Kapitel 42: The Tomb

Roger's head swiveled to face her, his eyes wide.

"A tomb? What do you mean a tomb?"

He backed away from the coffin, fear etched into every inch of his face. His hands began to shake and his voice came in quivering breaths.

Lila looked stunned at his behavior, raising her hands placatingly.

"Woah, I just said it's a burial site! Someone's body is probably in there!"

Roger looked at her and then back at the tomb, his terror not abating. He took multiple large gulps of air to calm himself, forcing the panic out.

'Calm down, it's not a prison tomb. It's just a regular grave. Breathe, you got this Roger. It's okay…'

His efforts bore some fruit, but he still felt himself tremor at the thought of a tomb.

They were different in prison.

The tomb was where executions were carried out, and they were never quick. The inmates were always forced to bear witness, an attempt to dissuade anyone else from causing trouble.

The word tomb meant agony and pain, nothing else.

Lila kept giving him strange looks, but he ignored them, unable to care for anything else while his brain processed the rampaging emotions.

With a burst of willpower, he took a few shaking steps back to the side of the marble tomb, forcing himself to try and decipher its secrets.

'The prison is behind me. I'll never go back. I have to let go of my worries.'

Turning his attention to the surface, he studied the engravings.

Three large ones stood out near the center.

The first was the depiction of a man, the same as the ones on the stone walls everywhere else, but more detailed than those. It had a suit of strange armor on, with flowing robes underneath. The guarded sections seemed to focus on the joints but left most of the body unprotected.

'That seems incredibly short-sighted. What kind of armor leaves vital organs in the open?'

The face was hidden behind a flat mask, with the only ornamentation being a plain crown set on top. It had a single prong on the front, displaying a small circular gem.

'I wish this thing came in color. I feel like knowing what everything actually looked like would help.'

The second image was difficult to understand. It looked to be multiple squiggles, like stretched waves of water, but they seemed to go in every direction. It was a chaotic mixture that hurt his brain.

The final image made Roger do a double take.

"Lila, you may want to see this."

His words were uncharacteristically forceful, drawing her attention quickly. Once she saw the third symbol, she too looked shocked.

"Is that what I think it is?"

She responded with a single nod.

The image they were currently staring at was a large "O" shape, a symbol that Lila taught Roger meant a word he had come to know very well.

Omicron.

'So the three images are of an armored man, strange squiggles, and Omicron! But what do they all mean? What is the connection, and why are they marked on this tom-... coffin?'

Lila seemed to be thinking very similar questions, and reached out to trace the grooves with her fingers.

'Good to know I'm not the only one who feels drawn to them.'

"What do you think it means?"

Lila paused before speaking.

"I think that whoever was buried here was Omicron-rank, which is very impressive. There are maybe a thousand Omicron-ranked magi throughout all of Avar."

She pointed to the symbol of the man.

"The crown makes me think he was some kind of king, maybe he ruled this forest before he died? Or he could have just wanted to be buried here."

Roger listened intently, formulating his own ideas as she spoke.

'What about the middle icon then? That has to mean something too, they wouldn't just have an unimportant marking between two important ones.'

Hoping to find answers, he moved the torch across the rest of the surface, reading the other symbols.

There were dozens of unique shapes, some almost understandable, but the vast majority were nonsense. He saw one that was also vaguely humanoid, but it wasn't quite right. The hand was longer and more angular, and the body proportions were more extreme.

It also had claws growing out of its hands.

'What I wouldn't give to know the languages of Avar…'

Roger had always been a very adventurous person, and it felt awful to have a possible discovery stymied because he couldn't read the ancient script.

'Finding a historian who can teach me the languages should be a priority.'

His eyes narrowed as he realized his train of thought, disappointment clear on his face.

'Slow down, Roger. We are trying to avoid civilization, remember? The government will lock us up again. If we want to learn this stuff, we just need to do it the old-fashioned way and try to figure it out.'

He cocked his head as another thought hit him.

'Or the System decides to pitch in and make life easier for me.'

Roger looked around expectantly before shaking his head.

'Yeah, didn't think so.'

He walked around the tomb towards where the head would be and noticed another large symbol placed there. There was a gap between the engraving and the other smaller ones coating the rest of the marble as if to emphasize its importance.

'How didn't I notice this one before?'

Similar to the other three large symbols, this one was incredibly detailed, if not more so. It was also as big as all three of the others combined.

Leaning closer to study it, Roger progressively felt a sense of fury at the object but forced himself to discern it.

It was a large circle cut into twenty-four sections, each section having a different letter placed into it. He quickly noticed Omicron as one, and Alpha at the very top. At the bottom, he also saw Omega, a symbol he had learned in prison as it was considered an important reference to society, and as he now knew was the pinnacle of magic power.

'Figures that the government took the letter of the strongest element rank to represent itself.'

Alongside each letter, there was a strange shape, but he couldn't see them well enough to make them out. The only one he could see, which was due to applied memory, was the one with Omicron, being all the squiggles he had seen earlier.

'So the squiggles are connected to the rank? Is it the kind of power that rank provides? But Lila said it's random, which fits with what she and I received for Alpha.'

In the center of the circle was a smaller circle, and this one had another engraving inside.

Although difficult, Roger could just faintly see a snake twisting around itself to… eat its own tail?

He squinted and moved closer to try and see what he was missing, but he saw it all. The serpent was eating its own tail. Tilting his head, he noticed that it looked like a sideways eight, too.

'What the gods is that supposed to mean?'

A hidden anger was growing inside him, causing a headache, and forcing him to not spare any time questioning the strange central symbol.

Looking above the large circle, he saw the final marking.

It appeared to be a crown with twenty-four gemstones, each of them slightly different than the last. He couldn't make out what any of them looked like but felt fairly positive the one in the crown he studied earlier would be one of them.

'So it's all connected, but how? And why does this thing look so insulting?'

Before he could stop himself, he punched the marble surface, causing himself to gasp in pain as his knuckles struck the tough stone.

Lila, who had been searching the rest of the coffin, looked at him in shock.

"What was that for?"

He ignored her comment, his eyes locked onto the detailed symbol in front of him.

Roger didn't know why, or how, but he felt like he should destroy it. Shatter the marble it had tainted with its presence.

Beneath it all, he felt a respect for it, but knew it was missing something important. Something personal.

Just as he was about to strike it again, he felt Lila grab his forearm, turning him to face her. The moment he stopped looking at the symbol, his fury vanished, leaving in its place a faint sadness.

"What the hell are you doing?"

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