Elmryn's Castle
| Type | Castle |
|---|---|
| Kingdom | Zybersia |
| Ruler | Elmryn |
| Sacred Book | Book of Fire |
| Notable sites | The grand hall, the Sacred Chamber of Zybersia |
| Status | Abandoned and half destroyed |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Elmryn's Castle is the seat of the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire, standing at the far end of Zybersia and holding the kingdom's Sacred Chamber.[1] It was Elmryn's home and would have been Reagan Hideaway's, and it stands abandoned and half destroyed since Obellius Kalaar's Nelazgians took the city.[1][2]
The castle
The castle looms over Zybersia from the far end of the city, its ancient sandstone walls jagged and red against the sky and its high towers reaching hundreds of feet. Reagan knew it as what had once been the heart of the kingdom and a symbol of her father's power and duty as Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire.[1]
Nothing about it is whole any longer. Large sections of the outer walls are blown open, the windows are dark, the battlements broken, and the flag poles snapped with their banners lying in the dirt beneath them. The gates are half gone. Behind the main doors, which jam on the rubble piled against them, the grand hallway is thick with dust and debris: marble floors cracked and caving in, a vaulted ceiling open to the sky in places and shedding paint flakes everywhere else, and bare walls whose paintings and tapestries were either carried off by the invaders or torn up and dropped on the floor.[1]
The grand hall
The Ruler's throne stood in the grand hall, which the Sacred Guard Nedifar knew as the throne hall and where he spent his days standing at its right hand. The hall collapsed when the Nelazgians came through, and Obellius had the throne carried out of it and up to the citadel in the city centre, where he stripped off its cushions and sat on the bare wood.[2]
A set of stairs climbs out of the end of the hall into darkness, up to the doors of the Sacred Chamber.[1]
The Sacred Chamber
The Chamber of Zybersia lies behind marble doors at the top of that staircase, set in a frame so wide that Reagan reckoned six of her could pass through it at once, side by side. Inside, a narrow walkway crosses a cavern too deep to see the bottom of and ends where the Book of Fire lies flat on the platform, too heavy to float with its Heart torn out of its spine. The Sacred Guard once stood outside the doors day and night, and Aero Ellisvat says no Eslurian other than Elmryn and his predecessors was ever allowed past the stairs.[1]
Beneath the platform, cut into the rock, is a hole about the size of a semi-truck with a rope hanging down into it: the Zybersia entry point of the Veskadoth Tunnel System. A map of Eslura is painted in white chalk across all four corners of the room, every line a tunnel and every line running back to the Sacred City at the centre, with seven red crosses marked on it.[3]
Government
The castle was the seat of the Sacred Ruler of Zybersia. Elmryn ruled the kingdom from it until Obellius had him killed, and Reagan Hideaway, his daughter, has never lived in it.[1] He kept the greater part of his research at Galecrest rather than at home.[1]
With Elmryn dead, Zybersia had no Ruler, the Sacred Chamber lost its protective shield and the Book of Fire was left to the strength of the Sacred Guard alone.[4] The kingdom fell to the Nelazgians shortly afterwards.[2]
Notable events
- Demise broke into the Sacred Chamber and took the Heart of the Book of Fire for Obellius Kalaar.[1]
- The Nelazgians blew the castle apart when they took Zybersia. Obellius helped himself to Elmryn's wardrobe, wearing the Ruler's ceremonial robes and garnet cloak and carrying his staff, which he used to burn the Sacred Guard Nedifar and later to burn a hole through Alyria's fin.[2]
- Reagan Hideaway walked into her father's Chamber alone. The doors sealed behind her, she put her hand through the hole in the Book's spine and could not pull it free, and she came out of the room the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire.[1]
- Erwin came at her across the walkway and demanded the stone she was carrying. Fire came out of Reagan's open hand and threw him off the walkway into the dark below. She could not tell afterwards whether he had been waiting for her in the room or had come up into the castle from somewhere else.[1][3]
- Reagan lit the room with her new flames, and she and Aero read the chalk map, worked out that the lines were tunnels, and climbed down the rope into the hole after Obellius rather than follow him overland.[3]