A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,38
fortress once—an entire city, a palace that had housed myriads. Thousands of years had passed since the Ancients had raised it. This was all that remained: rugged boulders, snaking trails, echoing chambers. In the rains and winds of time, the fortress had melted into the mountain like a corpse's flesh melting into the earth.
The sun crackled overhead. Heat waves rose from the endless dunes. Solina flew toward the mountain, a comet of fire. As a phoenix, her wings were two hundred feet wide; she was a beast of wrath. And yet the mountain dwarfed her. She felt like a mere spark by this stone edifice.
A great archway loomed upon the mountainside, as tall and wide as Queen's Archway back in the capital. Shadows loomed beyond. When Solina flew near, her flames lit a hall carved from living rock.
She shrieked—an eagle's cry that echoed down the mountainside—and flew through the doorway.
Walls of stone streamed at her sides. Her flaming wings beat, sending dust flying to reveal chipped mosaics of coiling serpents and manticores. The firelight leaped against the walls. The hall drove into the mountain, its ceiling a hundred feet tall.
The nephilim will emerge from this canal like a child from its mother's womb. I will be their mother.
She landed upon the dusty mosaic. She shifted into human form. Her flames writhed around her, then gathered into the amulet she wore around her neck. She clutched the amulet in her hand and raised it, casting its light against the grand hall of the Palace of Whispers.
Once this place had been beautiful. Once the Ancients had lived here, a people of golden light. Statues rose here, faded now with the years, showing a people slim and fair, their heads oval, their eyes almond-shaped, their hair flowing. Once the limestone statues had held blades; today but stumps of rusted metal remained.
"Once you ruled this world," Solina whispered to the statues. "But you sinned. You lay with the demons of the Abyss. You birthed the nephilim. They destroyed you, but I will rule them." She clenched her fist around her amulet. "You buried and sealed them. You tried to hide the shame of your spawn. They were your children and you shackled them. I will free them. I will rule what you imprisoned."
She walked deeper into the hall and entered a doorway. A dark corridor loomed before her, and she walked upon limestone tiles, her sandals clattering. Her light shone upon walls covered with silver runes and faded murals. The Ancients had drawn their wars here, a hundred feet tall upon the walls of their palace. The murals rose around her, painted in faded blacks, golds, and reds.
Solina saw hordes of men, great armies in steel, tossing spears and shooting arrows at their enemy. Painted nephilim charged across the walls, life-sized, thrice the height of men. The giants lumbered, bat wings spread wide, fangs and claws painted a faded blood red. Men died between their teeth and under their feet, crushed and devoured. Solina raised her amulet high, shining her light. The painting of a great nephil covered the ceiling, spines dangling from its jaws, a flaming halo around its head. Solina smiled to imagine the nephilim walking again, feasting upon the weredragons' backbones.
She explored the Palace of Whispers for hours. She climbed staircases and gazed upon shadowy halls. She moved through chambers where stood hundreds of statues, stone armies of sandstone and gold. She walked down winding halls lined with dozens of doors, labyrinths like the veins of a giant. The palace seemed endless. Solina thought that all the people of Tiranor, two million souls, could reside within these halls and think them roomy. This was not merely an abandoned palace, but a city.
No, not even a city; an entire kingdom, she thought. She walked through chambers where thousands of sarcophagi rose, tombs for ancient kings and warriors. She moved deeper and deeper into the mountain. She thought that the sun outside must have set. She thought that she could walk here for days—for years.
Finally, after what seemed like eras of wandering, a shriek shattered the silence.
Solina froze.
The scream was mournful, echoing, a cry like a dying star. It rolled through the palace, torn in agony, a call of ancient pain, of lingering torment, of fallen ones begging for revenge. She had heard such screams in Requiem when toppling her halls. She herself had screamed that way when the weredragons murdered her child.