Chapter 175 - 157: Spirit Lodging Artifacts

Richard stepped outside and glanced up at the sky.

The stars were exceptionally bright, seeming to confirm last night’s Divination.

At 7:30, everyone descended into the cellar.

Inside, seven white Candles had already been lit.

The stone sarcophagus in the center of the circle looked especially solemn in the light of the seven candles.

"Take your positions," Mrs. MacNeil said.

The eight of them stood firm in their predetermined places.

In the center was the sarcophagus, and on top of it rested the True Name Stone.

Seven Saint Michael’s Candles, borrowed from the nearest parish and re-carved, formed a circle.

Mrs. MacNeil stood in the first position—due North.

Mr. Hutton stood in the second position—due south.

This was the most ancient of contrapuntal methods: the North states, the south responds. The North speaks, and the south receives.

Richard, Maggie, Theodore, and Edmund stood at the four diagonal corners, serving as auxiliary Anchors.

The two Hunters were in the outer circle.

Captain Field stood at the cellar entrance, facing the sarcophagus.

Sarah stood in the deepest corner of the cellar, her double-barreled shotgun already assembled and held diagonally across her chest.

Behind the Curtain, they would be the ones to take real action.

7:47, the transitional moment where day and night converged.

According to the rules of a Seal, this point in time was the key window for maximum efficiency, and also when the Curtain was at its thinnest.

In that instant, the flames of the seven Candles in the cellar all canted gently half an inch to the North.

The flames pointed toward Mrs. MacNeil.

This was the Seal field acknowledging tonight’s Caster.

Mrs. MacNeil retrieved a leather case from her coat.

She opened the case. Lying neatly inside were all seven of her Spirit Lodging Artifacts:

a Silver Ring, a Jade Brooch, a Black Ebony Comb, a Moonstone Pendant, a pair of Coral Earrings, a Silver Pocket Watch covered in fine engravings, and a yellowed Bone Bracelet.

Unhurriedly, she put on each item in turn.

As she put on the Silver Ring, a faint wisp of gray mist appeared at the tip of her index finger. A distant wolf’s howl could be heard from within the mist.

"The first, Oba."

When the Jade Brooch was fastened at her collarbone, the air around her shoulder seemed to bend.

"The second, Valda."

She tucked the Black Ebony Comb into her hair bun, and everyone in the room simultaneously had a fleeting memory of a trivial matter.

Richard vaguely felt that five minutes ago, Mr. Hutton had nodded at him, and he had nodded back.

But this had not actually happened.

The next moment, everyone forgot it just as quickly.

"The third, Milk."

The Moonstone Pendant began to glow on its own, emitting a soft, milky-white light from her chest.

"The fourth, Isra."

The pair of Coral Earrings each emitted a high-pitched sound that no one could hear.

"The fifth, Saen."

The second hand of the Silver Pocket Watch clearly swept an extra half-circle before returning to its normal path.

"The sixth, Sael."

Last was the Bone Bracelet.

The moment she put on the Bone Bracelet, Richard could feel a very, very old woman poke her head out of the bracelet to take a look.

Like a long-deceased great-grandmother, peering out from a picture frame over the fireplace to size up the grandchildren who had come home.

"The seventh..." Mrs. MacNeil did not speak the last name.

"You’ve arrived."

All seven artifacts were lit, and the seven Spirits residing within them were all present.

Including Mrs. MacNeil herself, that made eight people in total.

Richard took a deep breath from his position.

The high-precision observation granted by his [Perception] allowed him to faintly see her weight on the Ether Layer at this moment.

She had transformed from the stable light he was familiar with into a small, lit lighthouse.

This was the true manifestation of a Spirit Medium at Minor Mastery—turning one’s entire self into a ritual artifact.

Across from her, Mr. Hutton was also ready.

Two stacks of Rubbing Copies were spread out on the table before him: a charcoal pen copy of a Celtic mural and a preliminary comparison of a Pre-Roman Inscription.

The old man’s left hand rested on the Rubbing Copies, his right hand suspended in mid-air.

Richard could see a small ball of dark gray mist coalescing at the old man’s right fingertips. Encased within the mist were segments of deciphered Curse Spells.

A Scholar’s work was calculated as such: every Curse Spell had to be able to bite its target.

The prerequisite was that the Caster knew what the Curse Spell said.

Every additional line deciphered was another "sharp blade" that could be thrown.

"Are you ready?" Mrs. MacNeil asked him.

"Ready," Mr. Hutton replied.

The old man’s face was even paler than it had been during the day, but his lips were pressed tightly together.

In tonight’s ritual, Mr. Hutton was the Caster of Curse Spells from the southern position.

The density of Curse Spells he had to handle was a workload that would require a Senior Practitioner’s full effort.

He was betting all the Ether reserves he had slowly accumulated over the past weeks and months on this one night.

Richard glanced at Mr. Hutton.

Mr. Hutton did not look back.

At this moment, the old man had withdrawn all his focus from his identity as a "teacher" and concentrated it entirely on the two stacks of Rubbing Copies before him.

"Taker of men from beneath the bridge." Mr. Hutton recited the first line.

His voice was not loud, but every word echoed clearly off the cellar’s stone walls.

"Walker in the Shadow."

"She whom salt cannot approach."

"She who comes not forth before dusk."

The epithets were recited one by one.

With each one recited, the flames of the seven Candles in the cellar sank an inch.

Soon, the seven Candles were left with nothing but pea-sized flames, yet they did not go out.

Mr. Hutton paused for a second.

"The one who steals the Shadows of the young..." He recited the final line.

Richard’s inspiration tingled, shaken by this name.

In that second, the entire Ether Field of the cellar was "locked" in place by this one name.

Above the sarcophagus in the center of the cellar, the True Name Stone began to glow.

Everyone in the cellar heard the beating of the "heart" at the center of the True Name Stone.

THUMP!

THUMP!

THUMP!

"Connect the Exoteric Division."

Mrs. MacNeil, standing at the due North position, raised her right hand. The Silver Ring on her index finger pointed at the True Name Stone.

The gray mist from the Silver Ring shot out from her fingertip, following the lingering resonance of the name through the air and plunging into the pulsing point of light at the True Name Stone’s center.

The point of light caught the gray mist.

THUMP!

The pulse of the light slowed by a beat.

"Exoteric Division connection stable," Mr. Hutton confirmed.

Standing at the southeast corner, Richard could feel the True Name Stone, the thirty-four Silver Belts on the outer wall, and the four diagonal corners where the four Newcomers stood all link together into a complete net.

The Exoteric Division was complete.

"Prepare to cross the bridge," Mrs. MacNeil said.

She turned her head to look at the four Newcomers.

"Edmund, Maggie, Theodore, Richard..."

"Follow Mr. Hutton and me."

She turned back to face the sarcophagus.

She took a step forward, and her entire figure vanished from the due North position in the cellar.

The candlelight surged. The flames of the seven Saint Michael’s Candles shot up to the height of a person, only to be snuffed out in the same instant by an unseen hand.

A layer of color was drained from the underground stone chamber.

The stone walls, the sarcophagus, the physical outlines of everyone present—all faded into the semblance of an over-bleached old photograph.

Richard looked down at his right hand. His fingertips were becoming translucent; he could see Maggie’s face on the other side, through his own sinew.

"Everyone, we are crossing the gate."

Mr. Hutton’s voice came from all directions at once, the sound itself scattering and reconverging within the Ether Layer.

All of Richard’s previous experiences entering the shallows now felt like wading in a puddle.

Active submersion was a relatively safe posture.

You bend down, extend a foot, test the angle of the door, and squeeze yourself through.

This crossing was the complete opposite.

The great gate beneath the Curtain opened of its own accord, scooping up all eight people in the stone chamber, lifting them over the threshold, and setting them down again.

He thought of his two previous submersions, in the peat bog and at the Highland Summer House.

Back then, he had thought he had already stepped through the Curtain.

Now he knew that he had, at most, stepped into the front hall of the Curtain’s antechamber. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes.

"The physical body is just a sheet of paper."

Mr. Hutton’s voice continued to pour in from all directions. The old man was explaining with the bare minimum of effort.

"In the Material Realm, a floor is a conclusion upheld by wood, iron Nails, a foundation, and gravity."

"Here, that layer of conclusion does not exist."

"Eight people, eight sheets of paper. Mrs. MacNeil and I are holding you in place."

"Don’t move around."

A gust of wind would have sent them flying, but no wind blew.

The entire underground chamber, along with the eight positions, was held fast within the same Ether Layer by the two Senior Practitioners, as if they were pinching a sketch.

Only then did Richard dare to raise his head.

For the first time, he truly saw Whitcombe Mill from behind the Curtain.

Looking up, he saw an infinitely extending "above."

"Halls" were nested one inside the other, stacking upward into a bottomless well.

The nearest hall was suspended directly above their own.

Richard’s inspiration was triggered, and the mill from the day of the 1881 incident began to appear.

The Shadows of twenty-three workers were nailed in place at the very second they were consumed, all facing the same direction in various poses.

One man’s mouth was half-open, his tongue still caught behind his teeth.

Another’s hand was raised halfway, still clutching an unfinished piece of hard bread.

A third was turned toward the window, having just heard a sound, not yet having had the time to ask "Who’s there?"

The colors of the entire factory floor were flattened, like an overexposed film negative.

Another layer up was a chapel in 1340, in the middle of a Sealing ceremony.

Seven Practitioners formed a circle, holding onto a rope of light, while a bishop held a Cross taller than his own head.

The golden rope of light was truly glowing, hanging down from the top of the Cross.

The Practitioners’ mouths opened and closed, but Richard could not hear a sound.

With the purest piety, they had chanted word by word for two full days and nights.

Two days later, four of them collapsed on the spot, never to rise again.

In that moment, Richard completely understood the "crude" Sealing Mrs. MacNeil had described.

The layer above that was even more indistinct.

A highland in the morning mist, where people clad in animal skins sang around a newly erected stone pillar.

He could see the song rising from their mouths, coalescing into shapes that crawled up the stone’s contours.

Further up, there were older things.

"Retract your wandering Spiritual Vision!" Mr. Hutton helped him "pull" back his straying Inspiration Line.

"My apologies," Richard thanked him in a low voice.

"Your inspiration is higher than the other Newcomers’. You must learn to restrain it yourself."

The old gentleman did not turn his head from his side.

"Remember, if you look at the ’above’ carelessly in here, a piece of your cognition might be torn away by it.

You can pull it back only because you have human tradition behind you."

Richard adjusted his Breathing and, for the first time, truly felt the weight of that tradition on his shoulders.

Every book he had read, every Rubbing Copy passed to him from Mr. Hutton’s hands;

Every piece of steganographic literature brought back from the Imperial University Library;

Every Scholar who had lived decades, centuries, millennia before him...

The weight of their words and knowledge was what held him up, allowing him to stand firm in this hall.

Beside him, however, Maggie took a step back. Richard could see her shoulders trembling.

"...My great-grandma is there."

Slightly off to the side of the nearest hall hung a smaller, more compact one.

It was a stone house in the Gael Highlands. Inside sat an old woman with an unfinished woolen cloth spread across her lap.

"I didn’t look directly," Maggie said, pulling her gaze back to her feet. "I just... I felt her."

"Feeling is fine. Looking is not."

"I understand."

On the other side, Theodore was staring blankly at his Copper Compass.

Beneath the Curtain, the Compass needle was spinning nonstop, pointing left one moment and right the next, with no stable direction.

"My Compass is broken."

"It’s not broken," Mr. Hutton reminded him. "It can’t find North here, because there is no North here."

"...Then what do I hold onto?"

"Hold onto the direction of my voice."

"Okay." Theodore clutched the Compass tighter.

The most stable of them was Edmund.

The young priest stood in his designated spot, his left hand pressed against the Silver Cross on his chest, softly reciting a passage of scripture.

His face was paler than when he had first entered the cellar, but his feet did not move, and his shoulders did not tremble.

Richard glanced over with his Spiritual Vision.

Edmund was being held up by a faint halo of light at his feet.

The passage of scripture, recited over and over by generations of priests in that small chapel on Cornwall Road, now emerged through Edmund’s physical body.

There were far more people supporting Edmund than he imagined.