IGS #4, Chapter 54

Jova

Kuragin and Nyrix slept for an age. Time slowed and lost all meaning. Nobody spoke. One by one, the others fell into slumber. The air, frigid, caused them to huddle, Xandera forming the natural nucleus, her body heat constant and prodigious.

Silence but for the distant moan of wind tearing around the mountain peaks. Jova felt alienated from her own needs. She could recognize her fatigue, but it was distant, theoretical. Sure, the eidolon was on guard, immovable and alert, but what good had that done them when the Philosophers had struck their camp?

The light was unwavering, a constant clarity high above that gradated to shadow in the pit in which they rested. Hours melted into each other. Jova fell into a trance, occasionally rising to pace, stretch, or simply stare upward at the sky, hands on hips, frowning.

The Tomb’s entrance yawned before them. An invitation. Her mind worried at the fact, unable to provide answers, unwilling to simply accept. The Philosophers had remained at bay. Was the intelligence that welcomed them thus non-Silverine? Or more potent, one of the fabled Abstractions? No; it felt correct for it to be a Herdsman. But what manner of Great Soul could reside in such an inhospitable place for years, decades, centuries on end? Was there a vibrant colony within? A parallel to the Red Keep, filled with bustling heretics and traitors laboring to stifle the closure of the Pit? Or was there a mechanical intelligence at play, some great Artifact that sensed Great Souls and opened the portal for them alone?

She’d find out soon enough.

Restless, impatient, she worked her way through one of her stretching regimens, taking her time, controlling her breath, loosening the large muscles of her thighs and back, easing the stiffness in her spine, but even that could only occupy her time for so long. Eventually, sipping on the last of the chill water from her waterskin, she subsided again to stare past the eidolon into the depths.

Death.

That’s what most likely awaited them within.

But she found that she wasn’t afraid. Not that she’d ever truly feared dying. At best she’d been indifferent, resenting it more as failure on her path to power, an ignominious way to end this life more than anything else.

Had she always been this way? Her earliest Trials had revealed a Jova filled with passion and life, determined to accomplish the impossible for her people, her daughter. As prone to laughter as rage, tempestuous, vibrant, commanding.

But her Pyre Lord trial had shown the culmination of that particular arc. Belli’s death had marked her, hollowed out something vital and precious from her soul, and since that loss she had been… muted. Her capacity for joy, lost. She could sense it in the journals. In herself even now.

Some wounds couldn’t be healed.

Some losses couldn’t be recovered from.

And what remained when the capacity for happiness was excised?

Jova rested her chin on one knee. The answer was now clear. Once she had thought her only desire was to acquire power, but now? New words rang out in her mind. Duty. Loyalty. Obligation. To what?

To higher truths? To justice, to equity, to the end of suffering and abuse. Not that she could find it within herself to pity the people of Bastion like Scorio, but rather… on a grander scale. To unravel the very lies that governed Hell.

Fine, yes; postulate that those were her motives, now. To some degree. It felt as if she were trying on a new set of robes to see how well they fit.

But beyond that, deeper, more close to her heart, burned a loyalty to those who’d earned her respect. There were precious, precious few. Leonis was redeeming himself. Druanna might be a peer. Luminaries such as Aezryna and the Seamstress had earned her grudging and provisional esteem. But only one person had truly earned her loyalty. Through his actions, his principles, and his undeniable successes.

But he was gone now.

What she did here today she did in his name. To honor his legacy, to accomplish his goals, to…

Jova pursed her lips. Pictured Scorio, how even when he laughed or smiled amongst his friends he looked ready to shift without notice into violence, into fury. Most probably couldn’t sense it, but she knew it was there, that propensity for destruction. All it took was someone taking a step too far, abusing another, revealing their perfidy.

But he was gone.

Jova rested her brow on her kneecap and closed her eyes. Gone for now. If anyone could find a way to freedom after falling into the Herdsmen's hands it was him. Hadn’t he somehow survived his duel with Plassus? A sheer impossibility that she’d somehow known he’d overcome.

She took a deep breath and nodded to herself. Yes. The Herdsmen wouldn’t stop Scorio. They and the Silverines had bitten off more than they could chew. Any moment now they’d begin hearing the distant report of exploding Silverine Suns, and then Scorio would appear, slightly singed, abashed, and probably a Crimson Earl or the like.

Jova smiled quietly to herself.

Time passed.

Kuragin stirred first. Winced, then Jova felt his Heart Ignite.

Good.

Leonis moved to tend to the man, helping him sit up and sip water. The pair spoke in low tones, Leonis no doubt recounting what had transpired. Shortly after Kuragin eased in beside the other fallen Dread Blaze to lay Nyrix’s head upon his lap. Kuragin stared down at him with a permanent frown etched into his face, occasionally running his fingers through Nyrix’s hair.

More time passed.

Nyrix finally stirred, groaned, blinked, looked up to see Kuragin.

“Hey,” whispered Nyrix, moving his hand to cover Kuragin’s bigger one.

“Finally.” Kuragin’s voice was little more than a rasp. “I was about to give up on you. Find someone stronger.”

Nyrix smiled, closed his eyes, and Ignited.

It didn’t take long for both men to heal. Jova’s patience had near run out by the time they’d shouldered their packs and gathered behind the eidolon. She turned to glance back at the others.

“Scorio should be here to give you all a sappy speech. Seeing as he’s not, I’ll just tell you to stick close, stay sharp, and be ready for overwhelming resistance. There’s no shame in running if we’re outmatched. Ready?”

Kelona clapped sardonically. “Who needs Scorio when we’ve got Jova?”

Druanna stretched, then hunched over as she clenched her muscles, her Heart Igniting and two other sets of arms grew from her sides. A wicked black blade glinted in each fist, and her presence filled the small pit. Her grin was wicked, relaxed, confident. “The fact that we’re even here is accomplishment enough. Whatever lies beyond, I don’t mean to go down easy. Let’s go ruin their day.”

Jova smiled. “Now those are words I can live by.” And she strode past the eidolon and into the dark hall, engaging her dark vision as she went. The walls were of glass-like black stone, smooth but subtly rippled. No signs of chisels, no seams, just one continuous passage that led deeper into the mountain.

Her breath puffed before her.

A few paces in she reached for the black stone and tugged gently at its fabric. She could sense it, could feel it respond to her power.

Good.

No need to bring rocks of her own.

The hall extended some fifty yards before opening up into a great shaft. They approached cautiously, listening intently as they drew close, but when finally they reached the terminus they found no resistance.

The place felt deserted.

But the shaft. It plunged massively into the ground, beyond the limits of her dark vision, and rose just as precipitously to distant heights. The walls were ribbed with hexagonal columns, a honeycomb of fused black pillars. Here and there these columns simply stopped, forming six-sided platforms set against the shaft’s sides. 

“Whoa,” breathed Kelona, steadying herself against the hallway’s mouth as she leaned out to gaze into the depths. “That’s… was this even built?”

Xandera crouched to press her palm against the floor. “I can sense ancient fire. These stones once ran like honey. A long, long time ago.”

Druanna ran her fingertips along the wall. “Perhaps the Herdsmen simply took advantage of what was already here. The question, I suppose, is whether to ascend or go down.”

“Down,” said Jova, not having torn her gaze from the darkness below. “The black towers are interesting, but I can feel a pull from below.”

It was the strangest sensation. She’d felt it gently at first, but it had grown ever stronger as they neared the shaft. A sense of spiritual gravity, of great density or presence in the depths.

The others nodded reluctantly.

“I have to give it to the Herdsmen,” said Nyrix, tone wry. “They really know how to pick a terrifyingly impressive base of operations.”

“It’s a tomb, idiot,” said Kuragin. “Nobody’s operating out of here.”

Nyrix shrugged one shoulder. “I can feel something below. Dead people don’t radiate… power.”

“There’s one way to find out.” Leonis hitched his pack higher up his shoulder. “Jova?”

She extended her power and with as much delicacy as possible probed the sides of the shaft. She could just tear a chunk of black stone from the wall, but the nature of the rock compelled her instead to shear six or so of the hexagonal columns away, then rotate this from the vertical into a horizontal platform. The surface was ridged, dangerously smooth, and the stone was curiously responsive to her power.

Eager, almost.

She brought the edge of the black raft to the lip of the hallway, and stepped aboard. The others did the same with differing degrees of nervousness, and once everyone was aboard, Jova commanded it to descend.

The air was freezing.

Down they floated, Jova standing at the very edge of the raft to stare down into the dark.

The throat of the shaft narrowed as more and more of the fused columns pressed close. Even so, there was plenty of room, and eventually the column tops ceased to appear, the sides now geometric and continuous.

Everyone around her Ignited. Nobody spoke.

The darkness below ceased to reveal itself as they descended, and for a moment Jova thought her dark vision was being nullified, but no: they were instead approaching the end of the shaft where it opened into some larger space.

“Get ready,” she whispered. “Entering something new just below.”

They dropped into a cavern. The sense of space around them unfolded vastly, and Jova slowed their descent so they could take it in.

The space was cathedral-like in scope, the floor easily some seventy, eighty yards below. The basalt columns receded dramatically into the distance where they formed the walls. The ceiling was supported by clusters of hexagonal columns, each cluster as broad as a house. The style was brutal and exuded alien strength, ponderous might.  At the base of each pillar burned pyres of translucent Silver mana, each bonfire made to appear small by the scale of the architecture, their pewter light dancing up the stone walls and turning what should have been pitch darkness to mere gloom.

Silence.

No signs of life.

“I don’t see anyone,” muttered Leonis. “Where’s the welcome committee?”

Druanna’s Heart blazed brightly and her eidolon appeared below on the hexagonal-patterned floor. It turned in a slow circle, blades flashing in the mana-light.

“They know we’re here, right?” Kelona’s voice bled tension.

“’Course they do,” growled Kuragin. “They’re toying with us.”

Jova closed her eyes and focused on that presence, the gravitational pull of some hidden power. It was all around them now, making it hard to breathe deep, to remain relaxed. She felt as if she stood in the full gaze of some hidden predator, something huge and beyond their ken.

The urge to tear a boulder from ground and hurl it against a column or deeper into the hall was as sudden as it was childish.

“That way,” said Druanna, pointing at where the huge hall receded to the left. “I can sense something there.”

Jova nodded and willed the stone raft on. The eidolon kept pace below, each footstep crunching sand or gravel beneath its black stone foot. Everybody peered into the depths between the cyclopean pillars. The tension was so thick it made the darkness feel like treacle.

“Who lit the fires?” Nyrix peered down at a passing pyre. “Or are they self-sustaining?”

“We’d have to get closer to find out,” murmured Druanna distractedly, her attention ahead. “But I’d guess self-sustaining. Would go against the feel of the place if servants had to move around each day to re-light them.”

The next space, or chamber, or whatever it was that the hall opened into was somehow even more breathtaking in scope. While the ceiling remained at the same height, some sixty or seventy yards above the hexagonally patterned black floor, the walls simply disappeared into the darkness, withdrawing totally so that it felt as if they emerged into a vast horizontal seam. The columns here were so thick, so huge, that they deceived the eye into thinking the ceiling was closer to the floor than it was; each column had to be several hundred yards in circumference, massive as a city block back in Bastion, ringed with clusters of Silver-mana burning candles that appeared like clusters of stars at their base.

“By the ten Hells,” whispered Druanna, awed.

For the ground was covered in familiar shapes. The stone biers from the Academy, their beveled edges trimmed with dull gold, surfaces patterned with gems and blue stones, across which swirled bands of silver. Faint Silver mana-light glowed up from the ground around them, so that each appeared birthed by starlight.

Thousands of them, receding into the distance like constellations.

And while many of the biers were empty, far too many to count were occupied by slumbering forms. Men and women clothed in black robes, golden ropes tied off at their waists, as still as corpses but without deterioration, as if they had all laid down to sleep but moments ago.

“Look,” said Leonis, pointing off to the side.

A singular, stylized column arose from what had to be the center of the biers, all of which were oriented around it. This central spire rose near to the ceiling, a scepter whose peak was crowned with a gently pulsing gem of iridescent blue.

“The Archspire,” whispered Kelona in wonder.

“Are these Herdsmen, then?” Nyrix leaned outward, peering down. “Are there this many of them?”

Jova, barely able to breathe, guided her stone raft out over the biers toward the second Archspire. So it was true. It was all true. Her mind reeled. It was one thing to suspect, to hear, but to see it with her own eyes?

Nobody spoke.

The eidolon picked its path carefully between the biers, keeping pace.

There was a large space around the Archspire, and Jova guided her raft to land there, the stone ridges of its undersides crunching as it touched down on the floor.

They all stepped off, each tentative, hesitant.

The silence was awful. The vast sense of space. The biers extended into the distance. How many lay here? How many dormant Great Souls?

Dry swallowing, she moved to the closest one.

It was grand, ornate, and rose to hip height. A slender young man with tousled gold hair lay upon it. He was handsome, his face strong boned, his chest still. Up close, she saw that a slender silver rod had punched clear through his chest, right through his heart, its tip wickedly sharp, its length coated with black blood, to extend some five or six inches into the air.

But the man seemed otherwise unharmed, his face pale, sure, but not that of a cadaver.

Leonis joined her, the others moving to other biers close by.

“Look.” His whisper was awed. “A plaque.”

Indeed. At the foot of the bier, close to where they stood, was affixed a gold rectangle. Spelt out in clear letters was a name: IULIUS THE GOLDEN.

“No fucking way,” hissed Druanna to one side.

Jova glanced over to where the other Pyre Lady stood. Upon the bier before her lay a thickset man with a mane of black hair, his eyes sunken, his nose a hooked eagle’s beak.

“It’s Moravius the Black,” said Druanna, eyes wide.

“What?” Xandera ran over then froze just shy of the bier. “Moravius?” Her voice shook and she pressed her hands to her mouth. “Our… our…?”

Jova raised her gaze to take in the other biers. All those clustered around the Archspire were occupied.

“Horvin the Fell,” read Nyrix from his, then skipped over to the next bier. “Pentalos the Thrice Anointed. Wait. Wasn’t he the Imperator who killed that True Fiend that almost conquered Bastion? The one called The Loathing, or…?”

“This… this is Iulius,” croaked Jova. Everyone turned to stare. “Right here. On this bier. Iulius the Golden.”

“A tomb in truth,” said Leonis, raising his gaze to take in the dead. “But why… they must be trapped here.”

“This silver spike,” agreed Druanna, staring at the one that emerged from Moravius’s chest. That emerged from everyone’s chest. “It must be trapping them. Keeping them from being reborn.”

“Can we…” Kelona cleared her throat. “Can we release them?”

Certainty filled Jova. “We have to. There must be a way to undo this. If we can but find…” She began circling Iulius’ bier, examining the sides. “A catch, or means to de-activate it…”

The eidolon abruptly shifted, turning swiftly to stare off into the darkness, and Druanna’s head snapped up. “Everyone, something’s here.”

They all oriented on the darkness beyond. Something was indeed approaching. Walking slowly, calmly, toward them. The sound of its footsteps were subtle but grew more distinct with each passing moment.

Jova moved to stand alongside Druanna, ready to tear the ground apart, to bring the ceiling crashing down on whatever approached.

Nobody spoke.

The figure finally drew close enough that she could make it out.

A person dressed in elegant black. A cloak of some kind over one arm, a skirt down past its knees, every inch of it dressed or gloved or booted.

But for its head.

From the black ruffles about its neck rose a perfect obelisk of jet black, a rectangle without mark, feature, or symbol. Alien, inhuman, and from which Jova could sense a terrible disdain and unutterable sense of authority.