Chapter One
The Archivists were trained to handle danger. Raised like soldiers from the moment they could walk they were trained not only in the art of combat but in the method and practice of calming and controlling their emotions during moments of extreme stress. They were taught not to try and suppress their fear and thereby exhilaration and alertness, but to lasso them, mount them, and break them, allowing the harnessing of these emotions that nature and Kah have seen fit to bestow upon the intelligent races. So, it was not pure fear that overtook Mars when he felt the needle prick on his back. There was also a sober understanding- I’ve been struck. All at once he realized that the danger of this place was far greater than he had anticipated and understood that no one would come to his aid. He had told no one of the true destination of his secret journey, instead taking advantage of the implicit sense of trust he inspired in others to spread the lie that he had gone to visit a beautiful and entirely imaginary grotto to study in silence and peace for a while. Mars would never lie to us, they’d think. Or, if he did, he’d have a good reason. Had he? Not particularly. He wanted a trophy. Something to show off only to his most trusted friends and then unveil much later as a bonus to whatever great find he made on his first official expedition. The Archivists had to wait many years until their first voyage out of the island hidden in the sound, Bohein, their home since times first recorded. Years of rigorous study and formation. Their work was of the utmost importance. They were the lifeblood of all knowledge on earth. It was their responsibility, their calling, and their divine duty to collect, record, archive, and sometimes even disseminate any and all noteworthy written texts. Their order was formed by Kah. After witnessing the destructive power of Vi wipe the world into a clean slate, erasing eons of science, history, and culture, Kah made sure the knowledge and wisdom his creations developed and recorded would always be preserved. He gave them a backup to all civilization. An archive.
That was history to Mars. Back when Kah walked the earth in flesh. It was as far removed from him as the flies buzzing around pools of stagnant water in the deep, dank passage were from the birth of the first elf. Yet he still felt those stories tug, jerk, and pull at his heartstrings. To be an Archivist was not only his duty but his pride. When he snuck off the island he did so boldly, head held high in the wind as he set sail in his dinghy. Had he been caught he would’ve confessed his entire plan. He almost wanted to be caught for the chance to brag. But he was not caught. Too great was the trust placed in his caution and foresight. That trust became his peril.
His destination was not too far. He had read about it in one of the forbidden texts. (The Archivists were rather lax about forbidding their texts.) A map pointed the way and a brief description told him of the ancient burrows carved by some huge, long-extinct creature in the wide plains of an island a few miles away. The burrows themselves were not of particular interest aside from being a unique and stunningly beautiful natural phenomenon, but the description told him that, if one ventured deep enough, they would find openings to the underground world. This world- a dizzying maze of passageways with cold, hard floors that connect rooms to halls to caverns- apparently spanned the entire world as reports of openings to it had been recorded as far away as the Barren Peninsula and as far back the earliest Archivist writings. The tunnels are said to plunge deeper than the sea floor, encompass all of the earth, and connect to each other. But attempts to map them fully proved hopelessly futile. They stretched too far and there were too many small intricate passages breaking off from larger hallways. And despite their earth-spanning prevalence whoever built them and to what end remained a total mystery. They were from a different time, an unknown time, a time before the Archivists. They stood as both an irksome quandary to the Archivists and hard evidence of the importance of their mission.
Mars had no such high ambitions as solving the mystery of these sturdy, bare, distinctly unnatural tunnels. All he wanted was a trinket. Perhaps a prehistoric novel full of untranslateable text, a ledger full of numbers that no longer held meaning to anyone for the past few millennia, or maybe just a signpost; something to put on the mantlepiece and tell about to any little Archivists he happened to father. But Mars would father no children. Fate had other plans for him.
He had heard it in the dark. Always out of sight. An elementary spell created the orb that floated above his head and generated enough light to illuminate his surroundings but also cast hard shadows around corners and behind debris. When he stood still and listened he could hear something scrape the smooth floor, sliding through the shadows, perhaps observing or mocking him. He settled to draw his knife and keep exploring. Even if he had turned back then it would’ve been no different. The thing would’ve struck him just the same. The moment he stepped into its domain in the deep, activating its systems and subsystems universally unparalleled for their longevity, the nature and operations of which Mars could never begin to comprehend like a rat sniffing an aromatic nibble of cheese placed conspicuously on the kitchen floor Mars’ fate was sealed. He was already caught. He was caught when he entered the underground world. He was caught when he entered the burrows. He was caught when he set sail from Bohein. He was caught when he heard his first Archivist song. He was always going to fall for the trap of that dark, mysterious, ancient place.
“‘Strike not my back- let me gaze at thee, O Zarr,'” Mars cried out. Those were his last mortal words. It was what came to him.
There was no Zarr behind him. Had he not been suddenly paralyzed, had he been able to turn around, he wouldn’t have been able to comprehend what he saw. He had no basis on which to draw. It would appear to him a luminous snake stretching from out of his back into a dark corner, but it was no living creature. Mars faded. He thought of his father, Sage Mackiel. He wanted to see him again to ask him for his opinion on a particular morally charged treatise he had read. His father was a smart man and he loved him. That was his last mortal thought. He blacked out.
Mars awoke back in the burrow. He didn’t know how he got there. He felt fine. Strangely fine. He felt his back. Nothing. No puncture. No wound. Just smooth skin. He hadn’t imagined being stabbed there. It healed over while he was passed out. Mars gazed idly down at the ungloved hand he used to inspect his back. He noticed a spot of white on his wrist. He rolled up his sleeve. Around his wrist was a ring of white embedded in his skin. It seemed to him to be a tattoo. But if he tried to remove it (much later he would), to cut the white skin from around his wrist, he would find the flesh and muscle underneath white as well. And if he grit his teeth and cut deeper he would find the bone under the flesh white, too. And if he, hopped up on some spell or potion that allowed him to tolerate the pain and insanity of self-mutilation, cut the white off him down to the very bone, his hand would grow back later with the white shackle same as it ever was. This was no tattoo. The white marked his status as cursed. It was not his life that was stolen in the deep, but his death.