Then Wataru noticed a candlelit staircase descending from where the statue stood. Without hesitating, he proceeded down the steps. He felt elated, with not a shred of fear remaining. It was like he really had become the main character in a game of Eldritch Saga.
At the bottom, the stairs opened out into a wide chamber. Curtains of crimson velvet hung covering windows. There was a line of chairs with high backs sitting against the wall. The floor was polished, so that Wataru could see his own face in the reflection. Here and there were set tall candles in clusters of three. Everything smelled of wax.
Wataru looked up to see numerous paintings covering the ceiling. But the light from the candles was too dim to make out the details. He saw the vague forms of animals, flowers, and trees—wait, that thing with the strange corkscrew head! It’s a gimblewolf!
Wataru was standing there, mouth hanging open, when a voice called out to him from a distance.
“Wataru, this way.”
Startled, he looked around, and then saw, at the far end of the chamber, the old wizard seated at a candlelit desk.
“Wizard!” Wataru ran over. It felt like he was meeting an old friend. He was so happy he almost wanted to give him a big hug. But when Wataru approached, the wizard slowly lifted one bony hand and said, “Fool.”
He smacked Wataru on the forehead.
“Wizard?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. This won’t do.”
“Huh?”
“Your performance. You’re faring far worse than Mitsuru did. Far worse.”
Why? Wataru fell silent in confusion. He thought he had answered the four Wards’ questions quite well.
As though he had read Wataru’s mind, the old man said with a pained expression, “That was merely average. You lack originality.”
“O-originality?”
“Yes. And you were wrong to hesitate at the entrance to the cave. Times like that, you have to move quick. I’d say you lack decisive power, that’s what.”
No way! Wataru staggered and sat down on the floor.
The old wizard produced a long quill pen and a clipboard from somewhere. Wataru blinked, sure he must be seeing things, but no, it was a clipboard.
“Let’s see, your total score is…”
The quill pen—it must have been nearly a foot long—moved swiftly and precisely in the wizard’s hand across the paper.
“Vision Suitability Percentile…thirty-five percent. Special Ability: Zero. Constitution is average at best. And for Bravery…the lowest possible score.”
“Th-th-that can’t be!” Wataru said, clinging to the wizard’s bony knee. He received another loud smack on the forehead.
“As a result you have been assigned the rank of Novice Brave, Prototype I. Your equipment will be provided.”
The wizard tucked the writing quill behind his ear, and with his empty hand he gave Wataru a pat on the head. Something like a firecracker went off, showering sparks on the floor.
“Stand.”
When he stood, Wataru found his clothes had changed. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of undyed silk—without collar or cuffs on the sleeves. His trousers were dark blue and baggy. His boots were sturdy and laced with leather straps. Only those resembled what Mitsuru had been wearing. Everything else was definitely a grade down, if not several grades down. Instead of a leather belt around his waist, he found something like a hempen cord had been wrapped around him several times.
“This…is my equipment?”
“That it is. Congratulations.”
“What about my weapon? Even a Novice Brave must get a weapon.”
“When you return to the surface, yes.”
The wizard put pen and clipboard away inside his robes, and then with an audible exertion, he stood up from his chair. “I will be leaving for the surface now.”
“Leaving? What about me? Is there another trial?”
The wizard scowled. “You do know that for every request, there is a price?”
“You mean like, money?”
“Not all prices are measured in coins. Sometimes you must offer something larger to receive.”
Again, Wataru felt a tremor run through the ground. It was still distant. But it was getting closer. Something big—no, huge—was coming this way.
“I’ve heard your request, and the price they ask is a game where the stakes are your life,” the wizard said simply. “Should you escape, you win. You’ll have your life, and your wishes. Should you be captured, you’ll lose. And your wishes will not be granted. But that will be the least of your worries.”
With a thunderous crash, the walls of the chamber came crumbling down in four spots. The four Wards! They had destroyed the walls with their axes, the way a child destroys a sand castle on the beach. They’re coming for me!
“There are many exits,” the wizard said, pointing around the room. Wataru noticed numerous doors lining the far walls.
“Find the exit and make your escape.”
“But how will I know which one is the right one?”
Axes raised, the four Wards charged.
“Good luck,” the wizard said with a grin. “Remember the song of the birds in the Northwood.”
Then the wizard disappeared, leaving only a thin trail of mist where he stood. The mist formed into the shape of a white bird, and was swept upward toward the darkened ceiling.
“W-wait!”
But there was no time. The four Wards were upon him. Wataru screamed and ran for one side of the room, but his legs were like jelly, and he tripped and fell. Where he had been standing moments before, the great axe of the Snow-God came crashing down, biting deep into the stone of the floor. A jagged crack shot through the floor like a lightning bolt.
“Help me!”
Wataru had always laughed at the people in movies and comic books who screamed for help when it was painfully obvious that no one would hear them, or even think of coming to their rescue. He now realized how little he knew. At times like this, you had to scream.
He struggled to his feet and lurched out of the way as another axe—this one belonging to the Dawn-God—smashed into the floor where he had fallen. Even in such dire circumstances, he could tell the statues apart by the color of the single shining eye in the middle of each statue’s forehead.
Okay, run away. But to where?
The chamber was long and rectangular, and the sides were lined with countless doors. He had no way of knowing which one of them was the exit. Do I have to open every single one in order?
Wataru ran in a panic, and the four Wards gave chase, the floor shaking under their massive feet. Where they stepped, the floor stones broke into shards and scattered everywhere. Wataru saw the destruction out of the corner of his eye and it made his hair stand on end.
Still, as he ran, he noticed something. After one of the four Wards charged and swung his axe, it took him time to change directions. Not only that, but it seemed like the one who charged set the target for the other three. Where the first statue’s axe fell, so too would follow the weapons of the other three. If he could just avoid the first axe, he would have plenty of time to run around before the next attack.
Right! Wataru ran for the far wall of the chamber, the four Wards bounding after him. The heavy armor they wore clanged and echoed off the walls. Wataru only dared look around once, to find they were right behind him.
Only a few feet away from the far wall, Wataru spun and jumped toward the line of doors along the side of the room. The Dusk-God’s axe swung down, aiming for the place where Wataru had been seconds before. While the axe was coming down, he was picking himself up and grabbing the doorknob closest to him.
The door opened easily. He ran into a small, square room, lit by a soft glow, like moonlight. There were no features in the room, save a bronze statue sitting in the very middle.
Wataru breathlessly approached the statue. He tapped it. It was metal, and very cold to the touch. It looked like the statue of a fawn. It looks exactly like Bambi!
br /> What’s a statue of Bambi doing in a place like this?
There was no exit that Wataru could see. He groped around, but all he could feel was the cool, seamless stone of the floor and walls. There was no ladder to the surface or rope hanging down from the ceiling. He had to assume that he had chosen the wrong door. It was time to try the next one.
Wataru opened the door a crack and cautiously peered out into the chamber. The four Wards, having lost their quarry, stood in a circle at the very middle of the room. Their eye-lights were dimmed. Wataru took a moment to catch his breath. Then, summoning his courage, he slid out through the door. But the moment he took his first step back into the chamber, the eyes of the statues flashed bright, and the chase was on again.
Wataru ran close to their blades, dodging aside at the last moment, then took the few moments while they regrouped to try another door. He did this again and again, but every door he opened was much the same. They all led to small, square rooms with the statue of an animal—each one different. He saw an elephant, a tiger, a great fish, a bird, an ox, a snake, and even a frog.
As he left each room he would leave the door open. He didn’t want to visit the same room twice by mistake. As he ran around, Wataru began to falter—and not on account of nerves. He was exhausted. It was getting harder each time to avoid the swinging blades of the four Wards. If this went on much longer, he would collapse.
By now he had opened every door there was to open. And, he was sad to discover, there was no obvious exit.
This isn’t fair, he thought, gasping for breath. He stopped running for a moment, feeling dizzy, and the Wards immediately turned and charged toward him. They don’t get tired at all. The longer this goes on, the bigger their ad- vantage. What do I do?!
—Remember the song of the birds in the Northwood.
The wizard’s parting words of advice. Wataru remembered the pretty song of the birds, like ocarinas playing in harmony.
Desperately, he tried to remember what they had said. Something about questions and answers…I think I’m past that part, though. And the Wayfinder, yawning. And what was that about going home? Hop on home? What an odd thing to say…
And then it hit him.
Hop.
A light went on in Wataru’s head. The frog! The frog is the way home! He forced his weary legs to move one last time, jumping away from another blow of the Wards’ axes, and running up the side of the room, staying close to the wall. Where was it? Where?! Wataru breathed ragged breaths as he ran, checking the contents of each room he passed.
Found him!
In the last room to the right sat a statue of a massive, plump bullfrog. Wataru leapt into the room and rolled to the statue’s base. Bong! went his head on the bronze foot of the frog. Sparks flew before his eyes. “Ouch!”
Wataru was holding his pounding head in his hands when he heard a heavy clunking noise. The base under the statue began to slide forward. He looked closer and saw something very interesting—where the base was a moment before there was now a large opening. He could see the rungs of a ladder descending into the darkness.
I found it! Wataru rubbed his head and began to climb down the ladder. It wasn’t that long, ending before the twelfth rung. Wataru stepped off the ladder onto soft, damp earth.
He was surrounded by darkness. Above him he could see something like a cave mouth, and through that—stars! Wataru looked up to see something shining like hundreds of stars above him. Occasionally they would flit from one side to the other in a seemingly random fashion. Fireflies? Perhaps these were the fireflies of this world.
By the wan glow they cast, he could see that the cave continued on, deeper. The walls were of jagged stone, and the floor was wet here and there with rivulets of water coming out of the rock.
The cave twisted and turned but eventually began to climb. It seemed to be heading for the surface—which gave Wataru much hope. He began to walk faster. At last the cave tunnel ended, and he found himself in a small courtyard paved with flagstones. In the middle, a single ray of light stabbed straight down from above. It seemed to be centered on a blue symbol of some sort drawn on one of the flagstones. Wataru felt his body grow lighter. He seemed to be walking on clouds.
Then, he blinked. He was standing in the middle of the forest, back in front of the entrance to the Cave of Trials. He could hear the birds singing. The sun shone through the trees at an angle, and a faint blue mist was beginning to creep through the woods.
The entrance to the cave was already closed, leaving only a featureless lump of rock in its place. He touched it. No rumbling in the ground. No southern accent. Nothing.
Wataru followed the path back through the woods to the place where the five huts stood. The wizard was nowhere to be seen, and Wataru saw smoke rising—not from the first hut, nor the second, but from the chimney of the third one.
Chapter 3
The Novice Brave
Wataru walked straight up to the door and knocked. Immediately, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. The door opened and the old wizard stuck out his head. Wataru gasped. He was crying.
“Y-you’ve come home at last!” the old man said, sniffling. He wiped away the tears with one hand, and waved Wataru inside. “It took you quite a while to solve the riddle, didn’t it?”
Wataru sat on a sturdy chair hewn from a single tree stump, and watched the old wizard sit down and brush the tears off his cheeks.
At the first hut, he was angry. At the second, he was kind, and now…
“Um, Wizard?”
“What? If you’re wondering about your weapon, I was about to explain that to you.”
“Well, before that…”
“Ah, yes, an introduction is long overdue. My name is Lau. You may call me Wayfinder Lau. Though I suppose I’m more of a way-shower than a wayfinder, but no matter. Yes, I am a wizard by trade, but my role here is to serve as a guide to Travelers such as yourself. You’ve been through the Cave of Trials, you’ve passed the test, so you may call me Wayfinder…actually, why don’t you call me Lord Wayfinder. Yes, I think that will do quite nicely.”
“Yes, Lord Wayfinder,” Wataru said, speaking quickly so that he wouldn’t be cut off again. “Just let me ask one question. Does your mood change depending on which house you appear in?”
Wayfinder Lau stroked his narrow chin with a bony hand. “What, you just realized this now? You are slower than Mitsuru.”
Wataru winced. That one hurt. “But I’m right, right?”
“Quite, yes. That is the way of this village. The Watcher is bound to guide travelers to the best of his ability. Should I let my own emotions get the better of me, and become lax in my duties, then Travelers would needlessly suffer. That’s why each hut is set with its own mood. That way I’ll never be confused. I know I’m to be mad when I’m in the Hut of Anger, I know I’m to be kind when in the Hut of Kindness. And…”
“Let me guess, this is the Hut of Tears?”
“No, Wataru, the Hut of Sorrow.” The Wayfinder blinked glistening eyes. “Tears can fall even when one is joyous, no? One can even cry from laughing too much. No, I cry in sorrow—because you disappoint me so.”
Wataru sighed. “Sorry.”
Wayfinder Lau walked across the room, his robes dragging behind him, delicately picking up a woven basket from the corner. He placed it on the log table before Wataru. “Your weapon is inside. Open it.”
Wataru’s heart beat in his chest, and his hands began to tremble.
The lid of the basket was light and opened easily—there was no lock or fastening to bother with.
A sword sat askew at the bottom of the basket. It was sheathed in a worn, grimy scabbard. The blade was no more than a foot in length, maybe shorter. The aged leather straps wrapped around its handle were so loosely bound they seemed ready to fall off at any moment.
“The Brave’s Sword,” Wayfinder Lau said, looking up.
“This…is my sword?”
The Brave’s Sword? More like
the Coward’s Pig-Sticker.
“What, you find it lacking?”
“It doesn’t look too, um, powerful.”
“Of course not. And neither do you. A fitting match, I’d say.”
Wayfinder Lau sat across from Wataru and rested his hands on the table. “The Brave’s Sword is no mere blade. It grows together with its wielder. As it is now, it is merely a reflection of your own ability and preparedness—or should I say inability and lack of preparedness. As the sword is weak, frail, dull, and altogether unattractive, so too are you weak, frail, dull, and displeasing to the eye. So you see, Wataru, it’s not the sword’s fault.”
The old man gave Wataru a sharp slap on the forehead. “Take it in your hand, look at it closely. See the design on the hilt?”
The Brave’s Sword was even lighter than the basket it came out of. A lightweight… like me. The blade seemed to drift in his hand, unreliable, without purpose. Like me.
The hilt bore the same star-pattern he had seen at the entrance to the cave. At each of the five points of the star small holes about the size of a tablet of aspirin had been bored into the hilt.
“This mark—I saw it on the entrance to the Cave of Trials.”
“Ah, so you did notice. Knowing you, I was afraid I was going to have to point it out.”
Wayfinder Lau explained that the star pattern was a sigil—the symbol of power of the goddess who ruled Vision. “If one of due strength completes the sigil, then they will be able to work magic, create powerful Wards, fly through the air, and command the powers of water and wind. You will encounter this sigil in many places as you travel through Vision. Remember that when you wish to use the Mirror of Truth, you must be at one of these locations with the sigil for it to work.”
“The Mirror of Truth?”
Wataru seemed to remember having heard that word before. Mitsuru…
—When I looked into the Mirror of Truth…
That’s right! When he came to get me from Vision, he talked about using a mirror…
“It seems you know of it already.”
Wataru mentioned what Mitsuru had said, and Wayfinder Lau nodded deeply. “Travelers from your world can use the Mirror near a star sigil to create a link between Vision and the other world—a Corridor of Light. Travelers may pass along the corridor to go back to their world, but only for a very short amount of time. Should they not return to Vision before the way is closed, then they will not be able to return home, nor will they be allowed back into Vision. They will be stuck forever in the Vale of Eternity—the gap between two worlds—lost vagrants in time.”