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TRAS Chapter 67: Chasing Sun
🕑 Added 2025-02-09 14:00:02 +0000 UTCRenea, turning pale, looked at the jars which contained organs.
“Wanna do the honors?” Ailn asked.
“Of course not,” Renea said. She put her hand to her mouth, her fingers lightly covering her nose. “That’s disgusting. This woman is demented…”
“How were you able to stand the north wall if you’re so prone to nausea?” Ailn asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Even if it was Sophie—”
“My stomach’s fine,” Renea snapped. The flicker of hurt across her eyes meant this was a sore point for her. “My constitution isn’t as delicate as you think. And… it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.”
“Sorry,” Ailn said. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
He was being sincere, but that seemed to make Renea feel worse about her outburst, given the way her shoulders sagged.
“At any rate,” Kylian coughed lightly, then looked at the jars. “Are you saying those organs are relevant, somehow?”
“Remember the name of the mural up there? Or what it’s homaging at least?” Ailn asked.
“The Weighing of the—ah,” Kylian grimaced. He walked over to the jars and reading their labels, picked up the one which presumably contained Noué’s heart. “I may as well do it, then, if you’ll tell me where to put it.”
“I think you’ve got it.”
Kylian just sighed. Then, just like Renea had, he scanned the mural, following the golden chain upwards with his eyes. Ascending the staircase, jar in hand, he exited into the upper chamber.
Then it clicked.
There was an actual golden chain. It was the anomaly in the chamber that had been there the whole time. Beginning from the base of the torch atop the sarcophagus, and reaching to that cup atop the mausoleum’s entrance, the chain constituted the ‘three-dimensional’ half of the scale.
“Perhaps this woman truly is demented…” Kylian muttered. It was evident this mausoleum had been conceived by obsession, strongly coupled to an irreverence that gave him disquiet.
Reaching up to place the jar, it settled in with a click.
The section of stone where the cup had been inlaid began to revolve. As the smooth, empty side took its place, Kylian’s ears picked up the faint sounds of something intricate and mechanical, chugging behind the walls.
He heard another click from behind.
This one came from The Legacy of the Magi. Again, the click was followed by the grinding of metal and stone, but this time it was happening out in the open.
The entire bas-relief was rotating, save the disc that represented the sun, which instead rose a foot higher. As the relief turned upside down, the magi above and the scattered peoples below switched places—except both groups were now standing on their heads.
The two groups shared that plight until the scattered peoples—now standing above—rotated upright. The magi, however, remained cast below, still fully inverted. A strange pang of pity struck Kylian. Though they were nothing more than unmoving stone, the once-proud magi seemed so wretched now—merely from a reversal of the relief’s orientation.
Cheers of excitement came from the lower chamber—primarily Ciecout and Renea—and Kylian was about to head down himself.
That is, until the mausoleum’s strangest spectacle yet unfolded before his eyes.
__________
Down in the lower chamber, the painted forms of Noué and the woman presumed Lumitheia began to move once more. Earlier their drift had been so slow and graceful, like feathers in the breeze, switching places almost by happenstance.
But now, Noué, adorned with golden wings, gave chase.
Lumitheia flew fleetly away, and both women left the world of their paneled painting, passing into the stone section of the mural.
Noué had but one depiction, while Lumitheia had four. When Lumitheia vanished from one scene, a different version of her would suddenly start moving in the next—almost as if she were leaping between bodies. Noué, by contrast, simply flew past the boundaries of each scene, her original fully painted form unchanged.
In the caveman painting, the sandy blonde figure—Lumitheia—took flight, ascending over beast and man, both sides turning from their battle to crane their ‘heads’ up. When she flew over them, the figures in the scene reacted, as if they could grasp her ankles if they tried.
Noué, however, seemed to simply pass ‘through,’ her existence neither acknowledged nor influencing the scene around her.
“She truly was a genius!” Ciecout exclaimed.
“It’s incredible,” Renea whispered, her earlier misgivings about Noué swept away by the sheer visual delight. The artist’s work had completely captivated her.
“It’s… definitely something,” Ailn admitted. It was a given he’d never seen anything quite this magical, and yet he found himself put off by how self-referential the piece was.
Navel-gazing was one way of putting it, but it was more than just artistic self-absorption. There was a distinct sense of lost reality, an inability to distinguish herself from her art, that just fundamentally bothered Ailn.
Even in this fantastical chase, Noué had still retained some sort of meta-existence, while Lumitheia existed ‘merely’ within each scene.
Or was it the other way around? The desperate look on Noué’s painted face made it feel as though the mural was the real world, and Noué’s existence would never be fully allowed in.
There was only one thing both figures seemed to mutually recognize—the painted golden chain.
As Lumitheia ‘entered’ the Byzantine painting, she gave the chain a flick with both hands, the resulting undulation disrupting Noué’s flight. Now grounded, Lumitheia brushed past the bowing crowd, bumping into them as she went through.
It was lucky for Lumitheia that she’d managed to delay the flying Noué, because in the harbor scene she tripped over the chain that was snaked between her feet. Her bright yellow coat lost its radiance as it soaked up the puddle she’d splashed into, but that didn’t stop her. She quickly leapt and flew off toward the vanishing point of the painting.
Noué, ignoring perspective, again simply glided through.
“No! She tripped!” Renea gasped, and cantered up the stairs to follow the fleeing women of paint. The way she got worked up, it was like she was watching a horror movie, giving the play-by-play of the characters’ mistakes, and loudly ruining the suspense for everyone else. “She’s gonna catch her!”
The flotsam of half-memory came floating up, as Ailn remembered how much that type of moviegoer drove him nuts. But that didn’t really matter right now.
Actually, now that he was pulled out of the immersion enough to notice—what was that chugging sound he was hearing? The paint itself was moving, so it wouldn’t make any sense for gears to be involved.
Renea gave a quick glance behind, looking like she was confused he wasn’t watching. But she turned her attention back as the chase reached its final act.
Now Lumitheia was her grandest self, the master of light and shadow standing above the clouds of the chiaroscuro painting.
She had a chain in each hand. One of the golden chains was the one that had traced their progressive chase upward. Lumitheia held it with the hand behind her, that was pointed downward and obscured in shadow.
The other golden chain reached into the sun, as if it were a lamp. She held it with her other hand, on the side of her body radiantly cast by light.
Noué was so close to reaching her. There was a manic look on her face. Both figures were once again in comparable, full-bodied, depth-filled styles. For once, the artist seemed able to enter the scene itself, bursting through the clouds, her hand just inches away from grabbing Lumitheia’s ankle.
And that was when, with her shadowed hand, Lumitheia disdainfully released the first golden chain.
It slunk down, and Noué began to fall back diagonally, reversing her flight. She flailed her arms as if truly seized by gravity, terror clear on her face. The sight of it was so visceral it made Renea cry out in dismay, and right before the painted figure hit the ‘ground’—
Lumitheia, near the top of the stairs, pulled at the second golden chain with her radiant hand. With a click, as if it really were a lamp, the sun seemed to go out.
And Ciecout’s artifact immediately went dark.
__________
Kylian had seen moving paint before. Never to the extent he witnessed in this mausoleum, but enough that it didn’t catch him off-guard.
The sight of moving stone, however, deeply frightened him. So much so he’d instinctively reached for his sword, ready to destroy the priceless piece of art and suffer the repercussions.
“What is wrong with this artist?!” Kylian muttered angrily to himself.
His own good sense stayed his hand, though for a moment he truly believed the stone figures might come leaping out.
Instead, the bas-relief figures, above and below, only reacted to each other.
Once desolate, stuck on the ground, and gazing yearningly at the magi above—the scattered people lowered their arms to point downward, their heretofore pleading faces now twisting into amusement.
They were laughing at the magi.
And the magi raised their arms to shield their faces, as if terrified of something deep below. Their self-assured faces were marred not just by fear, but fury and pain.
Caught in the flicker of torchlight, their grotesque expressions felt far too real, shadows casting their anguish across the chamber.
Then, when the magi completed their transition into writhing, the torch that had perpetually lit the chamber for centuries instantly extinguished.
Kylian drew his sword and manifested his holy aura.
It wasn’t, however, enough to fully light the open space of the mausoleum, and he took cautious steps forward. His heart thumped in his chest, as he wondered if Areygni’s art had malevolent designs—as it had certainly escalated over the course of the puzzle.
What had started out as odd, became disquieting, and soon enough sinister. To Kylian, her ill will seemed but a step away from violence, driven by some artifact or mechanism.
Were the three in the lower chamber alright? He hadn’t heard anything.
They had their own lighting artifact, so they should still be able to produce their own light—yet no ambient glow crept up the stairs. Did this mausoleum have an artifact capable of extinguishing all sources of light within?
“Are you alright?” Kylian called out loudly.
A moment later, he heard Ciecout scream, and with no regard for his own safety began to sprint, ready to protect his friends.
__________
When the lighting artifact went out, Renea stifled a yelp. She let out but a quiet gasp, as the sudden darkness took her breath away.
The truth was, it did trigger a phobia—one that she had no cognizance of till this moment. Infrequently, she still had those nightmares of being alone in the dark passage, unable to move while her brother slowly died outside.
She’d been contending, lately, with a sense of lost control.
Renea, despite her natural temperament, wasn’t a timid person. Trusting her life completely in Sophie’s hands, entirely powerless herself, all while performing the part of Saintess took not just guts but a cool head.
Or… that’s what she wished to believe.
“Father Ciecout?” Renea nervously cleared her throat, and called out in a whisper. “Ani? Are you two there?”
“Give me but a moment, Lady Renea!” Ciecout called back to her. He was in a fluster, but a fluster that was both glad and loud to hear another soul in the dark. “This… useless artifact…!”
Starting up just as slowly as it had the first time, the artifact let out the barest orange shimmer. Enough that they could see Ciecout’s face suddenly appear in the darkness, though with lighting so poor it gave him a ghastly appearance—especially because the source of light was being vigorously shaken by the impatient priest.
“Shaking it doesn’t make it start faster…” Renea muttered. She resisted the urge to let out her anxiety on the priest.
She was a little worried, but she could just barely hear Ailn mumbling to himself.
‘...hate modern art.’
When it produced a reasonable amount of light, Renea again had to stifle herself, but this time she truly might have screamed—so she still let out a small whimper.
In every scene of the mural, Lumitheia had been replaced with the grim reaper.
Just a little more nervous than before, and her breathing a little shakier, Renea held her hand over her heart. It was just a cheap jumpscare. If it had been any time but now, when so much horror and sorrow had dulled her wits and courage, she would have just laughed at it.
“Ani? You never called back… are you alright?” Renea could make him out now in the dim light.
“...Yeah, I’m here,” Ailn said. His voice sounded either anxious or grim. Was he afraid of the dark? He was at the bottom of the chamber, staring at the final scene. “Don’t… don’t come down here, Renea.”
“What is it?” Renea asked. She walked down the staircase with careful steps. “I’m coming down.”
“Suit your—” Ailn started, but stopped mid-sentence, apparently reconsidering. “No, really. Don’t come down.”
His tone was firm in a way it typically wasn’t. And despite herself, Renea found herself indignant at Ailn’s coddling. If he hadn’t hit upon an insecurity earlier by calling her squeamish, she would never act so recalcitrantly.
Ailn sighed as he heard her coming down.
“I was only loud earlier because I found it engaging,” Renea said, voice testy. “I don’t scare easily. And there was creepy, sordid art up here, too. What could even be down there?”
Almost at the bottom of the stairs, Renea squinted at the same section of wall Ailn was staring at. The light now bright enough to amply reveal a substantial change, and she realized the faux Creation of Adam had been replaced.
There was some kind of actual, three-dimensional craft. Though it was pseudo-flattened, almost like a pressed flower.
“Huh?” Renea squinted harder. “Is that… paper machet?”
Now right beside Ailn, her brain caught up to her eyes, as she realized that she was staring at the mummy of Noué Areygni, posing as if she were an Egyptian pharaoh.
This time, Renea let herself scream.
Comments
Storyflower
‘...hate modern art.’ To be honest I get more of an impression of 'Jheronimus Bosch', the Dutch fable figure religious painter (1450 - 1516). ;-)
