What Secrets Await

Chapter 11: Relics of the Past

From a dwindling corner of attention Solas and Sera distanced themselves from each other, and the conflict was quick forgotten by most everyone. Feelings of anger toward Sera bubbled up inside of Maeva while her eyes followed Solas until he disappeared around a corner.

Meanwhile the enthusiasm from the alluded coronation literally overflowed into the doors and halls of the castle and its structures. People flowed freely in and out of the buildings as efforts to clear its rooms and repair its rooftops doubled voluntarily.

The Herald and her advisors made somewhat of a ceremony in opening the great doors to the main hall building, and Maeva was among the followers close at their heels. More than anything, she was highly curious about the fortress they explored, and especially about those who had lived in it, and fallen from it last.

The great hall was vast: high vaulted ceilings dotted with weathered holes through which the sun shone against in the inner wall and floor. The long hall ended at the northern wall of the building which was lined with three long windows of colorful stained glass mosaics, surprisingly undamaged. It drew pictures in radial symmetry of rosés and diamonds, reds and blues and golds all swirling in harmony. Two of three large iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the third having collapsed onto the hall floor.

The corridor gradually ascended up terraced platforms and ended up a raised dais just below the stained glass windows. A throne sat upon it, a metal chair-base with an elaborated high back aburst with sword-like spikes, the shape of it fit the Inquisition's sunburst insignia perfectly.

The Herald and advisors departed into a side-room. Maeva stood in the front half of the great hall, listening to their steps echo against the high walls, stone balconies, and half destroyed roof. The floor was littered with planks and debris, forsaken furniture and ages of dust.

To her right a large hearth formed the base of the wall, a forlorn table and chairs sun-bleached by piercing daylight standing before it. A column of vines had sprouted out from cracks in the stones in the corner, the lushest leaves mapping the regular path of the sun's light from a hole in the roof far above.

These will be gone once the repairs are finished, Maeva realized as she beheld the plant's tendrils.

Swiftly, she moved past the table and chairs toward the corner while pulling a short dagger from her belt. A vivaciously green vine stood out from the rest, reaching away from the wall and boasting a bright yellow flower that aimed directly at the sunlight. She selected it for preservation and snipped it deftly at the joint, decoupling the flower and a trail of leaves from the rest of the vine.

She pocketed her knife and carefully coiled the plant into her tunic, when a small square of reflected light caught her gaze from the dark ashy center of the fireplace. A corner of parchment emerged from the ashes. Immediately she fished it out and held it close for examination.

The parchment was mostly blank, only a few abstract scratches of black ink against the burnt edge, and scrawls of a larger image-- or letters, perhaps-- adorned a small portion of the corner, as if they were notes written on the side of a printed text. Most of all, the quality of the parchment was remarkable: thick and almost glossy with a... resin, tree sap? Some sort of hardened coating preserved it, thus shrouding its age in further mystery.

Finding no more parchment pieces in the fireplace, she rolled and tucked the piece into her bag's straps. To be cataloged later, she promised herself as she returned her attention to the hall.

The high ceiling boasted suspended rods that held long curtains all the way to the ground floor, gathered loosely by thick ropes. The cloth was long since faded by the sun and weather, leaving only a suggestion of pattern in the darkened imprints of its own shadow on the lower folds.