29th September 1137
Acryl
It was raining again.
Drops fell down from the top of the metal bones of the city. It smelled like memories of holding up umbrellas and slippery roads, moss, fresh air, and days of rushing and holidays that made people feel guilty about not working or studying.
Acryl made an umbrella with his Realm-art, but as long as he tried to walk under the rain, the colors started to melt.
It wasn’t surprising as Acryl used the mass of his Realm-art to paint ever since he gained it.
He found an old roof and stood under it.
To avoid suspicion, he walked before Neon.
The old city surrounded the Church of Starseeker and the headquarters of messengers. Its stone-paved ways tell a tale with no words and paint a painting with no shapes. How old is the old city? It may seem like an easy and simple question, but Acryl never found answers to it. Not in chronicles and history books. Despite it not being as visually impressive as the Grand Dome itself, the mystery of the old city is no less impressive than the Grand Dome. At least there is an agreement between scholars that the Dome was built somewhere around the first descent of the Starseeker.
Many houses here have been turned into tourist attractions or other public facilities. Not many live here these days, after all, the rent and taxes are not cheap. In summer, it is not uncommon to see art school students grabbing their easels, sketchbooks, buckets, and all sorts of art supplies here to complete their summer projects. He was one of them. Standing by the street, the smell of dried colors lingered by his nose as his hand felt the pain of being clipped between the legs of easels.
His eyes wandered as he looked for his next prey of pencil and paper. Old bricks with moss that feed off the water of a broken pipe, the Church of Starseeker from afar, but seen through a drop of morning dew. No matter how many times he comes, the old city always has something new, as if the old city was never old, but grew and advanced like the rest of Euth.
As he waited for Neon to find him, an old man in a blue coat joined him, half-sprinting. His gray, trimmed beard made his head look as sharp as a letter knife. He stood tall and confident, even being just a palm taller than Acryl, he looked as if his height differed from Acryl’s by a head.
The old man took out a cigar and lit it up. He blew out a ring of smoke as if he wanted more clouds in the sky. It smelled like the smoke Acryl smelled when he had broken free from the gigantic abnormality.
“Young man,” he said as he took the cigar out of his mouth like pulling out a knife from a piece of steak.
“Do you know why they didn’t seal the dome?”
“No…?” Acryl said, tilting to the old man.
“Because we need something to wash off the bloodstain.”
“You may think, why the hell am I saying this, when am I gonna use this?”
“But could you imagine that your first client later became a Letter-Writer?”
His eyes trembled. There shouldn’t be anyone having knowledge about the paintings other than him, Seren and Canvas, and Neon.
“Relax, kid, I was her coworker before she was elected. The name’s Josh. Common name, unlike yours.”
“Be careful when you are together with that Auderheimian man…he is not the kind of person I’d like to cooperate with.”
“Who did you vote for?” Josh suddenly asked.
“Or that you couldn’t cry a real tear?”
“…I couldn’t decide, so I left the form empty.”
Voting in Euth required one thing other than just ticking a box, it required teardrops, a single teardrop that will be sent with the ballot paper.
They stood together as they waited for the rain to stop. Their reflection in the puddle looked like two statues, one newly made, one rusted and worn out. The rhythm of the rain slowed down as if it were a tired and inexperienced drummer.
Josh farewelled him and walked in another direction. As Acryl glanced at his silhouette, he saw Neon waving her hand by the street corner and took a turn into an alleyway.
Acryl walked past a few houses he recognized from his own drawings. The old city was all quiet. Not quite the homeland he remembered. Acryl was not fond of going outside unless it was sketching and purchasing necessities.
He did not see Kaspar yet, nor the house that Suiming told him about. Sometimes music groups and troupes would set their stage in the old city, Acryl vaguely remembered some plays or concerts Canvas or Neon had seen with him.
Suiming did not tell Acryl of the house’s address, only saying, ‘You’ll know when you see it.’ The houses became significantly older in the center. From what he had heard, these are preserved by the church as they hold significant meaning to Euth. Although he put on a jacket, it was still cold as the wind brushed against him.
The dome above him is not completely windproof. Some holes and gaps were left there so that the smoke from factories could escape.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
By her promise, Neon followed Acryl, not behind him, but parallel. She knew these streets as well as the streets of Songhua. He saw her arcane item yesterday. It suited her, Acryl thought.
Iris must be somewhere near him. Acryl kept hearing footsteps, yet when he turned back, there was no one. Nothing followed him, nothing around him as if he were the only thing alive in a silent stone-built forest. He walked through the alleyways with many blind spots and dead corners, always having an itch on his back neck. As if ghosts were scratching it.
Acryl stopped by one house. He did not know why he stopped, but his body stung there.
The sun beamed down on its room as if a pin was on the house. It looked ancient, almost falling, yet somehow still standing like a dead tree. Its style was unrecognizable in Acryl’s eyes and, for a time, had left so many of its marks that it lost its essence.
The walls were crooked and warped as if it was torn and glued again. Acryl did not feel pleasant or sorrowful, nor did belonging to that old building. The smell of it- rotten-like, not that the wood had rotted, but the house itself. It seemed to be almost impossible to encapsulate it on a canvas. Not even his slightly abstract and overly stylized forms could help.
The secret is only revealed to those with unsharpened Realm-art
What will happen if I walk in? Acryl though. He reached for his pencil and sketchbook as he noticed his trembling hand. The wind felt like screaming and scratching as his pencil fell out of his hand.
As he grabbed it, Kaspar arrived.
“Good morning. You are more punctual than I had expected. A merit that I should look upon,” Kaspar said as he unbuttoned his coat. He revealed his arcane items. Talismans from the East and different kinds of rune-carved tools. Acryl realized that some of them were measuring devices used in Realm-lore.
“Let’s go inside, shall we?” Kaspar said, light emerging around his hand as he made a finger gun pointing at the door sealed by wooden bars. The tall shadow of Kaspar looked like something even more horrible to Acryl’s eyes. Unnatural and unsettling. His shadow flickered as he felt the flow of Realm-art so large that his body was almost falling as if a wave was hitting him.
As he was amazed and fearing, the door was open, Acryl didn’t even see how it was opened.
“…Is this what…four times sharpened Realm-art is like?” Acryl muttered to himself as he cast his Realm-art. His eyes were seeing dots from the light, and he could only relate to the burning magnesium he saw when he was in school. Acryl had just noticed that the building looked far older than the buildings around it.
Acryl wanted to tell the truth, yet the old walls and stone road felt like cells pushing him. Should I lie? He thought. The surroundings suddenly looked all strange, as if they weren’t storytellers, not speaking, but interrogators as silent as stones.
He was shaking, his conscience, his ideals. Acryl was an honest person, he didn’t lie, only stutter.
“…It’s not a problem. Come.”
The floor creaked as Kaspar stepped on it. Dust was fleeing and blinding Acryl’s vision as they both coughed.
The interior looks far newer than it should be, as if someone or something had been replacing, renovating the house brick by brick, nail by nail, for the past who-knows-how-long time in secret, under the eyelids of the messengers. But that renovation stopped like that person was getting tired of it for having forsaken this house.
“Be careful. Can you feel the scent?” Kaspar said, putting his arm in front of Acryl.
His eyes turned to Acryl, dark irises darker than his surroundings. Kaspar’s Realm-art lit the darkness, and dust and spider webs crossed and covered the floor. Damp and confined. Like an antique chest that keeps all kinds of abominable secrets, kway and forsaken.
The scent. The scent?
Acryl couldn’t smell anything but the shivering mold and rot, the moisture that would damage anything, yet the books’ scrolls that were scattered across the floor somehow looked like they were kept away from this terrible environment.
Kaspar bent his knees as Acryl followed him. He opened up a book, and he took out a device. It had gears spinning and runes shining. The parts of it hammered and made a puncturing noise like a loom. Although Acryl was someone interested in the study and reasons of the Realm, he had not seen nor heard of this device.
“…Lanterns and the Faustus. Acryl, which one do you relate more to?” Kaspar asked as the hammering of the machine stopped, and the tiny window on it showed something in Auderheimian.
“May I not answer this question?”
“It’s not an unsolvable mystery,” Kaspar responded, the beeping and the hammering continued. He didn’t make any eye contact with Acryl. Acryl would consider himself to be someone who couldn’t read subtexts well, but it was obvious to him that Kaspar lied to him in the tavern.
“…I don’t think the thoughts are contradictory to each other.”
“Really? I sure hope those old and crooked-backed scholars can have the same opinion as you, well, that is to as, if they have their own opinion at all.”
“But my friend, I suggest you stop playing fool.”
“You reported me to the messengers, didn’t you?” Kaspar said the noise of the machines stopped.
Acryl backed down. He activated his Realm-art as he tried to walk away from Kaspar.
“Now this isn’t an open-ended question, Acryl.”
“I…didn’t! I can explain, Kaspar!” Acryl said, stuttering. As if Kasparweres was his teacher, asking why he hadn’t done the assignment.
“Then how come the bartender was a messenger?! Then why did I see the Letter-Writer standing by the main road of the old city?! Why were you talking to one earlier?!”
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t even say a word to the messengers!”
“Who did you say that to then?”
To whom did I say this? Suiming…Iris…
This was a test!
“Every war has its victim,” Acryl mumbled.
“And what will be your victim?” Kaspar said calmly. His back was straight as he put back his device. The smell of the rot was invading Acryl. The shadow of Kaspar was flickering as it covered Acryl’s face. His eye demanded Acryl’s answer.
And what will be my victim?
Acryl swallowed as if to calm his heartbeat. Thoughts clashed within him. As if he were a piggy bank, picked up by a giant and wiggling to listen to the sounds of coins inside him. Time seemed to slow down. Wind from nowhere brought a damp smell and an unpleasant taste to his face.
“I am willing to give up the lantern,” Acryl said. Letting out a whisper, echoing loudly.
“One stone, two birds. You have two answers now.”
Kaspar laughed. His short hair and his coat waved as he held onto his knees, coughing, out of breath as if his lungs were punctured by bullets.
“Good, good. You are not blinded…you know that you know nothing and so do I.”
“Come, we have a haunted house to explore.”
Acryl walked behind Kaspar as he lit up a lantern. The wicked light illuminated their soon-to-be road.
