The mariner and the thief climbed the black path to the Rapaxoris. A pair of obsidian obelisks marked the trailhead. They were seven feet tall, three-sided like the other standing stones. Unending wind had sanded their edges and scoured the closest faces blank as slate.

On the leeward faces, faded lines of Zenyaga remained. Fish moved to inspect them, shook his head, and set off on the black path. Rigel hurried after him. There was no time to dawdle. They were hunted men.

Though he’d rowed all day, fear lent a new strength to Rigel’s steps. The path was steep and unforgiving. Black sand shifted underfoot, fine as snow. Narrow ledges ran along sheer cliffs, still slick from the storm. Soon, Rigel’s gut churned, and his calves cramped.

Fish never flagged, though his face shone pale with effort. They passed through a second set of obelisks, then a third, each taller than the ones before. As they strode beneath the third, a sharp tremor shook the ground. Rigel and Fish locked up and looked up, wary of a landslide. A hot wind blew down the mountain and washed them with the scent of brim and flint.

“Let’s go.”

The obelisks grew taller as they ascended High Mountain, ‘til they bowed overhead in gates, like the ribs of a whale. Surely, they were marching into the maw. The ground shook as they climbed on, uneasy at their advance. Rigel counted off the markers. As they crossed the tenth pair, the sky changed. The curtain of thunderheads fell low, and Rigel’s ears ached and popped.

Inaltazei pierced the clouds, and stars shone through the rift. The winds blew swift, and the tear spiraled outward until spokes of storm wheeled over the mountains. Red lightning raged, and the peak took on a violet outline in the moonlight. As the moon rose toward her apex, the eye of the tempest sat atop Inaltazei like a crown.

Rigel eyed the strange tempest, unnerved. Fish never noticed. The mariner’s washed-out eyes were cold and distant, always searching. His mouth moved, but no words came. He drove them relentlessly. Rigel realized it was not fear of the men following them, for Fish never looked back. Something drew him forward.

At the top of the path, the black path flattened into a plateau of fine basalt sand. Three great obelisks rose at the bounds of the arena and curved over the pit, some seventy feet tall. At the center of the pit, their points nearly touched. An altar of blasted black stone was directly below. Around the arena, an amphitheater was carved into the mountainside. The steps were meant for giants, each twice Rigel’s height.

The altar drew his eye. It was a cube, ten paces wide, half-sunk into the sand. He didn’t know the stone, and its surface bubbled like a rash of boils. Rigel moved toward the edge of the arena, resolved to stay as far from it as he could.

Fish raised a hand for a halt at the edge of the pit, too winded to continue. He drew rasping breaths, his face glowed red in the storm. Rigel watched Fish scowl around the arena. He seemed confounded by his surroundings.

He doesn’t know where he’s going.

Rigel eyed the black altar and grew afraid. In the darkest moments of their long trek, he’d felt a whisper of suspicion. What if Fish planned to sell him to the High Ones? What if whatever he sought could only be bought with blood?

Back on the river, Rigel knew Fish needed him. He couldn’t row alone. What good was he now? Together, they shivered in the fulsome light of the blue moon beneath a storm like no other. With high Inazaltei as its axle, the tempest twisted over the land in thundering spokes of cloud that flared with blood-red lightning.

They were so small, mice before the mountains, dwarfs before the great stone steps and the soaring obelisks. What giants thronged those massive tiers? What terrible acts did they witness upon that black altar?

The memory of Herkimer’s red grin rolled over Rigel again. He should have never agreed, never followed Fish into this terrible place. There were a dozen opportunities along the way to run off into the wilderness. Now, it was too late.

Fish found his breath and started across the arena. Fine black sand sighed beneath his boots. Rigel touched the handle of his dagger and wondered if he might take Fish by surprise. Back at the bar, Fish had slapped the dagger from his hand like a toy.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Never fight.

Fish was probably right. Rigel bent low and pretended to shake a rock from his boot. He scooped a handful of fine black sand into his pocket and hurried to catch up. Fish loped forward across the arena, too entranced to notice. Rigel followed in his footsteps, ready to bolt at any moment.

The shadow of an obelisk fell over Rigel as he crossed, and he stared at the stars where the three points met. It reminded him of the silver pedestal when he’d stolen the orb and started this whole mess.

Were the obelisks meant to suspend some enormous version of the orb? Were sacrifices performed as the moon aligned between the three points? His fingers traced the scar around his neck. The burn still itched.

“Come on,” Fish urged.

“What is all this?” Rigel asked. He made a show of picking up a step but stayed three paces back. Fish turned back and caught Rigel in his gray gaze. Rigel froze, ready to run for his life.

“Hear me now, so I don’t have to tell you a thousand times once we’re under the mountain. The answer is always the same. No one knows. This place was here before we crawled out of the caves. It will remain long after we’re gone. No one knows who built it, or why. Touch nothing you don’t see me touch first. Do nothing unless I tell you to do it. Trust nothing and no one. The prisoners of this place will promise you the moon. Take a deal, and you’re doomed.”

“The High Ones are real?”

“Look around you, boy. Men didn’t build this. The High Ones are real, and the Rapaxoris is their prison. They’ll do anything to try and escape, but it’s impossible. The beguiled are devoured.”

“Is there truly a treasure?” Rigel asked.

“Yes. A fortune beyond compare. But we have to make it out alive. Discipline is the key. Stay sharp, stay silent, and don’t get separated from me for any reason.”

It was slim reassurance for Rigel. At the far end of the arena, an entrance tunnel cut into the mountain. It was dark as they approached but down the slope Rigel could see moonlight on the other side. There were words scratched into the rough stone, the ragged letters three feet tall.

Fish hurried past without a glance. Rigel wanted to ask what they meant, to reach out and run his fingers over the graffiti. He did neither. The tunnel sloped down for three hundred paces and opened into a valley of colossi.

Again, Rigel reeled at the scale. Sheer dacite cliffs rose on either side, a hundred paces tall. Stone sentinels were carved deep into the stone, and each stared at its counterpart on the other side for all eternity.

The figures towered above Rigel, worked haut relief in flawless black onyx that was as smooth as glass. The sentinels gleamed as if newly made. Every mote of dust had been washed away by the downpour.

“Who are they?” Rigel breathed.

The colossi were carved in abstract, angular planes spiraled into whorls of incomprehensible detail at every intersection. Riel stared up at a nude giantess until his neck ached, too awestruck to be aroused. She could have crushed him between two toes. Her face was frozen in an eternal smirk, as if she knew it.

“Hadriate,” Fish spat. Her name was sour in his mouth. “Laetralyn, Tyrannameade, Kree, bah, so many! I can scarcely keep them straight.” His eyes leapt from statue to statue.

The colossi all stood on two legs but, from that point, they diverged. Some had many arms, or wings, or horns. One head was just a great, staring eye. Some were male, some were female, some both and neither. There were dangling appendages and queer formations Rigel couldn’t even guess at the purpose of. Stone faces bore expressions of bestial fury, abject contempt, sinister mirth, and fathomless ennui.

The High Ones!

It seemed any instant they might come to life. Rigel fought the urge to turn back.

“Who is this one?” Rigel croaked below an aberration. The colossus had an elongated skull and a mantle of barbed tendrils draped from its shoulders like a cape. Too many arms hung at its sides.

Fish scowled at the half-kraken and shook his head.

“The squid. I can’t recall his name. It’ll come back to me once we’re inside.”

“Are they the masters of this place?”

“These are rocks. A hall of trophies for the gaoler to boast of his exploits.”

“Who is the gaoler?”

Fish shook his head again, pained.

“I’ve lost so much, boy. Curse the lake. But I remember the way. I will get you through this.”

“Are they actually this big?” Rigel asked.

“Most aren’t,” Fish said. He scowled at an ape-faced behemoth. “They act as if they are. Carrying on always as if they’re the lords of creation. But they’re prisoners, one and all. They all got trapped.”

“And us?” Rigel asked.

“We have the key,” Fish said. He held up the orb.

The blue orb seemed very small in the valley of giants.