A Hand-Woven Universe 69 69. True Silence

Noone stood tall at the edge of the outcrop, very close to where he leapt down before. As he looked at the familiar stone walls and tunnels his eyes began to tear and a smile plastered itself onto his face. Although he returned as he said he would, he didn't come out unscathed.

The climb had become a transformative experience for Noone, and he was excited to tell Liter and Adria and Elder Azelle about it. All the exhaustion washed out of him as he thought about the familiar city lights and Porose's food. Thoughts of sieging the city taverns in the night floated through his mind.

"In due time." He thought with a chuckle. He adjusted his pack on his shoulders and began his descent into the tunnels.

His steps were light and full of energy as he embraced the stale atmosphere of the tunnels – it felt like home. But the smile he sported soon began to waver, and then lowered into a frown. His eyebrows scrunched up, he stopped walking, closing his eyes.

There was something in the air that was making him uneasy.

It was silence.

Noone opened his eyes and turned on his heel, walking back to the outcropping. He scanned the ground, and the entrances of the tunnels. Silence reigned all around. It was not the same silence he was used to, it was deeper than that.

Noone was beginning to feel paranoid.

I must have been gone for too long, he thought. I forgot how silent it gets here. He worked to not look as down about it as he felt, but his hands unconsciously moved up to rest on his shoulder straps.

But… as he looked around, he couldn't help but feel that something was off. "Where is everyone? There should be someone lecturing, or at the very least a few people practicing their attunements?"

His frown deepened. Maybe there was something going on, he thought. Images of Adria and Elder Azelle leaving to the desolate land above surfaced in his mind, and his eyes went wide. Perhaps that was it? Would that timing be too convenient?

Noone broke into a sprint towards the elder's hall. If there was something going on, it would most likely be happening there. His feet slapped against the stone floors of the caverns, echoing through the halls and back.

He ran through the caves by instinct, knowing every turn and dead-end by heart. By the time he was halfway there, his heart began to beat harder. He did not see a single other individual yet. There was a strange stillness to the air that Noone felt he must be imagining. It was like the air hadn't been stirred in a long time...

When he rounded the last corner to the elder's hall, the stillness the air began to ring through him becoming a dense pressure that threatened to stop his heart. He could no longer ignore the sensation, it felt as though the air within the halls of Tapestry were stagnant, and Noone's presence was becoming the only sign of people.

If Noone had not experienced a rebirth within the cavern on the cliff, he would not have been able to sense the minutia he was experiencing. The feelings were too subtle. It would have left Noone completely unaware to what was to come.

Noone's palms landed on the cold steel doors of the elder's hall and with an unexplainable sense of urgency Noone threw open the doors to the hall. They grinded against their hinges as years of being untouched caused them to stick. The force behind Noone's shove lodged the doors open and he quickly rushed in.

He was prepared to call out to the first person he saw, but instead there was not a single person inside the hall. Noone stood just inside the doorway, there was an overwhelming sense of foreboding that was beginning to plant itself in his mind.

Instead of rus.h.i.+ng out from the hall immediately, Noone walked further into the room looking at the smooth walls and unused chairs and desks.

He walked a large circle around the perimeter of the room - eventually coming to a stop in front of the opposite wall to the doors he entered from.

The smooth stone walls still sparked with various shades and hues of colored energy, snaking throughout the rock. They would split and recombine, creating intricate and random shapes of energy.

Noone's mind buzzed as he watched the energy, he raised his palm to the wall in front of him. There was a feeling coming from this portion of the hall. Noone wasn't thinking anything when he did this simple action, he was remembering something the elder had shown him years ago.

Noone couldn't help but feel that the colors were less brilliant than he remembered.

His palm touched the wall, the smooth worn-down texture left a gentle feeling on his hand. He watched the lights on the wall, which seemed to have no interest in his existence. He was about to pull his hand away, when suddenly a thin blue streak of energy no more than a hairs width was drawn to him and turned to streak towards his palm.

As the light absorbed into his hand through the stone, it quietly disappeared. Before he could react to the sudden change, his mind was suddenly overridden.

In a flash Noone was no longer looking at the wall, instead he was looking out from it. As the vision came into focus, he saw the figures of Adria and Elder Azelle standing in front of the spot he had been standing in moments before.

"I'm sorry Adria… but there's no time." Elder Azelle shook his head. "I don't understand what's going on… but I have my fears. However, no matter what it is, it's very possible our survival depends on the world above."

Noone's heart slammed against his chest as the picture of the two became clearer. The elder and Adria looked terrible. The elders' eyes were red, and his expression was stoic, his exhaustion was clearly on display. Adria too looked ragged, Noone could see dried blood on her upper lip. Tears constantly flowing down her cheeks.

"Come with me Elder! I don't want to go alone!" Noone couldn't make sense of what they were talking about, but his tongue was caught in his throat as he tried to choke back his mounting fear.

"I must stay here Adria. These are my people. I am responsible for them. Even if we are all to die-" Die!? Noone's mind recoiled, but he stayed pulled within the vision.
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"Don't say that!" Adria's eyes were red with fire and tears.

"Also… someone should be here for when Noone returns… no?" Elder Azelle too was being affected, his exhaustion and fear was all compounding on each other.

Adria didn't respond. She was attempting to compose herself, but her tears fell relentlessly. Noone watched on, but the vision began to blur and waver. Whatever had been left behind - it was very quickly coming to an end.

"Come Adria. You must go on ahead. Eventually you will return… or we will follow you. I promise."

Suddenly he was back where he had been before, standing in the back of the elder's hall - hand outstretched against the wall. He pulled his palm away, looking at it as his mind attempted to come to terms with the information.

Like continuous lightning, his brain wildly whipped between working and freezing. Noone did not doubt what he saw for even a moment, but he couldn't make sense of it either.

"Something terrible happened… The elder kicked Adria out to the world above to find help… or to protect her from it." The information seemed to get through in a trickle. Every word becoming a huge weight on Noone's soul.

"He waited behind…" Noone thought. "He waited behind!" Noone thought about the stillness to the air and the way he saw no one in the halls. How silent it all was.

Eventually his brain couldn't keep up, and his body took the lead. Like a bullet, Noone shot through the doors to the elder's hall and out into the cavern. His breath was ragged, and his feet hit the floor like sledgehammers. At some point he dropped his pack just to gain more speed. His entire body moved like an unstoppable vengeance. Sanctuary.

Sanctuary is a word that can be both a location, and an object that can be given to someone in desperate need of help.

In Tapestry, sanctuary was the room where the dead would undergo their sanctification before being buried in the cemetery above. Noone had only ever seen the ceremony a few times. The idea of death scared him back then, but the older one got it seemed the less they minded. As such he never liked to come to the sanctuary.

Now though he had never moved faster. He wasn't sure what drew him to that place, or how he knew to go there. But over the course of a minute Noone had covered the entire distance to the sanctuary. His face was set tight as he ran, and his eyes did not waver for even a moment.

When Noone turned the final corner, he saw that which he would never forget. The entire floor in front of the door to the sanctuary was littered with bones.

Skulls and arms and legs, ribs and spines. The bones of entire bodies lined the floor creating an impenetrable carpet of decay and death. Noone's eyes widened into saucers and his heart skipped a beat. All of his momentum froze. There were not a few - there were hundreds. Every single one picked clean by time itself.

Even the miasma that coexisted with death and corpses had long since moved away. The only thing accompanying these bones was the still stale air of a city long pa.s.sed, and the scream of a young man whose world had become twisted in a way he could not cope with.

Like a crystal gla.s.s in freefall, Noone's mind noisily crumbled into hysteria. His knees crashed violently against the floor but he did not even notice, instead he stared at the sight, his vision swimming with reality and non-reality as he pictured what must have occurred here. Tears flowed ceaselessly from his eyes and he continually gasped in breaths trying to stave off unconsciousness.

Someone… someone…

He noiselessly pleaded for any guidance or answer, but only the sound of wailing escaped his lips. Hours pa.s.sed and his ragged pants filled the empty halls, echoing back like a mocking laughter to his naivete.

"You thought Tapestry was silent before?" It seemed to say. "Well how about now?"

His eyes fell on the door to the sanctuary. Without any thought Noone stood up and - with no expression but the reddening of his eyes - he walked through the sea of bones towards the door. Subtle cracks rang under his feet, but he did not notice.

His palm reached up towards the door, which lit up at his touch. Quietly the door opened and Noone stood in the doorway, waiting, praying, pleading for there to be any other outcome inside.