Aesthene's Close (location)
The Legend of Aesthene's Close
- Lorethew Brevanish Cander, Chronicler
When the ruins atop the Siergelde were not yet ruined, and the land
surrounding The Crossing was yet fertile and abundant, an outlawed
alchemist by the name of Aesthene came to settle within the new town
which had sprung along the delta of the river Segoltha.
Rich, eccentric, and acutely asthmatic, Aesthene found the mild
climate of The Crossing to his liking. His arrival in the fledgling
town was announced by a massive caravan numbering 1,000 beasts of
burden, 50 trackers and guides, 276 indentured servants (though
where he found so many toothless laborers is still a mystery),
16 chickens, 26 musk hogs, 134 oxen and a puma named Al.
His first official 'residence' was Gaethrend's Court, where he
took for himself an entire suite of rooms. As he settled in for
the smooth Segolthan winter, his servants proceeded to build for
him a magnificent mansion of grand halls, ornate cubiculums and
snaking tunnels. One room, referred to by Aesthene as his
'travel' room, would run the entire length of the upper story of
this magnificent residence, but to the builders' dismay, was
required to have no windows and no exits. Aesthene would, he
promised them, richly reward those workers who would hole them-
selves up within this room and complete it, without any contact
whatsoever with any of the other workers involved in the building
process.
Though it took roughly sixteen months longer than planned, Aesthene's
Close was finally ready for residence. Aesthene and his flock of
followers arrived at the mansion's doors early one morning, and
huddled around the gigantic archway which led from the dusty street
to the incredibly lush gardens surrounding the mansion. There,
Aesthene placed his blessing upon the home, put up a magical
barrier to seal it from prying eyes, and announced he was to embark
on a journey of epic proportions. Immediately. Everyone pack.
Befuddled, to say the least, his team of trackers and guides and
his indentured servants hastily prepared to travel yet again into
the wilds of the Northern Territory. As they packed and boxed,
crated and sealed, Aesthene presented his gracious host Gaethrend
with two very special potions, which for as long as were potent,
would afford Gaethrend tremendous financial success. Aesthene,
however, was an outlawed alchemist, and therefore, did things just
a wee shy of perfection. As Gaethrend's Court flourished,
his personal life fell to pieces -- but that is yet another story.
Suffice it to say that once the gift of the potions was made, the
bevy of travelers was on their way out the western gate of The
Crossing.
No record of Aesthene's travels in that time have been documented,
except for certain town records illustrating a massive search for
several workers reported missing shortly after his departure.
The next entry in the town journal thereafter was of Aesthene's
return, nearly twenty years later, and described a tremendous
haggling over land taxes due on his property. 'We know he built
a massive residence,' the tax seer wrote, 'but we have yet to
find it.' Beneath this is another entry: 'Aesthene Allevew paid
12 chickens and 4 oxen in past due land tax.'
Aesthene locked himself away in a far chamber on the second floor
of his mansion, working feverishly through an entire summer on
a project no other eyes would behold. Residents of the town,
from time to time, reported strange glowing lights flashing from
windows near the room, but other than this, nothing out of the
ordinary seemed to occur -- until the night when, under cover of
a moonless dark sky, Aesthene's servants hauled a massive iron
crate into the front yard.
That same evening, so the story goes, residents in the surrounding
area felt the utter chaos of Aesthene's presence. Bolts of
lightning cut heatedly through an otherwise calm night, and a
vaporous cloud undulated eerily above the mansion. Multi-colored
streaks of essence crackled everywhere, darting around, through
and in between every home on the street. A sound like that of
rattling chains woke people in their beds, and the ground shook
as if jostled by a massive quake, yet nothing was found out of
place.
The next morning, curious onlookers found the massive iron crate
opened and abandoned at the side of the street, probably waiting
for the charity cart to roll by and remove it for recycling.
Nothing out of the ordinary occured again at Aesthene's Close,
at least not for many, many years. Visitors came and went, Aesthene
became well-known for his bizarre collection of striped pink
donkeys and mooing chickens, and on occasion a streak of multi-
colored lights could be seen pulsing about the street-facing
archway. The townsfolk came to grudgingly accept their most
eccentric neighbor, whose house never quite seemed to be where it
should, and whose absolute worst compulsion was to drop handfuls
of coins on the roads whenever he was angry.
Destiny, however, intervened in the quiet lifestyle of The
Crossing. At dawn on a sleepy spring day, a tremendous rumbling
quaked through its streets and upset its foundations, killing
dozens and turning nearly a half of the town into rubble. A
handful of crazed servants scrambled to vacate Aesthene's Close
as it sank in ruins into the ground. Together with surviving
victims of the quake, they watched the tortured remnant of the
Close disappear as if it had never been.
Many, many years later, upon his deathbed, one of these servants
finally confessed to the strange happenings of that sorry
morning. Calling for me as chronicler of The Crossing, he related
to me a succinct and bizarre tale, which I now set down for those
of you willing to understand. Perhaps someday, the mystery of that
morning will be solved, and all who remain alive will benefit from
Aesthene and his adventure. But it is not my place to judge, it
is only my place to relate to you what was told to me. Herewith,
then, is the story told me:
My conscious will be clear,' he prayed, 'if I tell thee of
the events of that morn, which I have sworn upon my sword I would
not tell another living soul what I had seen. Yet I see the
goodness in those who have spent their lives in the rebuilding
of this town, and their progress overcomes my loyalty to my late
master Aesthene and all his works.
It was I whom attended my master through that night with a
most curious experiment,' he continued, 'in the cubiculum of the
mirrors, and it involved a strange and wonderous crystal.
Was Aesthene's habit to affect various experiments upon this
crystal, which involved some sort of time travel. I, of course,
cared little for such things, but Aesthene was obsessed with
the notion of traveling between time and space through a gateway
created by this object.
Its power was awesome, and I daresay, unharnessable. It
frightened me no end that Aesthene trusted only me to assist in
his experiments. Night after night I sat and attended to Aesthene
as he worked with that thing. He chanted, he cursed, he weaved
dark signs in the air...and all it did was hang suspended there,
glittering back at him in defiance.
Until the night,' he said softly, 'that Aesthene called on
the dark power in frustration, to show him the power of the
crystal.
That is when I first saw Aesthene disappear.
I was frantic. I had no idea what to do. The cubiculum had
no exits or windows, and without Aesthene's conjuring, I was
trapped there. The crystal shook and hummed, feeding a dense
prismatic light to the air. My hair stood on end, my skin
crawled. And as I frantically clawed at the floor, it coughed
and sputtered, and Aesthene reappeared!
His face was on fire and his hair was streaked with white,
but the look in his eyes was of burning coals and the smile on his
face was remarkable. He told me he had been to a most curious
locale, and kept chanting 'incredible, simply incredible!' without
benefit of further information. Though it feared me greatly to
stay with him I did so, for I had a family to support and, quite
frankly, no way to get out of that room without Aesthene's
permission.
For many nights, he worked like this, disappearing and
reappearing from who knows where. He made copious notes in his
journal, in symbols and signs which made no sense to me. He
would mutter to himself and cackle occasionally, he would rub his
hands in a kind of sick glee. It was nearly too much to bear,
except that Al, his pet puma, kept me company and we became
friends.
But come that awful, awful morning,' he shook his head
sadly, 'and our lives were forever changed, were they not?' The
servant sighed miserably as he recounted the events that led
to the quake.
We were, as usual, locked away in the cubiculum, Aesthene
at his desk busily writing in his journal, Al resting
disinterestedly in a corner of the room, myself huddled near
Aesthene's chair awaiting his commands, and that awful, hateful
crystal whirring and humming and flashing like mad.
Aesthene turned to me, and for the first time in a long time,
looked downright normal. 'Tonight I embark on my greatest
adventure,' he smiled. 'You shall leave me now, but I will give
you a vision of what happens here. Tell no one of what you see,
except myself upon my return.'
He placed me down upon the tiled floor of the room with the
magic portal. From there, I was safe from the crystal, but in
my mind I could see all that occured.
From beneath his cloak, he pulled a blackened, twisted
staff crowned with a gleaming emerald. Holding this aloft, he
uttered a strange but impressive incantation. I cannot tell
you how it went, for about halfway through it, Aesthene's eyes
began to bulge, and I could see immediately he was in the midst
of a full-blown asthma attack.
Whatever was left unfinished in that incantation must have
angered the power of the crystal, for it shuddered violently
and tilted a little, and a thick bolt of lightning struck at
Aesthene and swallowed him whole!
The poor puma, Al, was the next to disappear. And quite
inexplicably, the crystal went dark. That was all I saw
before the visions died, and I was alone in the quiet darkness
of the tiled room.
For agonizing moments I pondered what could have happened,
and hoped that wherever Aesthene went, someone could help him
with his wheezing. Only when the wall behind me suddenly
collapsed did I have any idea of what other things were happening
at the moment I saw Aesthene disappear.
When I had clawed my way from the safety of that magical
room, everything around me was in ruin. Whole passages were
blocked by rubble, rooms were gone, and people were screaming.
I scrambled with those I found for the front door of the Close,
and thankfully the gods spared us the fate of many of our fellow
servants. But out in the streets of The Crossing, that same
chaos continued to spread. Roads buckled and cracked, whole
houses were torn asunder. Trees were uprooted, oxcarts were
overturned, buildings were crumbling...it was absolute chaos.
I have waited a lifetime for my master's return, and now,
as I see my own slipping away, I felt it was my duty to pass on
what I know. Perhaps someday, Aesthene will return. And he
will want to know what happened that morn.
Tell him, for me. And when you do, tell him also that I
have heard reports of strange lights in the air surrounding the
warehouse where his mansion once stood, and I myself have heard the
strange, familiar hum of the crystal on clear summer nights. But
most of all, please tell him to remember to drink his water warm
to help the wheezing!'
Lorethew Brevanish Cander
Chronicler