fountains

Thiss stared at the elvish ruins looming behind their diminutive camp. The grey stone structure appeared ghostly as the late night mist surrounded it, almost seeming to disappear with the breeze. Perhaps disappear wasn’t the correct word-- the structure never moved or became invisible, but the otherworldly alluring pull of exploration seemed to wax and wane as the mist did, the haze shrouding both the ruin and Thiss’ desire to delve into its bowels. Each time the wind shifted slightly and Thiss caught a glimpse of the ivy covered stone, she shifted in her seated position around the fire.

“They say it’s haunted,” Varis remarked from beyond her view. Thiss shut her eyes and rubbed them before she turned to face him.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Reg snorted.

“Very funny.” Varis’s expression remained as deadpan as before. “The locals. In Maufell, about a day's ride from here. They say that the spirits of the elves still roam the halls, waiting for their next human sacrifice.” His face seemed to hold no readable emotion to her-- the prince’s mouth drawn in a straight line, his eyebrows no more raised or furrowed than usual, and his pale blue eyes trained on the ruin.

Thiss frowned. “Human sacrifice? You know as well as I do that there was no such thing.”

Varis shrugged, “Sure, but that’s just what they say. Never said I believed it.”

“Then why mention it?” Thiss retorted, taking a long swig from her waterskin.

“To piss you off, likely,” Reg spoke from above his raised flask. “Your face turns red when you’re angry.” He took a drink.

Thiss felt her face flush as her annoyance rose, only worsening as she realized that Reg was right. Varis smirked from beside her, obviously pleased with his achievement. “You find this funny?” she sneered at Reg.

“Sure, but I was just pointing it out,” he said, repeating Varis’s phrasing from earlier. Thiss saw the corner of his lip turn up.

She made a frustrated grunt in reply, took a drink of her water, and replaced the cork. “Fuck off.” The statement, aimed at both Reg and Varis, landed on neither of them. Instead, it earned a slight chuckle from the two men. Thiss stood and stomped over to Mikke, fishing a torch from her saddlebag. She thrust it into the fire and held it to her side. “I’m going. I’ll be back by morning.”

“Don’t get eaten by the ghosts,” Reg snickered.

Thiss turned her back on them and began the approach towards the ruins. Behind her, she heard the two begin another hushed conversation. She tried to keep her footsteps as silent as she could. It felt like the correct thing to do. There weren’t any people for at least a day’s distance in any given direction, and there certainly weren’t any elves still inhabiting the dilapidated building. Even if she were to scream, the only people who would hear would be Varis and Reg. Still, though, each noise that disturbed the silence seemed to be supernaturally shushed by the weaving mists. Thiss looked back. The fire was still flickering, though the mist had surrounded it once again, leaving her closer to the chilled ruin than the warm camp.

She took a deep breath in and held the torch aloft, taking a careful look at the wall in front of her. The grey stone sparkled faintly in the torchlight but revealed nothing more than the crumbling mortar holding the blocks together. Thiss walked around the wall, stepping over the fallen stones that had found a new home on the moss covered ground. A pointed archway marked an entrance. Thiss stepped over the threshold, her eyes surveying each corner of the area. The ceiling had long since collapsed and its wood and stone remains littered the main hall-- or at least what Thiss assumed was the main hall, judging by the long expanse of stone before her, arches of entrances matching on both the right and left. The walls stood mostly complete, though the ivy and moss had begun to grow between the cracks in the mortar or where stones had fallen away. Carved marble torsos and legs on pedestals stood crumbling in each corner, seemingly watching her, even with their marble heads long detached from the body. She felt her skin prickle with unease.

Thiss tiptoed across the rubble to the first archway on the left, holding her torch behind her head to better illuminate the hallway in front of her. After all, the worst thing would be to be blinded by the torchlight and stumble into a trap. Not that she’d ever seen a trap, or even had reason to suspect that traps would even be laid. The only thing she had to go on was rumor-- and rumor didn’t provide truth. As she walked further through the hallway, she extended her hand to brush her fingertips along the smooth diorite brick. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, or if she was even looking for anything at all. Perhaps it was a chance to get away from her asshole companions, perhaps a chance to learn something-- anything--, perhaps the ruin called her (stranger things have happened, she supposed); or perhaps it was the allure of still silence, an allure of the ghosts of the past pulling her to understand more than anyone else seemed to.

She tried to picture what life looked like in this building all those centuries ago. The barren hallways had long been stripped of any decoration by both time and looters, but even then, the knowledge had been lost, and her mind's eye only drew a blank. Thiss exited the hallway into a large, mostly roofed room. The walls were a series of shelves, their items missing save for a few dusty tomes and the occasional odd or end. She picked up a book and flipped through it's pages; all in Elvish. Nothing that she could read. She replaced the book on the shelf and absently wandered to the other side of the room, pulling two more dust-covered books. Her left hand cracked open the first book, tucking the other under her arm. Her right hand fished the area for something flat to sit on. She felt nothing, and turned her eyes up from the large drawing on the page in order to scan the room. There were no chairs, and there didn't seem to be anything halfway worth sitting on, either.

The northern wall of the library made a good backrest as she took a seat cross legged on the stone floor. The book under her arm had been placed next to her, allowing her full attention on the book that she now held in both hands. She examined the drawing that had grabbed her attention. The lines were sharp and angular, though they formed intricate geometric shapes representing what she could only view as an elf: the straight, sharp nose coupled with the long pointed ears were the most recognizable to distinguish it from the smaller human-like figure in the background. Much like the writing, the drawing was nigh incomprehensible, there was no themed imagery for her to understand, it seemed to be an ornate sketch of two figures; nothing more, nothing less. Thiss groaned and hastily flipped through more pages. The ink had worn away on many of them, though sparse sections still maintained their text and art. She finished her flip through, slapping the back cover closed. She groaned and lifted the other book from the ground.

This one, however, looked more promising. Behind the first page was an even more ornate image. It was difficult to parse, but as she held the book at arms length, she frowned. There was imagery that told a story. A geometric elf stood next to another, their mouths open, revealing pointed teeth. Thiss couldn’t tell if they were portraying any emotion, but a stylized building decorated the background of the image. The building was on fire, and smaller elves (she assumed-- the figures were barely intelligible aside from their oval heads and twiggy bodies) were shown as running to the left and right-- away from the building. She frowned and flipped the page. This showed small groups of elves, all forming insular circles. She turned the page again. Small buildings, then big buildings, a large group of elves around a fountain, a sunrise, and the final page: an ornate palace.

Thiss shut the book, got to her feet, and replaced the item on the shelf. She dusted off her pants and sighed. The pictures told a story of elves, but whichever story it was had been lost to time. Still, she was grateful to learn anything at all from her explorations here. She licked her lips and realized that she’d been ignoring her thirst in her pursuit of information. As she brought her waterskin to her lips and sipped, she noticed that she’d still had her gathering satchel with her. Thiss took another drink. Her satchel was big enough… She replaced the waterskin and grabbed the book, arranging it into her bag.

“Didn’t think you were the kind to loot haunted tombs.”

She yipped in surprise, frantically turning around to see where the voice had come from. The torchlight that she’d set in the center of the room blinded her adjustment to the dark. Thiss drew her sword in a hurry, backing up towards the wall she’d just risen from. “Show yourself!”

“Gods above, you’re shit at this, Thiss.” The shrouded figure bent down and picked up the torch, setting it in a shaped metal sconce on the wall.

Her eyes adjusted now that the light wasn’t directly in her face and the figure took shape: Reg. She breathed a long sigh of relief, still acutely aware of the thumping in her chest from the panic. “Fuck, Reg. What,” she panted, “What the fuck?” There were far more questions than just ‘what the fuck’, such as: ‘When did you get here?’, ‘Why are you here?’, ‘Why did you have to scare me?’, ‘How did you know where I was?’. Unfortunately, with her heart still racing, none of them managed to be asked.

“Wanted to make sure that you weren’t being sacrificed. You seem fine, aside from picking up cursed objects to smuggle out,” he scoffed, picking up one of the books on the shelf. He flipped through the pages and tossed the thing on the floor.

“It’s not cursed,” she started, picking up the book that Reg had discarded. Pages fluttered out and lay scattered at their feet. Thiss sighed and left them alone, deciding that it was a lost cause. She remembered the sword in her hand and sheathed it. “And I’m not looting. I--,” she paused, taking into account the book in her satchel. “Okay, so I’m looting a book. It’s not like anyone is here to care. We all know that nobody is coming back to this, even humans.”

“I’m a human,” Reg grinned.

“You also think it’s haunted.”

“Never said I thought it was haunted.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re going to restore this ruin to its former glory, preserving these priceless artefacts?” she asked, rhetorically. Reg tipped the spine of a book and sent it tumbling to the ground. Thiss frowned. “Thought not.”

“I don’t actually care, Thiss. You’ve been gone a while, Prince Varis has already gone to sleep.”

“And what do I care about that? I’ll be back whenever I’m back, I don’t have a curfew.” She grabbed the torch from behind Reg.

“You’re insufferable, Thiss,” Reg muttered. “Don’t let me impede your adventure by checking if you’re fine.” He gave a deep, mocking bow.

Thiss rolled her eyes and walked towards the eastern doorway. “You can come with me if you stop destroying everything.” Reg rose, smiled, and strolled next to her. “And if you kick that smug look from your face.”

“That’s just my face.”

She opened her mouth for a reply, but decided against it; it was too late at night for a pointless argument. Despite his grating nature, he did provide decent help in her exploration. Holding the torch a few feet behind her allowed Thiss to see more of each room, though most of them were much the same. It felt like they had wandered an endless stone maze by the time Thiss stepped around a corner to see crumbling columns, moss-covered brick, and wide open, starry sky. A few feet away stood a crumbling fountain, a simply built yet ornately decorated stone structure covering a natural spring. The carved stone that made the structure featured the same writing that she’d found in the book inside, the letters colored green by the plants squeezing themselves into the grooves. She peeked over the edge, looking at her reflection in the rippling water.

“Find something?” Reg said from behind.

She turned to him. “No, not really. A spring.” She uncorked her waterskin and dipped it in, grateful for some natural water that wasn’t boiled from the river. Reg did the same. She looked around the courtyard, surveying the overgrown garden aimlessly.

“Why did you decide to come out here, anyway?” His voice was hushed.

Thiss found a broken column and sat on the top of it. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Despite their normal volume earlier, the hush felt like the only appropriate way to speak. The wind rustling the leaves coupled with the faint babble of water to create a cover for any noise, and Thiss was hesitant to break the silence. “I wanted to, I suppose.”

Reg sat on the ground in front of her, propping his arm on his bent knee. “The same for me, actually,” he said. Thiss cocked her head. “What, you thought I was genuinely looking for you?” he snorted out a laugh. Thiss frowned, unsure whether she was pleased that he hadn’t been worrying over her or offended that he hadn’t bothered to care. “I just wanted to. I felt like it.” He pulled his flask from his satchel. “Also a little bit drunk.”

“Hm.” Thiss acknowledged.

The two sat in silence for as long as they could stand it. It felt like ages, but Thiss was grateful for the reprieve when Reg finally broke it by standing up, picking up the torch in a loud shuffle. “I’m getting tired, and we’re back on the road tomorrow. You can stay here, but I’m taking this,” he waved the torch, “with me.” She looked around, trying to convince herself that she had seen everything she’d wanted to see. It didn’t work, but the torch moving away from her was indication enough that she should follow. Reg had a point; they’d be travelling again tomorrow morning, and she didn’t want to be left behind or worse; woken up too early.