There had been a sandstorm last night, one that changed the mountainous dunes of the Mors and covered the entire city in a fine layer of sand. The wind had rattled the windows of the citadel; it had whipped and hissed outside, like a beast possessed, and Orestes the next morning left the citadel through a back door and descended the cliffside upon which the rear of Solterra is built. From there, Ariel led him deep into the desert, further and further, until the pair of them found themselves wandering the carcass of some fantastical beast.
First, Orestes wonders if it is perhaps @Raum ’s deceased basilisk. The skull of the serpent is large enough for a grown horse to stand between the serrated teeth, as if laughing at death. Ariel does not possess reverence for the dead monster; he leaps atop the skull with the grace inherent to any cat, and walks a haphazard path down the serpent’s ridged spine.
“Here is a lesson in kingship, my Lord.” Ariel’s voice is like thunder, like rage, like the resounding crash of the sea against rocks.
Orestes humours him. “And what is that, Ariel?”
The cat does not seem amused. “There are skeletons in Solterra’s closet larger than most.” The lion walks down the spine of the serpent. Orestes realises, then, that this is not what Ariel had brought him to see.
No. The tail winds, and winds, until it comes to twist around cutting Entrada pillars, made of deep red sandstone. Ariel follows it further, further, to the pillars, where at last the lion abandons the carcass with a clatter of bone and movement. Orestes follows through the rib-cage of the beast, at once reverent and puzzled.
“The catacombs,” Ariel says, at last. He rests atop the pillars that guard a pitted entrance. The entrance itself is cobwebbed and covered in sand. It is scarcely wide enough for Orestes to fit, if he were to want to. But, at the moment, he doesn’t want to. “Ariel, there is a much larger, seemingly safer entrance in the center of Solterra at the moment. I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to venture down a desert cave, under the presumption this same cave will lead to—“
Ariel cuts him off. “Orestes, it is an entrance.” The Sun Lion drops from the pillar easily and, with a condescending glance over his shoulder, Ariel slips through the cobwebs and desert debris into the dark opening.
For a little while, the fierce sunlight above glows through the sandstone roofing; but the entrance slants downward at an angle, and eventually the only light is the light that emits from Ariel’s body. It casts the cavern into a pale yellow glow, and Orestes follows closely. He does not feel fear, necessarily, but apprehension wells within him in the same way the sea swells during a storm. Orestes has never thought of it so coherently before, but he has always found safety in the openness of the desert or the sea. The walls brush his shoulders and the ceiling overhead, at times, bumps against his neck and head. Orestes continues to follow, however, with a sort of blind trust that erects itself sometimes between those who are Bonded.
Eventually, the entrance opens into a larger cavern. Ariel begins to glow more feverishly; heat wafts from his skin, and the light ascends to the ceiling of this cavern, too. Orestes’s hoof clips a rock, and the sound echoes for much longer than it ought to.
The cavern is massive; so massive, the darkness of it threatens to eat up Ariel’s light. They begin to walk much more carefully, and keep to the wall. Orestes finds himself staring out into absolute darkness, stretching beyond the radius of Sun Lion’s reach. When he glances closer at hand, to the wall they walk closely to, Orestes discovers painted hieroglyphics and a scene of a sandstone city with an oasis at the center. A griffin rests at the base of a large pyramid, and oversees a large crowd of bustling equines. Among them, Sun Lion shine metallic against the wall. Ariel pauses to examine the mural before rather recklessly departing from the wall and walking into the darkness.
After a slight pause, Orestes begins to follow him.
“I have been awake at night,” says Ariel. “Sometimes, I explore these new catacombs. They stretch far from city itself, and the further one ventures, the less they seem to connect to the Solterra we know today.” Ariel paces carefully around a large, rectangular pedestal. Orestes pauses to examine it, in the Sun Lion's light. It gleams like nacre, or opal, inlaid with gold and an opaque, gleaming substance not unlike obsidian. Strangely crystalline. Orestes realises, when Ariel’s light glints off the surface, it is not a pedestal at all. Orestes does not recognise what it could possibly be, with ornate symbols and clearly drawn equines in worship—
“It’s a sarcophagus,” Ariel answers. “Older, and different, then a tomb or a crypt. There is a corpse in there.” Orestes finds it deeply troubling, and as Ariel explains, Orestes feels as if the darker shadow within the crystal encasement seems to be vaguely equine.
Haltingly, as if enamoured, they begin to continue. They do not make it far before a clattering, metallic sound echos in the darkness. Ariel’s light immediately goes out and they are plunged into a darkness more absolute than Orestes has ever known.
It is silent for several long moments. Then, Ariel asks in a thunderous voice, “Who is there?”
It echoes, and echoes, and echoes.
Orestes thinks it is far more likely the past will answer, than any mortal voice. For the first time, true apprehension begins to creep up his neck and cool his blood. The Sovereign is afraid.
caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
that roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
of high Sesostris, and that southern beam
the laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
She carries no man nor woman’s colours, having thrown loose from herself the ornamentation of allegiance the moment she boarded the merchant vessel fleeing Edana.
It is not because she has a pariah’s heart – though it grows in isolation, like petals shifting genuflections to the sun, becoming vibrant and wild – it is because she cannot bear the toothed cruelty of more loss. Any more razing, piece by piece, the stone and mortar of her walls. Her cities. Her kingdoms. Her soul, free or pried from nation and land, is set adrift on the purl of wayward winds. She always had a wanderer’s mind, a rambler’s spirit – but always, always, she had a place called Home. A hearth; stone and dirt and ice, carved chambers of welcome and warmth; the beautiful bones of everything that had come before, that would come after.
After. Except, of course, there would be no After. There is only Never when she looks behind. Stark, distilled Never. Like Never-Again, and Never-Was, and Never-Will-Be. Lost to darkest-darkness – the sort of rayless, muted consumption that sloughs whole continents from the earth – she has seen the impermanence of man’s monuments. Of their cathedrals, palaces and citadels; has seen with wide, fearful eyes, the way blood can, indeed, be squeezed from stone.
So much blood.
So she is free. But freedom is barbed. Beautiful and savage Quiet, but often loudest at night, when the stars unfurl above snow-peaked mountains or endless, golden dunes, and yawn wide their ancient mouths to hum requiems for a thousand Never-Mores. She cannot say what brings her here. What inspired that peregrination across the ridged range of mountains crowning Denocte, from whose high valleys on a clear day, she glances with bated breath the raw, distant desert; that vast, cruel wilderness that reminds her so of Dirtharest.
From the scant, protected margins, she watches the distant sky fill with sand, blotting out the stars. She knows not what she sees, but observes with strange trepidation a land in shift. By inchoate dawn, she is summitting the giving, slipping swirls of sand-hummocks, weaving around red-stone formations, arching against and piercing the burgeoning mauves and tangerines of the sky. She skirts the stone retaining walls of an unknown capital, eyeing it with cautious relief.
Except for her freedom, she does not know what brings her here. But it is their faint, cosmic light that draws her, silent-footed, after their wake, now, tracing paw- and hoofprints through monster’s bones and desert’s clutch. She watches them with bright curiosity; with sickening certainty as they descend into the eidolic opening, knowing she will go after them.
This place is not for her, seems intent on dispelling her at every careful footfall. She knows, deep in her heart, that this charnel abyss is their Never, come to be, steeped in a history she does not understand. Populated by the mummified remains (around which she carefully tiptoes, stifling gasps at their queer, eyeless observance) of a desert-past. She never lets their light fade and keeps a keen ear on the low, reverential thrum of their voices; two, and then many as they pass into vast, echoing antechambers.
‘It’s a sarcophagus.’
She peeks from behind vaulted, engraved walls, head tilting, heart pounding, breath hitching. She should not be here, but the funereal darkness and cadaverous ache that settles into her lovely skin are too familiar, almost comforting in that way. She inches forward, a slender, sable knee brushing against some tarnished artefact – urn or vase; jar to collect tithes for the ferryman – and with that gentle kiss it tilts, rattling with a loathsome song of bronze and stone. Her eye squeeze shut against the darkness, lips parting to hiss a frustrated, “faex.”
The lion calls out, demanding her resignation, and she duly obliges. Frozen in place without his solar glow, she swallows hard, finds her tongue bloated and thick, throat dry. “I… I am sorry,” oppressive blackness presses in around her. She can feel it moving. Feel it stirring. (Oh gods, what have I done.) “I did not mean to startle, only... It is rather dark...” Her plaintive voice, too big and too small at once, trails off as she squints uselessly.
Faex. He does not recognise the language; nor does Ariel. The two of them strain toward the sound, hoping for other senses to take the place of sight. The darkness about them is heavy, heavy in the way many blankets are heavy, something slightly oppressive. If one lets it, it might be comforting—but Orestes was in no mind to let the darkness comfort him he, a man so accustomed to burning light.
I am sorry… I did not mean to startle, only… it is rather dark.
Orestes nearly laughs. Ariel is not so wooed by the plaintive voice.
Ariel, Orestes half-pleads and half-demands. Just light the darkness again. Down here, far from Solterra’s burning sun, Orestes magic will not light. His tattoos, which normally emit such a calm and consistent glow, have gone silver with a lack of magic. Ariel obeys and the entire cavern is lit by brilliant, almost blinding light.
Orestes blinks it from his eyes and looks off after the voice. He does not recognise her, which means she is not one of his citizens. But that in and of itself does not mean anything bad. In fact, some of the kindest citizens he had met were outside of Solterra. “Nothing to be sorry about. My Bonded just prefers to be cautious.”
Yes, certainly. Because you never are. Ariel accuses through their link.
The lion slinks away, displeased by the new company. He continues to examine the strange crystal sarcophagus. Ariel is trying to remember something the world forgot, and is not having much success.
Orestes watches him, a little embarrassed, before turning his attention back to the woman. “I apologise for the rather rude greeting, but… these are strange times. I am Orestes. I don’t believe we’ve met?” Around them, Ariel's light glances off in every direction, and dies down some long, black corridors leading further into the catacombs.
caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
that roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
of high Sesostris, and that southern beam
the laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
She shields her eyes against the lion’s sudden bloom, white lashes coming together, head turning away until the sudden shift from utter darkness settles and she can, once again, take in the lit mausoleum. She sighs, shifting uncomfortably, eyeing with wary curiosity the leonine figure as it examines the crystal casket upon its stone bier. She wants, desperately, to ask them what it is. What it secrets away inside – who... But she stifles it against her breast and takes a tentative step towards them, her long, hastily braided hair making snake-trails in the dust. She doesn’t want to pry, to offend – perhaps, she doesn’t want to know herself. But, what conjures in the absence of knowing is twisted and horrible. Spires of ribcage, rivers of vertebrae, the thin, dry leather of old skin stretched between…
Something trimmed in gold and jewels, for surely whoever rests within was once important.
She nods at the man, her soft, pensive eyes shifting to him, golden and inlaid with tattoos of burnished silver, catching the lion’s light as he shifts on whist paws. “I understand,” a small, wistful smile tilts the swart corners of her lips, gaze trailing back for a moment to the lion. He almost reminds her of someone. Of someone past. Long gone. Forgotten, but not truly, for somethings – like this unearthed catacomb – cannot be misplaced so easily. But they can be buried. Buried deep, under leagues of sand and time and hurt; laid to rest in coffers of crystal and repression.
“Strange, indeed,” Stellanor tilts her head slightly, Orestes, “it’s nice to meet you, even under… strange circumstances. My name is Stellanor. I must admit, I followed you here,” not like her – not unlike her, either, for she has always been the inquisitive sort; it just normally would not find her trailing two strangers down a dark abyss. Strange, indeed.“I’m not from Novus, I only just arrived, really. I was getting the lay of the land and found myself in the desert.” She supposes it has a name, as Denocte has a name. Just as of yet, it is a land uncharted. “I suppose… well, this place has a sort of draw.” She pinches her lip between her teeth, lets it go and chews the insides of her cheeks.
Thoughtful habits die hard.
“What is this place?” she exhales, feels the shift of spirits. Disembodied, gaunt, long abandoned in the slip of sand down hourglass curves and she must wonder what that feels like. To be lapsed.
He might have hoped decades of sleep would assuage the rage that burned in his veins.
It did no such thing.
Cairo awakens in the deep bowels of Solterra, as the earthquake rattles the skeletal foundations of the catacomb. His eyes spring open at the earth’s call. Sand and debris lie, covering his body in a film of dust and grime.
The warrior returns from his induced sleep, cast back into his body. It is still frozen as it had been ten years ago. The vestiges of twisted magic that cast him into slumber still reside in the edges of his torso. His maw is still open with its silent scream of fury, though his eyes are no longer closed against the light of magic. Cairo was caught and incapacitated as he lunged for the unstoppable magic. Like the sea, the wave of magic was unstoppable.
As he rouses, a stone statue finding life, Cairo vows he would never be outmatched again.
His body soon reclaims itself and falls out of its twisted, thrashing pose. His wings fall from where they had been clawing at the walls in ire. The warrior lands upon his knees, his control over his limbs, his body, is as pitiful as a newborn fawn.
But Cairo kneels to no one, even in the solitary confinement of a tomb.
As a teryr he rises, vengeful.
A cloud of dust billows from his feathers with the action. The tomb exults his living, echoing the sounds of his breath over and over.
How long does Cairo stand there, gasping and relearning his body and what it is to live within it again? Slowly his nerves remember, slowly his lungs breathe in the fetid, dead air around him more easily.
He regains himself in time to hear the voices who approach.
Slowly he pushes himself forward. His spine aches, his wings twinge from holding himself up. A pair of voices grow closer and Cairo slowly turns his gaze toward the shattered tomb’s entrance. The wall is broken open and in the entryway, black as pitch, though a golden light breaks through.
The regal feathers atop his poll crown his stare with the wickedness of blades. The voices no longer approach. He looks to the bodies of his fellow warriors, none are rousing like he. And for a moment he slips and thinks, what of… What of..? The name dares not come to his mind,
Cairo casts it from him. It falls from his consciousness, tattered by talons, burnt by his fury.
The voices do not come to him. So he twists for the entrance of his tomb. His tail twitches through the settled dust of the carved floor. He slinks, leonine, tail lifting as he silently prowls from his tomb.
Avian, his skull twists, his ears moving to catch the voices, soft, muffled. He moves toward them, regal, lethal. Furry simmers through every inch of him. He bears no weapon, he needs none.
Rocks lie in his path, fallen from where the wall has broken between him and the tomb the voices speak within. He climbs them, wings aiding him. Dust cascades in clouds from his gilded body as Cairo looms out of the darkness.
In silence, beneath the thick kohl of his lashes, he grasps the gazes of a golden man and a silver girl. It is a look as sharp as gilded talons. And with it Cairo clutches them tighter, tighter prying from them every breath of truth and explanation they keep upon their tongues. Then it slips away, like a snarl, to the lion that cautiously examines the crystal catacomb of his brethren.
Aqualine and slow he descends the rubble, into the dark tomb. His feathers rustle, his teeth clack like a beak and his lips curl into a soft, ominous grin. His body moves as a mirror of the lion’s, he slinks through the tomb, weighing up the inquisitive trio.
Cairo knows what it is to be lapsed, the final grains of ancient sand fall from the muscled curves of his body. His hourglass has finished its countdown, this Arete has awoken. Demands for an explanation are aquiline cries upon his tongue.
The girl’s final question still echoes, the ghosts of her voice singing off the crystal sarcophagus.
“The catacombs.” Cairo answers her with a voice that has not rusted. It is silken destruction, slipping through the darkness of the tomb. It caresses, it curls, it weaves, pressing upon soft skin, clawing at the walls. He watches the way she bites her winter lip, innocent, gentle. “Where are the rest of the soldiers?” Cairo purrs as his neck arches, regal, divine. That soft question, those simmering words, bely the talons of his aquiline gaze. It conceals within him the frantic ire that cries, savagely. Talons are not just clawing in his gaze, they are at his throat, his lungs, his heart. Cairo rips himself apart from within.
”Where are the rest?” He croons, he snarls, he demands. He will draw the answer from their tongues, their lips, whatever way he must.
