Palindromes

Dictionary

Oren looked up. The complex towered over him, easily the largest building he ever laid eyes on. The glow of eerie green vapor radiated from the writing littering every surface. The shrine sat for centuries as a lifeless reminder of horrors long past. Oren turned his attention to Loryt. An elven bard with black hair and brown skin, Loryt was young, almost too young to join their order.

She crouched low, studying the symbols on a slab lost in a pile of rubble at the entrance of the shrine.

"Can you read it? What does it say?" Oren asked.

She looked up and shook her head. “I can’t translate it. The ancestors didn't have a written language as we understand it.” Loryt whispered, as if the ancestors could hear. She sensed them around her, their silhouettes hovering somewhere between life and death in vaporous fluid.

“Then what do you call this?” Oren asked, pointing to the writing on the slab.

“Ancestral Alfen," Loryt began, tracing each letter engraved into smooth, black stone with her fingers, “Every single word reads the same forward and backwards. Their language is nonsensical. There are no standards of sentence structure. Verbs, nouns, and objects shift and appear randomly in the sentence, we can't determine if it is meant to be read left to right, or right to left, and deconstructing a sentence can lead to words that don't even exist in the language. All of this is done to justify their love of symmetry. All of this is done to fuel their obsessions," she stopped and pointed to the wall, “and there, you see that? This is a paragraph that does the same thing. One half of the text mirrors the other. Their writing was not bound by the same rules and grammar. We think it was an art form to them. We drew pictures of animals we loved to hunt on our cave walls. The ancestral elves left behind their words.”

“I prefer the pictures,” Oren scoffed, “How do we keep them asleep?”

“I have no idea. I hear others calling me an expert, and I don't know why. No one knows how to read this, much less how to operate a tombshrine." Loryt stared at the symbols in silence as Oren prepared a response. She wondered why he seemed so confused, as if shocked by what he heard.

"I'm risking my life and the life of twenty men and women to prevent another awakening. You're saying you can't do anything?"

"I didn't say that," Loryt said through a forced chuckle, "It's tricky. I won't make promises, but it's better than going in blind. It's certainly a better option than letting them wake up unimpeded," she paused and saw the looks of defeat staring back, "I can't read it, but this is a viral language. I can infer meaning from their text. This slab was a religious altar, for example." She finished while pointing the alter, but her words didn't seem to ease their worry.

"I didn't know they had gods." Oren said.

"They didn't," Loryt replied, "The Symmetrical Logic is what they worshiped. They were obsessed. Look at the stones and how perfectly they fit into every space."

Oren looked at the floors, walls, and hexagonal columns. Each stone fit into its space with little to no gaps between. The dimensions of the room were deliberate, calculated to infinite fractions of an inch. The lines between the stones were hard to discern and Oren strained to notice the contrast of black on black.

For a moment, Oren felt like he could almost visualize the geometric method used in the tombshrine's construction. Loryt spoke, but the words faded as he stared. The precision of every angle became clear, and Oren's head immediately began to throb. He turned his head away. The pain lingered for several minutes, and Loryt spoke when she noticed him rubbing his eyes as if to push the painful sight out of his mind.

"Don't stare too long," Loryt said, "There are few things in nature with true symmetry. As an elf, I'm almost immune, but humans suffer the most if they stare at it for long periods."

They ventured deeper, 22 men and women who vowed to silence whatever ill will stirred in the shrine. Weeks ago, the green light began to shine. The last tombshrine to activate sparked a massive conflict that led to many deaths. A tombshine holds thousands of ancestors within. Each put into a deathlike slumber in the final breath of their empire's fall in hopes that they will rise again.

They passed rows of strange spheres. Each contained the body of an ancestor suspended in jade green fluid. Their forms twitched, a sign of the complex beginning the process of waking them up. The tension was heavy, each soldier jumping out of their skin at the slightest sound. Loryt was calm, collected, and driven.

With her guidance, the group navigated the corridors. Loryt paused routinely to gaze at the writings on the wall. Even Oren noticed their artistic quality. Each set of words lingered in full view, etched in prominent locations and centered to the wall. As with the rest of the complex, the wall opposite possessed the same writing on display. Each wall stood as a perfect mirror image and the layout of rooms in the complex did the same.

Oren asked if they were lost or going in circles many times. He found himself confounded at the symmetrical floor plan, some rooms even having the same exact writings on the wall as a room ventured into not long before. Loryt seemed to be the only one unphased, diligently taking note of the writings. She followed directions only she could interpret.

The complex was empty. It was not only vacant of life, but the foundation of the tombshrine itself appeared void of personality and life. This only led to more confusion. If a room had anything within, it was the glowing words of the ancestors, or rows and columns of the strange spheres stretching to the roof of the complex. Loryt stopped at the next threshold and turned to address the group.

"Here," Loryt began with a whisper, "The genesage lies in the next room. They were the highest members of their society, mutated beyond recognition. Touch nothing, say nothing, and we might succeed."

Nods of acceptance came as a reply. They ventured down a narrow hall with writing lining every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling. The writing on each wall mirrored the other. The green vapor lifted and danced, pushed aside as they progressed. Oren felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. The hall seemed to stretch on for miles, each step taken with caution.

They came upon a room, it's ceiling low and its walls lined with strange spheres far more ornate than the ones they observed before. In the center of the room was the most beautiful of them all. The sphere rested higher than the others, perched on a frame of translucent green stone. They inched closer, Loryt and Oren taking the lead. They circled the central capsule, eyeing every corner of the room.

They heard something, a growl like a cat, but distorted; unnatural. When they peered behind the central sphere, they saw something staring back. It stood over a stone tablet, raking its knifelike fingers over the words etched in the stone. The words glowed even brighter, and the central sphere began to rotate, floating in the air above the green stone perch. Loryt stepped forward.

"Hello," she began, doing her best to speak the eleven tongue she grew up with in hopes there would be a connection, "Please step away."

The creature squinted at her. It's eyes piercing through the gambeson she wore. The creature wore nothing but a cloth sash around its waist, its greenish-gray skin was like stone. There were no pores, no belly button, nothing that indicated a similarity to life today. It stood several feet taller than she did, hissing with sharpened teeth as she spoke.

There was no hair. It's ears were elongated to a point far more than elves encountered in the world outside. It's teeth were jagged, lining a gaping maw. The lips, eyelids, and nose were removed long ago, leaving something Loryt could only refer to as a monster.

It spoke. Its voice wheezed and rasped with every word as Loryt tilted her ear toward it on impulse in an attempt to understand it. She failed, losing track of each word in the layers of voices created by several sets of vocal cords. She felt her heart race and her skin damp with the slightest amount of sweat. The moisture made the air feel cool. It was weak, but to attack outright would only lead to her death. Her eyes darted over to Oren. He still took refuge behind the central sphere.

The expression said more than her words could. He drew his sword, called out to the creature, and the surrounding soldiers sought to make as much noise as they could to draw the creature’s attention away. Loryt acted on impulse. The moment the creature’s head turned, she pulled a dagger from its sheath and plunged it into the back of its skull. The death was silent, but the body collapsed to the ground and the sound echoed through the halls of the entire complex. Oren glanced at Loryt. Her breathing was fast, her hands shaking as she dropped the dagger.

“Are you alright?” Oren asked.

“I'll be fine.” Loryt replied while running her hands through her hair and shaking her head. She took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh as she scanned the tablet the ancestor was using.

The tablet contained six words, each isolated in rows and columns. She looked up to the sphere above. It rotated gently, but still remained inactive. Oren was close behind, peering over her shoulder as she prepared herself.

“Any luck?” Oren asked.

“I don’t even know where to start.” she said, shaking her head once more. The soldiers patrolled the room as she knelt down and retrieved a book from her pack. Oren gave a sigh of relief that quickly led to narrowed eyes and a groan when he realized the pages were blank. She thumbed through the first few pages and revealed her notes, scribbled and compiled over time. She found a half filled page and began to write each word down exactly as it appeared on the tablet before turning to Oren.

“I need some space. This isn't easy to do.” Loryt said, and Oren stepped away to assist the others in their patrol. Her mind raced as she stared at the words. She read through her notes, reciting them in her head. Make note of empathic context, she thought. She proceeded to read each word carefully. The letters meant nothing. Each character, given a sound by those who study the language, was simply a piece of the whole. The resulting word mattered not on its composition, but on the appearance and aesthetic of the word.

She gazed at each word as she wrote the emotions they brought up. Each emotion was powerful, sudden, and in some cases, overwhelming.

LaisilisiaL : Pleasure, success, pride
KorproK : Negative, rage, fear
TersreT: Pain, suffering
LowoL : Positive, impatience, anxiety
RithtiR: Negative, anxiety, loathing
SerasareS : Completion, fulfillment

She thumbed through her notes again, trying to push out the conflicting emotions the words brought out. She tried to keep her breathing under control. Her heart was racing again. Eliminate lingual mirror, then note capitalized characters, she thought.

She stopped, staring at the tablet and back to her notes. She spent ages deciding which word to choose. Oren stood off to the side, tapping his foot when he wasn’t pacing.

“What’s taking so long?” he asked.

“I can’t decide,” Loryt began, “I still haven't determined if the language expresses emotions in the writer or the reader. Each word can imply intent, but my own emotions can cloud that," she rubbed her temple with her hand and sighed, “If I read a word and I feel fear, I don't know if that fear comes from the writer, or myself.”

“So it's just a guess?” Oren asked, trying to keep his voice down.

“The most educated guess you’ll find, yes,” Loryt replied, “and that's better than doing nothing. At least we have a chance.” She pointed to the word that shimmered brighter than the others: RithtiR, “I know this is not what we need since the ancestor was using it, but the emotions don't line up as well as I'd like. Why would the writer loath this option? It could be my emotions, but it could be a slave that etched these words into stone and I’d never know it did the opposite of what we want.”

“So we should prepare to move,” Oren began, his voice raised so all could hear. Loryt’s solemn nod was his reply, “go on then.”

She reached out, lightly touched the word she believed fit best, SarasareS. The ground shook as the light burst forth from the tablet. Loryt turned to Oren, her eyes wide and her lip giving the slightest tremor at her sudden realization. She heared a low growl, the unatural call of the sleeping terrors waking up.