She was correct. One of their unsettling companions indicated each of the fantastic figurines, then pointed at the two reluctant outsiders.
Dru studied the carvings. Choose a figurine, but for what reason and what result? Would the wrong choices kill them?
Most of the figures were of creatures magical in nature. There was the gryphon, the dragon, a unicorn, a dwarf, an elf-he glanced sideways at Xiri at that point-and others whose names escaped him. Included also were beasts and a few human figures.
“Let me choose first.” Xiri did not wait for his answer. She reached out and took hold of the elf. A reasonable, safe choice. Both waited for some grand reaction, but still nothing happened. One of the golems eventually took the figurine from her hands and replaced it among the others.
The sorcerer held his breath as he tried to choose. There seemed no particular purpose to what he was being asked to do. It was tempting to reach out and seize the statuette that most resembled a Vraad, but for various reasons he chose not to. He glanced at the gryphon again, thinking of how much it resembled Sirvak, and nearly picked it up. Then his eyes focused on the dragon, almost a miniature version of the overshadowing form before him, and he almost chose that one instead.
While he debated his choices, the faceless ones waited patiently. Dru knew, however, that he would have to make a decision soon. His hand wavered by the dragon, then by the gryphon.
Abruptly, the Vraad withdrew from the artifacts. He met the eyeless gaze of one of their disturbing hosts and said, “I make no choice at all. I want nothing from here.”
An interesting choice.
The chamber had vanished. Dru, Xiri, and their silent companions stood within a place of darkness. The sorcerer did not have to ask to know where he was, especially when two gleaming eyes formed and the vague outline of a huge dragon emerged partway from the black depths.
The voice that had filled his head was the only one that would have given him hope at this late point. “You’ve returned.”
From the glance Xiri gave him, it was evident that she, too, was included in the conversation.
Yes, both choices affect the outcome, the guardian whom Dru had labeled first among the commanding voices added with mild satisfaction. They are pleased with your choice, though it also confuses them.
As if in response to the mock dragon’s words, the blank-visaged figures withdrew to arm’s length of the Vraad and the elf.
“Are they your masters? Was I correct in my assumptions?”
The hesitation that followed chipped away at the confidence that had only just been returning to the spellcaster. After a time, however, the half-seen entity replied, Yes and no.
“Yes and no?” This from Xiri. “How can they be your masters and yet not be your masters?”
To explain that, I would need to explain their final leaving… a cross-over of a different yet similar sort than what the Vraad have undertaken.
The guardian’s words were both confusing and enlightening. “If they will permit you, please do.”
I am not exactly certain if they permit me or do not care. What inhabits your golems are a shadow of our lords. We communicate with them almost as little as you do. The others struggle to understand, to know their places. Some have even argued that this is proof we are now our own masters.
Dru grimaced. As before, he knew which one of his fellows the dragon spoke of.
I digress. Was there an undercurrent of annoyance with itself? Anxiety? Dru could not be certain, but there was something. However confident the guardian acted, the truth was otherwise.
They were few when it finally became obvious that they would not live to see the culmination-or failure-of their dream. They had us to do their work, but we were limited in what we could do.
The sorcerer found it hard to believe that such as this could be wanting in power. The guardian was power, even more so than Darkhorse.
We are… aspects… of their minds. Bits of personality traits. Your choice of the term “familiar” is as close as we can come. They formed us as such so that, together, we would preserve all that they were, should the worst befall them.
What part did the rebellious guardian represent, the Vraad wondered, and how dominant a trait was it?
There came a point, the ghostly figure went on, when the race had two options. They could use the Gate and seek out something, anything, that would revitalize their life force, give them the strength to continue on. It was an option steered toward failure and possibly even a quicker end to their kind. The second choice was the one that promised the most hope for their legacy, but like the first would mean a finish to all they had raised up over the millennia.
They chose the second. With it, though they would no longer exist as they were, they might still direct the course and final outcome of their grand plan. The true world might still one day greet the successors to the elder race.
Dru interrupted at that point, despite the uncomfortable feeling that the faceless ones were eyeing him with particular interest now. “Did they have no name? You say ‘they’ and ‘them’ but you give no name.”
He could almost feel the other’s embarrassment. It has been so long, manling, that we have forgotten it. Even we are not immortal, though it might seem that way. With the passage of century after century, we have become a little less than we once were. There will come a time when we will fade as a dying wind.
“Don’t they know their name?” Xiri asked, her eyes ever keeping track of the movements of the blank-visaged beings.
In what they allow me to still tell you lies the answer to that… and perhaps other things. You, Vraad, have talked of the ka and how one can travel with it to places the body cannot reach. So it was with the elders. You saw the pentagram in the place you call the room of worlds. An apt name that, for with the Gate they could observe or travel to any of their creations. This last time, however, they chose to do something different.
The dying race numbered no more than a thousand or so by the time they came to their final decision, a thousand where there had once been millions. The guardian’s tone was wistful, recalling the glory of those earlier days. In groups numbering close to one hundred apiece, they stepped into the room of worlds and never came out. Not until the last group was ready to enter did the founders deign to reveal what they were doing to their servants, their familiars.
We feared for them, but we were only the servants and so we obeyed when they commanded us to return to our duties and not interfere. We have never been allowed to interfere, save when they gave such orders. Still, their plan gave us fright, for it would place them beyond our limits, leave us with no one to guide us. You see, as with your kind, Vraad, their kas, their spirits, were liberated from their physical forms. The image of a hundred departing specters made both Dru and the elf uneasy, but they remained silent. Your people created for themselves new bodies so that they could continue as they had always been. The founders did not. They had chosen instead a receptacle that would contain their collective consciousness, but it was more than a body, much, much more. It was intended that in some way, they would always watch over the world that had spawned them. They would be their world as much as the trees, the fields, and the animal life were.
Dru blurted it out before the tale could go any further. “The land! The land itself! When I felt as if this realm would protect itself, it was more than my imagination, then.”
The land. You, elf. When you spoke of the land being alive, you spoke truer than you thought. It is. It has a mind, albeit different from what you might consider one. It knows what those who live upon it do and moves to affect things in its favor. Yet I think that such a change affected those who created us, for the land is different. It is and is not our masters. Until your interference, we had thought the land dead once more, the founders having passed on despite their determination. Fools we were to be so presumptuous. Subtlety is not our forte. We could not see what the land was doing… even when it sought to bring you here, Vraad.