Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [94]
The creatures looked at them, then lifted their respective weapons.
"Gargan," she murmured. "Slowly… put the sword… down…"
The goliath seemed to understand, and he lowered his black blade. He put a hand on Twilight's shoulder and stepped in front of her, protectively. It was a gesture she hadn't expected but appreciated nonetheless, as ludicrous as it might have been.
It was a great and spacious hall. Pillars wider than four dwarves standing shoulder to shoulder held up a tall dome whose belly was decorated with mosaics depicting suns and flames. In the center of the room, lying before an altar, a vast slab of black metal rested, looking like nothing so much as a great hatch. A sun with a grim face hung at an angle above the altar. A faded sun mapped the floor, a withered candelabra at the tip of each of its twenty rays. It reminded her of the symbol of Erevan.
A strange golden moss marred the formerly beautiful architecture, and it was only when she looked away that Twilight realized it was moving, pulsing slightly. She fell into magic sense. The walls exploded with light, and she dismissed the sense with a wince.
Something Liken had told het came back-a bit of knowledge that she shouldn't have, yet did. She'd thought it a lie, but she realized what she was seeing. Her face went pale. "Oh, gods," she murmured, finding breath hard to come by.
"Fox-at-Twilight?"Gargan's hand clutched her shoulder.
"Heavy magic," she breathed. "The walls… the walls are covered in it."
Indeed, the golden stuff dripped from the stone, caking it as mud on the soles of a boot. It covered the interior of the cathedral almost completely. No magic could penetrate the barrier that surrounded the cathedral, and only the strongest archmage could even think of the Art within its walls.
And, as though to address that point, Twilight saw a silvery window open in the air before a section of wall. A black mass reached through-she recognized it after a breath as a muscular arm-and pushed the gold jelly back into place as though caressing the flesh of a yielding lover. Twilight trembled as she watched the arm snake back through the shimmering window, and another window opened across the room, then another just a few paces from them. Gargan leaped back with a growl, his sword hissing from its scabbard.
Then a portal of light, reflecting the back of the cathedral upside down, appeared before them, and through it came a creature of such power and majesty Twilight found herself forced to her knees. All her tales of seducing archmages and staring down archdevils fled her mind and she was emptied. In short, she was terrified.
For Twilight, who had never had the gift of verse, its form was almost indescribable. The best she could manage was brute analogy. Its body was that of a bulbous tree with three limbs that split into six branches, each a muscular arm thicker than Gargan's chest. These arms ended in clawed fists that contained an eye in each palm. The arms constantly shifted location, as though the flesh were jelly. Sprouting from its body came three fanged, and nosed, but otherwise featureless heads amongst the arms, all of which spoke at once, making for a nigh incomprehensible cacophony.
"Welcome to my realm, dusssstlingssss," it said, echoing itself. The sheer majesty of the sharn, understandable or not, was enough to make Twilight want to bow down and worship, but she couldn't move.
Then the mouths began alternating syllables, but spoke them all at once, so three beats became one. "Sssshort lived racessss go by like dusssst in the wind. But you have not died thussss far."