Chapter 35: Spell 35 - The Plan Room
A few turns later, Ren noticed the girl veer slightly off the path, toward a different hallway. She then stepped over a small ridge in the floor and seemed to hesitate before walking on.
Ren slowed behind her. The floor looked normal this time. It was just weathered wood, just as they had seen all over the entire level since they had entered it.
He glanced around for more objects or shapes that might have looked unfitting until his eyes landed on a wooden beam with different markings on it than the rest. They were subtle, and if it wasn’t for the girl slowing down, he wouldn’t have noticed them at all.
He reached out and brushed the edge of the beam with his fingertips, but nothing happened. Encouraged by the stillness, he stepped closer and traced the vertical line of symbols more carefully, trying to make sense of them.
A soft bell rang somewhere above, and then a flash wrapped everything in a white light.
Ren ducked instinctively as a burst of energy cut through the air above him. It buzzed for a few moments, then drifted downward until it dispersed across the floor, fading out like it had never been there.
"Testing things out, huh?" Kagami reached where Ren was and smiled visibly.
"I guess... if that’s what you wanna call it..."
"I’m sure your next life will appreciate the wisdom."
The girl had turned around at the noise as well. She tilted her head, staring at the triggered trap with mild surprise. There were still no words that would come out of her, but her expression seemed somewhat confused as to why Ren would trigger the trap in the first place, when she had warned him about it beforehand.
Ren stepped back into the safe zone beside her.
"You knew about both traps," he said, watching her closely. "You’re not just guessing."
She gave the faintest nod.
They walked in silence for a while, and this time Ren followed the girl’s movements without teasing his luck anymore.
The girl led them through another sequence of corridors, each with its own subtle warnings. None of them was really obvious to the untrained eye, but Ren began to understand the pattern she responded to. Her gaze would check upward before passing under certain arches, and she would walk closer to the wall when nearing areas where carved decorations changed shape abruptly.
Eventually, they reached a wide chamber surrounded by murals depicting what seemed like gatherings or ceremonies of some sort.
But what really caught Ren’s attention was the center of the room.
A massive table dominated it. It stood long and rectangular, built into the floor like a relic in itself. It bore drawings and clay models directly on its surface.
Around it, scattered throughout the place, were pylons and wires that hung intricate and complex maps of something Ren didn’t recognize at first glance.
It was a plan room.
Kagami stopped just past the threshold as she let her eyes, mind, and possibly something else deeper inside, adjust. Her fur bristled slightly as if the memory of this place wasn’t one of the regulars she would get out here in Naraku.
"This is where they used to plan the trials," she explained in a lower voice than usual.
Ren walked further in.
On one section of the table was a set of diagrams and sketches clearly illustrating the floating platforms hallway he had encountered on the first level of the Sanctum. Some strange markings and symbols seemed to explain in detail the glyphs each of those platforms bore, but the naming convention was too odd for Ren to understand.
Next to those, he found another familiar set of depictions. The monolith room. The circular layout of that chamber was drawn across a thin sheet of paper, which Ren lifted toward a ray of light that fell nearby. He recognized the Pact Echo he had fought, only that its shape was depicted here as a humanoid with generic features. What gave it away, though, was the Pact blade that resided on its right arm. That one looked just like the one he had seen.
But there were more as well. Other diagrams depicted the remaining monoliths, and alongside them, there were detailed sketches of their corresponding Pact Echoes. Ren pulled the pages closer, studying the drawings more carefully to take in the finer details.
"I thought there was only one of them to fight..." Ren ultimately said.
Kagami moved beside him, with her tail curling around her paws as she surveyed the table.
"You woke the one that was meant for you. But no, it wasn’t the only one," she explained.
"Meant for me..." he repeated, as if to better engrave it into his mind. "So they’re still there?"
"Why?... Do you think the floating platforms have vanished just because you passed them?" she replied, smiling as she turned the question back on him.
Then, her paw touched one of the schematics Ren hadn’t noticed before. It was one of the newer unfinished sketches of what looked like a trial under construction. He leaned in, trying to decipher it, but the more he stared, the less sense it made.
"I know it’s not something a human who has lived your kind of life would understand, but this was a form of art," Kagami let her thoughts unfold in a distant tone. "Once... Before the agendas turned it all to nonsense."
"How many of them were made?" Ren asked, still looking at the last sketch Kagami had pointed out.
"There are three main levels to this place," Kagami replied. "With the last of the floors, the fourth, being reserved for the initiation rite. It’s where the witch and Pact barer would finally become one."
Ren stepped back slightly, leaving the maps and sketches on the table where he had found them, taking the rest of the room in. The place really felt like a cathedral for designers.
"I bet there were a lot of sadists in here," he mumbled to himself.
Kagami smiled, amused by his thought.
"Sometimes. But the original trials were meant to be pure. They cut through the nonsense, so to speak, by making people face who they were. That kind of honesty was... magnificent."
"Yeah, that’s what all sadists say," Ren replied while raising a brow.
That didn’t amuse Kagami in the slightest. He then smiled a bit but decided not to push her further.
Suddenly, something clicked loudly behind them, making both Ren and Kagami turn at the same time.
The girl had stepped near the edge of the table next to something that looked like a mechanism embedded on one of the pylons. She had pressed it perhaps by accident, or maybe not.
Another click followed, which echoed loudly in the vast room.
"What did she just do?" Ren asked.
"I don’t know," Kagami replied, keeping her eyes locked on the girl.
All the while, the girl remained still, watching them, as if waiting for something to start.