By Daniel Triumph
Chapter 1
Finally, she had what she needed. And better yet, she had finally found some peace, heading down into the underground archives with her assistant.
She read, translating for the first time.
The document seemed to be talking about some sort of ancient war…but not quite. Something was off. It felt almost more like the community was afraid of being hunted, than of losing a battle. The language confused her, and the translation was slow, but she got into a rhythm and began reading faster and faster.
It was a rainy day, and the floor was damp with their footprints. But the archives were dry. That was the whole point.
Dry, except for the streams of runoff that lined every room’s perimeter. It was like each room had a mini trough, a system developed to prevent archival flooding.
Yuvellaiyah Chloe Huldah Zytnia, daughter of Rhye, scanned the document.
It was apparently a firsthand account by some sort of ancient scribe. The scroll in her hand felt millennia old. It very well might have been, and she treated it as if it was, with great care, holding it with the tips of her fingers to reduce contact as much as possible.
She moved her hand, rolling the scroll forward. Her sleeves, a little long because they had belonged to her eldest sister, got in the way, and she twisted her wrist. The light blue-white sleeve rustled away from her hand.
Yuvellaiyah wore a long-sleeve, light graphite grey wool coat without buttons and pants on top of this long sleeve shirt. Over her pants she wore a frontcloth, which was a sort of skirt that covered the front and back, leaving the sides open to facilitate running and other free movement. Her pants were the same grey wool, the frontcloth a pale cloudy morning grey-blue.
She continued, translating in her head as she went.
This didn’t appear to be an official document, it was more like a personal record. She wondered how and why it had been preserved in her family’s archive.
In it, the scribe recorded his own opinions. His worry bled through the pages, worries about a warring tribe. Yuvellah started feeling worried too.
She heard the flow and drip of water by her feet. The place felt wet, even though the walls were engineered specifically to absorb moisture and preserve the documents.
Everything here was made of porous stone, as defence against water.
The walls and floor were made of pale lime, with channels dug behind the limestone brick to draw any excess moisture back into the walls and down. The floors had multiple thick layers of sandstone tile, elevating it from any water that might seep further down.
So it should all be safe.
But the sound of water flowing through the drainage system still bothered her. It felt like there was fire right under the shelves, just waiting to consume the valuable documents.
She signed and shook her head, returning to the document. She was sitting at a wood-topped stone desk. On it to her left, she had a shielded lantern and was reading by its light. To her right, was an open notebook that flipped from the top and a fountain pen beside it.
Her eyes continued scanning. They had been—no, this wasn’t a war at all was it!
“They hunt us. We thank the Mighty one that they hunt only in the day, but they hunt is. These predatory devourers,” she read it out loud, translating as she went.
“What was that? What are you reading?” It was her assistant, Fenna. A university student with black hair and deeply coloured skin.
“This is what we were looking for. We might finally get some clues, some answers.”
“Answers to…why the civilization split in two centuries ago?”
“Yes, exactly.” She continued reading. Her intuition was on fire.
They were running from something, and it came down to a choice. A choice on how they might escape.
When she got to the end, no choice had yet been made. It felt as though the document ended so abruptly. Why?!
Yuvellaiyah reached the end in a flurry of translation and frustration. She slowed down to read the final few sentences out loud again.
“From the hand of Yitro Zytni, man of letters…”
She stopped at this line, eyes wide.
“Zytni? What?” That was her name. Yuvellaiyah Chloe Huldah Zytnia, daughter of Rhye.
How?
As she stared at the ancient scroll, aghast, one of the stone pipes gave away. It was a drainage pipe, and a thick one. A central channel that others flowed into before sending water deep down into the ground, where it couldn’t hurt the archived documents.
And it broke, a hairline crack finally let go. The water had been flowing as it should, down through the channels that lined the walls, then within seconds, it wasn’t. The stone bits built up in the tube and blocked the quick-flowing water, causing it to spray everywhere.
Yuvellaiyah Zytnia stared, dazed, becoming more detached as the seconds poured away.
The archives would begin to flood within minutes.
Precious documents washed away.
History, destroyed.
Her research into the lost civilization, her greatest worry over the past three months, receded in importance.
Everything did.
A part of her fought to be present again.
This was urgent.
And yet, she stood still, aloof, unsure what to do next.
Yuvellah saw movement in the corner of her eye. She took the moment and let the movement of her eyes influence the movement in her wide jaw. She spoke.
“Fenna?” She yelled.
“Your excellency?” The young female voice resounded, echoing over from the next room. “Umm, your excellency, the water in the little culverts here have stopped…”
“Get in here.” It was a command, something rare for Yuvellaiyah Zyntia to speak forth.
Fenna hurried into the room. She would have run, but the floor was uneven. Chloe watched her staring at the tiles as she hustled over, and trying not to trip over her own skirt.
The lower tiles in the floor already had a thin film of water. Soon, it would fill to reach the top layers. Soon, it would reach the fragile books and ancient scrolls.
Y. Chloe Zytnia ran calculations.
Fenna arrived next to her, already breathing deeply.
She saw the broken pipe and ran to it. She grabbed it, trying to move the side that was pouring water onto the floor, but she didn’t have enough strength to do anything.
The room was an odd hexagonal shape, lined with troughs which themselves were filled with powder and sand. It was a complex system designed centuries ago to prevent heavy rains, and even floods, from drowning the priceless, unique documents.
When was the last time it was maintained?
Huldah sighed a deep sigh. She exhaled her worries and cleared her mind.
She decided on a goal, an attempt that should work, and moved to bring it into reality.
Huldah began to move toward the broken pipe. Her height carried her across the room in only a handful of strides.
“See if you can find a tool. It has to be of a material harder than stone. Find me a metal bar or something.”
Fenna looked dazed, watching her mistress approach. “Metal…bar? …in the archives your excellency?”
Huldah frowned.
Despite her words, Fenna ran out of the room.
The shelves were not distinct units, instead they were cut into the stone walls of the underground network of chambers. There was no bottom shelf exactly for this reason. Flooding. This was the only reason they had so much time.
She lifted a thick leg, leaned her torso back to counterbalance, and gave the pipe a heavy side-kick. A small portion of the stone exploded gently, flowing into a mess lower down the water flow.
Fenna returned then, empty handed. She looked panicked. She will not be thinking straight, Huldah thought.
The stream eased, then got caught in the shattered stone and began to spray around the room.
“Oh no.”
Huldah gazed around the room, lifting her hands to block the water. The spray had begun wetting some of the ancient texts that surrounded the two women.
“I need you here Fenna.” When she saw the young woman remaining dazed, Chloe added, “Now please.”
Fenna ran over.
“Block it as I am.”
Huldah waited until Fenna’s hands were positioned in front of her own before stepping away. Striding around the room, she shut the stone cabinet doors on the shelves. These were to prevent damage from fire and air exposure.
They would help with the spray, some of which was still making its way past poor Fenna’s hands. But water could still get through cracks, or drip down from the walls into the shelves. Into the valuable books and scrolls.
Fenna was doing the best she could with her dark hands, but it wouldn’t be enough. The water now fully submerged Chloe’s feet.
Y. Chloe Huldah Zytnia sighed and placed her hands on her hips to think. At least, she thought it helped her think, like a thinking cap. That’s what she told herself when she was younger anyhow.
Her arm brushed against a hilt. Her sword. It was a curved sabre, a common self defence sword in her country. It was not her weapon of choice, but she knew how to use it well enough. Her ideal weapon was unfortunately far too unwieldy for daily use, especially in the capital city.
She drew it, and in one swift motion, arced the blade up and around, slamming it against the stone and spray. A little gave way, but it wasn’t enough.
“Careful, child.”
She stepped closer and thrust the point between two of the larger broken pieces, then used the sword as a lever. It broke away, and the spray halved in pressure. The water particles no longer travelled far enough to hit the walls, or the shelf covers.
Huldah continued manoeuvring rocks around. Somehow they had ceased tight despite the water flow. Or because of it…
Finally, she moved enough stone that the water diverted to the ground.
“I still need some sort of tool if you can find one,” she said, moving to the drain hole. It was full of broken rock, moss, and other detritus she didn’t care to examine closely.
She went at it again with her sword, and it opened quickly.
The water, now at ankle height, began to recede.
“Oh, never mind.”
“Thank God,” Fenna said.
Chloe sat in a plush reading chair near the wall. It was not against the wall, as every horizontal surface save was covered in books, save the doorways. “My goodness,” she said, sighing heavily.
Fenna moved to sit in a similar chair next to her.
“Wait, before you sit, check the other drains please.”
Fenna obliged.
“All filled with moss and mess,” Fenna said.
Chloe Huldah nodded. She leaned her elbow on the plush leather arm and rested her cheek on her knuckles, fingers open a little. Her yellow-blonde curls, a little wet now, flowed over her forearm.
“Of course…we should have checked all this when we arrived. We should have checked it last time we were here. I will make sure the task is added to the archivist’s duties.”
Fenna nodded.
The last time they were there was three days ago, and it was Fenna’s first. Fenna, a young student at the university, knew of its library, and had even been to the royal academy archives.
But all that was wood, square rooms, and pleasant energy.
The official underground royal archives were another matter. Cold, stone, practical, and jarring. A maze-like network of oddly shaped rooms cut into stone.
“Will it be alright?”
“For now, yes. We will clear the rest of this room before we go and let this,” she kicked at what was left of the water with an outstretched toe, splashing it a little, “recede fully. Then we will report the mess to the archivists. I will authorize a couple of guards to aid them this time, since it will be extra work. They should be able to upkeep fine.”
Fenna glanced at the scrolls on the wood-topped stone desk to their right.
“Did we get everything?” she asked.
“No, but it is enough for us at the archives today.”
“Yes mistress.”
They had come for a set of ancient documents about a lost sibling civilization. Her nation, the Solune people, were the children of an ancient community of tribes called the Sollussa. According to legend, and some of the texts she had researched in the last few months, the Solune were the ones that broke away.
They left, and thus took part of the parent community’s name off of their own.
Sollussa became Solune. So-lune.
She stood and walked to the desk. One scroll was unfurled, held down by polished brass weights.
She read aloud. She did not like to read out loud, but her father told her it was better for learning and retention to hear her own voice as she read, she she had started here and there long ago. Now that she had an assistant, she was inclined to try the good habit more frequently.
Fenna was not only a maidservant, but a research assistant. In fact, correctly addressing Chloe as “your excellency,” or sometimes, “mistress,” was her most frequent servantly behaviour. For the most part, Fenna Alh-Bkhyl Shlam B-Belh and her impossible to pronounce full name, was more a research aid than anything else.
She held the position in part thanks to her mother’s recommendation. Chloe had not particularly wanted an assistant, but Fenna’s mother, a black-haired woman with rich bronze-brown skin, had mentioned that her daughter was a history student.
Chloe Huldah managed for once to pick up on the social cue, and invited the young woman for an interview. When that went well, she took on the position part time.
When classes closed for the interim semester, Fenna Shalom B-Belh began to work full time. She only had her for a few more months before things returned to only a few hours a week. So far, she was taking advantage of the extra help by going in depth in her Sollussa research.
They headed up the stairs and emerged into the light of day. The archives were located on the southern side of town, near the city’s walls. A hexagonal stone building that appeared to have only one floor, but hid beneath it a depth of rooms and preserved knowledge.
On their way to the castle, Huldah found a guard and informed him of the near flood and of the urgency of the situation. It would be dealt with.
“Well, I will get to translating this. Then we can go to the university where I can find some reference books to process it.”
“That sounds good,” Fenna said.
“Yes. You may take the next…” Chloe thought for a moment, calculating. “Three hours off. Meet me in my personal library and we will head over from there.”
“Yes ma’am.” Fenna nodded, and they walked through the cobble and slate lined streets toward the castle together.
Daniel Triumph
© Daniel Triumph 2017-2026