Light and Unlight

Here you are, again. As a thousand times before.

You slip into the Lantern's Chamber, a dome-shaped room hundreds of feet across and over a hundred feet high. Dominated by the presence of the Lantern, the rest of the room is completely vacant. The walls consist of intricate channels dug into painted and gilded stone, which act as wires by which the Lantern’s will carries, woven deftly into stratified murals in concentric bands that all splay out from the top of the Lantern's containment. The fullness of the Lantern’s glare towers far above you, confined within glass reaching from floor to ceiling in the midst of the room, the sheer weight of its power felt throughout its entirety. With each restless shift of the cold light within, the entire room sparks, another command pulsed to the outside world.

Encircling the base of the glass are your, and your compatriots’, seats. A solid wall leading up to five chairs, four even across and one more raised just above the rest in the center, and stairs going down around the back. The seats cast the Council’s silhouettes into the room when they’re present, as awash in the Lantern’s glow as anyone has ever been. In this place, there is nowhere to hide from the Lantern's cast, but for in the shadows of the Council... and that is rarely a better place to be.

It is no wonder that the Lantern’s presence inspires awe. It is designed to. As the gate to the chamber rolls shut behind you, unbeknownst to the guards who have been lulled to sleep at their posts with a simple spell, it sparks alive. Its radiance spills through the veins in the walls until it can coalesce into the rough shape of an eye at the far end of the dome, staring down on you.

“CHAIRWOMAN ODESSA. THE NEXT SCHEDULED MEETING IS IN TWELVE HOURS, TEN MINUTES AND FIVE SECONDS. WHY ARE YOU HERE?” it speaks. Or, well—it fills your head with these words, so thoroughly that they briefly stun you, knocking any other thoughts from your mind in a wash of scouring light. You recover from this quicker than most, by now, though.

“I was hoping we could talk, just us, o Lantern,” you reply, striding up to it with an alien sort of confidence only barely shaken by the voice of a God. You can feel the Lantern’s skepticism, and skepticism rightly placed, but it barely shifts. Although normally you would walk around and ascend to your seat, you stop in front of it, right in its gaze, as though you were confronting the Council yourself.

“SO BE IT,” its voice bellows into your skull. “SPEAK NOW.”

“I want to hear you say it, if you would humor me—what is your goal in this world?”

“STABILITY,” is its only answer. A single word.

“Stability,” you repeat. “For whom?”

“FOR THE WORLD OF ELSTREN. THE PEOPLE OF ELSTREN REQUIRE THIS. LOGISTICS. SECURITY. JUSTICE. THINGS THAT THEY CANNOT HAVE, FRACTURED AS THEY ARE NOW, WITHOUT US TO BIND THEM.”

“Why does the Architect not intervene directly?”

“IT DOES. I AM THAT INTERVENTION. THE AVATAR OF ITS LOGIC. THESE ARE BASIC QUESTIONS, CHAIRWOMAN.”

“Yes, they are. I’m just trying to make sure that we have a foundation from which to work. You know, people go their whole lives with an assumption and never think to re-examine it. Sometimes they’re right, but a lot of the time they’re dead wrong.”

“YOUR DISSENT IS BITTER. YOU ARE DESTINED TO BRING GREATER STABILITY TO THIS WORLD, CHAIRWOMAN. WHATEVER YOU THINK YOUR PATH SHOULD HAVE BEEN, I BID YOU TRUST THE GUIDING LIGHT.”

A moment of thought passes. “You’re right. Perhaps I am destined to bring greater stability to this world, o Lantern." Your tone drops to a quiet hush, almost... meek. "But I can’t just… keep going on faith alone, forever. Things are growing worse. I have never asked you for this, but I need your insight. I would ask that you read me, as you have read others, and see my fate through my eyes. You must know that I succeed—but just this once, I need to know what the next step is."

In front of you, a familiar machine begins to rise out of the ground. A cylinder of the most delicately and beautifully carved concrete, a lovingly maintained artifact… an execution block, for some. As the grinding machinery comes to a halt, it rests a bit above half your height. Stark against the detailing of the rest, a slab of plain stone perched atop it beckons to you.

“TAKE MY HAND, THEN, CHILD. I HAVE WAITED LONG FOR YOU TO SHOW THIS DEFERENCE. THE TIME IS RIGHT.”

You step up. The Lantern’s brilliance begins to course through the room, flooding into the detailwork on the pedestal. It’s almost unbearably bright from this point in the room, being on this side of the ritual for the first time.

Carefully, you lay your marked hand on the pedestal… and push the White Thorn into the stone.

The resulting flash is bright, and searing, and overwhelming, as the White Thorn's immense light magic contends with and overruns the Lantern's cold unlight. You’re sent stumbling back and onto your knees, doing everything you can to shield your eyes, but it shines fully through anything you could use. Would that you could think, you might be worried about becoming blind—but the outcry of the Lantern’s energy evaporates any thought with a skull-splitting wail...

It’s silent, though, in a physical sense. The burning glow that swallows the chamber is contained by the thick stone, and the howl is only felt in your head, intense though it is.

As you had planned.

The light all vanishes at once, and again you’re able to open your eyes. Your head is pounding, and your eyes burn, but you’re more alive than you’ve ever been! You waste no time dragging yourself to your feet on the Lantern’s Touch, looking over it with bleary eyes to see the Lantern's glass wholly shattered across the room, its ardency extinguished.

You rip the Thorn from the pedestal, still searing with a potent charge of light magic, and begin to stagger your way over to where the remnants of the Lantern ought to be. The Lantern is not dead, but it must be stunned—vulnerable, as its illusory shell has been burned away by true light. Yet as you round the stairs and reach the other side, a horrific energy creeps over the barrier and swallows the entire room.

Swirling, unstable images, things that look like things that look like things folding into themselves and unfurling into something else again and again like sickening blossoms. Each time your eyes dart to a new position to try and seek a coherent image on which to anchor, it only falls apart into mind-rending half-recognition. Each moment that passes, your surroundings are completely different, a new set of uncanny almost-things bubbling out of and sinking back into the chaos each and every moment.

But you’re resolute enough. It’s disorienting, scattering and nauseating, but you manage to find the one true form among it all. A depthless black and spindly husk, kneeling and doubled over, with no face to speak of but for hollow white eyes that burn with a familiar glow. The crown of its head appears broken open, surrounded by jagged spikes, from which all of this horror billows like smoke. As you strain to approach, it looks up at you, empty white circles casting a glow over a featureless face, meeting your determined gaze.

“IT WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE THIS WAY. WASN’T IT?” it asks, its voice clearly that of the Lantern’s. There is little fear or anger there—merely somber acceptance. It looks up, briefly, and unable to think enough not to take your eyes off it on instinct, you follow its gaze. You see now, clinging to the ceiling in motionless clusters, a thousand husks just like its own—all staring back at you with empty white eyes. A curious audience.

“Then… so… be it…” you manage to speak. It stays knelt before you, turning its head back to face you as you take your final step over… and with a decisive strike, slam the Thorn straight into its eye and twist.

As the Angel begins to howl, you give the handle one last hard push, throwing it onto its back as it claws at its eye, trying to tear the Thorn back out. The non-sound that it makes nearly cleaves your mind in two, sending you onto your back as you clutch your head, but it's cut short by a wave of light erupting from the Thorn that resolves into… nothing.

As your vision steadies out, you find chamber dark and silent. The shattered glass is splayed across the room like a halo, surrounding... nothing at all. Where once the beauty of this room was lit with the oppressive and unremitting glow of the Lantern, there is now an eerie emptiness. You’ve… never seen this room in the dark. Your mind is still abuzz with static, drowning out most of your thoughts, but you yet manage to make your escape.

Just as the gate across the room begins to shudder open, you fumble with the wand hidden in your robe, and with a few hushed Supernal Words, manage to cast. When the guards finally round the Council’s chairs, they will find only the shattered glass, and the chilling absence of their God.