But why?
For what purpose?
Had the necromancers wanted to bury their work, once theempire collapsed?
Isaac stood on the barren concrete, staring in awe at theavalanches above.His mind was overwhelmed with scale.Slowly, the sunlightilluminated distant structures on the cavern floor.At first, still squintingthrough the intrusion of light, Isaac thought he was staring out at a bed ofwhite moss, some film of organic mass which clung to the bumps and hills of atree’s massive roots.It seemed to go on for miles.
When he looked again, he realized it was bone.
A sea of bone.
The white moss was composed entirely of ossein, the sametangle of fibers that composed all skeletal tissue.Instead of being arrangedin a solid matrix, the bone had grown for miles, unlimited by the constraintsof organic anatomy, festering in much the same way that spindles of mold wouldgrow on a piece of bread.As far as he could see, there were thick fibers ofossein, wrapping into streams, slithering like vines, collecting into knollsand mounds and hillocks, all of it so thick and layered and vast that itmight’ve appeared, at first glance, like the head of a forest canopy.
Isaac remembered the pipes, the retention tanks.Theextraction chamber had harvested nearly every ounce of their victims, fromblood and meat all the way down to the indefinable essence of the soul, sparingnothing but the bones.All of the drains had fed down into the earth.He hadassumed, perhaps naively, that these emulsified slurries had been used for therefinement of souls.Now, staring out over the festering ocean of bone, Isaacthought of fertilizers and crops and systems of irrigation.
He remembered the fibers of ossein growing on the walls of alaboratory.
All at once, he felt sick to his stomach.
Meanwhile, around him, the cavern ceiling continued to besmashed with great wounds of sunlight, illuminating more of the vast, emptyspace.Aside from the overgrown blanket of ossein, and the thin crest of soullight far off in its center, the cavern was devoid of anything but miles ofconcrete.Its walls were carved from bedrock, rising as high as mountains.Itwould take days to navigate the area.
“Good gods,” Zaria said, staring at a particular avalanche.
“What?”he shouted, barely hearing her.
“They shoulda fuckin’ left!”
“What?”
She pointed, wide-eyed.
And he saw, suddenly, in the middle of a heaping waterfallof sand, there was a pirate skimmer, which had minutes ago been prowling closeto the tomb’s entrance.It was now bowing precipitously toward the edge of thecrater, caught in the wakes of destruction.The twin-masted sail was alightwith the sigil of wind as the crew desperately threw fire against the fabric,trying to reverse their course.Moments later, another quake rumbled the earth,the sandy waterfall belched, and the pirate ship was flung out into open air,discarded like scraps from a kitchen table.The ship capsized, flipping endover end.Bodies scattered like rain.
Isaac didn’t watch the pirates hit the floor of the cavern.He didn’t even hear the sound of the skimmer’s hull smashing into concrete,smothered as it was beneath a cataclysm of falling rock.Instead, he wasstaring at the fleet of other pirate ships now visible over the edge of thecrater.He saw billowing sails, tangles of rope, draping black standards.
It was a fleet of pirate ships.Even a kingdom of the Ninewould balk at meeting such a navy in battle.Had they been waiting at theentrance of the tomb?
“Soren said as much,” Zaria muttered.“Ain’t no escape.”
“What?”Isaac shouted.
She shook her head.
All at once, he saw a colossal leg rushing out from theside, the femur slicing through the rock above like a meteor scouring the sky.A single foot steadied itself on the concrete, surrounded by a shower ofspilling earth.Its ankle was digitigrade, the tarsals spiked with threeenormous toes.A quake heaved through the earth, splitting the cement in arushing line.
Zaria craned her head, taking in the full sweep of the leg.“Xotra’s cunt.”
Isaac did not reply.Instead, he took his eyes off thecolossus, focusing on the soul light and the figure standing within.
Out there, past the sea of ossein, there was a pyramid,composing the apex of an open-air temple, all of it surrounded by pillars ofgranite and gold.Even from a distance, it had the appearance of a ceremonialstage.There was a bank of metal devices, crudely connected with pipes andcopper and the merging clouds of souls.
He could see his uncle, working atthe controls.
“I’ve got a plan,” Isaac said.
“What?”Zaria yelled, still staring at the bony leg.
He pointed toward the pyramid.“I’m going to—”
