Ayaz shaded his eyes from the piercing glare of the sun. It didn’t help that the white and gold tiling of the pavilion seemed to reflect most of it back up into his face. Though, Ayaz was not fazed by the light overmuch. He was waiting for the grand priest to appear with his retinue.

Grand Priest Raihan was a stubborn and simple man in many ways, which was made clear by his insistence that Ayaz wait unnecessarily in the sun for hours every time they met. In spite of this, his intentions were well-meaning, if slightly misguided, so Ayaz had no trouble waiting.

Raihan walked from the massive open doors of the Sacred Archive. It was a formidably large building and was devoid of any outwardly aesthetic architecture. Unfaded white stone formed a vast and flat wall, which was topped by crenelation along the distantly high roof of the structure. Where there should have been windows were hateful looking arrowslits, revealing nothing except the danger of attacking unarmoured. It was made for the storage and protection of the most powerful artifacts and information in the known world, not to appease the eye.

However, Raihan’s official garb was specifically meant to appease the eye. He wore a large red turban adorned with gold and silver pendants. His robe was elaborate and billowing black cloth streaked stylishly with lines of orange and silver gilding. Five guards followed him, each wearing the masked uniform of a Sacred Archive guard.

Each guard wore steel chainmail over plate, as well as a detailed steel mask. The masks were grimacing horrors, communicating aggression and ruthlessness. Ayaz thought that they did it quite well.

Raihan made his plodding way down the wide flight of stairs leading down from the entrance. As always, he stopped just before leaving the shade cast by the building. The two guards who were watching Ayaz broke off and joined the others behind Raihan.

“Again, my friend?” Raihan sounded exasperated.

“Yes. Fourth time.” Ayaz said.

“I know it’s the bloody- tsk. Come in.” Raihan waved at Ayaz to follow him. “Why are you this persistent? It’s never going to work.”

“That’s what you always say, Raihan. But who knows, it might work today.” Ayaz held himself regally. He stood a head taller than Raihan and looked down at him kindly as they walked side by side up the stairs.

Raihan scoffed. “I have a hard time believing you, lord protector. I am beginning to suspect that something is a bit wrong upstairs with you.”

Ayaz nodded docilely and politely avoided the gibe. “I will need all the usual provisions, please."

Suddenly, Ayaz's mind lost focus. Darkness crept around his vision as it blurred. He closed his eyes slowly and listened for what he knew was coming.

A stranger is at the door father, and-

Ayaz rubbed his face, groaning into his hands. “No. Not yet.” He whispered desperately.

Raihan turned to Ayaz with a concerned look on his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, I apologise.” Ayaz composed himself quickly and jogged up the last few steps. “Just some indigestion, It’s fine. Please, lead the way.”

Raihan looked Ayaz up and down sceptically but continued on.

They passed through secured rooms and hidden corridors in order to get to the main room, which is where the guards left them. The room was vast and dark. A scant amount of wall torches helped to show the scale of the place, outlining distant walls and an unknowable depth of shelves filled with documents and artifacts. Distantly, a brightly lit space lighted the way for traversal.

“Did I ever tell you why I hate this place, Ayaz?” Raihan said conversationally as they travelled towards the light.

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell you again. It’s because no matter how well you manage this place, how well kept the documents are, and how clean the artifacts, you will never receive any recognition.”

“How terrible.”

“I know! I have spent decades running this place, and what do I get? Fear. Fear and maybe some respect from the peasantry. That’s it. Nobody really cares if I live or die, how my day was, if my robes look well-fitting or not, and why would they? I go into the big scary building and occasionally come out with some sparkly bloody sceptre and tell them to be good little boys and girls and then I’m back into my hovel, forgotten.”

“I wouldn’t call this a hovel, Raihan. And the higher-ups are always thankful for your work.”

Raihan scoffed. “Like you’re thankful to the servant who remembers to keep your bath warm, or waves the flies away from your shit.”

“Like the servant who tames the wild beast living under the palace or takes the dangerous trek up the mountain to get medicine for the royal family.”

“Sure, maybe you're right. But still…”

They walked in silence until they came upon the open space beyond the shelves. There, the rotting husks of twelve ships sat. They were held up with wooden struts that kept them from touching the floor. In front of those ships stood five pedestals, each holding its own artifact. The two men walked past the pedestals and appreciated what occupied them together, as they had done every time.

“Has this one changed colour?” Raihan pointed at a rectangular object made of dark crystalline material. It was about the length of a forearm and came to a pyramid-shaped point on one end. If one looked deeply into the surface you could see how subtle shifts in the firelight changed its colour from deep brown to black to deep blue and so on.

“No, of course not. It just changes depending on where you look at it,” Ayaz said.

“You’re right! I never suspected that you were such a learned man.” Raihan gestured to the artifact. “A fascinating object. The Stone of Sacrifice. The longer one touches it the hotter it gets, with no known limit to how hot it can get. Very dangerous.”

“Hmph.” Ayaz smiled and touched the stone. It was warm, comfortingly so. He took his hand away and walked towards the blue marble ball on the far end of the pillars.

He ducked and a thin metal ring the size of a cart's wheel flew from a pedestal and into the darkness above them as fast as a falcon in flight.

“Oh, there must be the beginnings of a fire somewhere in the city. Did you know that the Fire Disk actually shoots-“

“Yes, I do know. I have seen it at work.” Ayaz stood in front of the smooth marble ball. It was an opaque light blue colour, with veins of dark blue running across its surface.

Raihan stood next to Ayaz and spoke with real concern. “We both know that I cannot stop you, but I think that you should because this road will lead to nowhere. I can see that it becomes more painful every time, and I fear that either you will wake up with nothing once again or that you won’t wake up at all.”

“It is always ok to be afraid,” Ayaz said in a monotone voice without pulling his gaze from the ball. He touched it tenderly with both hands.

His eyes misted with blue, and he saw-

**********

He stood in an endless expanse of white. Blizzard snow flew past him and through him, but the cold reached him, touched his heart. It emanated from the wooden house just beyond the white.

The house was small but warm, comforting. In it was a large man sitting at a desk, carving little wooden animal houses. The man was cold, in spite of the warmness of the house. The large man shivered and hummed quietly to himself.

He greeted the large man, who stood up and turned around furiously.

The large man said in their language, “For the fourth time I tell you to leave my home. I am tired to the bone of you and your dead offering. No a thousand times, take that as answer to your questions.”

“Baetha, please. I understand that I haven’t been able to convince you, but I need you to think about if the course you have chosen is in your best interest. I know you just want to be left alone, but is that truly the life that you want? You will be able to fulfill yourself more fully if you are helping others. Doing the task that you were given at the beginning.”

Baetha whittled away at the curvature of a roof, his face expressionless.

“You selfish oaf.” He lost his composure, knowing that maintaining it would be fruitless. “You idiot.” He stood in front of Baetha, passing though the table so that he could not ignore him. “Mother told you to do one thing. To protect and foster humanity! You sit here and do what? Build toilets for forest animals? Sleep with bears? You spit in her face with every day you let humanity fester and turn in on itself.”

“And where is she, boy? She left us for the clouds. If she gave a boar's snout she would have come back.”

“She loved us. Loves us. You know her ways are her own, but she will return. She wishes humanity to be ready for her, that is our job.”

“Pft.” Baetha waved his hand dismissively. “She can do it herself if she cares so much.”

He raged for several minutes to an uncaring audience.

Eventually, he sat down, weary. Baetha could see the top of his head poking through the surface of the desk.

“I had a vision today. It was much earlier than it usually is.” He spoke without thinking, projecting his thoughts into the air before his inevitable severing and failure. “I don’t know what it means, really. I guess I’ll just go through the usual motions, pushing and pulling in different places.”

Baetha furrowed his brow. “Visions? What visions?”

“Of my past. Of time passed. Mind fluff, nothing really.”

“You know as well as me that visions always mean something. Come, spit it out.”

“There is nothing to say, Baetha. Leave it.”

“Just ‘cause you’re a stubborn bastard, doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Please.” Baetha pushed the desk out of the way and kneeled in front of him. “What’s wrong?”

He tucked his head down between his legs and sobbed. “I’m coming apart. Everything goes on but me, I’m wearing thin Baetha. I can’t do it for much longer. I just can’t.”

Baetha frowned sadly and put his hand out to comfort his brother, put it passed through him.

He sobbed for a while in a silent house.

Then, just as he was beginning to fade away, Baetha whispered softly, “Fine. I will help you Jukman, but only if-“

**********

Jukman opened his eyes and took a shuddering breath. After a fit of coughing, he began to laugh uncontrollably with relief.

“Has he gone completely mad? Guards, he may be dangerous!” Raihan was standing over Jukman’s bed in a bright room somewhere within the Sacred Archive. He had changed out of his public uniform and into his more comfortable living clothes, namely a shirt, pants, and slippers.

“I am not mad. Be calm,” Jukman said joyously, “I am simply happy.”

“You have been catatonic for hours, not to mention the fact that you soiled yourself. This was much worse than previous trips, Ayaz.”

Jukman slid out of his bed gracefully and stood close to Raihan. He put both hands on the portly man’s shoulders and said, “That was the last time. And call me Jukman.”

Raihan stared blankly until realisation fell upon him. Fear, awe, adoration, pride, hope, flitted across his face. He fell onto his knees and gestured frantically for the guards to do the same.

Jukman tutted. “Please, I am no God. Simply a shard of one. Stand.” They all followed his command. “I will need this revelation to stay between us. More specifically within the Sacred Archives. It will be my headquarters until I have arranged a peaceful transition of power.”

“Surely the emperor won’t question you?” Raihan was filling his role as advisor quickly, as was his nature.

“Perhaps not him, but the nobility very well may. Yes, I could easily take hold. But it would be much more efficient and sustainable if the transfer was peaceful. A transition in which I obtained the love of the people rather than the fear. If love is possible, always take love. Trust me.”

Raihan nodded sagely “So, not meaning to sound too forward, I assume that you have left your exile to save us, um…” Raihan looked at Jukman questioningly.

He chuckled lightly and said, “Call me Brother. And yes, I’m here to save you. To save everyone.”