2. Discovery in Atlantis
Following the trail dictated by the Priestess of Avalon,
Eirik set his course towards the sunken island. The coordinates of that
forbidden realm throbbed in his mind with the precision of an astrolabe; it was
a knowledge that the darkness had not dared to touch, a map etched in fire
within the corners of his devastated memory. It seemed his skills as a vitki
had survived the shipwreck, allowing him to elude the wrath of RΓ‘n, the sea
goddess, whose frothing claws always lie in wait for those who dare to sail her
domains. His seafaring talents remained like intact supplies upon a ghost ship,
his only weapons to fulfil the promise that seared his chest: to find, at any
cost, the trail of his beloved.
My heart constricted as I witnessed how barren the landscape of my past truly was. From that terrifying night, only tatters of shadows remained. During the crossing, the silence of the ocean became a complicit witness to my delirium; at every moment, I thought I perceived in the distance the lament of a lady, a whisper that my parched soul mistook for the voice of my love. Yet reason warned me that these were naught but shipwrecked echoes, voices of a people devoured by time centuries ago, trapped now within the invisible gears of the Great Wheel. Perhaps they were merely the daughters of Aegir, the nine waves, playing with my sanity as they dragged me towards the abyss.
Little by little, the murmur of the swell began to weave
words in a strange tongue, a language of salt and oblivion that Eirik had never
heard before. However, through an uncanny alchemy, his mind managed to assemble
those sounds, granting them meaning whilst the grey mist continued to orbit
within him, clouding his understanding with its persistent embrace.
From the depths, like a chant rising from the very rock,
voices emerged from the abyss:
‘Jioru HΓ‘dhlan kai HΓ‘dhla-ΓΌn,
land of Atlas and the
Atlantean folk,
neisi inΓs hΓ‘klan suΕ ekua,
great island of the water
circles,
jΓ‘inies nimΓ jroinun,
lost in the memory of time…’
Eirik began to discern a conversation between beings
belonging to different worlds. Their messages appeared and vanished in
frequencies that glided over the ocean’s surface; distinct tongues intertwining
like silver threads synchronised by an invisible hand. Traces of thick mist and
salt water danced in unison before his eyes, tracing a mystical cartography
upon the swell. Those strange messages, born from the whisper of the foam,
inexplicably marked the path he was to take and the threshold he was destined
to cross.
I felt reluctant to let myself be swallowed once more by
the abyss. The memory of that terrifying night still throbbed in my temples; I
feared that RΓ‘n’s nets were waiting beneath the surface to claim what the
shipwreck could not collect. I did not wish to be dragged again towards a
strange world, dark and terrible, where breath is extinguished and the soul is
lost. But upon making contact with the water, the sensation was different. The
daughters of Aegir, who had previously seemed furious to me, now cradled my
course with an unknown gentleness. I felt that the only path to my safe harbour
was precisely this: a trail marked by a faint light in the distance, a
flickering but revealing ray that cleaved the submarine gloom.
That light, which soon grew potent and blinding, dissolved
the last shadows of his doubt. It was no longer a mere reflection, but the
beacon of a realm both dreamlike and real, a clarity inviting communion between
two worlds. The gates of Atlantis swung wide before him, defying the laws of
time and gravity.
Guided only by his instinct and the echo of those
voices—which were now fading behind the misty mask rolling over the sea—Eirik
finally managed to cross the threshold of the submerged kingdom.
No sooner had he breached the entrance than the water
turned dense and gelid, heavy with a predatory presence. From the crevices of
the abyssal rock emerged a colossal shadow that blocked his path: the
Chimerical Spider, a nightmare horror whose obsidian carapace was encrusted
with crystalline barnacles and bioluminescent algae. Its multiple crimson eyes
burned with an ancient malice and its long tail, similar to that of a dragon,
lashed with lethal tension. As he locked gazes with the beast, Eirik felt a
shiver that did not come from the ocean, but from an absolute and frozen void,
as if a breath of hoarfrost had blown directly into his soul.
With ghastly speed, the creature launched towards him a web
of submarine steel filaments, a translucent mesh designed to imprison the
intruder within its nets of oblivion. In that instant, the mark on Eirik’s
cheek began to pulse with a white, electric heat. The scar in the shape of
Sowil emanated a vibrant luminescence that began to detach from his skin,
mingling with the dense water of the abyss.
Eirik surrendered to the flow of the rune. Around his body, a nebula of white and ethereal light began to form, an underwater mist that refracted the shimmering glints of the cave. To the spider's eyes, Eirik's figure decomposed into a thousand impossible reflections, like a broken mirror beneath the sea. The web of filaments passed harmlessly through, piercing the cloud of light where the vitki had stood a second before.
Taking advantage of the monster's confusion, as it struck
blindly at the sand making the stone creak, Eirik slid like a white shadow
within his own mist. The conscious nebula enveloped him, erasing his presence
and allowing him to pass unnoticed beneath the very belly of the beast. While
the spider frantically searched for its prey, Eirik was already on the other
side of the threshold, leaving behind only a trail of electric particles that
dissolved in the darkness, like the echo of a sun that refuses to be devoured
by the abyss.
I remained on my knees upon the sea floor for a few
moments, my chest heaving and my hand still numb from the trace of the white
heat that had saved me. Shortly after, I attempted to resume my march, but my
strength vanished before the immensity of the trench. I let myself be swept
away by the current, allowing the gravity of the abyss to guide my fall; it was
not a sinking, but an absolute surrender to the will of the ocean.
However, that descent ended abruptly. In the blink of an
eye, the unbearable pressure of the ocean vanished and the water retreated
upwards, curving into a dome of liquid sapphire that now served as the sky. I
found myself surrounded by a dawn that ignited the tops of the white poplars;
Atlantis breathed again, though with that breath of abandonment of a kingdom
that has been left waiting for its masters.
Dazed, I thought I recognised in the whisper of the leaves
the peace of the island of my dreams. I perceived that the pentacle—the only
sacred link that still rested upon my chest after the loss of Yeadhr's
earring—was beginning to vibrate and warm against my heart. Perhaps the
priestess erred in her prophecy; perhaps my journey ended here. With this
conviction, I hopefully extracted one of the golden seeds to bury it in the
moist soil. And I waited to see what would happen.
The seed began to germinate, a delicate green shoot growing
in oscillating movements. However, in an instant, the stalk stopped and
snapped, falling dry and withered to the ground amongst the stones and grass,
its incipient green turning to a silvery grey. The shadow cast by its form drew
a crack upon the surface, which began to open, pushing the dry blades of grass
to either side. And at the bottom of the cavity, a small leather pouch covered
in dry moss appeared.
Its contents could be guessed by the faint shimmer of a luminous silhouette outlined on the surface of the small pouch. Sliding the cord that kept it closed, I pulled from within a brilliant metallic object that instantly illuminated my face with a light both weak and potent, flickering with increasingly slow pulses. Finally, only a steady light remained, covering the entire surface in silence, and in a flash, it went out completely. Between my hands lay the silver triquetra the Priestess of Avalon had spoken of, still warm and vibrant!
With a gleam of joy in my eyes, I placed the pendant around
my neck, securing it with the leather pouch’s cord. In my chest, my heart began
to beat at an accelerated pace and, suddenly, I felt hundreds of images
downloading into my head; memories of the past that had been cast aside in some
forgotten corner and now seemed to shine anew, with the strength of a breeze
that makes the mist disperse and vanish completely until a sharp vision of the
horizon remains. I could not believe what was happening to me, and I looked
again, astonished, at that extraordinary metallic piece that seemed to have
come to life for an instant, inundating me with its latent breath.
But the effect was not to be fulfilled. An unforeseen thrumming
took root in his jaw. The scar upon his left cheek, carved in the shape of the
ancient Sowil, pulsed with a dry heat. It was as if the midday sun had focused
upon those three strokes of his skin to warn him that the air had, quite
suddenly, grown too heavy and too still. All at once, ink-stained clouds buried
the entire orb and, in the heart of that blackness, the silhouette of an
immense, gaunt hand was drawn. Though human in appearance, the extremity ended
in disproportionate nails, black as coal and sharp as birds of prey’s talons.
That accusing finger, long and gelid as death, pointed with rigour towards the
ground in an imperious gesture that seemed to condemn the world to the abyss.
Eirik’s blood ran cold; it was not darkness that the hand projected, but an
absolute void that devoured existence itself.
The firmament closed in
absolute gloom whilst an unusual black rain began to dissolve, in dense
cascades, the profile of the mountains that had previously been silhouetted
against the blue. The peaks merged into one another, forming a greyish,
translucent mass that plunged into currents towards an invisible and infinite
netherworld.
Eirik’s vision was suddenly extinguished, and the heavens
became an absolute void, as if the immeasurable abyss of Ginnungagap had
swallowed him in a single gulp. The music of remote stars remained
reverberating in his skull, an intermittent echo that eventually deafened him.
The tide of memories that had just surfaced retreated with the same celerity,
sucked away by that nothingness.
Eirik remained there, like a strange wanderer in a
landscape without memory, with the bitter certainty that his past, so close and
yet so unreachable, had been denied him once again. Upon his chest, the silver
triquetra fell silent, whilst the young vitki sank into a blackness where time
and space ceased to have meaning.
- I. OVERTURE: My Name is Eirik
- II. EXORDIUM: "MYTHOS", Symphony of a Wandering Soul
- III. RESONANCE: My Story and the Secret of the Shadows
- IV. PRELUDE: Eirik's Dirth
- CHAPTER 1: Eirik and the Secret of Avalon
- CHAPTER 2: Discovery in Atlantis
- CHAPTER 3: In the Shadows of Hades
- CHAPTER 4: The Pull of Niflheim
- CHAPTER 5: The Icy Breath of Yule
- CHAPTER 6: Return to Mabon
- CHAPTER 7: Eirik and the Mystery of the Sirens
- CHAPTER 8: The Mirror of the Lake of Shadows
- CHAPTER 9: Finale
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