Chapter 24 A Sepulchral Cathedral
A Sepulchral Cathedral
The Máashìi exited the slipstream on the scorched fringe of the Ophiuchus nebula, its hull groaning as it grappled with the violent gravitational shear of the volcanic moon, Ignis IV.
Below, a planet surfaced, a puckered, bleeding wound in the cosmos.
Rivers of incandescent basalt carved glowing orange veins across a topography of obsidian ridges and calderas.
The atmosphere was a toxic soup of sulfur dioxide and particulate ash, thick with cinder winds and heat that hammered against the ship’s kinetic shields.
Idan stood in the corridor of the rear-deck airlock, sealing the magnetic toggles on a reinforced tactical vest that rested over his Sable armored suit.
He tucked the jeweled mask Zavier fashioned for them into a front pouch, ready to deploy when they landed.
As Sacran immortals, he and Molan’s physiology could decontaminate the caustic air outside without filtration, but Sheba required the full protection of a pressurized environmental suit.
He helped her secure her helmet, the locking mechanism clicking with finality.
Around her neck was the Sacran disguise, which she planned to wear as soon as they touched down.
‘You’ve got the dagger?’ he grunted.
She patted her chest vest pocket. ‘It’s safe and vibrating against my skin, making me itchy if I’m honest. Talk about sacrifice.’
‘You do know a sacrificial lamb is really nothing more than a mutton for punishment,’ Idan chuckled.
She narrowed her eyes at him and slowly held up her middle finger. ‘Said like the mule-high, pig-tight, sheep-loving yokel you are.’
Molan glanced at the couple and shook his head. ‘Young love,’ he growled, lips twitching.
He reached into a shielded compartment next to the airlock. Pulling out three weapons that looked more like relics than modern ordnance.
‘Standard arms won’t make a difference in this accursed place,’ Molan rasped. ‘We need the most lethal firepower in the galaxy to fight whatever waits for us below.’
He handed Idan a heavy, black-steel blade etched with runes that bled with a dark gold radiance.
‘This is The Sun-Eater. It’s a soul-breaker, Idan. It severs the connection between the spirit and the body. If you draw blood with this, they don’t get back up. Ever.’
He turned to Sheba, pressing a compact, sleek blaster into her hands.
It was unnervingly hefty, its power cell humming against her palm. ‘For you, Sheba, The Void-Pulse. It launches compressed ripples of black hole gravity. It got banned five centuries ago for being too cruel, but today, it’s exactly what you require.’
Last but not least, he shouldered a brutal, oversized kinetic rifle, the mechanical click of the chambering round echoing in the haze.
‘I’ll be carrying The World-Ender. It’s a high-velocity rail-slugger that ignores the rules of physics.’
Molan gestured to the pair, his timbre muffled by the mounting pressure of the descent. ‘Ready to launch?’
I’m on standby, Mirage said into their shared neural connection. I’ll keep the ship hovering above the stratosphere and initiate exfil if required.
Noted, Idan growled.
Let’s do this, Sheba muttered, bracing herself while thanking the heavens for her high velocity jump training in the army corps.
The airlock unfurled, and Molan took the lead as they leaped into the atmosphere in an arrow formation.
The drop was less like flying and more like plummeting into a furnace.
Clad in high-spec flight suits, Sheba and the brothers plunged into a toxic, churning soup of sulfur dioxide and particulate ash.
The wind hammered them, carrying rocks and a heat that vibrated through the suits’ armored plating.
Visibility was a joke, a dark orange haze of grit and fire.
Sheba fought the controls, her muscles burning against the drag, but she perceived a sudden, familiar shift in the air, a golden tether snapping onto her.
Idan’s Sacran power reached out like an invisible hand to nudge her flight path away from the worst of the debris.
When a massive, glowing slab of basalt careened through the ash toward her blind side, Idan didn’t just redirect it.
A flash of white-hot divinity lanced out from his silhouette, obliterating the boulder into harmless dust before it could even graze her suit.
Through their neural link, his presence was a bulwark of protection, guiding her through the chaos with a precision that defied the storm.
They touched down on a basaltic mountain peak, the only stable plateau overlooking a valley of fire.
The ground was a living, groaning skin of cooling basalt crust stretched over a sea of liquid flames.
Every few seconds, the surface buckled, sending a fresh tremor through Sheba’s legs that made her stabilizers whine in protest.
The temperature was a crushing, suffocating pressure that got the internal cooling systems of their suits humming at a frantic, high-pitched frequency.
Through the dark tint of her visor, the landscape was a nightmare of obsidian spires and rivers of glowing orange that cut through the soot-blackened plains.
Idan stepped into her line of sight, his silhouette distorted by the shimmering heat waves.
‘Ko’Sawa? he growled into her mind as he reached out his armored hand, clamping onto her shoulder for a brief check-in.
She nodded. All good.
Ahead, Molan was already on the move, his suit’s sensors sweeping the horizon as he scanned for their target through the swirling ash.
The couple followed.
The air was so thick with static and volcanic grit that their comms hissed with constant interference. Leaving them in a world of muffled thuds and the roar of the planet’s internal fury.
Around them, sinuous, silicon-based lifeforms skulked, creatures of translucent stone, skittering across the lava flows, absorbing the thermal energy as sustenance.
Trees of carbon-crystal sprouted from the embers, their branches crystalline and brittle, humming with the vibration of the tectonic core below them.
Target sighted, Molan muttered into their neural shared connection.
Verified? Idan muttered.
Naam. It checks out.
Moments later, the ash clouds cleared as the Sacred Crematorium loomed ahead, a floating Gothic nightmare tethered to the mountain by massive, iron conduits.
Sheba started forgetting to breathe for a second.
Beyond words, she whispered, more to herself as she took in the edifice of soaring spires and ribbed arches, constructed from the bones of a dead space whale.
‘Masks up,’ Molan growled, adjusting the diamond visor over his face. ‘Oxygen is breathable, Sheba.’
Slipping off her helmet and slinging it onto her belt clasp, she slid the Draquis-designed face shields over her head and clicked them into place.
Idan and Molan secured their vizards, too.
In seconds, the trio vanished from the physical spectrum.
They moved across the basalt bridge, appearing as psionic ripples, gliding past the first perimeter of wards.
The hexes, glowing red glyphs, pulsed aimlessly, their sensors unable to lock onto the invisible intruders.
However, the heat was an invasive force.
Even with Sacran endurance, the scorching atmosphere began to warm the oxygen inside their suits.
A bead of sweat rolled down Molan’s temple, stinging his eye.
He reached up instinctively to adjust the fit, but the slick moisture shifted the diamond mask just a fraction of a millimeter.
The seal broke, and the crematorium’s defenses screamed.
The ravenous wards caught a slice of Molan’s divine signature, and all hell broke loose.
Wights, restless, hollowed spirits of long-dead Sacrans, sacrificed and slaughtered to protect the mausoleum, materialized from the ash.
They were shadows of screeching terror, their forms elongated and translucent, clutching necrotic energy bolts.
Fokkin’ hell, Molan hissed, drawing his sidearm as their first hex-bolt charred the ground at his feet.
Brother, I’ll cover you while you do the same for Sheba! Idan roared, his eyes under the mask igniting with a lethal, incandescent light as he unsheathed the glowing Sun Eater. We’ve got your six, Sheba. Your priority is getting your ass into that crematorium.
The brothers moved with practiced fluidity, a display of divine carnage as Sheba surged ahead.
Idan’s spectral blade carved through the phantasmal mass of more of their assailants, while Molan became a whirlwind of solar fury, incinerating the shadows before they could solidify.
Sheba remained a phantom; her mask held, its diamond lattice undisturbed by the chaos.
Her boots raced over the basalt, leaping over volcanic rivers and fireballs rolling over the ground.
Moments later, she pushed open the towering, iron-ribbed doors of the Crematorium, entering a silence so absolute it pressed into her ears.
Sheathing her weapon, she reached into her chest pocket and withdrew the star-gem dagger, her vision narrowing on the altar at the end of the hall.
Where a figure encased in glowing, translucent chains lay prostrate on an altar of sacrifice.
The interior of the Crematory was a cathedral of calcified grief; the air reverberated with a potent frequency that threatened to shatter Sheba’s mask.
At the center of the nave sat the sarcophagus altarium, a slab of obsidian and corroded metal.
On it rested a Shackled King, Saitoni, a grotesque distortion of divinity; his skin had the texture of cured vellum stretched over a frame of blackened bone.
Rusted iron spikes protruded from his joints, anchoring him to the stone, while his eyes were twin pits of stagnant, gray fog that leaked a fluid resembling liquid mercury.
As Sheba crossed the final threshold, the sanctuary’s dormant defenses detected the intrusion of a foreigner.
The hexes here, different from those outside, ignited in the rafters, and a horde of wights erupted from the ground like geysers of darkness.
The floor buckled under a psychic shockwave, throwing Sheba onto the cold basalt.
Her diamond mask skittered across her face, but it held, slipping back into place.