“It will be done, my king,” Baron Artima replied, shaking the king’s hand, and standing up to leave. “You will not be disappointed.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“How can I be of service, my king?” Baroness Emilia asked.
“Head back home to Fentis. Prepare any troops that you can muster up and wait on standby for any word from me. You will be our insurance for if things go sour.”
“Yes, my king.” Emilia Erma exited the pavilion, her flowing dress blowing like a curtain in the wind.
Emery held Sirillia’s shoulders as tears began streaming from her eyes. The intense pressure of their situation was eating her away like a parasite. Slowly, insidiously.
Petir nearly lost his life, and Emery would be lying if he did not suspect that Ciana could be in a tremendous amount of danger.
But he saw no other path forward than this.
Sirillia remained seated, expressionless, and motionless. Only crying to herself and taking short, sharp breathes.
Emery rubbed his wife’s shoulders tenderly. “Sirillia,” he said. “I need you to do something for me. It will be incredibly difficult for you, but this plan of ours will not succeed without your help.”
Sirillia did not utter a word, still paralysed by the fear. She only nodded.
Emery kissed her cheek and spoke into her ear. “I need you to trust me, my love. Trust me. This will not work without it.”
Chapter 30 - Decimation
“We are almost there, surely. We have to be,” Landry said to Tomas, trying to keep his spirits up. His coat was dusted white with snow, his eyebrows full of ice crystals.
Gharland’s company had trudged through the snow all night and day, climbing the narrow path up Mooncrest Mountain.
Taking the northeast path had been the correct approach. The group came upon the beginning of the path up the mountain soon after. The path itself was little more than an old shepherd’s track of worn earth and a sludge of semi-solid snow and dirt. A few steps of wood had been laid on the steeper parts.
To their right side were the sheer, near-vertical cliffs of the mountain. An impenetrable wall of rugged stone. Only several feet to the left, in some areas, were the crumbling edges to a long drop down. They made sure to keep close to one-another, and as far away from the edge as possible.
Tomas’s wrists remained chained, chafing at his skin. Gharland had let him remove the ankle chains though to help with the ascent, for which he was thankful.
But something about the cold made Tomas’s bones ache and joints stiffen. It was an inescapable, dangerous chill that Tomas was longing to find relief from. It seemed to eat through their clothing and scratch on their exposed flesh.
The higher they ascended, the icier it became.
Tomas followed at the rear of the group like a defeated prisoner of war. Each time he’d stumble from exhaustion, Landry was at his side to help him up somehow.
Smiling John had collapsed a few times from the pain of his burns. Gharland had threatened to leave him in the dirt if he kept slowing them down. The others weren’t going to wait for stragglers, Tomas knew, let alone one who had attempted to kill one of their own. Even Gharland didn’t seem to care much about Tomas’s wellbeing anymore now that they were close to their mission objective.
But Landry had always been there to make sure Tomas didn’t drop into a grave within the snow.
“Creator, look. There it is,” Landry said suddenly to Tomas over the howl of the bitter wind. Tomas had kept his eyes down on his boots for most of the journey but made this exception to follow Landry’s finger to where he was pointing.
Through the mist and clouds, the vast glass dome of the Grand Repository’s roof jutted out from above a ridgeline ahead of them.
Evening was fast approaching, and the group struggled to keep their torches lit in the strong winds. Ixo’s broken pieces illuminated a cool white glow from the sky. As soon as they had spotted the glass dome, their pace quickened.
An escape from the cold was finally within sight.
The squad followed the path over the ridge and were taken aback by the sheer awe of the view before them.
The walls of the Grand Repository had been cut and constructed from the black rock in the very mountainside, rising at least ten storeys high.
But it was the magnitude of the glass dome sitting atop the enormous structure which was the most spectacular thing. It rose hundreds of feet into the sky, glistening and shimmering like water in the moonlight.
“And there I was, telling you about how enormous the buildings are in Shadowshore,” Landry said to Tomas. His face was like that of an excited child.
“I have to admit,” Tomas said, “it’s pretty amazing.”
Gharland led his soldiers down the other side of the ridge, through the thickening snow towards the entrance of the Repository.
On either side of the ten-foot-tall doors stood two menacing sculpture of hooded figures, their faces swallowed in shadow. Their hands were outstretched, each statue holding open a book.
Gharland turned to face his squad and nodded to them in a gesture of gratitude. They had finally made it. Tomas was sure he had seen the hint of a smile on the rugged man’s face.
Gharland stuck his torch into the snow beside the group and went to push against the enormous doors, but they remained closed. He tried again, putting his body weight into it but still the doors wouldn’t budge. A few soldiers helped him push, but to no avail.
“They must still have the place barricaded,” Gharland said.
He raised a gloved fist, knocking three times upon the metal doors.
Boom boom boom.
