Gasps flowed through the crowd—the sun witnesses mostly. Now, they entertained risky ideas. Merrin knew this. They would think, Why didn't he use the cure to save her? Was he playing with us? Is this a game? Or is he lying?
The answer was all of it. This was a game—a game for preservation. Their preservation. It was a lie. A truth. Many things all in one. He said, "I can save you all."
"Save us?"
Rein them with fear. Merrin thought and felt appalled by it. Fear—that was not an Ashman thing. To hide—to be a secretive creature, yes, but not to employ fear. Oh, what was he becoming?
"I can save you if you accept me."
"What mistsense is this?" Another, by the side, rasped. "How can you save us? How!"
"What I can do or cannot is not for you to know. To understand the limits of my person is a thing far deeper than your reach. I am more, and when I tell you that I can. Believe that."
The man startled.
Merrin beheld the vast crowd and said, "But I say the truth. This thing—this plague. The fallen brought it!"
Another collective gasp. But now, he saw fear in their eyes.
"I can save you. I saved the…" Merrin paused, a self-formed barrier against speaking held him. He had broken many times his words to the sister—making them a lie to begin. Would he do it again? I have no choice. "As I saved the witnesses from sure death, I assure you the fallen will harm no one of you that accepts me."
"Right," A mocking tone came from within the crowd. "How are you going to do that? Huh. You just want to form your own cohort. To overthrow the other leaders. That's what you want."
"Do not speak to the sunBringer!" A female witness turned, scowling with wide eyes. Imminent violence was admitted in her motions.
"Enough!" Merrin surged now the brilliant strength within him, and the power—in its immense exertion, flowed out. Bright white spewed from him, and a halo of solid light appeared behind his head. An unconscious thing? Perhaps.
That calmed the crowd—they froze, eyes dominated by the sheer whiteness spilling from him. The sudden change stunned them, and Merrin saw it clearly. The witnesses smiled—most at least. The rest—they froze. Fear—terror.
"What is?"
"How?"
"Almighty above!"
Reverence forced through fear came upon them, and many startled back. He said, "Now tell me. What need do I have for cohorts?" His gaze met the noctis-born man who asked the question. He recoiled.
"I do not need any of that. But I offer something to you. A chance to survive the fallen. Accept me, do as I say, and you will live. The opposite is damnation."
They trembled. "What clan are you from?" the question came from the crowd—fear-filled.
They want to graft my existence to the prophecy of the church. But I am not part of any clan. Merrin chose not to answer—but that turned wrong as a voice chimed from within the crowd. "He must be a part of a great clan. This is a fulfillment of the prophecy. Father above, this is true."
Merrin watched them seal themselves in assumptions—layer by layer, burying deeper, becoming a creature of reverence and stupid fanaticism. This was his doing. He made them into this. And how terrible he felt.
He never wanted this—never planned for this. But it was either this or the sure chaos between them and the witnesses. And Merrin, in the awareness that harm to the witnesses would break him, chose this path.
Never revel in it. He reminded himself.
His light still washed down, and many of the witnesses now bowed to him, offering words of submission. Some saw themselves sinners cleansed by his light. Some saw salvation in this thing he did. And even the larger slaves became infected by this religious plague.
Merrin felt cold and shifted his eyes from them, staring at a far distance. At a building not too far away. He startled. There, a man leaned against the wall, arms crossed, face a dull mask of expression. He had dark hair ending in curls, pure black eyes, wore a black unhooded cloak, and stood with such stillness he seemed one with the surrounding darkness.
Jeseries!
A bell rang, and his arm burned hot.
Excubitors!
A voice like muffled wind through a narrow chasm spoke. "Merrin Ashmen!"
The radiance about him quelled, pressed in by the abrupt pain. Merrin winced, groaned, a thing he quickly saw in quickness before the crowd. Not before them. However, a passion burned in their eyes. A strange willingness.
What?
A sun witness roared. "Protect the sunBringer!"
And chaos took the mines. There was a manic nature to it—the sun witnesses moved in disharmonious harmonry—a certain singular need filling up their actions. To protect him. Merrin was yet to see the Excubitors, but he sensed their presence.
Wait! Just then, he saw Ron, the giant of a man, rushing towards him. What? Ron slammed into Merrin—and darkness took his senses.
The definitions of each symbol are a thing of a flux nature. It changes. To grasp the meaning becomes a subject of currentness. For example, the lowerMind symbol of the cold becomes more vague in definitions in a place filled with frost. In this manner, the logic of symbolic fission is further proposed and accepted.—Collected meanings of symbols as transcribed by the hivemind.
Merrin smelled a perfumed scent—sweet, heart-warming, and soothing. A pleasant thing. Then, the rearmost memory fitted into his cognitive state. He jolted, head snapping up from whatever solidness he lay upon. Dim light sparkled below—a strange thing. He stood and gasped. Overhead was the roof—the once far ceiling of spiked stones was now mere meters away. It started him—and the natural assumption of negativity bloomed in his thoughts.
I'm I dead?
He moved a step back, fear-thrilled, and panted. He ran to the left, stumbled over a stray stone, rolled, and stopped before the edge of whatever. Below, the mines stretched meters and meters away. Like small dots of movement. Even the once impossibly vast pits seemed more like black ink drops. Small. Tiny. Insignificant. He awed at the height—the ashman in him delighting over the extent of where he perched. Ashmen climbed mountains, and so the height contented him. It also calmed the turmoil of emotions mixing within.
He heaved a breath and crawled back from the edge. An easy thing, he noticed, as the heat here, the land's warmth, was faint. Barely warming. He marveled at that, trailing his fingers over the hard surface.
How did I get here? He recalled Ron. Did he bring me here? Why? And how does he even know about this place? Where. Something this big should have never escaped my eyes. How then?
The strangeness around him pressed close like a cage, and its fear pointed like an arrow at a foreboding possibility. The ones left with the excubitors. They could be dying—fighting the guardsmen was suicide. Would that stop the sun witnesses? Merrin, for the first time, prayed for cowardice. And he wrote this prayer on the floor—in warm sand, softened by the colder nature of the peak. There, he stayed in silence, legs crossed, an ashman thing, and stared into the vaster darkness. Here, he saw clearly the dark stone walls that domed the mines and wondered at the immense power that had created them.
Caster power.
How did I get here?
He stood up, stretched his bones, and turned. He saw then the outlet path of the peak and drew realization. It was like a stone ladder, connected to a mine cave in the wall. The ladder, however, stretched high above, far further than a natural formation demanded. It was a path from the sky to the grounded caves.
"This place makes one see themselves as a product." A sweet voice said, a figure rising from the sloping ladder ground. He saw the voice owner, Catelyn, eyes blue, hair brown, curled. She wore the black queer and embroidered dress. And for some reason, she chose the slowness, a motion that brought sensual heat to Merrin.
"Catelyn." He said.
"Merrin. Merrin Ashman." She replied, lips a straight line. "An ashman in the mines of nightfell."
"Why did you bring me here?"
"I saw your man. The giant. Ron. He ran about, looking for shelter. I saw him and told him to bring you here."
"And here is?"
"Something a satisfied leader had gained. You should know him, you plagued him."
The one who had the servility ring! "Didn't you hear?" Merrin said, "A fallen is in the mines."
"And those creatures at certain levels could hold human forms."
Merrin drew on the knowledge of her words. She thinks I'm a fallen? No. She is doing something else. "What are you doing?"
Catelyn passed him—her scent…that halted his mentation for a moment. She stood at the lip of the peak and said, "I am to bargain. Oh no, I have bargained, but it seems you have no wish of fulfilling yours."