Nobody Calls on the Key Keeper

I used to know a guy.

“My bones are blades. With every action I am flayed,” he’d say.

He’d drone on about pain and blood and agony as he hung from the high boughs of a carpenter tree, fully pierced by a branch.

It was true too.

An osteomancer of no small skill had turned his bones into knives. Every movement, every little twitch, and he would be cut and sliced, but like, inside. If he moved too much, he’d actually cut whole chunks of skin off, and you could see the sharp edges of his elbows or his knuckles poking out. But then his curse, it would just slowly heal over the wounds.

There was always this pile of decaying flesh on the ground around him, and it would attract the flies and the hounds and the hogs. He had it bad, man.

But I suppose you’re here for one of my keys. So few make the journey to the Hollow Stone on The-Lake-In-the-Crystals-Among-the-Caves just to hear stories from an aging collector of secret things.

Which of my incredible keys are you fresh adventurers seeking? There are many kinds of keys, and locks can take many forms.

For instance I knew this woman who was locked in a shah’s pot. Trapped in this sort of roundabout pit, like the inside of an urn.

It was open at the top and you could look down into this ugly old well and see her, running in circles, crying and crying, just chasing this orb around. The orb had a hypnotic effect, so this runty burgomeister from a nearby village stuck in the ground on the way to the well warning people not to look down at it for too long. Took away a little of its edge.

The lady in the well couldn’t eat or sleep, but she couldn’t die either, so she just chased this swirling ball around in circles year after year. I don’t know how long she’d been down there but by the time I met her there was already a dark red ring she ran on, from when her feet would wear down and bleed into the ground.

I would look down in the well and watch her for a while, and be like, “hey, you can just stop and come outta there.” But that would make her more frustrated, and she’d grit her teeth and try to speed up. Sometimes she’d be too weak or her sinews would snap and she’d take a header right into the ground and mess up her face. But she’d just spit out some teeth and get right back up.

She’d say, “I’m chasing my dreams!” We’d both laugh and laugh.

I guess some old stonereader had told her that one day she would attain happiness, though it lay just beyond the threshold. It was like she lived her entire unfortunate life on that painful tipping point between achievement and utter surrender. It seemed pretty annoying.

Why don’t I still visit them? Oh, I don’t know. You grow up, people drift apart. People get busy with their own things.

You’re here for the Oozen Key you say? A moment while I find it.

Y’know, I used to know this couple of twin baronois who moved into a haunted pied-à-terre, they wanted to cleanse it with their love. Which they sort of did.

It was these two girls, born to different families, but both of golden-kissed blood. They looked like twins through a wavering mirror, full of this unknown allure. The locals would talk about how their black hair dared the sun itself, soaking in its rays and reflecting a more complex shine. How their glowing skin was perfectly soft without being insulting, firm but not rough. They had like, stallions in their stares.

When they finally found each other and fell in love, even the lowborn rejoiced and got drunk. The population of their villages exploded for a few years if you know what I mean.

They could’ve moved into one of the family keeps or gardened manses, but they were young and in love and wanted to make a statement, so they moved into that cursed apartment.

It was at the end of this long road, and every building for blocks had been abandoned, the inhabitants were either dead or scared off by the haunt. People who went in either never came back, or stumbled out in a violent fugue, their broken minds spilling nonsense insanities about endless walls and secret corners. I would always ask the twins why they didn’t just pick somewhere with a few spirits or something.

Anyway, the haunted apartment and its many halls did its thing and tried to drive the two mad, or trap them in a deep maze, but each day they’d come out to the street and assure the people that they were okay. In return, the people of the surrounding towns poured their love on the twins like fuel on an already raging fire. And sure enough, their love blotted out the curse.

The curse had mutated into something nurturing and kind. Gone were the endless toothed stairs and howling transoms. They’d been replaced with vast open rooms choked with flowers, and calming breezes that whispered kindnesses as they rushed through the halls. But the apartment loved too much.

One day, one of the twins (I could never tell them apart) found that a room had embraced their lover, shrinking around them and leaving nothing but a lock of black hair trailing out of a doorway no bigger than an acorn.

From that day on, the baronois sat in the hall holding her lover’s hair and weeping, begging the walls to release her other half. But it was an apartment, and it didn’t understand.

For a while I’d go and sit with the twin in the hallway and we’d talk about what we wanted out of life, loneliness and such. She’d talk about her trapped lover.

I wanted to be a shoulder to cry on. But she never left that apartment, and it became tiring having to reach out to her every time. I mean, she could come visit me too, you know.

I imagine she’s still sitting in that dusty old hallway, holding her twin’s hair.

Me? I guess I wanted to be an adventurer, but I never got the chance. I couldn’t really afford it, the gear and everything. I mean I used to try and go out on quests, but to really achieve something worthy of the scrolls you have to have a patron or come from royalty or something. Having that coin, those connections, lets you take risks. Skip the line.

Like there was this clerical artist’s son that I used to know. He found himself inside an endless labyrinth built into a cyclopian gorge, hunted by the other creatures trapped in those unmapped corridors.

Lucky for him, he’d been chosen by the Cracked Mask Blade, this sword that was guided by the all-seeing aura of a green copper mask that floated about his head. Some real expensive magick.

He never even would have been able to find the creepy blade if his family hadn’t inherited a blessed belltower that had all these lost maps and enchanted sextants, or he hadn’t come to me for the key to its six-sealed vault.

He was able to just set out and find the sword (with my help, of course) and once he had that piece of kit, it was no problem to stay on the road. An instant legend.

I haven’t heard from him since he got lost in the labyrinth, but the legends say that he’s still in there, using the blood of the slain to paint a secret history of the dead star, Xil, across the walls.

If he ever finishes his labors and finds his way out, maybe he’ll look me up, but I doubt it.

Don’t suppose your well appointed band of seekers could use the talents of an experienced collector, eh? I’ve got some cracks in the leather, but I could still hold my own against the weird and the glorious. Whatta ya say?

No no, of course. Just a small jest.

I definitely tried to seek out some quests, and I adventured for a few years, but I had bills to pay.

I traveled with this one guy who ended up being known as the “Mad Rat of the Frozen Brune.” They gave him the name cause he was this book thief who managed to survive in the frozen wilds for months before he became frozen in a waterfall of moving glass.

He was known for robbing the libraries of wealthy scholars and exclusive explorers guilds. In his estimation, that knowledge, those experiences, the secret soul of the incredible, belonged to the people who lived closer to the ground.

One time he stole this rare book of maps from an academy far into the frozen breakage. The whole place, columns, offices, catacombs, were carved out of a living glacier. But the freezing temperatures slowed his nimble fingers, and he was found out.

He managed to escape into the barren ice bramble along the banks of the glassen Brune, but the academy’s sleepless rectors, those relentless manhunters, were snapping at his heels. They tried cornering him, surrounding him, starving him out, but by means that are still miraculous, he managed to elude them for five long months.

The rectors finally trapped him at the precipice of a tall waterfall. According to one hunter who witnessed the scene, my friend the thief, gaunt and crazed, held the secret text aloft and shouted into the howling winds:

“Is this a world of wonders if the foundations are a scaffold of stolen sweat and bone? Can the golden mysteries of the dirt, depths, and demiurge be made record by the pen of thieves and charlatans?”

Then he finally gave up and collapsed into the slow glass surface of the river, taking the book with him. He’s still trapped in that waterfall, slowly falling for ages.

Yep. See. You’ve heard of the sleepless rectors from the elite academy, but never a word about the penniless rogue trapped in that living glass waterfall. I haven’t gone to visit him in years.

In this life, the questing life that folks like you and I have chosen, figures pass and the connection you have feels so real. But the further you get down that muddy path to the grave, the more you realize that while you’ve collected their stories, their lives, locking them away in a crypt of memory to which only you have the key, that gift of preservation is not a blade that cuts both ways. Some are forgotten. It’s a bummer.

Seems like that’s just the way of things. Maybe I never had a chance.

For some that’s simply their purpose, whether they know it or not.

I had an acquaintance ages ago who was employed as the page of an ambitious young physician. The physician had heard a golden spirit in the choked bleating of a caul born foal, and it had told him to seek the unfound city of Tabephis, to bring his healing arts to that fabled land. The page didn’t question his lifelong friend’s holy epiphany, he simply offered his vassalage without condition.

They set out across the steam moors, guided only by legend and folklore. As they encountered those in need, the physician would diagnose their ills, while the page tended their wounds and poured over crumbling grimoires to find antidotes for each new situation.

After a year, they had ministered 86 sick and broken bodies, but had yet to locate the city. The physician and the page were starving, so the page began offering bits of his own flesh to feed the physician, who sloppily devoured the meat, vowing in return, “When we reach Tabephis, there will be two thrones. One for the healer and one for his hands.”

Year after year, their travels continued. The physician and the page grew in notoriety, and soon they were joined by a merchant, a seer, a blacksmith, and a nun. Their band grew, but their fortunes did not, and once again they took pieces of the page to sustain themselves. As the physician healed the page, again he whispered, “Two thrones, my friend.”

By the time their traveling company had grown to the size of a small medicine show, the page’s knowledge and skill had come to match the physician’s, while the physician had only grown in notoriety. Their followers grew to a cult, worshiping the physician’s holy vision, and the page often found himself watching from the margins as the Seekers of Tabephis offered their services to the bloody and the diseased.

Still, the physician asked his friend for flesh to feed their followers. The page protested, and the physician darkened, asking, “Have I not promised you two thrones? Is my good work not your own?”

The page relented and they feasted again on his skill and on his skin.

After ages to rival empires, the physician and the page found Tabephis. Just as the vision had foretold, the hidden city had succumbed to a ravenous pox, and as the physician calmed their minds, the page used his skills to heal their bodies. Now 10,000 strong, the Seraphic Order of the Lamb’s Wander settled in the city, and the physician was made Lord Pontifex.

They had reached the end of their journey, but the page was not the same. His body had long since been covered in tough, rippling scar tissue, an armor grown from his sacrifices to the foundation of the physician’s kingdom. As the circle of sycophants and soothers had grown around the physician, the page himself was pushed to the fringes. His mind had been warped by bitter eras of dejection and isolation.

The page entered the physician’s throne room, intent on claiming his long promised seat. Indeed there were two thrones as the physician had foretold, but the page found that his seat was occupied by another, a lieutenant and a flatterer. He had not spoken to the physician in a century or so. The page shouted and cried and pled of the blood he’d spilt, but the physician looked at him with embarrassment, spitting, “You were promised a throne in Tabephis. But Tabephis is no more. You stand in the great hall of The Cure Delivered.”

The page ran screaming fury from that reshaped city, the taunts of the physician at his back. Now he still wanders, a malformed, babbling wretch, lost in his search for a city called Tabephis.

Honestly, he’s kind of a drag.

So you’ll take your key, and be on your way. When you tell your story, will there be any mention of the broke-down old key keeper you visited in the Hollow Stone on The-Lake-in-the-Crystals-Among-the-Caves?

Long after you’ve used the Oozen Key to solve the lock holding the gates of the Ichorvault, beyond the ages after you’ve written your own names in the myths of that forgotten and bottomless mausoleum, will you speak of me, or will I be just another nameless stone eddying the stream of memory and tale?

No. I think not. More likely I’ll be the page. No one calls anymore.

I mean no insult by it. Just that old jealousy, falling off like a brittle crust. It’s been nice to know you for a time, and maybe I’ll come visit you. Bring back your story to the next king’s son that comes looking for one of my keys.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll finally encounter the legendary task of my own, not just handing out the keys to other folks’ tales. I’m working on it. I’ve got many seeds planted in the peat. There’s still time.

Reminds me of this fallen cardinal I once knew. Under her miter she held a horn fragment from the unknowable Mosaic Stag’s crown.

Oh. Yes. I understand. You’d better be on your way.

Like I say, you’ll see me out there in the wilds one day. This old key keeper will be a legend then. You’ll hardly recognize me. I’ll show you. At least, try not to forget me. Lock me up in your memory, where no key can let me escape.

I’ll be that guy.

By Eric Alexander Grundhauser