Page 109 of Children of Fallen Gods

“Arans built this?” I asked, as we approached the doors. They loomed above us, two massive panes of darkness against the ivory.

This place was like nothing I had seen in Ara. It seemed… ancient and foreign.

“It wasn’t built so much as it was… discovered. It’s old. Certainly older than the fall of magic.” Max barely touched the door and it swung open seemingly of its own accord. He shuddered and cursed beneath his breath. “I suppose that four hundred years ago, when it was uncovered again, the Orders thought it would be a shame to let such a perfectly torturous place go to waste. Enterprising bastards.”

We stepped through the doors, and they closed swiftly behind us, as if offended by Max’s tone.

Reshaye slammed against my thoughts.{Get out. Get out, get out, get out…}

It was eerily bright in here. The walls and floor were made out of the same smooth white stone as the exterior, adorned with the same decorative carvings. There were no doors, no adornments. No lanterns, just light. And no people, though I felt the heavy gaze of watchful eyes.

“I fucking despise this place,” Max muttered, and started walking. I followed.

“There are no guards?” I couldn’t help but whisper. It was too silent — an unnatural silence, the kind that reeked of danger.

The words barely made it out of my mouth before I stumbled into Max, who had stopped short.

An old woman stood before us. She was draped in a black dress, with a matching scarf covering her hair, reminiscent of a hood. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her. Shriveled scars occupied her empty eye sockets. A Syrizen.

“Ascended above, that was unnecessary,” Max muttered.

The woman did not acknowledge the comment, though the muscles around her scars twitched disapprovingly.

I couldn’t help but stare. Is this what became of Syrizen, when they got old? I’d never seen one over the age of fifty. And while all Syrizen could be a little unnerving, this one seemed almost inhuman. A purple cast bloomed beneath her scars, like delicate bruises.

“For whom?” she creaked out.

“Vardir Israin,” Max said.

The woman then gave me a stare that I felt down my spine.

“She’s with me,” he added.

The stare held for several more uncomfortable seconds. Then she abruptly turned away, as if we were now unworthy of her interest. She lifted a finger and pointed down a hallway, and by the time we began walking again, she was gone.

Max strode on purposefully, as if that one feeble pointed finger was enough to tell him exactly where we needed to go, even though we continued to turn corners and wind down hallways. The carved white stone drowned out everything else, so bright I found myself squinting, and the walls seemed to press down on us.

Everything was so strangely silent, as if sound itself withered and died in the air — even the cadence of our footsteps seemedodd, like they were defying nature. At one point, we turned a corner, and it was as if somethingcracked. A piercing, agonized scream sliced through the air, so sharp it dragged bloody fingernails through my ears.

I froze.

But the sound was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. It was like a single fragment of broken glass, cut off at the end and the beginning, audible for only a fraction of a second.

And then, once again, it was so silent that I questioned whether I had heard it at all.

Max and I had both stopped walking. We looked at each other.

It took me a moment to realize what I had heard. Realize why this place was so oddly silent. “It’s a spell,” I said. “The silence.”

He inclined his chin, grim. “Yes. It is.”

The thought made a shiver run through me. Right now, the air might have been thick with screams, with agony, like what we had just heard through a single crack in magic. Here, just unheard, smothered beneath oppressive silence.

I didn’t like this place.

We continued down several more halls, until Max stopped and turned to the wall. He placed his palm flat against the white stone, and it simplyparted, like a curtain opened by invisible hands. Where there had once been solid stone, now there was a door.

Before I could move, Max caught my arm.

---