The only items in the room were three ornate metal rods jutting up from the stone floor near what I’d call the front of the room. They were about four feet tall and arranged in a row from left to right. The tops of the of the rods were actually splayed, flaring out into numerous prongs that — upon inspection — appeared to be designed to hold some object in place. As a matter of fact, the center rod actually was holding an item. Recognizing it, I could do nothing but stare at it as if in a daze.
“This is the Optimum Alcove,” she stated, making a gesture that encompassed the room. “It’s where the Triumvirate is housed” — she pointed with her chin toward the metal rods — “the three most powerful artifacts in existence.”
She walked toward the rods, with me, still in something of a trance, following behind her.
“Only one of them is here now,” she continued, coming to a halt right in front of the metal poles. “It’s–”
“The Beobona Onufrot,” I interjected, finally coming back to myself.
Ursula gave me a look that bordered more on shock than surprise — as if I were a mongrel dog that had suddenly started discussing particle physics.
“Yes,” she finally said with a nod. “That’s one of its names. You’ve heard of it?”
“I’ve come across it in the past,” I stated, staring at the object in question.
The Beobona Onufrot (or “Beobona” for short) was a cylindrical crystal about a foot long and roughly two inches in diameter. I had already known it to be an ancient and powerful artifact — truth be told, it had saved my life on several occasions — but I had no idea that it was connected in some way to Incarnates. (And if what Ursula had just said was true, it was far more powerful than I had ever imagined.) What it was doing in this place, here and now, was completely beyond me; to the best of my knowledge, it still resided in what could best be described as a weird suit of armor back on Earth.
Before I even knew I was going to do it, I reached out and grabbed the Beobona.
“No! No! No!” Ursula screeched as I lifted the crystal from its setting among the prongs. “You can’t–”
She stopped mid-sentence as brilliant light of every hue seemed to flare up all around us. Ursula squinted, bringing a hand up to shield her eyes while I, almost as a reflex, cycled my vision to the spectrum until I could see almost normally.
At that point, I realized that the light wasn’t exactly coming from around us, but from the corridor we’d used to get to the Optimum Alcove. All of the relics in the niches there — in the entire Relic Room, I sensed — were now beaming as if they contained thousand-watt bulbs. Understanding immediately that this was related to my handling of the Beobona, I hastily put the jewel back. As expected, the light died down immediately, and I cycled back to my normal vision.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as Ursula lowered her hand and rapidly blinked a few times.
When it appeared that her vision was normal again, I found her giving me a curious stare.
“Who are you?” she finally asked.
“I’m Jim,” I answered, laughing, “as you already know.”
“No,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I mean, how’d you do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t even know what I did.”
“Well, you touched the Beobona, for one thing.”
My eyebrows went up. “Is that against the rules?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ursula admitted. “The thing” — she motioned toward the Beobona — “is here so randomly that it’s never been an issue.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the Beobona kind of comes and goes as it pleases,” she stated. “It’s almost as if the thing’s alive.”
I didn’t say anything immediately, but Ursula’s statement actually coincided with my own experiences with the Beobona. The jewel regularly seemed to act as though it had a mind of its own.
“Okay,” I finally droned, “but I don’t see how that actually translates into look-but-don’t-touch.”
Ursula let out a sigh of frustration. “I guess you missed the part where I said it was one of the three most powerful artifacts in existence. That being the case, no one has to tell you not to touch it. It’s implied.”
“Great,” I muttered sarcastically. “Scold the new guy for not reading the unwritten rules.”
Ursula simply looked at me for a moment, then started giggling.
“Okay, fine — you get a pass this time, rookie,” she quipped. “Now, back to what I was saying: the Kroten Yoso Va, like the Beobona, is part of the Triumvirate. It can be used, like you said, to take an Incarnate’s sivrrut and use it for your own purposes. The problem is that it’s a lot like putting a three-year-old into a crane swinging a wrecking ball. They have a lot of power at their fingertips, but do they really know what they’re doing? They’re just as likely to crush themselves as anything else.”
“I get it,” I said. “Having power is one thing, but knowing how to use it is something else.”
“That’s why — if used for its true purpose — the Kroten Yoso Va would only be utilized to take power from an Incarnate.”
I frowned. “You lost me. How’s that different than what we were just saying?”
“We were talking about taking an Incarnate’s power and using it. Although the Kroten Yoso Va lets you do that, if employed as intended, you’d really only take power — presumably from a rogue Incarnate who’s abusing his authority. That’s what it was created for.”
“So that raises another question: who created it?”
She shrugged. “No one knows, not even the Incarnates. No one knows how any of the Triumvirate Relics came into being.”
“But they’re usually kept here?” I asked, gesturing toward the metal rods.
Ursula’s head kind of seesawed from side to side
