"The Electrum Bell had reverberated through the night from the highest tower," Ayla giggled, her gaze lingering on the distant silhouette of Braxmond's smokestacks shrouding the night's heavens in black clouds. "No hands had touched their toll—they had rung with their own force, a sound that had traveled across the Citadel of Convergence never heard before."
"Do you recall if that bell had ever rung in any other story or legend?" Rajnish responded, his voice clipped with every word. "It is critical that such "histories" do not lapse or steal from other factual accounts… Gypsy."
"Only that night," Ayla interjected, her voice excited by the skeptical man's jest, "the slow, repeated ringing had been solemn and a true omen of the catastrophic judgment that was coming—only if a word of a "Gypsy" were to be true."
She sat beside her questioner with a petite, slender frame and youthful spark, yet her hazel eyes flecked with crimson seemed too knowing, too old. Her long chestnut hair was braided with feathers and beads, and she wore a white fitted garment with a deep neckline trimmed in delicate lace, cinched by a dark ornate belt that highlighted her figure. Gilded ornaments jingled as she shifted to focus on the man with lustful interest—cascading gold strands and charms across her torso and matching white slender gloves that went from finger to elbow.
Rajnish possessed a rigid, lean build that stood somewhat more stoic than most. His black hair was perpetually groomed back, revealing premature silver threads. His deep brown gaze appeared acute yet weary, bearing the expression of one who spent more hours studying than resting. He wore the characteristic grey coat of the Mortal Instruments Order, adorned with a crimson band displaying a sinister skull crossed with bones, center a broken cog. Parchments, quills, and a blade accompanied him. His manner of speaking was refined and precise, conveying intellectual superiority though tinged with underlying uncertainty.
"Perhaps that is why the Citadel of Convergence is in ruin," Rajnish coughed, avoiding the young lady's gaze during his interview. He gestured east through a window of the tower towards jagged shadows darker than the night's backdrop. "Spires that once reached the heavens. Practitioners of magic aspired for divinity within those walls and yet brought about their own downfall through their own enlightenment. Surely, there was a disaster like a volcano or earthquake that razed that place to the ground?"
"But it wasn't silly!" she murmured, her voice cheerful and optimistic. "The gods had come and destroyed everything."
"Streams of liquid pigment had run down the sanctum's sides," Rajnish added, waving his hand in an inpatient manner. "Cascading downward, flowing elsewhere, spilling into broken recollections—indeed, indeed. I've listened to such tales previously—"
"All true!" she interrupted. "The stained-glass had melted in a blaze of unimaginable heat. It flowed down in rivers of weeping crimson, dying viridian, and tarnished gold," Ayla continued, ignoring the man's disregard.
Rajnish leaned forward despite himself. "And inside?"
"Inside, the clerics screamed as bronze idols twisted free from marble plinths that had held them for centuries," she said, eyes narrowing. "Veins of raw ore threaded through the carved figures, their sculpted eyes burning with malevolent vitality. The alchemists who had animated these constructs with calculated precision fled in terror as their creations turned against them, metal limbs striking with deadly intent."
"The Golems of Adonis—that's new information," Rajnish noted.
"Emperor Adonis created them, yes," she confirmed with a nod. "From the northern peaks, molten storms darkened the sky with ash while phantoms emerged from the eastern wasteland and blood flowed from western foundries—three divine forces once balanced in harmony converged because blood magic had been performed. The golems summoned the deities' wrath."
Ayla shifted as the retelling pulled her back into the traumatic scene, and Rajnish paused his scribing, allowing the lady a moment to gather her thoughts. Perhaps the naive nature of the child was too much for this line of questioning as her face turned from joy to fear.
"The God of Transfiguration descended first, Shiva," Ayla proclaimed, adopting a more dramatic tone and ignoring the golem inquiry. "A being of animated, gleaming metal with vast wings of electrum that beat the air into submission and a face like a stoic warrior. His voice, like a scalding ichor, poured into the minds of all who heard it, declaring: Mankind's part in creation, is void."
"But there had been no time to grasp that horror," Rajnish added as he set down his quill, eyes narrowing. He knew she had avoided his line of questions and proceeded to tantalize her with his account of records. "Others account that the God of Incantation, Enki, descended from the heavens as well. Wrapped in an aura of living fire, he strode upon the air, his colossal limbs shedding molten flame, melting the city's stones to cinder and shattered like glass. His forge-like maw breathed terrible words: Mankind's veneration is hollow. What you consider sacred shall be consumed. What is untainted shall be obliterated."
"True, all true," she agreed, and the pace quickened to play along with the man. "The Goddess of Augury, Alicia, emerged, cloaked in swirling feathers and icy chill. Her silver hair was tormenting, ever-changing, at times of white flame, of rushing water, and of stardust blanketing the cosmos. Alicia's voice, a chorus of whispers, decreed: Mankind's visions are merely illusions. What is perceived shall be shattered. What remains concealed shall endure in the approaching darkness. This will be your collective fate."
"The Tri-Arc, sworn protectors combating these dreadful forces," he started to fill in his records but interrupted himself with a sharp, bitter laugh. "Three known deities who had all achieved the ninth level of their transcendence centuries prior against mortals —doomed to fail."
"The Citadel of Convergence collapsed in destruction and death!" Ayla cried dramatically. "Seven champions from each tribe wielded sacred artifacts, briefly holding the ground as pure energy shielded the Tri-Arc—until the very earth gave way beneath them!" She gasped theatrically as her voice rose. "The Erua'vem breached reality's boundaries, hundreds of malignant eyes staring from cracks splitting the foundation stones."
"Phantoms of mist and shadow poured from the foundries," Rajnish continued, caught up in the momentum of her storytelling, "extinguishing the forges with their chilling touch. Creatures warped into unspeakable abominations emerged from the corruption leaking from the factored reality."
"From blackened waterways, bloated corpses rose with bronze appendages fused to decaying flesh, joining the massacre," she whispered, hazel eyes gleaming as the red flakes appeared to shoot across her iris like comets in the heavens. "As people fled, men collapsed into spiritless slumber while women bore stillborn children exhaling black smoke—heartbroken cries of forgotten gods echoing through the chaos."
"Was the Cataclysm brought forth because of necromancy?" he concluded, cutting through the fable with direct interest. "For seven nights it burned, seven days it screamed. And on the tenth morning, silence descended over the world. I, too, went to a Gypsy carnival when I was a boy." He put down his quill and crossed his arms to scowl at the young lady. "You told my brothers you had secret information… Ayla… is it?"
"I did! Rajnish… is it?" she giggled. "Is this not the information you were after?"
"Delightful," he scoffs. "A Gypsy parlor trick—isn't that what your people excel at?"
"And what else will you have of me?" she asked, curiosity flickering in the darkness as she put her finger to her lips seductively. "Alone at night, with a stranger in their quarters seems most interesting... Rajnish. A very handsome stranger, if I might add."
He did not appear amused by the lady's suggestive nature. "A witch casting spells with honey-dipped words will not flatter me. "If your scheme involves wasting The Mortal Instruments Order's time—we are finished here."
"And the Covenant?" Ayla asked with deep conviction. As if her words had shifted to an elderly woman's wisdom and grandeur. "Is that why your order exists—find the ones in the shadows pulling the strings?"
Rajnish leaned back, eyes narrowing at the Covenant's mention—a secret looming over the world with alchemists, mystics, and gypsies weaving enchantments in dark shadows. "The Order's mission is to flush out these cult groups," he declared curtly, though Ayla's perceptive grin detected the private anguish beneath his tensed expression. "Certain darkness requires illumination freed from magic threat—people have disappeared following dark experimentation with what I suspect were Alchemist influences."
"So, you aim to tear down their veil, if such a veil exists and destroy all who may be within these groups," Ayla said thoughtfully, fingers tracing her garment's edges. "To be a rational man with no proof of such a group is oddly misfitting."
His gaze seared like freshly forged iron. "Their existence thrives in darkness through arcane manipulation—"
"Some believed the group reformed from the Tri-Arc into the shadows of this new world, and had very powerful members within their ranks," she concluded, sarcasms expressed on every syllable as she rolled her eyes at him. "No longer protecting humanity, but mere rumors, smoke and mirrors, but if such evil could have fangs."
"Ayla, you have been of great service to the Mortal Instruments Order," Rajnish stated with authority, a determined glint in his eye. "It was odd that a young girl like you had so much wisdom on these matters."
"If you dream!" she loudly expressed while jumping to her feet from the chair, her hazel eyes catching the lamplight, "Wisdom can find you, with gods and goddesses being the givers. Let your imagination guide you to what you seek Rajnish!"
"Well, it's our job to make sense and see through lies," Rajnish dismissed. "I'm a man of a rational disposition and maybe magic did exist in this world at one point. However, I lean on the notion that the Calamity ended all that nonsense."
"A dream walker," she echoed softly, almost in attempt to whisper a fantasy into his mind, reverent and fearful prayer on her lips. "A dream walker… was the one behind the Calamity —might be something worth looking into."
The man looked at her for a moment but failed to continue the questions and ordered some guards just outside the chamber to escort her from the premises. He straightened his robe, pressed a new scroll flat and called for the next person to interrogate. A smirk vaguely appeared on his chiseled jaw with a swift head shake to break the spell.