Blood dripped over the stairs as a crimson falls spreading slowly across the dais stone. Candlelight flickered undisturbed by the violent scene, and the reflections of its many miniscule flames danced within the macabre stream as molten beads of light. If the walls could speak they would say only that they had known this day would come, and that the body splayed upon the rising’s steps had been long expected. That the priestesses had chosen to hide the accursed item here, betwixt the stone walls deep beneath the temple, it had only ensured this outcome. It had only been a matter of time.
Alone within these deep halls, there was no one for whom the priestess could call out to for help. Few knew of this secret place, and even less of the greater secret buried within it. Only the cold, heartless stone could hear the woman’s labored gasps, and it kept her breaths as closely guarded as it did its secrets. How could it possibly know the priestess’s desires and intent? How could it comprehend the despairing truth that she had not meant to be caught down here? It was only by some strange and foreign fancy that the woman had been driven to come, to check upon the item’s state and make certain that it was safe in light of her startling feelings of foreboding. For nearly 200 years she had kept the temple’s secret, had seen to the relic’s safety before it was even her duty to tend. But tonight something felt different. Tonight, something had felt wrong.
What had begun this night as naught but an ominous feeling gnawed into the priestess’s mind until it had spurred her into action, and hastily she had made her way into this hidden chamber. What guards she passed she turned away, beckoning them to patrol elsewhere that they would not discover the temple’s deepest secret. That secret, concealed behind an enchanted door for longer than she had been alive, was something that she and only a handful of others were even privy to. She found it quickly; the entrance’s face disguised as part of the corridor’s unassuming wall, and willed it open with its partnered key. The magic of the medallion she wore, bequeathed to her by the high priestess before, commanded the spell of the lock to open and allowed her to rush inside.
Initially, the woman had felt relieved at seeing the secret room untouched. The ornate reliquary upon the dais’ pedestal was still in place with its countless locks and seals unopened. Yet a tingle in the furthest recesses of her mind caused the hair on the back of her neck to rise, and the relief at seeing the coffer safe was swiftly replaced by unnerving suspicion. The high priestess strode toward the pedestal, needing to closer inspect the chest. Was this ill feeling the work of the artifact within? This she wondered as she steadily approached the box. When her boney fingertips lighted upon the chest’s iron surface however, she felt there no forms of malice nor sensed even the slightest hint of power welling up from within. Puzzled, she wondered what had caused her to worry so, and came to no singular conclusion until the dagger slipped into her side. The blade, silent, cut through the priestess’s ornate robes and skin alike, leaving a searing pain and fiery sting to rip up between her ribs like many bolts of lightning. The edge of it punctured her lung, impaling her fully before it ceased, and during it all a powerful gloved hand fell over her mouth to stifle her shrill scream.
She had been followed.
The blade was retracted, sliding again over bone and muscle, and the priestess was released to collapse under agony and weakness, her aged body crumpling pitifully across the dais steps. Every edge and stair she hit created its own painful jarring as she fell, causing her entire body to radiate with pain. She grasped at the worst of them, that gaping hole within her side, and floundered with shaking hands to put pressure on the wound and ease the flow of blood. But like a river loosed from the dam did the blood pour out from between her fingers; a river that she had little hope to stem. For all her years treating the critically injured brought on slim hope to Alandia’s stoop, she knew a fatal wound when she saw one, and so too knew by simple touch that hers was among such ilk. She guessed that she had but minutes left if the bleeding could not be stopped, and looking down to her hand, she saw naught but red. Minutes.
The taste of iron filled her mouth as each breath bubbled up with bloodied mist, her spittle turning bright red and staining her lips. Desperately, she tried to swallow it down but found that she could not. She was fighting for breath like a drowning man, gasping against the harrowing weight growing within her chest. Helpless, she looked up from her place upon the floor and watched as a cloaked figure ascended the rising’s steps. A man? A woman? She could not see them clearly for the tears filling her eyes and blurring her vision. Against the candelabra’s light the figure was no more than a moving shadow besides, their finer details obscured. The priestess knew what they were after though. There could only be one thing, and in knowing it she tried to call out, to stop them, to warn them. But all she did was choke on her own blood and was ignored.
Without a sound the faceless figure confidently approached the pedestal and its intimidating chest of locks, and raising a hand, they proved unperturbed by the traps and obstacles laying in wait. One by one they swiftly began to undo each of the reliquary’s clasps and fastenings, their hands working here and there with alarming speed. The clacks of loosening metals, the pings and sparks of magic undone, it rang horror in the priestess’s ears. How frighteningly adept the thief had to be to so quickly undo each latch! The spells placed upon the ancient chest were potently strong, and the keys for its multitude of locks had been long ago destroyed. No one should have been able to get into that box, and yet the priestess did not doubt her ears.
In mere moments after having begun their tampering the thief calmly threw back the lid, and reaching deeply into the chest they retrieved the forbidden trinket. Even at this distance the priestess could feel it: the raw power emanating from within that box. As though aware that it had been found the relic seemed reawakened, longing to be used again and proving to the one who beheld it that power lurked here still. Briefly the thief held the artifact aloft, inspecting it in the soft candlelight, before unceremoniously slipping it into a plain sack tied upon their belt. What blood remained in the priestess’s face drained upon seeing that shadowed shape, in knowing that the danger that had been detained was once again set free. Fear for the world, not just herself, gripped her breast as she lay dying, and with that fear surged within a sudden burst of strength.
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“D…Don’t,” she gurgled, her efforts causing crimson froth to appear in the corners of her mouth. “You…mustn’t…”
“I must,” the stranger—a woman—replied in a voice calm, smooth and deathly cold. A sensation like ice trickled down the priestess’s spine and she would have shivered if not for weakness. And yet, strangely, though the thief’s words were few she could sense the depth within them. Therein was contained a bottomless abyss of things implied but left unsaid, a hint of boundless machinations moving yet unaccomplished. The priestess did not understand from whence such sensations came, this gravity by which so little was spoken yet possessed so grave a meaning. Was it the artifact that made this so? She had watched over it for so long and yet knew so precious little of it. How foolish she now felt for being so naïve.
“T-Too…danger…” Her voice was hardly a whisper now, and hoarse from the blood coating her throat.
“I know well the danger,” the stranger said. “It is for this reason I have come.” Sharply then, the figure turned from the emptied chest, the candles flickering in the wind kicked up by the brandishing for her cloak. This light dancing upon her back, the thief began to descend the dais with as much decorum as she had approached, and in silence, she slipped into the distant shadows as a wraith would into the night. The priestess dared to reach out, to catch the flitting edge of the woman’s cloak in one last effort to waylay her, to change her mind, but she had no strength remaining. Her final minute was nearing its end.
Her heart sank in anguish as her breathing slowed. As a priestess of Alandia she did not fear death. The goddess of life promised life beyond the end to her faithful, and faithful she had been since her youth. No, her soul ached for her failure, of a promise broken and of a foul power now unleashed. Such a power did not belong in the hands of men; naught but woe would come to the world for it, just as it had in times before. Regardless, she would not be blamed for the fault of the thief, and her murder would be seen as a blight to her long-standing efforts. The sanctuary would certainly forgive her this last shortcoming, but, would she ever be able to forgive herself?
“Alandia…” the priestess whispered, desiring nothing more than for the name of her goddess to be the last word upon her lips. But behind closed eyes the woman felt upon her then a sudden presence: the cold pierce of an intensive stare. Weakly she pulled her eyelids open and found the thief returned, standing above her with a loathsome gaze seeping out from beneath her hood. A feeling of unnamable dread washed over the priestess as her eyes met those of her killer, or rather, the shadowed pits of where the woman’s eyes should have been. Only now, standing upon the dais at the priestess’s bleeding side, did the candlelight finally illuminate the thief’s face. But it was not a face at all, it was a mask; one that was holding a seething hatred at bay.
“The gods will not hear you,” the mask stated coldly, her voice so sharp, so cruel, that the priestess felt cut as though with ice. “The Kayll abandoned us long ago.”
Unadulterated truth dripped from those words so potently, so convincingly, that it gripped the priestess’s chest like a phantasmal vice, and a new fear came upon her so suddenly that it shook the very foundation of her faith. It was a lie! This simply could not be so! And yet, her mind spun in blood loss and uncertainty, puzzling over truths she’d long denied. How many decades, how many centuries had it been since last anyone had heard the words of the Kayll? How much longer still since they had witnessed the gods’ divinity? Surely she was not the only one to hear naught but silence in return for innumerable years of prayer. Surely it was not just she who sometimes wondered and feared.
A derisive chuckle slipped out from behind the thief’s mask and the priestess once more peered into those bottomless pits for eyes. But the black face with its sloping white brow, those swirling mother-of-pearl tears that flickered dizzyingly in the candlelight, were unchanged, expressionless, void.
“The Kayll have damned us to Fall gain,” the mask spoke, its words cruel yet somehow comforting. “Take solace in knowing that you aid to prevent it.”
Yet it was not solace, but confusion that the priestess felt upon hearing those cryptic words, and despite her efforts to maintain strength in her final moments, her lips quivered with fear.
The Fall.
The words echoed in her mind with a horrible sense of doom. It could not be true. They could not Fall again. Her family, her loved ones, they did not deserve to bear such a curse! Surely the strength of the Kayll had not fallen so; that the Fawln would rise to take their place and condemn them all to ruin again. And yet, she knew. She knew how many centuries had passed since the last great Fall, how long had passed since that bloody war when the gods stepped onto the earth and cursed the very ground. She’d known all along of the approaching Fall, known of its inevitability.
All at once the priestess felt so very small, so very helpless in the face of those shifting godly forces. She had relied on the goddess for guidance for so long…were her prayers not enough? Had the prayers of the wicked truly grown so much stronger in spite of everything she’d tried to achieve?
Tears poured from the priestess’s eyes unbidden, a river in their own right, born of sorrow; proof of the truth her heart believed. Thoughts of those she loved, of those she cherished, flashed through her mind as her strength failed. Helpless to stop the fading figure, the relic and its new owner passed beyond her reach, gone unto the shadows. Her body ached to cry out, to do something, anything to stop what she knew was to come. Was there truly nothing she could do? Was she doomed to leave them unprepared? To leave so many to perish?
“Alandia…help me…please…” the priestess pleaded with her dying breath.
But the goddess of life remained silent.