The Sealed Gate

The power-wagon convoy came to a halt at nightfall, through a road running along the floor of a dusty valley in the interior of western Saibh. The wagon doors swung open; first were the guardsmen, grim faced, with the sun of Etoile prominent on their armor. Next were the wizards, moving awkwardly in their massive greatcoats. Finally, the Princeps of Etoile himself stepped off the second wagon, his insignia of rule shimmering in the wind and torchlight. With a motion, the group began to move off the road down a small gametrail, walking in silence.
Two other guardsmen with torches were in the lead, and before long a small excavation site came into view in the twilight, a small windmill spinning furiously, its chaindrive spinning up a flywheel. The excavators had been expecting them; they went to their knees at the sight of Constantine walking up the trail.
"Rise." The Princeps had an impatient note and gave a short gesture. "The formalities may be observed later. Overseer Quinn, was it? What's the nature of the discovery here?"
The foreman got to his feet but kept his gaze to the ground. "We don't know, Princeps. It's an old door, older than anything we've ever encountered, and impervious to our attempts to open it. Neither steel or flame can leave a mark."
One of the wizards looked crestfallen. "More ancient mysteries. I was hoping it would be something more mundane for once." Alistair tugged his coat back over his shoulder.
"If it was a mundanity, none of us would be here." Constantine handed his cloak to a guardsman. "Let's see the thing."
The foreman beckoned them down a rough hewn stairway and into a tunnel. The excavation was like any other mine, with the air becoming thicker and colder as the party marched forward in double file. The torches dimmed, and the three wizards each held out their palms as they walked, casting a greenish light that lent a shimmering quality to the red walls. Before long, they entered a small open area. The tunnel continued onward, but to the left was an opening in the tunnel wall. A large natural cavern opened up before them, with fresh air being a relief to the nose. A rope and nail had been pounded into the ceiling here to allow descent to the cavern floor twenty meters below, and the Princeps regarded it warily.
"Mellitus." The older wizard nodded and stepped forward, gripping the rope tightly. Within seconds, the rope twisted and hardened, bent unnaturally into alternating L shapes to form a makeshift ladder. Nodding, the Princeps climbed down first, with the rest following.
A stream ran along the cavern floor, and the group followed it for a minute before coming to a halt. Next to where the water flowed under the cavern wall was a door unlike anything any of them had ever seen. At least five meters high and three wide, the door was a featureless monolith in pure white, with only the faintest outline of a frame to indicate that it wasn't simply a straight wall. Constantine looked at it carefully, then turned to the group.
"Any thoughts?" The Princeps gestured. "Where did it come from, who made it, was it made at all or is it somehow a natural thing?"
"No chance this is natural." Rigana walked up to the door and ran her hand down the surface. "It's not cold to the touch. I don't think it's made of metal, but it's too smooth to be some sort of stone. At least, not any stone we know of."
One of the guardsmen stepped forward and drew a dagger. "Mind if I have a go at it?"
The Princeps nodded curtly, and the guard stepped to what appeared to be the thinnest of gaps between the door and its frame. He ran the dagger's point up and down the gap and frowned. "I can't even get my knife in here to try to pry this open." He took a swipe at the door for good measure, then felt the surface with a finger. "Not even a scratch. Imagine a set of armor made out of whatever this is?"
Constantine picked a rock off the floor and flung it at the door as hard as he could. The rock bounced off without leaving a scratch, but the sound it made on impact was queer, as though the rock had hit a soft bed rather than a solid surface. Alistair cocked his head at the sound.
"Mellitus, do you remember the sound that that building made out of Resonance Mineral made when it got demolished?" Alistair frowned. "Sounded a bit like that, but there's no way this door is made of Resonance."
"Hrm." The older wizard put a palm on the door and closed his eyes. Nothing happened at first, but suddenly he backed away quickly. He had channeled a bit of magic into the doorway, and a pattern of light was now crisscrossing the surface of the door, ephemeral symbols blinking in and out, faster than the eye could tally, skittering across in no discernible pattern and suddenly thoooom and the center of the door was a cascade of colors, Rigana was scratching notes down furiously and thoooom and the color changed and the tone echoed through the cave, shaking the ceiling and causing small pebbles to rain down, shaken from their slumber, and thoooom again, another tone, deeper and reverberating, more colors swirling and juddering and dancing on the door, when suddenly all fell silent again, and the door returned to its plain white.
The Princeps folded his arms. "That definitely rules out natural, I suppose."
Rigana glanced up from her quill. "That was a language, Princeps, unmistakably. Regular in cadence with a discernable pattern, triggered by magic."
"Sounded like music to me." Alistair glanced up at the door, as though a closer inspection would let him divine some secret. "Though I suppose music is a language in its own way."
"Too discordant for music, assuming whoever made this had the same musical taste that we do." Rigana narrowed her eyes. "The color pattern and the symbols we saw at first tilt the scale more towards a language, though not like any we would know of. What kind of language uses color?"
Mellitus gave a short laugh. "Perhaps we should have brought the painters down here to give their opinion. Does anyone object to my seeing if we can get that...sound to occur again?"
The Princeps nodded, and Mellitus placed both hands on the door. Within seconds, the door was swirling in color again, symbols flowing on the color as leaves bob on water. All three wizards were taking notes.
---

"And here are our findings." Alistair put a stack of papers in the center of the conference table, next to the oil lamp. The linguists of the Academy of Etoile looked on with interest as the wizard continued. "Needless to say, the Princeps has a personal interest in this matter and it's secrecy. Rigana, Mellitus, and I ran magic through the door in several different places at various orders of strength, and we took notes on what happened."
"We think it's a language of some kind. It's emitted at a specific pacing of roughly two 'things' per second, and for each 'thing' there's a specific color pattern, sound, and echo. Before the sound starts, symbols appear and disappear, but we were able to consistently match symbol sequences to color and sound pattern."
"A language that uses color?" One of the linguists rifled through the pages of the report. "Has to be magical, right? Whoever made that door must have been magical, and communicated with magical coloring?"
"That's for us to conjecture." Alistair scratched his chin. "Take a look at this sequence. I've marked it in a way I think makes sense, kind of."

3S-A-R

1SR-A-r

2W-X-R

1S-E-R

1R-A-r

0-0-0

3S-O-r

3SR-X-R

2W-E-r

"Any thoughts?" The wizard thought about that for a second. "Sort of hard to derive meaning from any of it, right? It's as though I made up the word 'klox' and asked you to tell me what it meant."
Another of the academicians shook her head. "We can see if it matches any sort of pattern or code that we're aware of. It's only completely meaningless if we can't find any code or ancient language that even remotely fits, but in all studies of modern linguistics there's no such thing as an 'original' language. All languages are connected. This one must simply be more esoteric than most."
Alistair nodded. "If not, then we have an artifact that relates to the Origin question, and that means a doctrinal problem. Whatever your findings, keep them close to the vest."
The last bit set the linguists to chattering excitedly among themselves. The wizard shook his head. "None of this is coming from me. I was just the unlucky wizard to get put on the expedition, but this is all direction from the Princeps himself. I believe in academic sharing as much as any other member of the Academy, but the Princeps has made this a political matter."
"That's a good name for it." The first linguist tapped the table.
"What is?" Alistair blinked.
"The language. Origin question. Origin would be a good working name."
The wizard paused. "Well, if that causes any public consternation, it falls on you."

---

A number of phrase-semantics of Origin: