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 Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
When Reims commented on Dering’s attention across the room, he only shrugged. Looking over there didn’t seem like it meant much if he couldn’t report on why. He always surveyed the area around him. It didn’t mean he found anything, and his friends probably just thought he was paranoid about everything.
Maybe he was. It had its uses, sometimes.
Dering’s shoulders were tight and he stood still while Reims moved, but he tracked where he went, and what happened around him.
He felt no magical undercurrent, or any sensation or sound of music.
Dering felt uneasy, but that was his fault. Not the wonder.
At Reims’s beckoning, he stepped closer. It was strange, how the room was so large and carried so much sound, and all he could hear was the sound of his robes draping against stone. He almost hiked them up to keep quiet, but the distance between where he was and where he was going was too slight to warrant the effort.
He joined Reims by the organ, close but with enough distance that he didn’t crowd Reims. In the well-lit room, even the dust looked like glitter in the air.
Dering wasn’t sure what might change, or if he should expect anything at all, but he’d have done anything for Reims. So, he drew in a breath and focused, searching for something–anything.
Mostly, he expected nothing. But that was information, too, he supposed.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
Reims waited while Dering moved closer, but when nothing obvious happened, he didn't press him for an answer. That was fine. They didn't know what they were looking for anyway.
Instead, Reims shifted the final page between his fingers and looked back toward the arch the lion had indicated. The first two melodies still lingered somewhere in the stone, faint enough that he could almost convince himself he imagined them.
Then Dering stepped into place beside him. The page in Reims's hand warmed. Not enough to trigger another memory, thankfully, but enough that he immediately looked down at it.
"Okay," he made a face. "That's new."
A thin line of light traced along the handwritten marking near the bottom of the page, then faded. At the same time, somewhere behind the organ, there was a soft mechanical click.
The lion's head lifted toward the sound. Reims straightened, pulse picking up again, but he didn't reach for anything.
"There."
He glanced at Dering, then toward the lute. "I think we're in the right spot."
The air around the arch seemed still, but the dust near the base had begun to shift again in a faint, steady pattern — as if something behind the wall was breathing.
Reims stepped to the side enough for Dering to have room to play. "Same as before," he said. "Just the last part."
Then paused, then added more quietly. "Whatever happens after that, we'll deal with it together."
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
Dering looked down, eyes tracking the lines of the page as if he too might see whatever new mystery revealed itself to Reims. He wasn’t surprised to see only the page, nor was he even really disappointed. There was so much about a Wonder he didn’t understand, but he knew the bond between it and its Knight was something special, irreplicable from one to the next.
The click from behind the organ was more observable, and his eyes lifted briefly. He listened like a rabbit might, as if to catch movement in the split second before a predator struck, but the wall–and Reims itself–was unthreatening. For him, at least. Concern spilled over once more for his friend, who he couldn’t be certain had not been made to carry more discomfort in this revelation.
Riker seemed fine, for all that it was worth, so Dering nodded and positioned his fingers over the strings of his lute.
This time, it took him a few seconds longer to prepare, both because the pressure not to mess up this–the last song, presumably–and ruin all the effort they’d put into getting this far, and also because he didn’t know what was beyond this.
If there was danger, he needed a shield.
And if there was more than that, Reims needed to know he was safe to handle it.
Dering spared the wall one final glance, and then returned to the page. The tune was familiar to him now, and he probably could have played most of it without looking at the page, but he forced his fingers to stay slow–without hesitation, but without certainty either.
The notes were easy. Playing it was easy.
The only way this could go wrong was if he messed it up, and he was determined not to.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
Reims stayed quiet while Dering played. He didn't watch Dering's hands this time. Instead, he watched the arch, the organ, the dust shifting along the floor — anything that might warn them if something were to happen.
The final notes carried through the cathedral, and for a moment nothing happened.
Then the first melody reverberated from somewhere above.
The second followed from the north alcove.
All three gathered together, not loud, but impossibly clear, threading through the stone until the cathedral itself seemed to hum around them.
Reims felt it through his shoes before he heard anything else.
A deep click sounded behind the organ. Then another. Dust spilled from a seam in the wall as one narrow section of carved stone shifted inward several inches.
Reims's breath caught.
"Well—" That was about all the time he had to say before the lion moved in front of them, broad body angled protectively toward the opening. Reims rested a hand against its back, but his attention went to Dering first.
"Sounds like you got it."
He didn't add anything about how close it had been, or how carefully Dering had played, or whether there had ever been a chance for failure. The passage had opened. That was the secret's answer.
Only then did Reims look toward the dark gap behind the organ. Cold air drifted through it, carrying the faint smell of old stone — and something else beneath it that he couldn't immediately place.
His excitement dimmed.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Now I'm not too sure about all this."
He crouched near the opening without crossing it, letting his eyes adjust first to the darkness. The passage looked like it descended. Not far enough to disappear completely, but enough that whatever waited below remained hidden from view.
Reims glanced back up at Dering. "You still wanna do this?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
In the moment between when Dering finished playing, and when nothing happened, his heart stilled as his blood ran cold. A very familiar sense of doubt and disappointment began to well, but before shame could cascade over him, he heard the click.
Anything else he might have been able to explain as wishful thinking or an overactive imagination, but then the wall opened, and–
Dering wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring into the darkness when Reims’s voice pierced the fog in his mind. He blinked, eyes refocusing quickly, and settling on his friend.
“It’s fine,” he reassured. The passageway was ominous. Dark, and eerie. Everything about it screamed ‘this is not somewhere you want to be’.
But it didn’t matter if it was true. Riker had worked so hard to get here. Of course he could have gone on alone–and, he probably would have. Maybe not today. If Dering said he didn’t want to go, Reims wouldn’t have forced him.
He’d have come back another day.
“Do you want a flashlight?” he offered. One hand disappeared into subspace while the other stayed on the strings of his lute. He didn’t see movement in the darkness but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something there, waiting.
Dering’s subspace was well organized, and he had the flashlight in hand–and offered to Reims–in almost no time at all.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:20 pm
Reims accepted the flashlight with no hesitation and quiet thanks as he clicked it on, angling the beam down the stairs. For a moment, he half expected the light to catch on something he'd immediately regret seeing, but there was only stone, dust, and a narrow staircase descending deeper beneath the cathedral.
Unfortunately, it gave his imagination too much room to run wild.
The lion moved ahead first, its broad shoulders nearly filling the opening as it sniffed cautiously at the cold air. Apparently the passage had been built wide enough for something its size, although its stained glass wings folded tightly along its back.
"Well, if he fits…" Reims glanced back at Dering before following. "Stay close."
Not because he thought Dering couldn't handle himself. Reims wanted Dering close enough that, if something moved in the dark, neither of them would be cut off from the other.
The stairs didn't go especially deep before leveling into a short corridor. It was colder there, but the smell wasn't the same as the grove. No rot. No overwhelming scent of death. Reims hadn't realized how much he'd been expecting that until some of the tension eased from his shoulders.
At the end of the corridor was another arch, and beyond it—
Reims stopped.
The room wasn't what he expected.
There was a bed. Not a stone slab or an altar, but an actual narrow wooden frame pushed against the wall, remnants of old fabric collapsed across it. A small table sat nearby, along with a chair and shelves built into the stone. Broken cups or bottles were scattered beneath one of them.
"What the hell…"
Someone hadn't just hidden something down there.
Someone had stayed there.
Reims stepped inside more slowly, sweeping the flashlight across the room without touching anything. The lion moved ahead of him, sniffing along the floor before stopping near the far wall.
Beside the bed, scratches marked the stone in neat little groups. Reims frowned at them. Damage, maybe, except they were too orderly. Too deliberate.
Counting days.
His stomach tightened again.
"I don't think this was just somewhere he hid something," he murmured.
The flashlight passed over an old cabinet built into the wall. Its doors had rotted enough to hang crooked, but something inside caught the beam and flashed deep red.
Reims froze.
After what had happened with the pages, he had absolutely no intention of reaching for it yet.
"Jules?" he said, quieter now, angling the light toward the cabinet. "Tell me I'm not imagining that?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:21 pm
Dering did not need the reminder to stay close, but he nodded anyway. He’d never had any intention of letting Reims descend into the darkness alone–although, it seemed like the lion had the same intention. Only, the lion didn’t seem to need the flashlight.
Dering did, as much as Reims, so he relied on Reims to wield it for the both of them.
Unlike the steps on Dering, he did not fall down these. Despite the circumstances, it felt like a good start.
Not much else felt good about being down here.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that someone had stayed down here–unwillingly, probably, given the marks on the wall. He didn’t look at them for long. He didn’t want to think too deeply.
About how small the room felt. About how cold it was. About how thick the air felt.
There weren’t bones here, not that he could see, so he felt some small spark of hope that whoever had been down here hadn’t stayed down here.
It didn’t really seem like the type of place you kept a prisoner, after all–not a criminal.
You wouldn’t let them keep their treasure if they were. Probably.
He didn’t really know what he was looking at, only that when the light was beautiful, right up until the part where it started to hurt his eyes. He squinted, and turned his gaze towards the shadows in the room. He hadn’t seen many places for someone–or something–to hide, but maybe that was all the more reason to be cautious.
“What is it?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:21 pm
Dering's question pulled Reims's attention back to the cabinet. The red glint was still there, caught in the flashlight's beam.
"Not sure yet," he frowned. "Looks like jewelry, maybe."
Reims angled the flashlight a little more carefully, trying to make out the shape without getting any closer than he had to.
He wasn't eager to touch anything after what the pages had done to him, but standing there staring at it wasn't going to give them answers either. Reims crouched instead, keeping the flashlight trained inside while the lion moved closer, broad enough to block most of the room behind him.
The object was small. Jewelry, maybe. A pendant or a brooch, tarnished metal curled around a stone so dark red it almost looked black until the light struck it.
Something about it made Reims's stomach twist, although he couldn't place his finger on why. He reached toward it, hesitated, then glanced back at Dering.
"I'm going to try it," he said quietly. "Be ready in case it does something again."
His fingers hovered over the metal for another moment before finally brushing against it.
For a sharp second, the room changed.
Not completely this time… more like two moments that seemed to exist in the same space.
Someone sat on the edge of the bed, too blurred for Reims to make out their face. Past Reims stood in front of them, one gloved hand holding the same red jewel while the other closed around their wrist.
Not violently… but definitely firmly. The person said something Reims couldn't hear. Past Reims answered with a single thought so clear it made Reims's chest hurt.
They cannot know you're alive.
Then it was gone.
Reims jerked his hand back and stared at the jewel. For a few seconds he didn't say anything. The lion pressed its head against his shoulder, grounding him before he could drift too far into whatever the memory had left behind.
"They were alive," Reims said finally. His voice came out quieter than he'd intended.
"Whoever was kept here. Past me knew they were alive, and apparently someone else wasn't supposed to."
He angled the flashlight more carefully over the jewel without touching it again. Beneath the dark red stone, the metal had been engraved with a tiny symbol near the edge of the setting. It was too precise to be random decoration.
The mark looked almost like a small faceted diamond crossed by a short line, worked neatly enough into the metal that Reims wondered if it belonged to whoever had made the piece.
Reims frowned. "Jules, come look at this." He shifted aside to give Dering a clear view, keeping the light steady on the engraving. "There's something engraved underneath it. Does that look like a maker's mark to you?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:21 pm
When Reims extended his hand to the piece, Dering braced himself. He expected the worst, because it was easy to, and he didn’t want to be caught unawares. There was only so much he could do despite ‘being ready’, and he’d already given himself a headache while trying to predict any of the infinite possibilities of just how things might go wrong.
He nearly stepped forward when Reims recoiled, but Dering stalled when he realized Reims was startled, not hurt. He stood on the tips of his toes, on edge and ready to move, but as the tension in the room eased he slowly lowered himself.
When summoned, he moved to Reims’s side immediately.
He could only somewhat make out what Reims was talking about, but the sparkle of the gem kept distracting him, and he didn’t want to lean forward too much and block Reims’s view.
“Maybe,” he answered, but was quick to remind, “I’m not really familiar with that sort of thing.”
Even if he had been, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to read anything here–not like Reims had been able to do in the library.
“Um. Would you like me to pick it up and hold it so you can see better?”
Reims had given Riker enough surprises so far, and Dering could only imagine what weight he was carrying now that he hadn’t before. Riker was not particularly known for his caution, and yet he was carrying himself gently, now. Dering paid close attention to him, as much as he could without staring or crowding or otherwise smothering.
It was important to keep an eye out for dangers within the room, but just as important to him to keep an eye out for dangers to Riker–especially the ones that would have been too easy for him to hide.
If Dering could help–in any way–he wanted to.
Reims had worked so hard to get here.
He deserved answers.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:21 pm
Reims hesitated. His first instinct was to tell Dering no. He didn't know what the thing was, what kind of magic might be attached to it, or whether touching it would do anything worse than give someone a headache and a glimpse of something that happened a thousand years ago.
But Dering had already handled the pages without anything happening. Whatever was reaching for Reims in the form of sudden memories seemed to belong only to him.
"...Yeah," he said after a moment. "Okay. Just be careful."
He shifted the flashlight so Dering would have enough light to reach for the piece without having to lean too far into the cabinet.
"I don't think it'll do the same thing to you. The pages didn't." His expression tightened faintly in thought. "And if it does anything weird, drop it."
Reims stayed close while Dering reached for it, one hand resting against the lion's mane almost without thinking. Truthfully, he wasn't really sure why he'd called the engraving a maker's mark in the first place. He didn't know enough about jewelry to identify one on sight.
"I don't actually know why I thought that," he admitted after a moment. "The mark, I mean. I'm not exactly an expert on jewelry or that kind of thing either."
Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe being down there, close to things his past self had known, was stirring up information without giving him the memory attached to it.
That possibility wasn't exactly comforting.
"If you can turn it over, maybe there's something else on the back." He angled the flashlight toward Dering's hands once the jewelry was lifted free.
Without the cabinet swallowing half the light, the piece was easier to see. The setting was older and more intricate than Reims had first realized, and the dark red center wasn't cut like an ordinary gemstone. Its surface was smooth in places and uneven in others, almost as if whatever formed it hadn't started as stone at all.
Reims frowned.
"Does that even look like a gem to you?"
His attention shifted briefly toward the room again — the bed, the tally marks, the shelves. "Whoever was down here had this with them for a reason. Past me knew about it."
And apparently someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure both the person and whatever they carried stayed hidden.
Reims looked back at Dering. "See if there's anything else engraved on it. Anything that looks intentional."
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:22 pm
Dering knew that Reims’s insistence to be careful was just part of how he expressed concern, no matter how unlikely it was that Dering would have acted on the contrary.
Like Reims, he had deduced that he was the least likely to be affected by anything magical here. However, just because it hadn’t affected him before didn’t mean he took unnecessary risks.
He’d never tried to use his magic without playing the lute, and he didn’t know how discordant the sounds were allowed to be before it didn’t count, but just in case, he kept his thumb close to the string while he carefully handled the jewelry.
It was less for him to see, and more for Reims, so he turned it over in his hands slowly to make sure Riker had access to all of it.
Even if it hadn’t been some ancient treasure, it felt expensive. There was a weight to it, either from the stone or the metal. Dering had mostly, if ever, handled costume jewelry. “I wish Atticus were here,” he said softly, turning it over again.
Not only was Atticus far more creative himself, with a fine eye for detail, he would have been used to seeing gemstones and all sorts of shiny things even if just because of his father’s propensity for them. Not to mention all the time Atticus spent in museums, too.
Did it look like a gemstone to Dering? Yes, but his standards were low. He could have been tricked by plastic or glass, so his opinion on such a thing was hardly noteworthy.
“Is it something worth protecting?” he asked, just before the light caught on a small indent. Dering couldn’t really make out whatever was inscribed–not only was the angle poor for it, but he couldn’t have read it anyway.
Dering spoke softer down here than he had upstairs. There was no one to disturb down here, but the space had been untouched for so long that it felt wrong to disturb it.
“I mean, a reason why it would have been kept down here with someone instead of just, um. Taken? I mean, I don’t know.”
It felt like a messy subject. He didn't need to know.
“Um, there’s this, though. I think it’s intentional.” He couldn’t be sure, but he held it up for Reims.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:22 pm
Reims watched Dering turn the piece over, keeping the flashlight steady on his hands. At the mention of Atticus, he gave a small huff of agreement.
"Yeah. He'd probably know more than either of us."
The question about whether it was worth protecting made Reims hesitate.
"Maybe," he said slowly. His attention settled on the dark red center again. "There's weird magic on Ganymede sometimes. Not just Wonder magic." Reims frowned, trying to decide how much of it was important enough to share. Or to be kept secret. "Yvoire found a door once that wouldn't open for me. It only reacted after he cut his hand and touched it."
That still bothered him more than he liked to admit.
"So I don't know if this was important because it was valuable, or because whoever had it was important, or both."
When Dering held the inscription up, Reims leaned closer to catch the light across it. The characters settled into meaning almost immediately.
"'Kept in trust,'" he read, his brows furrowing. "That's… not ominous at all." Reims looked from the inscription to the bed, then back to the jewelry. "If it means the necklace, someone was supposed to keep it safe from someone else." His expression tightened slightly. "If it means the person…"
He let the thought trail off and looked up at Dering instead. "Can you see if there's any way it opens? A clasp, compartment, anything hidden in the setting?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:23 pm
Dering’s mouth went dry during Reims’s story, and something heavy twisted in the pit of his stomach. The injury hadn’t been severe enough that he’d heard of it before now, so he wasn’t worried about Yvoire, exactly, but any door that required blood to open hardly boded well.
For Yvoire and Reims.
He drew in a breath, quiet and slow, and once more turned the stone over in his hands.
“I don’t see anything like that. I’m sorry.”
He looked again, rubbing his fingers across the surface, but still unable to find anything abnormal enough to investigate.
It didn’t feel like much of an answer, so after a few more seconds, Dering held it up to his eye and squinted, rotating the stone like if he looked hard enough he might find some secret embedded within it.
“Do you have any memories of anything like this, or are you just guessing?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 12:23 pm
Reims shook his head. "No. Nothing like this." He glanced down at the piece in Dering's hands, expression tightening slightly in thought.
"I get flashes when I touch certain things, but that's it. I don't remember this place, or whoever was down here, or what that is."
His gaze settled on the dark red gem again.
"It's just a hunch."
Maybe it was the inscription. Maybe it was the way past Reims had been holding it. Maybe being this close to something his past self had known was stirring up instincts without giving him any context for them.
He frowned when Dering apologized. "You don't have to be sorry. If it doesn't open, it doesn't open. That's good to know, too."
Reims leaned closer while Dering rotated it in the light. There was no hidden seam or compartment, but the longer he looked at it, the stranger the setting seemed. The metal curved around it almost too naturally, like they had been worked together instead of one being mounted into the other.
"I don't think that's a normal gem," he said after a moment.
But unless one of them spontaneously became an expert in thousand-year-old Ganymede jewelry, staring at it longer probably wasn't going to help.
Reims let out a breath and straightened, looking around the little room once more. They had answers at least… sort of. Someone had been alive down there. Past Reims had known about them and had gone to considerable trouble to make sure no one else did. The jewelry had been important enough to leave with them, and someone had marked it as being kept in trust.
It wasn't enough to explain what had happened, but it was more than they'd known when they came downstairs.
Beside him, the lion shifted and gave the room one last slow look, ears turning toward the corridor before settling again. Reims rested a hand briefly against the thick mane at his shoulder.
"I think we've gotten about as much as we're going to get out of this tonight." He held a hand out for the piece, careful not to touch the red gem. "We'll take it with us. Maybe Atticus can tell us if this is actually a stone, and I can see if there's anything upstairs that matches that mark." He paused and made a face. "I guess I could ask Ganymede about it, but…" He shrugged. He wasn't really in the mood to make her think he needed her help.
The lion was already turning toward the stairs, apparently satisfied that nothing else down there intended to jump out at them. Reims glanced after him, then back at Dering.
"Our hot chocolate is probably cold chocolate now… but if you want, we can finish up whatever pile of books was being worked on then call it for the day."
There were still so many questions, but for once Reims didn't feel the need to force an answer out. The Wonder had waited a thousand years. It could wait a little longer.
Fin
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