Chapter 6:
Orcs and Words
THE WALLS OF THE CHAMBER that housed the massive magic circle were lined with twenty doors, spaced at regular intervals. These connected to rooms of various sizes, all of which presently served as break rooms for the priests. Long tables and many chairs had been brought into the largest of these rooms, so that it might function as a dining hall. Day and night, weary priests shuffled in, stuffed their faces, and left. Not a word would be spoken. In order to make food available at all times, the fortress’s kitchen worked around the clock.
At the back of the impromptu dining hall was a marble statue, so lifelike it looked like it might start moving at any second. The male figure’s features, attire, and accoutrements were carved in intricate detail, even giving a sense of the muscles beneath the cloth. Around his wrists were thirteen gold bands, making it clear he was someone of high standing. His belt buckle was shaped like the water dragon on the fortress’s sluice gate. The statue’s pedestal was blank, the man’s name lost to history. Perhaps when the statue had been carved, the man had been so well known there hadn’t seemed a need to label him. Now, though, the faded and peeling remnants of pigments only told a tale of glory long gone.
Behind the statue’s pedestal, a square panel was fitted into the wall where one of the many stone blocks had once been. Removing the panel revealed a tunnel so tight that an adult would barely be able to pass through it. This narrow passage went on too far for the feeble light of a lantern to illuminate its depth.
It took quite a bit of courage for me to enter it. If I were to get wedged inside or caught on something, trapped immobile in the darkness, my life would end in a drawn-out nightmare. I wished I had brought George with me, so that I could have tied a rope to myself and told him to haul me out if something went wrong.
Bringing him along would have been too risky, though. With all the priests gathered for the ceremony, the chance that someone might recognize him greatly increased. I wanted this endeavor to go unnoticed.
I looked around the room surreptitiously. Silent priests with haggard faces were bent over their humble meals, none of them seeming to pay me any mind. I found my resolve and slipped into the tunnel.
To my relief, I found the passage slowly widened the farther I crawled. Eventually, the ceiling was high enough for me to walk with a stoop. I pressed on, lighting my way with my lantern. The air was damp, reeking of mold. Occasionally, the plop of a water droplet would break the grim silence. After a few corners, I came to a chamber no larger than the interior of a shed.
On the far wall was a relief of a human face that reminded me of the Bocca della Verità from my own world. The inside of the uncanny face’s wide-open mouth was pitch-black, impenetrable even with the aid of my lantern. Tentatively, I inserted the tips of my fingers into the mouth and saw them immediately swallowed in what seemed to be a black mist. It was just as the sage had told me: this room was the work of the ancients with their magic.
This was one of the hidden rooms the scholars had found in their investigations of Dragonjaw Gate. “Finding No. 33, Chamber of the Dark God,” according to their reports, but nothing else had been noted besides this ominous piece of art. However, the room possessed one more secret that hadn’t been reported.
I stuck my entire arm into the hole, all the way up to the shoulder. Like the statue blocking the tunnel, the carving looked as if it were about to spring to life. Perhaps my arm would be bitten off. I held my fear in check and groped around within, my fingertips encountering a smooth sensation. Here it was: a stone sphere. After a bit more blind groping, I fitted the sphere in the palm of my hand, and then poured my mana into it.
As I did this, that black mist poured out of the relief’s mouth, and I lost my vision.
“Don’t panic, and don’t let go,” the sage had advised me. “If you do, you’ll be left behind in the dark, and you’ll never come back.”
He’d laughed when he’d said this, but his eyes had remained serious. I didn’t know if he’d just been teasing me, but I didn’t feel like finding out. After I’d poured forth quite a bit of mana, the inky mist began to thin out. It wasn’t too long before my vision returned, and once I could see again, the scenery had changed entirely.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Since you’re going to Dragonjaw Gate, then, I have one request.”
“If it’s within my power.”
“Before I was exiled, I left my notes there.”
“Your notes? Why?”
“Fool! Don’t you get it? It’s my orcish dictionary. If I hadn’t concealed it, they would have burned it, so I hid away the copy that I had Potato make.”
“Potato?” I asked, confused.
“The name of the orc I kept! He loved steamed potatoes, okay? You don’t need to pick at every insignificant detail. Good grief, the time wasted in talking with fools!”
How was I not supposed to question a potato copying a dictionary?
“When I was a young scholar, my superiors always shoved dull research topics on me. Later, when I was advanced enough to choose my own research, my subordinates would come to me for help with their own dull pursuits. I discovered the hidden room’s secret around the time that I’d become fed up with it all. Instead of reporting my findings, I used the room as a hideout whenever idiots were looking for me.”
He then described to me where to find the entrance to the secret room, and what to do once there. Before I parted ways with the hermit, that exiled priest, I asked him what name I should address with him going forward.
“I am all out of names. I shed my birth name when I became a priest, and my priestly name was stripped from me.”
“Then I’ll call you ‘the sage.’”
The sage snorted. “Whatever.”
It was then that I left him, and soon enough I was steering Veralgon back to Dragonjaw Gate.