The Blackened Yonder: Planar Lost: Book One (Planar Lost (Standard Edition) 1) by J. Gibson

Author:J. Gibson [Gibson, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Lost Press
Published: 2021-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII: ORDER

Athenne

This is the last door. Eclih has to be here.

A serpentine tunnel lay before them. This time, the pathway presented no illusion. It manifested neither outside nor elsewhere. Nothing more than dark stone walls, floor, and ceiling filled the space. Poor light from unknown sources illuminated the halls, as if through invisible torches, lanterns, or candles, perhaps the only evident magic or trickery. They walked forward, eyes searching for a door, to the sides, ahead, above. As in the last path, exhausting in its twisting course, there came nothing.

The longer they ambled down the passageway, the wider the hall grew, and the taller. After miles, they came to a towering iron door. On the outside of the door, inches from its face, protruded the Matron Star.

Athenne lay a hand against the metal.

It shuddered.

She backed away, until she stood next to Bhathric.

The door opened, sliding into the floor by a groaning mechanism within, dirt and dust spilling down from the ceiling. Upon entering, they arrived at the fore of a long chamber. Pillars at both sides of them faded into the darkness overhead, wrapped in stone vines like veins with sculpted leaves.

At the far end of the chamber stood a massive altar. A face like the one at the front of the temple decorated the wall behind the platform. In the center of the floor, another seven-sided star, filled with a crimson color and outlined in white. An orange light, hazy and blinking, wavered in the space, once more from imperceptible sources.

Athenne’s heart pounded. They waited and listened. A kind of electricity hovered in the air, static enough that it prickled on her skin and caused the hair of her arms to stand on edge.

They strode forth, passing pillars and statues of armored women and men. Knights of Faith.

Each step they took sounded louder than the ones before in the empty room, filled with a spectral stillness. Tension clutched her, as though someone or something may accost them at any moment. She felt the many pupilless eyes of the sculptures on them. There were phantasms in this place, shadows dancing in her periphery, stirring and receding as she jerked her head to catch them; tricks of the mind, either from the columns, the statues, the deviant light, or all of these.

When they reached the end of the path between the posts, the center of the room at the septagram and the altar lit up. The sculpted face appeared larger than it had from afar, so colossal Athenne had to tilt back to see its peak. Standing atop the star were three armored figures, not there before.

Eclih knelt at their feet, his head drooped. They had bound his hands behind his back.

Black, interlocking plates over mail and jackets, embossed with the Matron Star at the center of the breast, protected the Knights. The resemblance of a woman, likely Vekshia, adorned the face guards of their one-horned helms. Athenne had never beheld such immaculate armor, not even among the Renerin High Guard and Alterforce.

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