He glances at the iunctus uneasily. “Why would the Concurrence have brought us here?”
“The Concurrence have not brought you here.” We both flinch and curse at the statement of the dead man in front, abrupt in the hollowness of the thin chasm. He turns to us, and I can suddenly see an awareness in his gaze that hasn’t been there since Caten. “They are the enemy. Humanity’s enemy, which I have fought my entire life. Do not conflate us.” Delivered emotionlessly again, but he pauses, staring at each of us as if to ensure we understand, before moving on.
Eidhin and I exchange shaken looks, and follow. It does, I suppose, suggest an answer to the main question we debated on our way here. If the Cataclysms are really to stop something worse, what could be the cause of the latter?
It seems we have our answer.
My mind reels, and I can see Eidhin silently trying to make sense of it too. Was Veridius workingwiththe Concurrence, then? No. Surely no advantage to him in deliberately obfuscating like that—and he even admitted that he had drawn his own conclusions about the ancient enemy described in the ruins, and their role in the Cataclysms.
Still. The revelation unbalances me more than it should, challenging a truth I was somehow certain of. I feel sick. Oddly horrified. As if it were important to me that my original understanding was true.
“Who are the Concurrence, then?” I say it into the hush as the iunctus lights a lantern, and we forge into the darkness of the tunnel.
The iunctus moves steadily ahead of us. “Not a ‘who.’ A ‘what.’ A self-contained latticework of iunctii. The remnants of a rogue system which once controlled the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the world. Acrosstheworld, before the Rending.”
I exchange a look with Eidhin, who shakes his head slightly. Equally baffled. “A system?”
“A great, independent machine made up of the dead. Interlinked, each one carefully purposed. More vast and complex and impossible to fight than you can imagine.” We’ve taken a different path to the one Emissa led me along, and a dead end suddenly looms in the form of a massive obsidian slab, divided into three distinct panels. The gilded symbol of the Hierarchy slices down the one in the centre.
The iunctus gestures me forward before I can probe the bizarre statement further. “There is Will imbued in the outer two sections. You need to move it to the centre. But once this door is opened, we have a matter of hours, if that, before your Military arrive to stop us. So we must move fast.”
I nod. Take a deep breath, and do as he instructs.
The polished black surface shudders, and slides into the ground.
Eidhin and I stand there as the iunctus strides through.
“Vek.” I breathe it.
“Vek,” agrees Eidhin softly.
We’re on the lowest level of a space hundreds of feet deep and at least as high, painted in eerie green light. Ahead and behind, the floor slopes upward into multiple levels, accessible via carved stairs. To our left and right, the space stretches away in both directions as far as I can see. An enormous, semi-cylindrical tunnel.
Filling it—not just along the pathways of our level but on the tiered ones above—are bodies.
I stare. Frozen. Even the numbed, ongoing agony of my legs temporarily forgotten. The entire mountain, the entire Agerus mountainrange, must be hollowed out to accommodate this massive crypt. At first I think it’s a much larger version of the ruins near the Academy; certainly it feels the same, with its jade light and corpses splayed upright against white stone slabs. None of them have blades pinning them through the heart, though. They’re not naked, instead clothed in identical, simple black shifts.
And—as I peer at one of the closest ones—they stare glassily ahead. Dead, certainly, but the eyes of these corpses have not been removed.
It’s a small comfort, confronted with the scale of the thing. There are thousands of them.Tensof thousands. They stretch on forever.
“What is this place?” I whisper it, almost to myself.
“This is the Necropolis.” The iunctus beckons us to follow him, and we start along the path to our left beneath the crushing weight of a thousand blank stares. From the set of his shoulders, Eidhin is as startled and troubled as I feel, though at least there is no sign of movement, no flicker of unnatural life in any of the men or women—or children, in some cases—who we pass. “It was entirely empty when your era discovered it—more than a century ago now, I believe. It is a remnant of another time. One of our earliest attempts to build something to rival the Concurrence. Of course, your Military never figured that out; they merely use it to preserve access to knowledge. Particularly that of their foes.”
I gaze around in dazed horror. “How many?”
“Near eighty thousand.” No inflection to the statement. No judgement.“This chamber holds the most recent, but there are dozens more like it. Your people have filled this place with the slain of a century of conquests. Everyone from great leaders, to the lowest servants who may once have overheard something important. Anyone and everyone who may have something valuable still locked away somewhere in their minds.”
I can barely comprehend it as our path angles upward slightly, toward a raised platform in the centre of the enormous tunnel. A twenty-foot-wide obsidian triangle, elevated above the rows of corpses on either side. “You want me to wake some of them.” It’s the only logical conclusion.
The iunctus starts climbing. “I want you to wake all of them, Catenicus.”
His statement hangs as we ascend. I open my mouth. Shut it again and glance across at Eidhin, whose furrowed brow says he is as lost as I am as to how to respond.
“How?” I ask eventually as we reach the platform. Its surface is not one piece, as I assumed from below, but four—three triangular-cut stones for each point, and a single, upside-down one in the centre. A corpse lies within each of the outer triangles. They would look almost restful in their repose if not for the thin, two-foot-high spikes of obsidian that protrude up through their chests.
“You need only imbue these three men—they do not need more than the Will of a couple of people each. The machinery of this place will do the rest.” He sees my dissatisfaction at the explanation. “A iunctus can cede far more than it takes to wake them, which means one of the primary strengths of Synchronic Will is the ability to perform what is called a Cascade. These first three iunctii will cede to you, then utilise the remainder of their Will to wake more. Who will cede to them, and then wake more. And so on, and so on. Due to the scale at play, they have been instructed to maximise efficiency and begin creating external pyramids, once the seven levels below you have been filled. But by the end, you will have the strength of a Princeps, and an army who can be compelled to follow your commands.”
