Prologue
The hooded figures climbed slowly down an ancient, rusty metal staircase, their boots clanging on the grated steps, robes rasping against corroded steel walls.
A distant purple glow from far below lit their way, the light of ceremonial fires accompanied by what sounded ominously like chanting. A peculiar smell rose along with the smoke of the violet flames.
Jasin Gol recognized the scent at once.
She was about a dozen or so ranks deep within a crowd of acolytes descending into the ancient cavern. She wore her long crimson hair tucked in under a black wool hood. A fabric mask was pulled up over her nose, so that only her eyes peered out from beneath the dark ensemble.
Those eyes were watering from the bitterly pungent smoke drifting upwards. Jasin furtively dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve, smudging the traditional kohl markings she’d applied around them. The dark cosmetics contrasted sharply with her pale skin, making her eyes appear to glow luminously through the dingy underground light. A quick glance at the other acolytes around her revealed they were also suffering, each brushing away tears hoping the others wouldn’t notice.
She knew what made the smoke so acrid: someone down there was illegally burning Hael.
Across the Dawn Lands, the burning of Hael was universally forbidden, a crime often punishable by death. Or at least it had been when people could still acquire the rare flower.
Some had taken the risk anyway. As a child, Jasin remembered her own mother burning Hael, dire consequences be damned. She’d often insisted to Jasin that burning the purple flower protected people from the Sickness far better than drinking its sweet tea.
Here within a cavern crafted by the Decrepit Ones, Jasin fervently hoped her mother was right all those years ago. Their ancient, buried ruins were saturated with the Sickness. Supposedly, not a single Hael petal remained to be made into tea or burnt in all the world. But Jasin prayed to Chalo that was incorrect; her life depended on it now.
Memories of her family summoned a sudden pang of grief within Jasin’s chest. Though curiously the deep emotional pain that usually came to Jasin along with those old memories felt somewhat dulled by the smoke.
Unfortunately, the scarring events that brought her pain still replayed themselves clearly within her mind.
Years ago, on a particularly cold winter’s night, Jasin’s father came home early from the housa tavern where he normally spent his evenings. The vicious older man had burned his arms that day at the glass smelter where he made his wages. The alcohol and his injuries hadn’t been a good mix.
Upon arriving home, Jasin’s father discovered his family burning Hael, something she and Jasin did in secret each night to cleanse the homestead of Sickness. Both mother and daughter had then suffered under the drunken old man’s fists. He’d screamed at them, accusing them of endangering the family. The Gol women had received beatings from their patriarch before, but that night Jasin’s father had been unusually fierce. And then for every night until his wife perished in a glass making accident. Jasin left the very next day.
Those were not memories Jasin would soon forget.
The old goat must be dead by now. Not that it mattered, she’d escaped that life. Has it only been three years since I left? Jasin wondered. It felt like a lifetime ago. At sixteen years of age, the scars marking her heart made her feel like a grizzled veteran of the Sarabean Wars. It was ironic. Her father had actually been a veteran of those real-life battles.
The light of the fire and cacophony of chanting grew as Jasin continued along the stairwell, bringing her back to the present. Her excitement swelling with each step, until it reached almost unbearable heights, crowding out the unpleasant memories of her childhood and all that happened following her escape. Receiving her acolyte robe and making the trip to the Great Temple felt like the end of a long journey. The relief of that thought was immediately poisoned by another bitter memory.
This is not the end of my hardships. This is the beginning of a new struggle. Except this time others will reap the whirlwind. The world is not ready for me.
After escaping her father’s home, Jasin had been forced to make sacrifices to survive. Thoughts of the compromises she’d had to make - the things she’d done even when every fiber of her body screamed in protest - those things still made her bolt awake in the middle of the night, screaming and crying.
Jasin bit her lip remembering the worst of those degradations. The final test courtesy of the Spiral Order.
“Only blood can buy the robe of an acolyte,” she’d been told by her handler one rain-soaked afternoon in the Cauldron. The black-robed old man had pressed a jet-black dagger into Jasin’s palm as he whispered the words to her. Jasin remembered shuddering at his sickly touch. The old creep disgusted her, but he was her only link to the Order. If she could just pass this last test, Jasin would gain food, shelter, and training as a warrior. Maybe even a family. Everything she’d sacrificed to get to that point would be worth it.
Jasin’s chosen victim had been a degenerate gambler. Homeless, no use for society. Still, his pleading eyes had haunted her as she stole his life. Even now, they continued to torment every one of Jasin’s nights.
Arthur. His name had been Arthur. His eyes, his eyes! They were so sad.
Jasin again returned to the present. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel the usual pain of that memory. Her senses began to swim. What was mixed in with the burning Hael?
Jasin didn’t have long to think about it because they’d reached the bottom of the pit.
Stepping off the final riser, Jasin at once discovered the source of the noxious fumes flowing skyward: a pyre flanked by two members of the Spiral Order dressed in dark green robes embroidered with purple flowers.
Ghouls, savage warriors of the Perpetuam. Jasin shuddered.
She watched as one of the Ghouls took a single purple Hael petal from a pouch about his waist and placed it in the fire. The flames immediately turned violet with a violent surge of heat and light. Jasin felt something incredible wash over her, a burst of charged energy passing through her body. It was exhilarating and nauseating at the same time.
So, there is a place where that cursed purple flower still grows!
The herd of acolytes swarmed forward through a small doorway immediately in front of the stairwell, Jasin carried along with the rush. The mob of feverish young men and women were charged with a visceral, manic excitement as they passed through the opening and into a gigantic, cavernous chamber. Jasin found herself rushing along a narrow metal catwalk suspended across the cavern. To either side of the walkway there was a sheer drop into a terrifyingly black abyss. The drugged acolytes remained unfazed, racing along the catwalk without a moment of pause or concern.
Except Jasin.
It wasn’t the mind-bending depths, nor the fact that she couldn’t even see where the cavern ended above her that made Jasin stop in her tracks. No, she began to work against the flow of dark hooded figures because something else had arrested her attention.
To her left a monolith arose from the black. A colossal cylinder made of smooth metal extending both upwards and downwards into obscuring black darkness, the ends of which held completely out of sight. Jasin had never seen anything so massive before in all of the Dawn Lands. Even the Shogun’s immense fortress within the Cauldron would have been a child’s play-thing compared to this frightening object of cosmic proportions.
On the monolith’s flank Jasin could barely make out some faded, chipped symbols written in the language of the Decrepit Ones. ANH-T0R, the symbols read. What it meant, Jasin could not tell, she couldn’t read the old language. Regardless, a cold spike of fear wormed its way through her heart and stomach.
Then, Jasin’s terrible awe fled from her as quickly as it’d come. Whatever was burning in the Hael fire overrode her feelings and she quickly rejoined the enthusiastic frenzy of acolytes heading deeper into the ruins.
The catwalk exited the giant cavern housing the monolith and entered a long corridor tunneled directly into the rock face. Closed doors leading to more rooms and hallways lined either side of the passage. Leaving that corridor, Jasin and the other acolytes entered another large cave, this one not nearly not as massive as the previous expanse with the metal object. This chamber had an accessible floor and so the acolytes waked directly upon the rocky ground as opposed to being suspended above.
All around the cave were more Ghouls attending to fires fed by Hael. Scattered here and there were Wraiths, clad in robes the inverse of their warrior companions, dark purple fabric laced with green flowers.
Jasin had never seen a Wraith before, only hearing whispered descriptions of the mysterious assassin-priests. It was said the only ones able to cast eyes on a Wraith in the flesh were members of the Perpetuam and the dead.
In the center of the room, a large cluster of Ghouls were huddled around an object. The eerie chanting that had accompanied Jasin’s journey into the belly of these ancient ruins appeared to be coming from that group.
Jasin craned her neck to see what the Ghouls were gathered around, but she wasn’t quite tall enough to get a glimpse. She couldn’t make out the words of the chanting either, but she did realize it was likely only one person talking. They were saying the same string of sentences over and over. The words sounded vaguely unnatural, echoing about the flamelit chamber.
Jasin’s attention was diverted to a man in a plain dark green hooded robe. He was approaching the group of acolytes, and they instinctively formed ranks to face him. Those among the Perpetuam hopefuls who’d been chattering to each other fell silent. In the sudden silence Jasin felt her heart beat heavily. Fresh sweat prickled on her palms and ran down her back. Thick beads of perspiration gathered at her hairline before rolling down her face, marring her kohl markings. It was unbearably hot in the cavern, and Jasin felt like she might pass out if not for the Hael smoke, which was keeping her both invigorated and stupefied at the same time.
As he grew near to the gathered acolytes, the hooded man gestured towards a group of Ghouls following him. The Ghouls stepped forward past him towards the acolytes; each one of the warriors carried a clear, liquid-filled tube with a thin needle point at one end.
As Jasin watched from her place a few ranks back, the Ghouls pierced the needle end of the device into the right shoulder of the front-most acolytes, pressing down a plunger on the other end of the clear tube. When it was her turn to be jabbed, Jasin instinctively tensed up.
“Relax,” the Ghoul who’d approached her hissed.
His breath had a sickly-sweet quality like rotting meat, and his face was smeared with a thick, black paste. The Ghoul’s appearance made Jasin go stiff with anxiety, contrary to his instructions. He rolled his eyes and plunged the needle into her right shoulder anyways, injecting a clear liquid into her body.
Immediately, Jasin’s shoulder burned with searing hot agony. She gasped, choking on the sudden pain. A single tear escaped to roll down her cheek. The Ghoul grunted at her and grinning, nauseating Jasin. This world will never be short of creeps, she thought acidly. Alarmingly, she could feel the skin puckering and scarring beneath her woolen robe. Jasin stood still, determined not to let any more of the anguish she felt show outwardly.
The Ghoul lingered for a few more moments, licking his lips and enjoying Jasin’s discomfort, before moving away to his next victim. Jasin quickly felt around the affected area with her other hand. Her skin was bumpy, inflamed, and painful. She could feel the mysterious liquid coursing through her veins like molten lava, almost making her double over and fall to the ground in writhing agony. Several of her fellow inductees had done just that, prompting some of the idle Ghouls to laugh and kick the squirming youngsters.
Jasin’s misery grew until it became difficult to breathe. Then, quite suddenly the torrid heat within her dissipated, replaced again by the hazy, dulling heat of the Hael smoke.
The man in the plain green robe pulled back his hood, revealing a face pinched and thin, skeletal looking. Those acolytes who’d fallen rose to their feet sheepishly, gingerly nursing broken ribs and noses from where they’d been kicked. All the watching acolytes leaned forward in anticipation, the Hael smoke diminishing their distress.
“That’s the Grand Penumbra,” the acolyte next to Jasin whispered, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy.
How could he know?
The acolytes grew silent once again as the thin man in the green robe clasped his hands in front of him with a loud clap. “Greetings, young ones. Today, your life’s journey finally begins. Your struggles are not over, but they have entered a new and glorious phase.” He seemed to look directly at Jasin as he echoed her own sentiments from earlier. The young woman shivered from a mix of excitement and fear. The man’s words filled her with heat, but made her feel cold.
“I would like to welcome you to the Great Temple,” the Grand Penumbra continued. “Your stay here will be brief. And I will be honest,” his eyes glinted dangerously, “it will also be brutal. Not all of you will return to the surface. And none of you will return home. Ever.”
The acolytes murmured excitedly among themselves. The Grand Penumbra’s words penetrated Jasin’s drugged haze. Not that she cared much about never returning home. Hael had destroyed her home long ago. Instead, an inkling of doubt slithered its way into her subconsciousness.
His eyes, his eyes. He’d said something as he died! What was it?
The Hael smoke once again wiped Jasin’s thoughts clean. She blinked, wondering what it was she’d just been thinking about and why tears were streaming down her face.
The Grand Penumbra gestured towards the cluster of Ghouls in the center of the room. “Soon you will leave here as a seasoned soldier. We will take you, the weak, insignificant balls of clay you are, and make a warrior of you; ready to take the sacred crusade of the Perpetuam out into the fields and streets of the Lands of Dusk and Dawn.”
The assembled Ghouls, their implements of torture discarded, had all turned to face the acolytes. Their eyes gleamed wickedly in the flickering torch light from underneath their hoods.
Jasin’s right shoulder ached and itched. She thought she knew why, but couldn’t quite draw up the memory of what had happened to it.
His eyes, his eyes! His lips had been moving. Jasin shook her head. Concentrate!
“You will learn the secrets of our Perpetuam, the Spiral Order. You will be handed the keys to the survival of humankind itself! The keys to unlocking a better humankind.”
The gathered acolytes were hanging on the Grand Penumbra’s every word, completely enraptured by the spectacle. He smiled a sinister, tight-lipped grin for dramatic effect.
“Now, come close, young ones. Witness the majesty of the Artifact.”
At that moment, Jasin realized the chanting coming from the center of the cavern had stopped some time ago. The Ghouls gathered there parted down the middle, revealing the object of their strange veneration. It was a large, wide, circular black pedestal, made of a glossy material Jasin had never seen before.
But it wasn’t the pedestal that made every one of the acolyte’s veins turn to ice. It was what was atop the gleaming black surface that made them collectively gasp in horror, for resting there was a human head.
Jasin stared in shock.
Then the head opened its eyes, looked directly at her, and began to talk.
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