Chapter 110: The Lost Age

The old man faced forward again as the feline continued toward the distant structures.

The Skyraisers grew larger with every passing moment, though Mara struggled to understand their true size until they reached the first. What she had mistaken for a tower was a pillar wide enough to contain an entire district. Its sides disappeared into the darkness above, extending beyond the reach of the old man's lantern until Mara could no longer tell where stone ended and the black sky began.

More pillars stood beyond it.

Some remained straight. Others leaned at slight angles, their upper sections burdened by something too high to see. Long fractures ran through several of them, wide enough for trees to grow inside. Pale mineral filled parts of those wounds, giving the impression that someone had once tried to repair them before abandoning the work.

The land beneath them had been crushed almost flat.

No grass grew near the bases of the pillars. Nothing moved between them except the feline, its paws crossing enormous stone tiles buried beneath centuries of dirt. Even the smaller Abominations that had followed them through the darkness stopped well before reaching the Skyraisers.

The feline slowed.

Its strides shortened until the force pressing Mara against its back finally eased. She raised her head and found herself facing a hillside nestled between two of the great pillars.

A door had been built into the slope.

It was enormous, easily large enough for the feline to pass through without lowering its head. Dark metal covered its surface in overlapping plates, each fitted so closely against the next that Mara could not find a hinge or seam from where she sat. The surrounding hillside had grown over much of its frame, but neither roots nor soil had managed to force their way between the plates.

Shapes had been carved across the metal.

The lowest sections showed Bastions surrounded by walls of light. Reapers stood along those walls with raised weapons while Abominations gathered beyond them in numbers that filled every remaining space. Above the Bastions were roads, bridges and great columns connecting distant regions beneath a sky crowded with pale stars.

The largest figure occupied the center of the door.

A woman stood before hundreds of souls. A veil concealed the lower half of her face, while two long horns rose from beneath a crown or headdress. One of her hands held a light close to her chest. The other reached toward an open gate carved above her.

The people behind her followed that light.

Mara continued staring at the image after the feline stopped. "What is this place?"

"This is where I'll treat Rook," the old man said.

"I meant the carving."

He followed her gaze toward the horned woman. His expression softened, not with affection but with the quiet recognition of something he had seen too many times to find surprising.

"That is Yama."

Mara loosened her grip upon the feline's fur. "That's Yama?"

"According to whoever carved the door. Images of her are inconsistent. Some give her horns, others place a crown upon her head, and a few refuse to show her face at all. The light remains the same in nearly every surviving depiction."

Her eyes moved toward the gate above the figure. "Is this Yama's Gate?"

"No. You have not become that fortunate."

The old man stepped down from the creature and landed lightly upon the buried stones. He walked closer to the carving, raising his lantern until its pale glow reached the metal woman's veiled face.

"Whoever built this place claimed to have seen one of the Gates. Perhaps they also saw Yama, or something they believed was her. They returned here and carved what they remembered before the memory faded. That is the charitable interpretation, at least. People also carve things they have never seen and allow later generations to confuse confidence with truth."

Mara climbed down more carefully. Her legs had stiffened from gripping the feline, and pain ran through them when her feet touched the ground.

"So even you don't know whether that's what she looks like."

"I know that someone wanted her remembered this way. In the Underworld, that is often the closest thing history offers."

The feline lowered its head beside them. Mara's translucent chain still passed into its body, carrying the faint assurance that Rook remained somewhere inside.

The old man reached into his coat and removed a fragment of pale material. It looked like a piece of broken glass at first, but dim shapes shifted beneath its surface. A narrow room appeared within it, followed by the corner of a bed and part of a face turning toward someone Mara could not see.

It was a soul fragment.

The old man braced it between both hands and snapped it in half.

The sound was quiet, yet the memory inside split with a sharp burst of light. One half continued showing the room. The other held only the face, divided along one eye.

He tossed that half toward the feline.

Its jaws opened and closed around the fragment.

Mara grabbed the old man's sleeve. "What are you doing? Rook is still inside her."

He paused rather than pulling away. "She does not digest everything she swallows. Her body has separate memory chambers, and she decides what enters each one. The fragment went where her food goes. Rook did not."

"You expect me to trust that she can tell the difference?"

"She has been preserving him throughout the journey while running hard enough to cross several regions. If she intended to feed upon him, your chain would already have broken. You may remain cautious, but panic will not change her anatomy."

Mara released his coat, though her eyes remained fixed upon the creature's throat.

The old man pressed the remaining half of the fragment against the center of the door.

Memory spread through the metal.

The carved images shimmered as pale light travelled along their edges. It reached the Bastions first, igniting the Beacons engraved upon them one after another. The glow then climbed the roads and bridges until it entered the light held by Yama.

Something heavy moved inside the hillside.

The door did not swing inward. The metal plates separated through the middle and slid sideways into the earth, their movement producing a low vibration beneath Mara's feet. Dust fell from the slope, but the roots growing over the frame remained undisturbed.

A tunnel waited beyond it.

The old man retrieved the fragment after its light faded and motioned for the feline to follow.

Mara entered behind him.

The tunnel had been constructed on a scale that made the door seem modest. Massive square stones covered the floor, each wide enough to serve as the foundation of a house. Reinforced walls extended beyond the lantern's reach, their surfaces broken by sealed gates and narrow defensive platforms. Blue Reaper lanterns had been placed at regular distances along both sides.

Some still burned.

Their cold flames revealed an underground road descending gradually beneath the hillside. The light touched Mara, the old man and the feline without casting any of them clearly against the walls. Dust covered most of the floor, but broad tracks had been worn through it by the creature's repeated passage.

The entrance closed behind them.

Metal slid from within the hillside and met with a deep final impact. The sound travelled down the tunnel for several seconds before fading.

Mara looked back at the sealed door. "What is this place?"

"It was a Bastion."

She turned toward the passage ahead. "Underground?"

"There were many kinds. Most surviving Reapers think of Bastions as walled settlements because those are the ones that remained easiest to find and occupy. Some were built beneath mountains. Others moved along the rivers or rested beneath the Silent Sea. There were even Bastions suspended above us, supported by the Skyraisers before their light failed."

Mara looked instinctively toward the ceiling.

Stone filled her view.

"What happened to the ones in the sky?"

"Some fell. Some drifted beyond the surviving routes. A few may still be where they were, but the Underworld has grown too dark to see them from below. Reaching them would require restoring the Skyraisers. And that's something I currently don't have the capital for."

Mara imagined islands hanging somewhere above the darkness, carrying dead cities no one had visited for centuries. She could picture the towers and walls. She could not picture what happened when something that large lost the power holding it in the sky.

She decided not to ask whether any had landed upon people.

The old man continued speaking as they walked, his attention upon the passage ahead. "This Bastion served as a shelter beneath the Skyraisers. Workers lived here, stored materials and maintained the systems connecting the pillars to the upper structures. When the light failed, they sealed the main entrance. It protected them for a time, though nowhere built to sustain thousands survives indefinitely after its supply routes disappear."

"What happened to them?"

"The records disagree. Some left in groups. Others remained until the Beacon weakened. By the time I found the entrance, there was no one here capable of explaining which account was true."

The tunnel descended for some distance before widening into a large hall.

Walls divided the interior into dozens of sections. Most doors remained sealed beneath layers of dust, their metal surfaces covered with faded markings. Other rooms stood open, revealing broken furniture, empty weapon racks and cabinets whose contents had decayed into colourless residue.

Several chambers had been used recently.

Fresh tracks crossed their floors. Tools rested upon tables beside sealed jars of memory, coils of pale thread and fragments of dark bone. One room contained shelves filled with Abomination cores suspended inside cloudy liquid. Another had been cleared entirely except for several stone slabs arranged beneath heavy chains.

Mara moved closer to the old man.

At the center of the hall stood a short pillar.

A bright white flame burned above it.

This was a beacon.