius’ voice, sounding blurry like he was underwater. The rest of the team walked in and appeared on the other side of the archway. Inside was a long, black corridor with silver tiles on the floor and inscriptions on the ceiling. Lining this endless corridor were different shaped and coloured doors with initials on them, and the team slowly made their way down the narrow space.

“I’ve heard stuff about the vault before. The storage areas are designed to match the personalities of the Scholar that it belongs to. If the Scholar left the Institute in a bad way, their initials on the door are scratched off”, Winkle said quietly.

“This is a really bad idea…”, Clive whispered, his eyes darting around the setting and looking out for traps or surprises. The crew continued through the hallway, looking around at each door. There were a few doors with names carved off that they briefly looked into, one of which was dark and bleak and had only a long black cloak in it and a top hat. Another had a collection of different coloured eggs inside a blue glass oval case and a few short sticks that looked like they were made in the Forge. Continuing on the path, Mortius began to notice a small, wispy light in the distance. Walking a little faster, it began to grow in size until it was around the same size as a watermelon, yet somehow not being brighter up close.

“What is this thing, Winkle?”, Mortius asked. She only shrugged, staring deep into the light as it resonated and faintly glowed in the midst of the blackness of the walls. She’d never been in the Vault personally. Despite still not wanting to be a part of this, Winkle herself couldn’t lie and pretend that she was interested in learning more about the Dark Vault and some of the juicy secrets that might be inside.

“I am the Athenaeum. What would you like to search?”, the glowing orb asked in a deep, yet calming voice. The Athenaeum? Mortius looked around at his cohorts and all of them either shrugged or shook their heads, offering no answer to what this entity was.

“Erm, what exactly are you?”, Mortius asked.

“I am the Athenaeum. My function is to assist the Scholars in finding records of Scholar history in the Gholgrad Institute for educational, functional or personal purposes. What would you like to search?”, the Athenaeum asked once again. The group looked among each other and then Mortius returned to the Athenaeum to progress their mission.

“Do you have anything on a group called Rieth’s Eyes?”, he asked. The Athenaeum hummed slightly and the light seemed to grow a little more intense before it began to speak again.

“There are three known Scholars that have this term included in their search base. Scholar Ivar, teacher of Inmirc, Scholar Brizk, teacher of Beasts and Scholar Maleos, teacher of Īdelcræft.” The whole group was still and all eyes were on Mortius. He was frozen solid, as he stared off into the light of the Athenaeum in disbelief. He couldn’t move a single muscle and gripped his staff even tighter. Hearing that name shook him to his core and his mind burst with different thoughts, a cavalcade of questions and assumptions raced around in his brain as he repeated that specific part over and over again. Mortius had so many different questions that he wanted answering right now and, though he wanted everything, he knew it was best to prioritise and get the information he wanted now.

“Where is the room of Scholar Maleos?”, Mortius finally asked, feeling like his jaw was creaking after trying to speak.

“Ahead twelve doors and to your left, you will find the personal effects of Scholar Maleos”, the Athenaeum directed them and the group went ahead down the corridor, Mortius running further ahead than the rest. Frantically searching through the doors and seeing all the initials, he saw one scratched out completely, the initials barely visible on the door spelling out E.R.M. This was definitely the one the Athenaeum described and Mortius wasted no time in pushing the door open. Inside the room was a singular bench in front of the wall. The room was only square and quite small in comparison to the other rooms they’d seen. The walls were made of singular stones held together with concrete and, in some places, were damp and moulded which indicated that it hadn’t been looked into for a very long time. Inside the room was a single tall and thin wooden cabinet. The others arrived at the door of the room and looked in.

“Well, that’s a bit anticlimactic”, Saminha commented. Mortius opened the cabinet and was sent jumping backwards as a small but sickly and skeletal creature flew out of it and out into the Dark Vault hallway. Mortius only caught a singular glimpse of it and it seemed to have a strange red mark going down its eye, though this might have just been his imagination. Perusing the rest of the cabinet, Mortius found only two objects within. One was a steorrādōn but different from the ones he’d usually seen. It was larger than most, being silver instead of gold, and had intricate blue and red designs on one side of it displaying thorns with occasional roses in between. The other was a huge round jewel, blue-ish in colour with a blood red eye in the middle of it, making it look like a glass eye. Though it was more the size of a fist than an actual eyeball. Mortius couldn’t make sense of these so-called clues but he took the steorrādōn from the shelf and bagged it, making his way out of the room.

“Hey! What are you doing?! You can’t take the private effects of Scholars from the Dark Vault!!” Winkle whisper shouted after him.

“I’m his son, so technically it’s mine now since he’s long dead”, Mortius replied shortly, not even turning around. The rest of the team followed out of the room with Saminha closing the door. Mortius ran back to the Athenaeum and it glowed once again.

“I am the Athenaeum. What would you like to search?”, it droned once again.

“Tell me everything about Scholar Maleos”, Mortius demanded.

“Scholar Maleos came to the Institute in 1683 as a student. Shortly after graduation, he joined the Institute faculty as an assistant lecturer and researcher until 1694, teaching Īdelcræft for twenty eight years before being removed from the staff. All other information is unavailable”, it answered. Mortius’ eyes widened in anger and disappointment.

“Well what about this steorrādōn? What do you know about that? Or the Warlock cult?”, Mortius pressed for more answers.

“I’m sorry but all information I hold is only relevant to the Scholars themselves and their personal history in the Institute, not their possessions or outside associates”, it replied. Mortius groaned in frustration and resisted the urge to punch the walls. Sighing, he looked around and then looked at his companions who were waiting for his next move. Then, a thought occurred.

“Wait a second… how did you have the name of the cult in your search if you have no information about it? There is something about them, isn’t there?” Mortius rose again, feeling like he’d found some footing and managed to trick this dumb orb. Then, the orb’s humming suddenly stopped. Everyone stood and stared as it seemed somehow frozen in time. Then, it began to revolve and pulsate. It moved faster, and faster, and the pulsating grew in intensity. It grew in size, and everyone looked around at the walls as the doors suddenly all locked in unison and became covered by plates of metal. The walls began to drip black liquid all around, and one of the drops landed on Saminha. She hissed and held her shoulder, revealing a small burn mark that left her skin looking scarred.

“Out. Everyone out! NOW!”, Winkle screeched, flying out and towards the exit. The dripping became more intense until it started to look like rain. The group were barely able to outrun it, but the worst came when Clive looked back and shouted a warning. Everyone glanced behind and saw the silver tiles on the floor rising up and following them. Together, they clacked and joined, forming a giant white reptile that let out a deafening hiss. The long fangs of the tiles were bared as it slithered after them, black rain hitting its back and rolling down its silver body as it drew closer. The exit was close but the beast was closer. Mortius was the slowest of them all and did his best to focus on the exit. Making a quick decision, Mortius grabbed the jewel on his staff and turned back at the tiles.

“Hroth ahsku!” A jet of boiling hot water burst from his hand and covered the creature, but it continued to charge, now with a cape of steam flowing from its neck and downwards. The creature’s mouth was wide open, the exit was only a few steps away. Then, it bit down, clamping its jaw with every inch of strength it had and Mortius felt the slight tug of a sharp fang on the back of his vest, before losing his footing and falling on the floor. Looking up and around, he gave a sigh of relief to see the students' Vault in front of him and the rest of the Institute as well. He spared a look back to see the entrance to the Dark Vault now solidified, looking like a wall of concrete. Getting up and brushing himself off, he looked over to Clive and Saminha. Saminha angrily pushed away Clive’s outstretched hand to help her up, making clear that they were both okay.

“Winkle, what the f**k was that?!” Mortius yelled, looking all around with annoyance, but a hint of concern at not seeing where she was. He relaxed a little to see Winkle in front of his face, shaking her head speechless and pointing behind her. Finally Mortius’ eyes focused, and everyone stood completely still as they looked upon the disappointed face of the High Scholar.

“My office. Now.”