A prison. So the cuffs rising out of the waves carved onto the tombstone hadn't been symbolic. It had been literal.
Cautiously, Senna moved around the hollowed-out cavern and lowered his muzzle to the rusted iron bars of a cell. "Did you know about this place?" he asked absently, glancing over his shoulder at the spectral-pale form of Theodosia.
Before he could meet her eyes, however, his gaze snared upon the two sets of hoof prints scored into the thick film of dust and ash. It looked recent, perhaps left just a few days before.
He thought back to the skincrawling feeling of being watched when he'd stood over Santiago's upturned grave. He wondered, not for the first time, what sort of magic was required to make the dead walk again.
They moved further through the prison, peeking into every cell for scratches gouged into the wall, messages painted in blood.
Sinister things, Senna thought, befitting of this ever darkening... hunt.
It waited for them in the very last cell.
Another message—written in a dark, brackish liquid that looked suspiciously like yet strangely unlike blood—greeted them:
He read it over three times, silently, to himself. That which eats but has no mouth. The Solterran in him answered the riddle immediately: sand. How the sands of the Mors ate all that ventured within, bones and all, unless the traveller sated the desert's bloodthirst with a freshly killed sacrifice. A bird, a deer, an enemy.
Or so the ancient legends said. He'd never tried it for himself, thinking it about as barbaric as he'd expect Solterran legends to go, and the Mors hadn't minded his transgression.
The old man he'd bought the Halcyon scrolls off of had slipped a thin wedge of a book containing an account from a Deluminian explorer named Agreus, who had ventured to the abandoned Ager within the last few decades. In it, Agreus had recounted how the desiccated halls had been all but swamped with sand and choked through with invasive plants. Plants eat with no mouth, as well.
Turning back to the writing, he ignored the third line—black of heart could mean a vexingly many things—and read over the fourth and final line once more. Until—
"It's the Ager." The name had always struck him as vaguely familiar.
["Ager Romanus: the old territory of the civilization who called themselves Romans. An ancient people believed to have originated far to the West of Scarab, though their existence has never been confirmed by scholars," read a passage he'd skimmed years ago, when he'd attempted to best Sova in tactics by studying the history of all the foreign nations he could unearth scrolls in the Great Library about.]
Greensward—green field—west by south. The little island beneath Terrastella; which was, tellingly, the location of the Ager.
There was no question about it. Like an ouroboros, the hunt was swallowing its own tail.
Back to the beginning of all things.
♦︎
The remaining stretch of beach, once they'd squeezed their way out of the abandoned prison, led quickly towards a passageway leading into the Terrastellan citadel. From there, they set off towards the island skimming the horizon, reduced to a black, craggy mass by the brilliance of the rising sun.
As they flew, Senna glanced weightily towards the Halcyon pegasus. They hadn't explicitly agreed to work together, and he certainly wouldn't go so far as to call it that, but what was to happen when they arrived?
Ever since the beginning Senna had known, despite Theodosia's feigned restraint, that she would never let him take Prudence peaceably. He wondered briefly if she knew of his arrangement with her Commander. But even then, that was between him and Marisol, not the Halcyon unit in its entirety.
If it came down to it, he would not fight her.
"How long will your surveillance of me last, Champion?" he asked instead, voice insouciant as his brow arched upwards in feigned amusement.
What will you do once we reach the Ager?
Cautiously, Senna moved around the hollowed-out cavern and lowered his muzzle to the rusted iron bars of a cell. "Did you know about this place?" he asked absently, glancing over his shoulder at the spectral-pale form of Theodosia.
Before he could meet her eyes, however, his gaze snared upon the two sets of hoof prints scored into the thick film of dust and ash. It looked recent, perhaps left just a few days before.
He thought back to the skincrawling feeling of being watched when he'd stood over Santiago's upturned grave. He wondered, not for the first time, what sort of magic was required to make the dead walk again.
They moved further through the prison, peeking into every cell for scratches gouged into the wall, messages painted in blood.
Sinister things, Senna thought, befitting of this ever darkening... hunt.
It waited for them in the very last cell.
Another message—written in a dark, brackish liquid that looked suspiciously like yet strangely unlike blood—greeted them:
One great eye gazes out from the ocean.
Laid to waste by that which eats but has no mouth,
Always hungry, fed by those black of heart.
Roman greensward west by south.
He read it over three times, silently, to himself. That which eats but has no mouth. The Solterran in him answered the riddle immediately: sand. How the sands of the Mors ate all that ventured within, bones and all, unless the traveller sated the desert's bloodthirst with a freshly killed sacrifice. A bird, a deer, an enemy.
Or so the ancient legends said. He'd never tried it for himself, thinking it about as barbaric as he'd expect Solterran legends to go, and the Mors hadn't minded his transgression.
The old man he'd bought the Halcyon scrolls off of had slipped a thin wedge of a book containing an account from a Deluminian explorer named Agreus, who had ventured to the abandoned Ager within the last few decades. In it, Agreus had recounted how the desiccated halls had been all but swamped with sand and choked through with invasive plants. Plants eat with no mouth, as well.
Turning back to the writing, he ignored the third line—black of heart could mean a vexingly many things—and read over the fourth and final line once more. Until—
"It's the Ager." The name had always struck him as vaguely familiar.
["Ager Romanus: the old territory of the civilization who called themselves Romans. An ancient people believed to have originated far to the West of Scarab, though their existence has never been confirmed by scholars," read a passage he'd skimmed years ago, when he'd attempted to best Sova in tactics by studying the history of all the foreign nations he could unearth scrolls in the Great Library about.]
Greensward—green field—west by south. The little island beneath Terrastella; which was, tellingly, the location of the Ager.
There was no question about it. Like an ouroboros, the hunt was swallowing its own tail.
Back to the beginning of all things.
The remaining stretch of beach, once they'd squeezed their way out of the abandoned prison, led quickly towards a passageway leading into the Terrastellan citadel. From there, they set off towards the island skimming the horizon, reduced to a black, craggy mass by the brilliance of the rising sun.
As they flew, Senna glanced weightily towards the Halcyon pegasus. They hadn't explicitly agreed to work together, and he certainly wouldn't go so far as to call it that, but what was to happen when they arrived?
Ever since the beginning Senna had known, despite Theodosia's feigned restraint, that she would never let him take Prudence peaceably. He wondered briefly if she knew of his arrangement with her Commander. But even then, that was between him and Marisol, not the Halcyon unit in its entirety.
If it came down to it, he would not fight her.
"How long will your surveillance of me last, Champion?" he asked instead, voice insouciant as his brow arched upwards in feigned amusement.
What will you do once we reach the Ager?
@redandblack @Theodosia | "senna" nestor | notes: try as I might senna's clue posts always go on FAR longer than necessary please excuse me
