The Colour of Sunrise (Part Two of Three)
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A red sunset, fogged with grey.
The villagers had seem him along the dusty road from their homes; the girl and a red warrior walked with him to the edge of their lands. She was full of questions for him.
"Where are you from?"
"I come from the Silver Monastery, in the valley beyond."
"Are you the elder there?"
"No, I am a Bronze Brother of the Fifth Circle. The Abbot runs the monastery."
"Is hunting Greys the only thing you do?"
"Actually, my primary task is to gather the lost knowledge of the White Ones and keep it safe. It is the senior brothers who are tasked directly with hunting Greys."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because," Hime said, looking at the girl's only stone, a blue shard below her eye. "This was my homeland."
The girl and the warrior left him at the edge of their outermost field; beyond stretched the grassland toward the lair of the Grey. As Hime continued on his way, the two stood watching. At the very edge of hearing, the girl shouted out:
"Tjion Hime, I am Tiandra!"
He did not turn to acknowledge. Tjions knew many things, but women were not one of them. Instead, he walked on.
He tracked the path of the Grey One across the plain, leading toward the mountain. His quarry's steps were shuffling. Was the spell caster tired? Despite his apparent weariness, the path tended eerily straight, guided by the Lines of Lei.
And so it was that Hime came onto the foot of the mountain. Thrust into the sky, like a sudden titan's foot struck down from heaven, the Cloudfeet Peaks bore well their name. The grass of the plains ended suddenly, and there was naught but the blue-grey stone reaching skyward. At their top, a crown of starkly white ice.
“All true knowledge was in the tomes of the White Ones; and those were buried in tombs deep, temples long ruined, and magic towers unscalable.”
All trace of the Grey ended abruptly here. The hunter-monk remained unfazed. He placed hand on a ridged, grey stone, and lifted himself off the ground.
Three days and three nights he spent scaling the peak, nothing but the fingers of his hands on the tips of his toes keeping him stuck to the wall. When it rained, he drank his fill, hugging the cliff-face like a babe at his mother's breast. When the sun beat down, he ignored the ache at his back and continued ever upward.
Hime came onto a natural tunnel carved into the face, too small to be seen clearly from below. It was high noon, the rain just passed. A small rainbow formed just above the village, rendered in miniature by the distance. He stopped at its opening for some time, preparing himself with a recitation of the Forms and the Movements. It brought him focus, concentrating his abilities on the task at hand.
He entered the tunnel, leaving the sunlight behind.
The passage remained lit as he ventured deeper. A soft blue light, seemingly without source, kept all the walls visible. Hime stepped forward cautiously, senses alert for danger. Inscribed all over the walls was an intricately carved text. It was of expert craftsmanship, likely the work of sorcery. He picked a wall to begin reading:
"…we Wynchalla were like the gods themselves, remaking reality..." the Wynchalla, the name the White Ones called themselves. A holy place? Hime scanned forward as he progressed, taking care to look for any sign of the Grey while he memorised this knowledge for transcription back at the monastery.
"...soon enough, some of us grew lonely; some needed partners to assist in grand endeavours. So it came to be that we created noble creatures in our own image. We imbued in them all that was best in ourselves. We called our children the Enchamen, the companion people." This was the gospel of the genesis of humanity. Hime took his time to read all the walls, committing them to his trained memory.
Before long, he neared the dead end of the passage. Against the wall, three stone figures seemed carved from the rock of the tunnel, rising seamlessly from the stone floor. Many Tjion holy places had two - not three - figures carved in this style, and Hime recoiled from the blasphemous representation in the stonework.
The central figure was robed, elderly man standing outstretched, his hands to the skies and face exulting. Holy Arruun, avatar of the Wynchalla, first among the White. On his left was a woman, perfect in form and beauty, who stared forward into the future. Mim'me, mother of humanity, unrobed to represent her lack of magic. On the White One's right - a figure hidden by voluminous robes carved from the stone, head bowed and face obscured by the cowl.
“Mighty in our magics and sure of our control, we remade our reality as we pleased. There was no dream that was beyond our reach on this world…”
The Grey Champion, Uun-gannu. This place was an eldritch altar to Grey powers. What a mockery of holy art! Hime calmed his rage, putting it aside. The knowledge here was useless.
Hime stepped away as a deep, thunderous scraping sounded. The figure of the White Spellmaster split in twain, the walls sliding apart to reveal a huge space beyond. The monk moved fluidly with the left panel, hiding his form behind blessed Mim'me. He took mental note of his glimpse of the room beyond.
Beyond the sliding doors, more writing covered every inch of wall of a huge hall. A hundred meters deep and forty high, forty wide. At it's very end, four long stones formed a square, like an empty door to nowhere. Next to it, a pedestal with a huge open book.
Standing in front of the square, a grey-robed figure whose torn robes revealed a skinny, misshapen form. The Grey One, leaning over the tome.
