2 Musica Universalis

The rain could still be heard outside, but they had finally made it to somewhere dry, the group all let out sighs of relief.

"We're finally in, now what is this place supposed to be?" Kenneth asked as he tried to pat his clothes to get out what water he could out of them, Austin took a look at Kenneth and noticed how he appeared to have a smooth spotless face that seemed like that of porcelain, then he shook his head and focused on the question.

"Well, this place is probably a stronghold, where any of the original residents would go to hide if the place was attacked; that's my guess anyway." Austin answered as he wiped his glasses and made sure his journal wasn't ruined.

"What makes you think that? Are you basing it of how early Christian monasteries would be set up?" James wiped his finger against the wall, ending with the finger being covered in dust.

"Well, if my theory is correct, this was probably built by Pythagoras's math cult, they based their beliefs that everything, and I mean everything, was based on numbers and nothing else, it was to the point that they worshipped the numbers like gods, it was weird even for the Greeks, and they soon burned his house down and chased him out of town for it; the cult was said to have stopped being a thing all together after the old philosopher himself died, but I wonder if that was true."

Austin looked at the walls, and saw faint inscriptions on them, stars and circles, along with ten dots with lines connecting them to make a triangle.

'No wait, spheres would be a more appropriate term.' Austin thought as he looked through his notes on Pythagorean teachings, he clicked his fingers when he found what he was looking for.

"Musica Universalis, the Music of the Spheres."

Kenneth looked at him with his face showing complete and utter bafflement, there was no need for him to say anything for Austin to understand his confusion at the sentence he had uttered.

"It refers to the belief that music and astronomy work in tandem, that the Sun and the Earth and the Moon and all other stars and planets create a piece of harmonious music that is created by their movement, it is said to be inaudible to normal hearing."

James looked puzzled for a second before asking. "But hasn't it been that theory been disproven? Scientists proved that it would be impossible for us to hear something like that from so many light-years away; and that if we could hear it, the sound would destroy our hearing anyway?"

Austin's mouth morphed into a smile, showing a bit of teeth in excitement.

"Yes, that is true; but would the Pythagoreans know that?"

James went to retort, but then stopped and put his hand to his chin in thought, the trio was in silence as they mulled over what they discovered, the rain still heavily audible from outside.

"Does it have something to do with this door?" Ken walked over to a part of the wall that seemed to be uneven with the rest of it, the youth pressed his seemingly beautiful hand against it, before rattling his knuckle against it.

*knock* *knock* *knock*

"It seems hollow, this has got to be a door right?" Kenneth looked back at the other two explorers.

"...Green eyes..." Austin muttered to himself, hoping no one heard that.

Unfortunately, James did indeed hear him. "What're you talking about? Kenny has blue eyes."

Austin blinked a couple of times, before he lightly slapped his head to focus.

"Kenneth, is there anything on the door? Like a symbol, preferably a sphere." Kenneth took to studying the door carefully, before he put his hand out to call them over.

"There's a sphere, I think that's supposed to represent a planet? It also has a sixteen and a fifteen on it, what are we supposed to do with that?"

Austin tried to search his brain and his journal for anything specifically to do with a planet in the middle. "Is there anything around it?"

James answered back as he took a look. "There are about five empty spaces around it, all shaped like circles, does that help?"

Austin shut his book and exclaimed. "The Greeks thought Earth was in the center of everything!"

"Okay, but what does that have to do with the other five circles?" James was working it out in his head at the same time as Austin, but Austin had the benefit of his journal.

"Those were the five other planets that were known at the time; Mercury, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus."

Kenneth looked up for a second, seemingly anxious and panicked, before he composed himself. "What should we do next then?.."

James put his hand up, indicating that he had something to say. "Why don't we actually look around the room, what if we missed something cause we were focused on the walls?"

Kenneth and Austin both nodded their heads to the idea.

The Italian-English man began looking around the floor, when he suddenly shouted.

"Jackpot!"

Austin and Kenneth ran over to where he was, and they saw what he had found.

There were five circular plates on the ground, all with numbers on them.

"What do the numbers mean? Is it the order they have to be in?" Kenneth

"Okay, pass them over so I can see the numbers, it might fit something to do with the Musica." Austin got out everything he had on Pythagoras just in case, just to find something that might have to do with it, and seeing that it was all numbers, he would find something.

"Oh! The numbers refer to the believed tone that each planet is supposed to make! But...."

"But what, Roth?" James replied to the man's history ramblings.

"These numbers wouldn't exist until 900 years after Pythagoras came up with the Musica Universalis. It makes no sense for them to be here!" Austin was currently very perplexed by this.

'How the hell did a bunch of Pythagoreans get the same numbers as the ones used almost a Millenium later? How?!' Austin was just unable to come up with anything other than it was a simple coincidence or they simply lasted long enough to see the books that used the numbers.

'But that still doesn't explain why they would bother doing so, most cults and religions were often resistant to change, especially if it conflicted with their own beliefs, Galileo and his theory that the Sun was the center of our solar system was a prime example of that; what made these guys accept it?' Austin was close to breaking his pencil in half out of frustration at trying to figure out this current quandary.

"Austin? Are you done looking angry at the wall?" James rattled his knuckles on Austin's shoulder, this helped the bookish man to snap out of his internal aneurysm at the world sometimes, as the Irish would say, taking the absolute piss.

'Alright, think of this bullcrap later, focus on the now.' Austin immediately got back to looking up the needed info for this peculiar puzzle.

"Okay, gather up the plates, right now I think we just need to slot them in."

James picked up three of the plates, while Kenneth picked the other two, and they carried them over to the door.

James and Ken began slotting the plates in each of the empty spaces, and when they finished after a few minutes of careful placing, they both sighed in relief as they got them all in without any problems.

"Okay, now, read the numbers on each of the plates." Austin held up his journal, ready to write everything down.

"Are the numbers special in any way? I assume that they are since all the number stuff and that." James already understood a bit of the puzzle just from listening to Austin read aloud just a few notes on the number-obsessed Philosopher, the numbers were obviously a significant part of the answer.

"Yeah, the numbers each should fit a corresponding tone ratio, the 'sounds' of the planets, as seemingly contradicting as it is, considering all the spiel about it all being inaudible."

"So which planets are which numbers?" Kenneth confidently asked, James looked for a second at the youth's seemingly nice chest before slapping a finger against his nose and wondering what the hell he was doing.

"Let me see...The 15 to 16 plate should be earth, and that represents an alto tone, what're the next ones?"

"2 to 3, 5 to 6, 4 to 5, 12 to 5, and 24 to 25." James rattled out all the numbers on each of the other plates to the redhead, making sure to not say the numbers wrong.

"Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, and Venus, in that exact order."

Once again, while Austin and James talked about the planets and their ratios, the mention of Venus made Kenneth feel uncomfortable again, something about the word just set off alarm bells in his head.

Now that he thought about it, his head did hurt a bit.

'Probably just feeling chills from being caught in the rain.' Even then, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was ever so slightly wrong.

Kenneth focused back on his two companions into this place, envious of how much more confident they were, he wanted to be more like them; unlike him, they had no problem with going out of their way to come to these places, no matter how dangerous or unexplainable they may be.

It had taken a few weeks of reading himself for this trip, and even then he was woefully unprepared compared to these to veterans.

But Kenneth decided to let his silent grievances go for now and focus on listening to Austin explain the answer for the door.

"So you're saying we have to match the tone of each planet by singing said town into its respective plate, and that will open up the door... How do you know this will work?"

"I don't, but it might have a better chance of working than what we tried first."

Austin first had James bang each plate with a number of knocks corresponding to them, and then doing it again with the secondary number, but that test hadn't yielded any results besides a slightly bruised knuckle on James' part.

"Kenneth, mind helping us out? We're gonna try and see if singing the different tones will work."

"Sure." Kenneth came over and, as a group, began singing into each plate.

They decided to start with the lower tones, as the higher ones would almost definitely strain their throats; they weren't singers, and Austin in particular was quite tone-deaf, anything besides a singular tone would be near impossible for him, James and Kenneth weren't much better.

Austin and James did Saturn and Jupiter, which were both basses, while Ken did Mars, a tenor; overall, their singing was not too atrocious, but they weren't winning any competitions, that was for sure.

"Okay guys, this might not work and give us throats that a doctor would be horrified to look at, but we gotta at least try it." James tried to joke as they were catching their breathes.

They proceeded to sing aloud the towns for Earth, Venus, and Mercury, which were two slots and one soprano respectively; as before, took the job of doing the singular one, as he was the only one among who could even go that high.

"Wow, now that I notice it, you have a pretty high pitch voice, Ken." Ken didn't know how to react to hearing such a compliment, as it seemed really out of place to him for Austin would say it, but that showed what he knew about the people with him.

After their collective horrible attempts at singing, the door was seemingly willing to give them all a pass, as it began to open up to the next room.

"Well, that was a thing." James gave his comment.