Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Lutetia City: The Monastery

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to requisition uniforms for a cleric that's been dead for a hundred years, assuming one has the proper documentation," Arianne shrugged her shoulders. "Joking aside, I'm running out of options. There are, well, greater forces than ourselves all around us. One in particular has the ability to conjure terrible beasts, wreak boundless destruction, and the Caer are at risk of awakening it. Yet, they don't know of it, and they need not care. It is the rest of us that should be afraid."

She placed the roll of gauze she carried, merely a prop to help her get inside, on a nearby table.
 
Savien swallowed. "Arianne, we just got our asses handed to us. Nox cleaned house without even fielding his full power. Now you're telling me that Nox isn't even the biggest threat my city is about to face?"

It was dismal news, but Savien didn't doubt it, much as he wanted to. Not even Nox, he knew, was the end-all superpower behind the Caer. 'The maw of the Wyrm is dark and depthless,' one of Savien's comrades had used to say. Depthless indeed - if the power chain ran any further beyond Nox, then the Monastic Order may very well end up fighting God himself.

"What exactly are we up against?"
 
"Think less against, and more alongside. Can you stand? It's something I suspect would be more easily explained if you saw it yourself," Fabre stood and briefly glanced towards the door, "it is not the sleeping one itself that is the threat, it is the moment it awakens instead. This world could be rent asunder if its stirring is sufficiently violent."
 
Savien paled. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't just threatening Lutetia. The world was at stake.

"Of course I can stand," he half-scowled. He removed the IV from his hand, throwing his feet over the side of the bed. With the covers pushed aside, Arianne might see the extent of Savien's wounds. Gauze wound his body like thread on a spool, strapping huge bandages to an impressive collection of wounds - some fresh, some weeks old. Splotches of purple bruised his pectorals and abdomen while lengths of stitching made lines across his back and legs. He was a man barely being held together.

"I assume," Savien grumbled, "whatever this thing is, it's not in the city." He gave her an annoyed glare. "Which means you're about to do that thing you witches do where you open a portal into hell's asshole and teleport me to some Light-forsaken corner of the earth."
 
"I should have made you stay, on second thought," Arianne remarked dryly as she saw the extent of Savien's injuries. "Nonetheless, you're partially right." She grabbed a pen from the bedside table and licked the nib to make sure ink was flowing, then leaned up to painstakingly draw an intricate symbol on the paladin's forehead.

"You're not one of us, so certain precautions have to be made. To make sure you're not lost to the endless sea of nothingness between realities, of course," the witch smirked and shuffled towards the nearest wall. "Because, well, this place we're going to technically doesn't exist, at least by mortal standards. It's hard to put into words, but just know you won't find this place with your GPS."

"We're ready to go. I hope you aren't afraid of falling-" As she spoke, her hand pushed the unstable Savien towards the hastily made portal. It was often better to not let visitors get nervous, after all.
 
The knight stood still as Arianne drew something on his forehead, offering only a slight grumble of protest.

"Sounds lovely." His head cocked. "Falling? Why-"

He fell backwards, flailing into the hastily constructed portal.
 
The endless depth of Savien's plummeting seemed for both aeons and seconds at once. Flashing lights, dancing colors, unblinking eyes, all manner of sights and sounds surrounded the paladin. They seemed fixated on his silver, though more as a curiosity of sorts than anything.

Eventually he awoke, laying prone on the ground. There was no recollection of landing or reaching that place, almost as if awakening from a dream. It bore a texture similar to stone yet glassy and whitish, emitting a soft glow beneath the paladin. motes of white light raced beneath the surface in seemingly meaningless patterns.

The sky was a more natural grey, with endless overcast. Thunderstorms raged far on the horizon, but the sonorous drums of thunderclaps never announced their presence. A single gravity-defying tower dominated the skyline. Arianne pointed to the structure. "You are, tentatively, in the Fabres' home. It also houses the beast that is of our concern, the one that dreams."
 
Savien groaned and came to his hands and knees, staring at the patterns of light swirling in the stone beneath him. He rose to his feet, taking stock of his surroundings. This place reminded him much of the forest haven Aderyn had taken him into - massive, mystic, full of color and strange beauty. He was surprised to find the air cool and temperate with the storms raging in the horizon; while bare chested, he was comfortable. The tower in the distance filled him with awe and foreboding. How many generations of Fabres had lived and studied in this monolith? What ancient secrets lurked within its walls? The thought of it mystified him.

...but of course, Savien was a paladin, and all paladins must harbor some innate distrust of the arcane. The knight found himself clutching his silver, the raven pendant humming with a familiar warmth - as it always did in the presence of foreign energy.

"Quite the roommate you have," he responded to Arianne. His eyes narrowed at the tower. "Does this... beast have a name?"
 
"It does have a name, but even a trained mind can struggle to conceptualize or pronounce it. Thus, we refer to it by a simpler term: The Dreamer." Another structure or landform of some variety, a ghostly mountainous mass that seemed to gently bob and sway, dominated the horizon in one direction. "I have touched your mind once before, and as such you may be able to see it slumber, off in the distance." The witch turned towards the mountain. "You've seen the monsters, I suspect? They hide in the corners of one's vision, dart from edge to edge, impossible to describe with words? One of several consequences of The Dreamer awakening would mean those would no longer just be hallucinations. They wait in the minds of the enlightened, ever anxious for an opening."
 
"I remember well," Savien replied, thinking to his brief encounters with the Dreamer at the library, the nightclub...

"How are the Caer at risk of waking up this thing? Are they aware of its existence? Are they purposefully trying to awaken it?"
 
"Magical disturbances. Tethys, one of my elders, reported that she was able to ask Nox himself, and he admitted he was able to, er, consume the soul of another living being. It wasn't absorbed in the normal fashion either, or stored, it was effectively destroyed. The weft and weave of magic was briefly torn from such an act. If this happened repeatedly enough, it may be possible."

"We have no evidence that they are intentionally doing so, partially because it would only impede their progress. If they have any well-studied practitioners of the Arcane, then perhaps they may be aware of its existence, or have cursory information of the being. Most mortal men go mad from continued and repeated study of it. That is in fact what I did to you, Savien." As she spoke, a roach-like image scurried at the edges of Durandet's vision, "I granted you a small modicum of insight, nothing more. That simple knowledge has made you a beacon for those foul vermin, so they lie in wait for an opportunity to reach you."

"Anywho, if they even had seen tales of The Dreamer, they'd likely only find folk tales or ramblings of mad wizards."
 
Savien nodded, ignoring (for the time being) the fact that Arianne had consciously exposed him to the Dreamer's influence. He supposed she'd done so in order to better equip him to confront the beast - at least, he hoped so. Damn witches. Even now, Savien had a hard time figuring out whose side she was on.

"Alright," Savien rolled one of his shoulders forward, "we have a dormant, primordial being with the power to destroy the world, and the vampire lord whose habit of eating souls is waking it up." He looked at Arianne. "This seems simple. We stop Nox, we stop the Dreamer."
 
"Even if we don't stop him, at least make sure he cannot disturb the great one's rest, yes. Now, I noticed the Order seemed a bit, er, ill-equipped to deal with the Caer, no offense. I could potentially provide you with some cursory instruction in magic, if you so desired. Simply giving you supplies or joining the fight against them would break our ceasefire," She started towards the tower, glancing back at Savien as if expecting him to follow, "but not if you just so happened to learn a few little parlor tricks any two-bit wizard could teach, no? Due to the subtlety needed and rush on time, you won't learn much, but I suppose it may be better than nothing."
 
Savien gave her a leery look. "Come on, Arianne. Can you really see the Order allowing its paladins to study the arcane for anything other than fighting against it?" He adjusted his sling, flexing the fingers kept near his chest. "You know what we need - more than supplies, more than instruction, we need allies."

He followed the witch towards the tower. "This ceasefire you have with Nox can't stand. You know what needs to be done. The only way we beat the Caer is together."
 
"Do you know what one of the fastest ways to awaken the Dreamer is, Paladin?" She looked back at him as she walked, "The death of a Fabre. Why do you think so few of us ever show our faces to the world anymore?" The tower seemed to grow closer, but not as quickly as their walking pace suggested. "Last time the Caer surfaced, the church even canonized a saint from your ranks, from moves of desperation. Perhaps, even if sainthood doesn't appeal to you, the idea of fending off the dead likely does."
 
Savien quieted, pensive and brooding under the weight of her words. What was he supposed to say? Berate her for imprisoning an ancient evil with her life force? Yet again he was reminded of the stark differences between witches and knights; the world was not so black and white with magic thrown in the mix. He wondered if Arianne was right to compromise her intervention against Nox for the safety of the world, if he wouldn't have done the same in her shoes.

But her comment about the church stuck deep in his mind; witches were not the only one who made compromises. The Order had sacrificed much to defeat the Caer. Perhaps too much. Saint Arodring had died a pariah as much as he had died a victor.

Can you do the same? a voice whispered, can you sacrifice the soul of Lutetia to save its life?

"I want to protect my city," he said at last, his graveled voice uncharacteristically clear and articulate. "Petty thief, corrupted clergyman, vampire lord... they're all the same. The Wyrm is the Wyrm; I'll fight it as long as I can, as hard as I can, and then I'll die. Such is my Oath."

He kept pace with Arianne, giving her a long, inquisitive look. "If Nox wins and gives us winter eternal, or if the Dreamer awakens and destroys the world, or if some punk kid makes a lucky shot with his peashooter and kills me on a routine patrol, then at least I go into the Dark knowing I gave it my all, from first to last."

There was strength in his words, a steely resolve forged over a decade of struggle and pain. Hearing the words - knowing he was still capable of saying them - uplifted Savien. For the briefest of moments, his wounds were not so deep, the scar lining his eye not so painful. He felt a familiar stirring in his chest, a warmth fed from his silver directly into his heart. The Light of the Wick - that lonely flame raging against the undying dark - flared within him once more. He was a paladin yet.

He looked at Arianne. Her throats was cut. Her head hung on her breast by a strip of skin connected to her neck - cut by his own blade. Her dead eyes glazed breathlessly into his own.

Savien stopped, pale, shaking. He shut his eyes tight, opened them again, and Arianne was back to normal.

He stood there, heart hammering in his chest. He felt very cold.
 
A imperceptibly light but nearly-tangible weight seemed to lift off Savien's shoulders, and the feeling of being watched melted away. "So, paladin, what is your decision? Do you seek to better yourself even when others may not understand it?" As Arianne spoke, the world compressed before them, miles of ground between them and the tower now only a few feet, and the witch began to open the door to the tower.

"Regardless of your choice, I have someone for you to meet."
 
Savien blinked, quickly regaining his composure. Arianne hadn't seemed to notice the episode. He fell back into line as if nothing had happened.

"Something tells me I don't have all that much of a choice to begin with," he replied, looking around himself as he entered the tower. "But who is it you would have me meet? Another witch?
 
"Your intuition is legendary," Fabre teased Savien as the pair entered the tower. An unseen force lifted them with great force straight up, a similar sensation to the carnival rides occasionally erected in Valentine Park. After maybe a few seconds at most, the chamber ejected the pair onto what must have been the top floor. A wide balcony dominated much of the study, facing the Dreamer in its vista. The faintest glimpses of a figure sitting in a throne-like chair facing the balcony could be made out.

"You reek of faith, and as such, you must be the paladin Arianne spoke of," the new witch announced.
 
Savien startled as an unseen force lifted him off the ground. His muscles tensed, good hand outstretched to steady his float. He didn't relax until he was safely on the ground again, glancing about the study with equal measures caution and curiosity.

"You reek of faith, and such, you must be the paladin Arianne spoke of."

"Charming," Savien muttered under his breath, loud enough for Arianne to hear - though he supposed the new witch likely heard it as well. Supernatural senses and all those other overpowered arcane benefits.

"I am Sir Savien Durandet of the Monastic Order," he replied, "apologies for the indecent attire. My lovely host didn't give me much time to dress." He looked at the legions of books lining the walls and watched the Dreamer slumbering beyond the balcony - still not quite able to make out its exact form, shape and size.

"I wasn't aware 'faith' had an aroma," Savien continued, "if it smells anything like mana discharge or arcane waste then it must be foul indeed."
 
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