Time soon became a thing of annoying furtherance. The passing of which brought the sure knowledge of the dying witnesses. He didn't know for sure, but being here, in the heat and dark, one's mind became a thing of drifting imaginations. He could see them—moeash stabbed by a giant pierce stone. Ron, crushed between boulders.
Ah, the need for patience. The need he lacked with the fugacious nature of time. He grabbed a stone, hurling it at a wall. The echoing of stone against stone filled the room, sending mild shivers down his body. What if something was here? The fleeting thought.
He sighed—openly. "Almighty, lord father above." Merrin knelt, moistening his fingers with spit. He wrote, on hot earth, his prayer. "Please keep the ones that you have given me alive. Protect them as you have protected me." All in Ashman glyphs.
He slouched against the stele, looking out into nothing. The roof, a thing he once thought a means for jumped escape, turned out walled. Stone ceilings, made from tumbled rocks. From the collapse, or an originality.
Briefly, his eyes shifted to the writings on stone. A word came back, Taka, a name. Isn't that the name of one of the saints? Merrin thought, shutting his eyes. The saints of the theocracy…What's such a name doing here? Did the church make the stele? Maybe. Or was it a creation of night? He turned to the side—staring at a far wall. This place is old, that's for sure. An ashman knew these things. Maybe a hundred years old….His thoughts drifted. The coming tiredness.
Maybe a little rest then…
"Huulp…"
He jerked within…
"Heuulp!"
Whose's that?
"Heullp!"
That sounds familair…
"MIST ME! Somebody HELP!"
Merrin rolled up, gasped. Somebody! Instincts took hold, and in a movement of pure swiftness, he crossed the chamber, reached a wall that was fenced by tumbled stones. Large ones. One he suspected came with his descent.
"MIST ME…AHHH!" The voice rasped in audible pain.
Merrin trembled, rubbing his fingers over the stone. Looking, searching for an entry. None. Come on! Come on! He reached for a rock fitted into a segment of others, pulled. It weathered his strength, releasing a loud groan. Come on!
"AHHHH" A scream.
Mist this! Merrin surged that awesome power and saw the flooding greyness into reality. Symbols—faded, weak ones as dictated by the minuscule force amount tunneled. He saw the fabric wind symbol, grabbed it, both hands, and felt the weak resistance. Like a push in his mentation, one that he bore down with adequate force. He stepped back, breathed, and swung down. The wind pulled in accordance—the weave smashed into the solidity.
A boom rumbled, and Merrin was sent hurling back from the collision. Wind thrown. Stone fired in chaotic streams. This drew upon a familiarity—the pain. A companion at this point. He coughed, rested his knee on the floor, and crawled through the blast zone. Soot dust filled the air, drifting like rain on wind. An issue for anyone else, not him.
Merrin gripped a stone outcrop on the smoky barricade and pulled. He rolled over, landing back-first on the searing floor. Pain. He moved, crept forward, cutting through the fume.
"Where are you?" He screamed the words.
"Ashman!" A reply, "I'm HERE. HERE! MIST GET THIS OFF OF ME!"
Merrin tracked the sound—a breezy task when admitted to the true silence of the depths. He followed, coughing…There, in the distance. A large boulder. There, the sound was coming.
"Are you there?"
"Yes!"
Merrin soared the force; the wind churned, and the dust parted in a swirling gust. He gaped—"What is?"
A dark hall, the size like that of a city, blurred into his vision. The ceiling stretched away into unseen darkness. The length, oh, that proved an impossibility even for his senses. The walls were of dark, sleek stone—like the chamber. Scattered about were piles of rocks, shattered earth, ruin in fullness.
Stunned in awe, Merrin found himself locked in perception. Eyes fixed on the maddening expanse. How is this possible?
"Stop STARING AND HELP ME!"
That broke the trance. He moved to her. Caelyn, as suspected, was half buried beneath a large boulder. The earth under her, however, was a hollow land. A sunken patch that protected against the full crush of the stone. That saved her.
He said, "Are you okay?"
"I'M NOT!" Rage in tone.
He reached under the stone and groaned.
"WHAT IN DAMNATION IS THAT SUPPOSED TO ACHIEVE?" Catelyn.
"I'm…savinn—you." He said through clenched teeth, hands trembling over the solid weight. No movement. He rooted his feet, bent his thigh. Pushed. Again, the solidity proved immune to his efforts. "I can't lift it…" Merrin said, pain-filled.
"OF COURSE YOU CAN'T!" Catelyn snapped, "BREAK IT. DO SOMETHING. CAST IT!"
Discomfiture ruled his mind; he heaved, reining in the nagging emotion. This was not the time for it. No, not now. He grabbed that same wondrous power, felt the taste of its inner desire. To dominate. How often, he wondered, would he use this power before he, too, was influenced by that same desire?
The familiar weave came before him, whirling. Gentle as the winds within these halls motioned. This was the way of symbols. They represent the reality. Delicate winds came, and so the weaves of their presence in the greyness swirled with that same mellowness.
His hands flowed through the fabric, felt nothing but the resistance and knowledge. Weak defiance for some reason. As Catelyn had said, casting the same provides softer means in the later casting.
It was beautiful in spectacular sensations. The knowledge that soon, he would tame even the winds. How ever did casters not fall to the seduction of this power? He repressed, took a warmed breath, and incited the winds. The winds heeded his command and surged. A squall of such intensity that his feet rooted in instinctual swiftness. To the stone, they went. Casted as fabric pushing against a mighty boulder.
The howling came. "Hold on to something!" Merrin said, the wind rustling in that known pattern. Voice breaking apart in its might. His, however, was enforced. By the current, no less. She heard him, gripped tightly on the side stones, and sealed her eyes. Not many bore the resistance to soot as the ashmen.
It moved. The boulder, pinned over Catelyn, quivered. This was noted, and the full force of the wind was unleashed at that moment. The scream of the storm, Merrin shook to the noise, but knew it as something of his creation. The violent wail.
A quake and the stone leapt out, smashing and rolling through the vast hall. Wind-pushed. Merrin dropped to his knees, panting. Force drained, eyes twitching, mind in that state of mentational slowness.
"Are you?" The world spun, fumbling his steps. Dust-blinded, Merrin yet heard the gentle taps of steps. Catelyn's. She was safe, he knew that, and felt the sweetness. The good warmth.
Cold beads rolled down his skin, hands searing from the land's pressed heat. He managed to straighten. A shadow moving in the dust fumes. Catelyn, of course. She parted through, blood streaking down her head and elbows. Her frown looked at him. "You couldn't have done better?"
"You are alive, are you not?" Merrin said, shifting to the vaster hall. Such magnitude defiled sense. Why such a size? A similarity to the bizarre extent of the caster's home. He scanned through the space, and found, as before, his eyes could not penetrate its proportions. Too Big. Too dark.
He looked to Catelyn. "Where is this?" She often had such information.
She sneered the words. "Why would I know this? I don't know this place, I'm just as surprised as you."
Merrin veered, pointing ahead. "Should we follow there?"
"Follow?" Catelyn said, confusion in tone. "Are you blind?"
Merrin returned, cocked his head.
"Can't you see I'm injured?"
"A minor scrape." It was when compared to one's Ashmen suffered without worries.
She, however, widened her eyes—those clear blue. "I'm hurt! I can't just move. I need to heal. Or can you heal me? Are you a cleanseWitch?"
"Obviously not," Merrin said, "Is this normal?" That part was unintentional.
She peeved. He saw it. "Normal?" she said, "I don't know what tremendous impossibility you or your people go about in the mountains, but here, it is not that. The height and the below are two different things. To treat one as the other speaks of a certain idiocy that is simply laughable…" She staggered forward, a dark smear on her neck and face. Hair rustled. "I need to rest. Plain and simple…"
Merrin sighed within, shoulders lowering. "I know a safe place."
"How?"
"Nothing has attacked me there."
"Yet."
Merrin nodded. "Yet."
"Where?"
Merrin pointed.
She scowled, swaying her head. "Are you missing something?"
"What?" Genuine.
She breathed. "I can't misting see in the dark!"
"Ah," Merrin found such density in that, he cringed within. "Come," He grabbed her hands, leading her through the darkness. A sweet, quiet journey.