The Artist & the Whisperer

Lorendale Academy, the only place that would take me. And that was after a sizable donation from my mother. The academy wasn’t bad, just grimy and old. The professors stank of salt and sweat, and the dorms weren’t much better. But still, I was worried. That place became my home. Four years in any place will do that. But there I was, sitting on a bench, waiting for my fate.

“The headmaster will see you now. Adam, was it?”

“Yes sir,” I replied, too quickly. All while the urge to remain perfectly still rushed through my head. I mustn’t shake. I’ll look guilty. Damned hand, stop shaking. I was so anxious back then. So young. “Is this about my recent submission? Sir, I was just painting—”

“Not my concern, boy. Go on through,” James replied. I always used to wonder why he even worked there. I swear he was more like a thug than a teacher. A large human, built like an orc. Anyone would guess he was a sailor or a boxer, with a frame like that.

“Yes sir, sorry sir,” I said quickly, repeating the same thought over and over. Breathe, breathe. Damned it, just breathe. You’ll be fine.

The door was sturdy, like everything else in this wing of the academy. New, and kept well. Too well. Of course, to any inquiring mind, that would have been a clue. To my mind back then, it was just an inconvenience.

Headmaster Karr was in his usual spot. His semicircular desk flush against the right wall, leaning over a stack of papers, miles of ink scrawled across them. His eyes barely rose to acknowledge me. He was one of those people who always looked tired, though tired of what depended on the day. On that day, I think he was simply tired of dealing with idiotic students.

“Sit, boy,” Karr ordered eventually, gesturing toward one of the chairs around his desk. He must have left me standing there for at least two minutes, maybe three.

I was glad of the seat. Even these turned out to be the most comfortable chairs in the whole academy.

“Sir,” I started, only for him to raise a finger.

“You are Adam Mora, correct?” he asked, reaching into one of his drawers.

“Yes sir.” The fact he didn’t even know me, only showed how insignificant I was at the academy.

“Unusual name for an elf,” he mumbled, pulling out a file with my name plastered across it.

“Well, you see sir. I was a bastard. My mother wasn’t sure who my father was, and—”

“Yes, yes. Not the time, boy,” Karr said, waving his hand dismissively. He opened the file, revealing a collection of my paintings. “Though, that explains why the son of an elven noble seeks to become an artist,” he added with a chuckle.

“Sir, I can explain, I—”

“Such… interesting,” he paused, perhaps for emphasis, or maybe searching for the right word, “images these paintings inspire.”

“Sir, I was just painting what I saw in my dreams,” I replied with a gulp.

“You saw this in a dream?” he asked, holding up a canvas.

The black, writhing figures were the central focus of a dark landscape of horrors. Tentacles of impossible scale coiled around jagged spikes with no direction or perspective. Hundreds of eyes stared into the void, their forms stretched and broken. And in the centre, a vast gear. The metal an impossible, shining blackness. Between each tooth, flesh rooted outward, stretched and ripped. I was quite proud of my brushwork on that part.

There was no arguing the madness. Yet to me, it had a kind of beauty. It still does. A confusing, familiar beauty. Almost like looking at a happy childhood memory. Something held dear.

I realised then that I was grinning.

“Um, yes sir. A few months ago. I fell asleep on the beach, and then the dreams started. Every night I—”

“The beach, to the north?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, I went over to Avalora,” I explained with a shrug. “My professors said I needed a muse. That my art was lacking something. I needed supplies anyway, so I walked over. Then on the way back, I walked along the beach. It was a few months ago, the height of summer. But it was getting dark, so I figured I might as well sleep there.”

“Hmmm,” the headmaster replied, setting the painting down and flicking through the others. “It seems you have heard the Whisperer. Though I have never seen it like this before.”

“The… what? Sorry sir?”

Before I could ask anything else, he was on his feet. He cracked his back with a relieved sigh and walked over to the far wall. A plain stretch of stonework. Decorative, but empty. I always assumed they were saving it. Perhaps for a new bookcase or display. Of course, that was impossible. Just another thing I later felt foolish about.

He stopped just short of the wall as I twisted in my seat, dumbfounded. After an embarrassingly long few minutes, I realised he wanted me to join him.

The chair squeaked as I rushed to my feet and stepped closer. His expression was flat — scared, even.

“Adam, my master will want to speak to you,” he said, grasping one of the carved gulls set into the wall.

“Your… your master?”

Before I could ask another stupid question, he clicked the gull’s wing downward. With a loud thump, the entire wall shifted.

“What—what—” I stammered as the stone swung inward, revealing a long, dark corridor. Salty air rushed out. “Does this lead to the sea?” I asked, because of course I had to ask one last grating question.

The headmaster was already back at his desk, grabbing the folder of my paintings.

“Take this. He will want to see them,” he said, thrusting it into my hands.

“Sir, I—”

“I’m not ‘sir’ to you anymore,” he groaned. “Goodbye, Adam.”

That was it. Any authority he once held over me seemed to melt away. All I could do was walk.

The corridor went on for ten minutes or so. I moved slowly, flinching when the door slammed behind me. Eventually it opened into a vast network of tunnels. The brickwork looked older than the academy itself. Thick with salt and mould, supported and re-supported with timber struts.

Across from me stood a hunched figure at a desk. Dark teal robes draped his form, a strange gear-like symbol stitched in black thread across his back. As I stepped closer, he rose, but the sound wasn’t bones creaking, but the clanging of metal.

When he turned, fear became paralysing terror.

He was human, or had once been. Beneath his flesh were wound gears and machines. Wires ran up and down his arm like writhing snakes. One eye glowed purple, its iris a metal sphere ringed by ticking cogs.

What flesh remained looked grafted to the machinery. Just like, the gear in my painting. It hit me all at once.

“What… what,” I mumbled. Yet the more I looked, the more I understood how it worked. A constant system, drawing ancient magics, forbidden forces, keeping him alive. Damned, he must have been hundreds of years old, when I met him.

“I can see it in your eyes,” he rasped. “Your mind has been freed from the lies.”

“The… the lies?”

“I know this is frightening,” he continued, reaching out. Instinctively, I handed him the folder. He pointed at my paintings, and his mouth turned up into a creaking grin. “This place, we call it the Hexus.”

“It’s real? But I only see it in my dreams.”

“What you see are memories of our master. Reaching out from beneath its chains. A god chained in the dark. The Whisperer.”

My silence said everything.

“My name is Ezio,” he said, resting a hand against his ticking chest. “I was once a devoted follower of a false god.”

He gestured beneath his desk. A filthy cloth shifted, and a mechanical crab scuttled out. Rusted, dim, its gears fused with flesh.

“I followed Lex’ara. Gave my soul to it. And all I received was this curse. But the Whisperer showed me the truth. And so, I built this place. A refuge for those who hear the call. We are the Ruinwatchers.”

“The headmaster… he said you were his master?”

“Yes. This island is special. Close, perhaps, to where the Whisperer is bound. We took control of the academy over a century ago.”

“So… you want to recruit me?”

Ezio chuckled. “No, Adam. These paintings, this detail. Even I struggle to remember the Hexus. You are special. I don’t want to recruit you. I want to work alongside you.”

“But I’m just an artist! A bad one.”

“Oh Adam,” he said, grinning darkly. “You are a dreamer. Literally it seems.” He chuckled, though I failed to see the joke at the time.

“What do you want with me then?”

“I can help you interpret those dreams of yours. Translate them. We can learn more from the Whisperer. There is so much more to discover. The things we could, no, we will achieve, together.”