Relic and Ruin

CHAPTER NINE

SOMNIPHOBIA – FEAR OF GOING TO SLEEP

Ridley knocked on Erebus's door. "What?" Erebus called.

"I'm coming in," Ridley announced. He stepped inside and looked around. The floor was covered in loose pages, open books, and notes. "What the fuck have you been doing?" he asked.

Erebus looked up at him from the floor, where he was sitting in nothing more than track pants. He waved his hand. "Would you mind closing that, please?"

"Seriously, what is all this?" Ridley asked, standing at the edge of what seemed to be Erebus's universe.

"It's uh, just a bit of research I'm doing." He continued to scan the laptop screen in front of him.

Ridley knelt down and picked up a piece of paper. "About what? Fairy tales? What is this?" He flipped the page around for Erebus to see. Erebus reached across and snatched the paper away.

"The Hallows" it read in medieval script. Below it, a picture of a beautiful dark-haired woman with horns, and beneath that, a short poem about a fabled kingdom.

"Haven't you heard the stories?" Erebus asked, finally looking up.

Ridley shook his head. "As you seem to have forgotten, I thought I was human for eighteen years. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with supernatural lore."

"It's just stories that the people here and topside know about. Apparently, once upon a time, there was a way to travel to the country where the gods lived. The country was known as the Hallows. But, according to myth, thousands of years ago the doors to the country were sealed and no one has ever been back."

"Okay . . ." Ridley sat down and crossed his legs, mirroring his friend. "Did you miss the part about it being just a story? I mean, why are there literally three hundred pages on your floor right now about this?"

Erebus grunted in retort. Ridley looked around at the countless leather-bound books piled on top of each other; the bookshelves that lined the room were now mostly empty. "What's so important that you've spent the last three days doing this?" Ridley asked.

"I think I may have found somebody who might know what happened to me. Who might know why I can't remember anything."

Ridley nodded, doubtful. "And who's that?"

Erebus sighed and held up a finger as he scanned the chaos. He pulled a book from the middle of one of the piles. Ridley cocked his head to read the gold foil on the cover: Explorer
Dr. Leveti's 1537 Journey Across the Heavens.

Erebus turned to a particular page. "This guy was permitted to visit the kingdom. Here, he quotes a chapter of a text he found within an older explorer's guide, telling him about this guy called the Old Necromancer . . ." Ridley nodded, and Erebus continued, reading directly from the text. "'The man was tall and pale, with gray skin and hair like snow. He was covered in strange, rust-colored markings. During my brief time in the Hallows it had slipped my mind to ask what they had meant. But I assumed they had something to do with the man's powers. He appeared to be the same as others of the necromantic kind. But the man also seemed to specialize in the keeping of information regarding the dead. It seemed the Old Necromancer was connected with the lives of the living (and, therefore, the dead) in a way that many may never come to understand. Truly a remarkable character, and I do wish to see him again on my next visit.'"

Erebus looked up.

"And . . . what does that mean, exactly?" Ridley asked.

Erebus shut the book. "I went topside the other day—"