《The Nether Wolf [CURRENTLY ON HIATUS!]》Chapter 23: Answers
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I'm brought into a small stone chamber located in the basement area of the building. The walls of the chamber are filled with shelves which are filled with books, leaving only thin strips of the gray stonewalls to be seen. The ceiling is similar gray toned stone that the walls are, so maybe this basement area was build before the upper brick one, or there has been some serious rebuilding. In the center of the room is a large wooden, maybe oaken, table, surrounded by chairs similar in style to the table. More stuff that doesn't match the upper levels.
A man appears from behind a pile of books laid on the table. The man is old and balding, with parse gray hair and bad posture, but doesn't seem to need to rely on a cane to walk. The wrinkled face doesn't leave you much to describe, as the jaw, eyes and overall shape of the face is hidden by wrinkles, but the proportionally oversize nose sticks out round and freckled. Bushy gray eyebrows are the only thing one can use to gauge the emotion showing on his face, which for now seems to be curiosity. Rising his eyebrows and some wrinkles with them, parts of the eyes come to view as he looks at me and asks:
"So you're the man who has caused all this commotion?"
I don't have the time to answer as the middle aged man next to me confirms that, and plead the man, who I'm now sure is Lewin, to take some guards with him because of what I did earlier. Lewin simply answers:
"And what do I do with those guards if this man can truly grab the blades of their weapons and crush them with his bare hands? Telling me horror stories about the enemy's strength and how useless our guards were when it comes to stopping him isn't the best way to assure me about the necessity of having guards to keep me safe."
The middle aged man seems defeated as Lewin's tone of voice leaves no room for arguments. He simply bows and leaves head hung low. Lewin turns his gaze towards me and begins to speak, but I cut him off before he gets the first word out:
"I'm not really an enemy."
Lewin nods to that and walks back to his seat on the other side of the table, hidden behind the pile of books. I follow him and sit on the chair right of him. Small amount of time passes in silence before he speaks:
"Didn't you have something to ask?"
That brings me back from the surreal serenity that has swallowed me up. I had been completely caught in the atmosphere of the silent chamber room. Gathering my thoughts into a set of questions, I begin asking them:
"What can you tell me about the western forest that allows no one to pass through and the temple hidden within it? And what about the eastern desert and the temple there?"
Lewin's eyes open more to that than they did to take a look at me when I came here. Frantically he starts to write down something on a piece of paper, and by looking over his shoulder; it appears to be what I just said. That could prove to be a problem for the plan of me getting answers from him. He suddenly turns around to look at me and asks:
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"What more do you know of these temples and the areas guarding them?"
A maniacal glee shines in his eyes, now more open than ever. As he waits for my answer, I ponder about telling him everything I know, as withholding information at this point is like shooting myself in the leg, not only does it get nowhere, it actually makes it harder to get anywhere. So I relent under the gaze and begin telling him about my travels from there to here, with there being all the way from my Earth. I also came into the conclusion that telling him about Ollie might as well be done at the same time.
When I have finished with my story and Lewin has gone through a small stack of papers by writing it all down, the door of the chamber gets kicked open. A guard comes in declaring:
"We have the area surrounded, release the hostage and walk towards the opposite wall! Don't dare to try anything, we have used the time you spend here to collect more than 200 men for this task! Resistance is useless!"
Lewin looks up to the guard with a frown on his face and calmly tells him:
"This man has not taken me hostage, he has not broken any rules after his short outburst at the reception table after I agreed to meet him meaning that he technically didn't even force this audience and he has helped me to come closer to solving the problem that is the clouds of calamity we have seen over the horizons. So kindly bugger off and tell the fat receptionist to bring us something to drink."
We wait in silence as the guard walks of to disperse the troops. This man, Lewin, might be quite influential figure if he can order the guardsmen to disperse like that and call the receptionist like that. After another moment passes in silence the fat receptionist brings us a wine skin filled with sweet wine and two cups. I don't participate in the drinking, but it would be good for the old man to collect his strength and thoughts, and open up his voice with small bit of wine.
Having taken the "small" bit of wine, Lewin begins talking about his theory of the moment, which is that he has no theory. My story had had no essential effect on his work, it simply was that he had gotten as far in his travel as a whole inch and my story was regarded as an another inch on that journey, meaning that it was the most impactful discovery only because the other discoveries were so small. I feel the rage building inside of me, but Lewin points for me some books, that have recorded history from the time the temple was built, or assumed to be around same time based on what he gotten from my description of the temple. So by taking the books and concentrating on the ones that talk about western area in total, I begin reading.
5-6 hours later I have read through most of the books without finding anything useful. I am currently in the middle of a tome containing the recorded writing styles of that area from all the time frames they could find. Boring and tedious, I would even be doing my math homework again rather than this. Or so I thought till I came to a certain page of the tome, one with squiggles I partially identify from my memories, but from where? It takes me a moment, but I finally remember where I had seen these red curved squiggles, on the painted shields of the black knights!
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I show Lewin these letters and ask about them, and from his answers I understood at least that these are part of an undiscovered tribe's alphabets. Or apparently undiscovered, as their writings have been recorded to be found from multiple locations, but no name for them or their nation has been found. Lewin originally thought that they could be the Huns, but my story at least solved that to be wrong. There are about 230 letters, and those are the ones that have been found and some of them remain untranslated to this day. Not even I can read them, even though I have an ancient demon teaching me to read. Taking account that one letter means one word and that the writing style is from up to down, it does sound like Asian style writing system, but it is read from left to right. Well, enough of that, I start compiling all the letters on the book to those which remind me of the shield squiggles and those that do not.
Hour or so passes as I work, cutting down the 230 to 73 ones that look the same as in my memory, form the time that I was half controlled by the wolf, uncaring because hunger and generally hazy from shock, instinct and hunger. Yeah, not the easiest, and proved to be utterly meaningless as I'm left with too many letters by the end. Well, at least I know that it is a three letter sentence, or three word-letter long sentence. But going through all of them is not possible, well it is, but figuring the right meaning isn't! As I'm clutching my hair in desperation, Lewin turns towards me and says:
"It has been late for quite sometime now, if you don't mind, I'm leaving to get some rest. I send some one more knowledgeable about those letters in here to replace me."
I mumble a yes for him.
It doesn't take long for the replacement to arrive and find me practically ripping of my hair. He walks to my pile of paper trash I an hour ago called work and starts going through them. Having stopped after a minute or so, he asks me:
"How come you haven't marked any day, moon or sun symbols in this sentence?"
"The fuck is a daymoonorsun-symbol?"
"Oh, that explains it..."
He takes a strip of paper and draws the lunar phases on it before talking:
"The tribe, which currently goes unnamed, as we have discovered nothing of them other than this writing, and I mean absolutely nothing else, no..."
"Yeah, yeah, less talking more mooning... Scratch that, just more talking about the moon."
"Yes, as you wish. The moon symbol is a letter outside the alphabet they used, to both demote and promote different letters to give then new meaning, just like the sun symbol..."
"Demote, how?"
"Well, let's take this letter which means wolf..."
My ears sharpen as I hear him say that, and I do a quick speed check to match the letter with one of my chosen ones, and it matches!
"...By butting in this lesser demote symbol, it becomes the word for a dog."
I ignore what he said by the end of his sentence and write the letter for wolf in the middle of the paper, as it was one of the letters I picked to be a possible middle letter. So for now I have that one for sure, and by using it to determine the two letters left, as not all letters could be combined to look like the squiggle in my memory. Now I'm left with 32, 11 for the upper and 21 for the lower one. Stopping the scribe from droning on and on about symbols, I pull out my new work of art, all possible combinations of earlier said letters in a row, now with the added moon symbols. The moon symbol was actually quite easy to remember, as it is either a circle, half a circle, crescent or a circle with no color in the middle, just had to remember which letter was accompanied by what. The middle one with nothing, but upper letter with higher demotion and lower letter with higher promotion. No idea about the sun or day symbols though.
The scribe goes through them and scratches of the ones that have no higher demotion or promotion form for them found yet and the ones with no translation available. By crossing off the ones that I don't think would have fit the situation, I'm left with one: The Nether Wolf and a word the scribe keeps staring at. The nether comes from demoting the word "down/under" and means in pagan beliefs what essentially is Hell, the opposite of their heaven Aether or Ether. So I was right when I called it the hellwolf, damn I'm good. But now I must know about the final letter.
"What does the final letter mean?"
"Well... According to our research it means a man or a human when normal..."
"If you know that, what is the problem then? You didn't cross it when you crossed off all the ones with no known promotion form."
"Well yes... It does have a demotion and promotion form... The destroyer and the savior... But they're heavily argued against..."
"Why?"
"...Because it is the demoted form that means the savior and the promoted form that means the destroyer..."
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