Chapter 414: Tapestries of Past Victories

"Mr. Roth! Mr. Roth! Miss. London! Miss. London!" a magically augmented voice boomed over the castle grounds. "Professor Jules requests you attend her office in the keep!"

"Well, that's me," Alex said, leaning down to kiss Theresa. "Have fun in the mines, honey."

She rolled her eyes and kissed him back. "They're not mines, they're tunnels."

"So are sewers; you're still going underground."

"Keep talking like that, and you'll be going underground," Theresa warned. "About six feet underground."

He raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay!" he chuckled. "I'll see you at dinner tonight."

As Alex and Claygon entered the keep, he was greeted by a massive entrance hall and two sets of curved, stone staircases rising to a balcony on the second floor. Between them—on ground level—were a pair of stone doors through which the expedition's small battalion of administrators, engineers and armourers scurried: through that doorway were offices, an armoury, and several summoning cells. On the second floor, another set of double doors led to a receiving room, a cluster of offices, and the first grouping of bed chambers.

Images of dragons in flight were carved into the doors, and the walls flanking them were decorated with tapestries woven in Generasi, each immortalised a moment from the expedition's taming of Greymoor.

The wall hanging on the left, was woven in muted tones and illustrated the expedition's arrival in the village of Luthering, with an—unrealistically—stern depiction of Baelin and Jules leading the team out of the portal. Another tapestry showed the battles they had fought across Greymoor: the survey teams' struggles against a host of wild monsters that had plagued the land before they were cleared away. Alex’s eyes drifted to an exciting image—one filled with way more crich-tulaghs and beast-goblins than had actually been there—of his team's battle with the blue annis hag.

Another tapestry—this one stitched in richly coloured threads—portrayed the first time they’d joined with the Heroes; it was the battle of the double dungeon. At the very top of the massive wall hanging, the Watchers of Roal, the Heroes and more, fought a blood-hydra from the sky, while Vesuvius and countless wizards engaged chitterers on the ground below. And at the bottom of the tapestry, expedition members and the Heroes were throwing spells and showing their might against the pair of dungeon cores.

But battles weren’t the only grand images hanging in fine silk for all to see.

On the opposite wall were woven scenes of moments of discovery and diplomacy. One showed the wizards of Generasi shaking hands with a group of blue caps somewhere deep within the earth: an artistic rendition of friendly contact between the expedition and the local fae. The fruits of that contact—veins of metals, gems hidden in stone and buried ruins—were finely woven into the image with care.

Another celebrated a group of triumphant researchers holding a jar of black dungeon core remains along with a detailed data sheet that glowed as if it were the sun. A third illustrated the violent explosion resulting from their experiment with core remains and chaos essence, and a group of brave researchers standing strong against the wind and heat.

Alex snorted. He didn't remember anyone standing that day.

"It's a tad garish, isn't it?" a familiar voice said from behind him.

"Morning, Carey." He turned to face his colleague. "Well, at least they have us looking our best. I don't think I’d be standing here admiring a bunch of scenes with us crawling through muck and hiding from all the rainstorms in Greymoor. I’d probably be laughing and cringing."

"Or one of us barely picking ourselves up after the chaos explosion," she said, "Those were not exactly our best moments."

His old lab partner looked...surprisingly good, all things considered. She wasn't back to her usual, bouncy—exhausting self—but she looked more rested and her hair was a healthier colour and texture than 'dried straw'. Her clothes looked neat, clean and freshly pressed, and a light scent like apple blossoms drifted from her.

The symbol of Uldar still hung from its customary place around her neck.

"Shall we?" She gave him a closed mouth smile, "It wouldn't do to keep Professor Jules waiting and—" Her eyes flicked up. "—Ah! Oh dear, that must have vexed her ever so much."

"What?” Alex asked, following her gaze. She was looking at the tapestry depicting their triumphant cataloguing of the dungeon core substance's data sheet. He focused on Professor Jules' face. "What, did they get her nose wrong or something?"

She giggled. "Well that is just the problem, isn't it? We can see her nose!"

"What do you me—Oh, by the Traveller! None of us are wearing safety equipment in the lab. Oh yeah, I bet she wasn’t too thrilled about that." He laughed.

"Certainly not."

"Well, you're right: best not keep her waiting and maybe make her mood worse."

Together, he and Carey climbed the stairs with Claygon, walking through the labyrinthine halls of the keep. For a time, they walked in silence as they climbed the ever-rising staircases of the tower.

Until, finally...

"Have you...been quite alright?" Carey asked with a shy note in her voice. "With...recent discoveries, I mean."

"I was thinking about asking you the same thing." Alex glanced at her. "Honestly? For me? It's...complicated."

"That's not surprising."

"Right?" Alex said. "I dunno, it's made me think about and reconsider a lot of stuff. A whole lot of stuff."

"In truth, it cannot help but make one do so." She nodded. "It’s given me many sleepless nights to the point where I sought help from the infirmary. They offered me a sleeping draught and the strength had to be increased twice before it finally gave me some relief."

Alex looked at her sharply. "Those sleeping tonics are pretty powerful. Are you okay?"

"Oh yes," she said, though there was more than a little tension in her voice. Her body language was open and truthful, though. "I used it for a few nights to get me started and then slept like a baby without it after that. Now all the questions haunting me have the decency to confine themselves to my waking hours."

"Yeah, it's a lot to think about, isn't it?" Alex agreed. "Thoughts about gods, mortals...the relationship between them."

"Oh yes." She nodded. "I recall those well. Have you had any thoughts about the future and how our country's bedrock might well dissolve one day?"

"Oh that's a familiar one," Alex laughed bitterly as they climbed. "What about questions dealing with what the source of the...you know what, might be?"

"Those? Oh they only knock about in my head every time I blink," she joined his bitter chuckle. "It is...troubling. And lonely."

"Lonely?" Alex asked, pulling open the door to the fourth floor and holding it for her.

"Thank you ever so much," she said as she walked through. "Well, it's terribly lonely in that all of my comforts are now...not so comfortable. I can count on one hand the number of people I can talk to about any of this, I can't exactly run to the priests of Uldar in Generasi and seek their wisdom, and even my own prayers feel..." She sighed. "At times it feels like I'm praying to a stranger. I hear you mention the Traveller regularly, Alex. Do you pray to the Patron Saint of Alric?"

"Honestly?" He looked around as though he was about to admit a terrible secret. "I've been praying mostly to her for a while. I dunno what interpretations or conclusions you've reached—if you can even reach any conclusions in all this mess—but to me, I know that the Saint of Alric fought for our people. Even in death, in her own way. It feels way more comfortable to pray to her; it's kinda like I know her better."

"I see," she said. "Perhaps I might try praying to St. Avelin of Wrexiff. He destroyed the Ravener all by himself ten cycles ago: the Heroes had unfortunately perished in the journey." She shook her head. "My teacher said that was a bad cycle: lots of infighting and even betrayal."

"I remember learning about that," Alex said. "Well, I hope praying to him gives you a little more...comfort."

"I truly hope so," she gave a sigh so deep, that her whole body seemed to deflate. "I fear that...well, nevermind."

"No, what is it?" Alex asked, pausing and glancing around it. At the end of the hall were the double doors leading to Professor Jules' new office.

Carey paused and—for a moment—her eyes shone. "I wish to keep my faith, Alex. Both in the church and in our god. I...I'm not stupid, and I know how this all looks. For a time, I thought that surely we must have made a mistake. I thought of every possible way to deny what Ffion told us. And to deny what we ourselves experienced. Then my every thought turned to the core: to try and pick it up once more and see if we had made an error."

The young woman shook her head. Her eyes seemed to burn with different emotions. "But I would not have come to Generasi if I was one to deny the cold hand of evidence. As we have learned so many times: confirmation bias is the bane of wizards, science and the truth. The world is the way the world is, and none of my wishing will change that."

"I hear you," Alex said, with a world of sympathy.

If creation bent to folks' wishes, it would be a much kinder place. Or a more crueller one, depending on the wish.

"Well," he said. "Maybe the problem comes from mortals in the church. You know, like a few rotten apples spoiling the entire barrel."

"Truly, that is the hope," she said sadly. "But I kept coming to a grim answer to that thought: if the lies are coming from a few false priests, then why does our god keep silent? He fought the first incarnation of the Ravener himself—according to what the church teaches—that sounds like an active deity to me, not one who'd sit back and let the evil of mortals ruin his earthly house."

"Yeah..." Alex said. "When you put it that way it does make things seem kinda....grim. Well, if you need anybody to talk to about this, there's always me. I mean, I don't know if my faith was ever as strong as yours, but at least I can listen to what you're thinking and feeling about this mess."

She smiled at him then, and her face was ringed with both appreciation and a deep melancholy. "I...I would appreciate that, Alex. Now, come on before Professor Jules chides us for being late."

"So you passed that awful tapestry, did you? Ugh," Professor Jules rolled her eyes as she sat behind her enormous desk. "I had no less than five arguments with the weaver about the lack of protective equipment. He kept screaming 'art' and 'impression', but neither of those concepts give prospective students and visitors the right ‘impression’, to use his word."

She shook her head at the two students seated in front of her desk. "Can you believe they wanted to put a painting of the same scene on a wall in my office! Bah! That'd be enough to give me the shakes every time I sat down to work. In any case, that's not why I called you here."

The professor peered at the two of them carefully. "Are you both alright? I can imagine all of this has been a great shock."

Alex and Carey looked at each other. "We're about as fine as we can be," Alex said. "Which is better than expected, to be honest."

"Yes, I've been worse," Carey agreed.

"Good," Professor Jules said. "Because as soon as the new year begins, we'll be putting the two of you to work."

Reaching into a box of rolled up papers at her side, she took out and unrolled a map of Greymoor, tapping her finger on an unremarkable location to the east. "I've had the engineers hard at work setting up a new testing site for the two of you. It'll be a fortified bunker with a teleportation circle that Chancellor Baelin crafted and it’ll be directly linked to the dungeon where you obtained our living dungeon core, Mr. Roth."

She shuffled through another stack of papers and retrieved a schedule written in spidery script. "At the start of the new year, I'll be taking you both off the main research team for at least one day a week. So, instead of reporting to the research building as you normally would, you'll join a team of Watchers and other defenders and go to the new site, then use the teleportation circle to take you back to the dungeon. When you’re there, you’re to conduct a number of predetermined experiments designed by Chancellor Baelin and myself to test the limits of mortal control over living dungeon cores. Any questions?"

Alex raised his hand.

"...Mr. Roth, there's only the three of us here. Four of us if you count your golem." She nodded to Claygon. "I don't think it's necessary to raise your hand before asking a question."

"Right," Alex cleared his throat. "Will you be supervising us?"

"At first, yes," Professor Jules said. "Though there will be times when I’ll send a graduate student to supervise you instead, especially after the initial trials. I want you to first focus on mastering warping terrain with the dungeon core."

"Not on making monsters?" Alex asked.

"No, let's start small before we think about crafting entire armies of Ravener-spawn that we might or might not be able to control." Professor Jules tapped the map. "Besides, any summoner can 'make' an army of monsters. What's far more intriguing to me is the thought of warping terrain at our will. If we can do that, we could very easily construct new underground bases, labs and fortifications. Destruction is necessary, but discoveries that create new methods of construction are a lot more interesting in my opinion, Mr. Roth."

She circled the research castle on the map of Greymoor with her finger. "Imagine what we could do with devices that could raise walls, create tunnels and craft roads in only a heartbeat of time, a surge of mana, and no building materials whatsoever. It would be incredible."

Far below the research castle, the petrifier commanded the dungeon cores to close the vertical shaft leading down to the Ravener's tunnels. The rock closed, forming a seamless floor. None would know that tunnels were there, deep beneath the earth.

In its grip, the dungeon cores thrummed with power.