The Arkanist

Chapter Twelve: Findings

Under the image, was a line of strange text: Ectos Caeie Te Leream Imperiae Undes Nea.

To my relief, my father had written a translation under it, many of the words crossed out and changed. It seemed he'd had great difficulty. What remained, read: Mortal Minds Cannot See Beyond The Cage Of Our False Imprisonment.

My father also left a note on that. Below it, he wrote simply: We must look harder.

I sat back in my chair and smiled briefly, shallowly. It was not a smile of joy, but one of shock, of realization. He's talking to me, I mused to myself. It was a clue. I had to look harder...but where?
So I went to the only person worth knowing, and whom I thought could help, the unnamed philos. He opened his doors and let me, and I explained everything, showing him the torn out page, the image, the note.

He narrowed his brows as he scanned the page. "The picture, it seems familiar...I've seen it before, sue as day. Dammit! Where did you think we should look now? He hasn't given us much to go off of."

"I don't know," I said honestly. Other than his plea to look harder, well, there was not much else. "I can't seem to find anything else. It's the farthest he's translated. I was hoping you'd know."

"I know as much as you, Kaedn," he said. "Nothing more, or I would have told you."

"I wish he'd have just told us were to look," I said. "He knew we'd find it, and yet, he leaves the answer vague."

"That was his way," said the philos. "I know it, you know it. He didn't like giving away answers. Never."

"And instead he leaves us with clues," I said, reclining in my chair as the candle between us flickered upon a low cedar table. "A line of text and half a picture. Not much to go on in any sense."

"Considering all else we've found," the philos replied, "it's the greatest clues we've been given." He ran his finger across the words, and then to the picture. "It's cryptic."

I leaned back over the book. "What?"

"It's cryptic!" said the philos. "Look, look." He pointed to the letters of the original text. "E, C, T, L, I, U, N." He closed his eyes, and thought, tapping his fingers. "Yes! Lectiun. We were reading him the day before he killed himself; it all makes sense. He was an Idan scholar, of the Great Empire. He postulated on life, and the afterlife, death, and the universe. Your father read his work often, I remember, and that picture," he said, checking back to the half smeared illustration. "Yes, I think so." I heard him mutter to himself.

"What does it mean?" I asked. "I don't think he was simply telling us the last thing he read."

"No," said the philos. "Wait, here, wait here a moment." He rose from the chair and started off towards his cellar. "I've Lectiun's work we were reading. I'll be a minute."

A minute he was, and when he returned, he held a large tome, a bare wood cover. He opened it, leafing through the pages. "Here," he said, stopping at a page and the same illustration stared back at them, full and illuminated. "I should have recognized it from the start."

I peered over and saw the entire piece, colored in faded dyes and gold paper. At the top of the tree, there was an eye, with two pupils and a white iris, right against the brown parchment.
"Sysn's eye," said the philos. "Heard of it?"

I shook my head.
"It's the crux of knowledge, the epitome of sight. It sees life, and death, hence the two pupils, and watched the word unfold. Some say we live inside the eye, and some say it watches over us all."