>>6125310“I surely hope so,” you reply, wishing for Willow to be right. She squeezes your shoulder faintly as you descend further down into the ship, the air now thick with warmth, to the point some of your hair gets stuck to your forehead. Plucking them away, you follow the Asterite, speaking to a masked man who walks back and forth, holding a metal tablet in his hands, which he keeps checking.
“Ah. Magistra— these rooms are forbidden to—”
“Don’t be silly now. We have guests. I want to show them the Sarcophagus.” The man stiffens.
“This is against protocol. I cannot allow you to proceed.”
“You cannot stop us neither.” She leans against him, her confident smirk once again pulling at her lips. “I, on the other hand, can make sure your next report shows some very interesting lines.”
The man turns towards you, his mask creaking and crinkling like some sort of mechanism is whirring inside, then he sighs and steps away.
You feel more and more relieved this terrifying woman is on your side. Or at least appears to be.
She advances towards a circular door, holding her hands up and something shifts inside, metal thrumming and scraping as the door starts to open, bit by bit. The air wheezing from inside smells like rotting flesh and burnt dross. It makes you retch. It reminds you of the reek of the Malostromo, but this one feels if possible even more raw, more primal. Like the cosmos itself was starting to get ill.
“There is an old saying in Marsevero, which the Throne has adopted,” the Asterite yells over the hissing, huffing noise of machinery coming from inside. The inner room reminds you of a huge windmill, with a core metal shaft slowly turning, huge gears that outs paddles into motion, rising and falling into the dark waters of the ocean. The metal, rusted and covered with the faint patina of salt, creaks and groans. More masked men turn at her coming, but they do not intervene, shaking their head and going back to their work, checking the moving pieces.
The air feels even fouler here. And it broils and contracts, like around a burning candle — like the men-candle, their heads turned into withering wicks, in the Well of the Seven Sisters…
[cont.]
