It was to be caught in a storm.
Ancient Anjiin comes to life around me and I am battered by streams of power. The walls and the floor and the air shake. Strange blocks and roundels pulse and move of their own accord. The disturbances are so great I am forced to bring Syerfu to a stop, to hunker down and hide behind her shaggy body as the great energies of the lost city of the gods rage around us. Streams of power cut through the air, pass through the strange walls and stutter along the maze-like streets of Ancient Anjiin. Energy rises in sparkling purple-blue streamers, punching through as if the air fights against it, rising and rising to feed some great appetite in the world above.
I do not think it can be anything good.
Udinnys past whispered in my ear. Lost knowledge filters into my consciousness. I know what I see is wrong.
This was not how Great Anjiin should be.
For the briefest moment, an image overlays the dark city, pulsing with purple lines and twitching lights.
So different.
A golden city. Humming and bright as if the Light Above shines down upon it. Great towers and spires, vast halls and huge buildings; and all of it moves. Eight-spoked leaves spin around on great poles, towers rise and fall and rivers of energy flood into the place from north and south, huge golden streams that split and twist as they come into the city. The energy shared among eight hundred thousand temples, and the incoming magic flows to each and on each a different god sits upon a throne, by them one of the people. Acolytes listen to their songs and obey their instruction and parts of the flow of power are split off, for who knows what purpose, maybe those gods eat it. What remains of the power is sent on. Joining the flow from other temples and spinning into a vast and twisting rope that rises up through the central spire of Great Anjiin; from there it is spread into eight smaller, though still immense ropes that connect with eight smaller towers and shoot into the sky, two head east, and two head west, and two head north, and two head south. There is no sense of storm or danger in this place, only contentment. I cannot understand the voice of the ancient Udinny who shares this with me – their words are strange and twisted – but I know I look upon a vision of Anjiin as it had been, when it was not ancient and Great Iftal ruled Crua and all was peace and all was good and the Osere had not yet risen.
The sense of peace does not last long. The vision flickers and once more I am buffeted by dark currents surging through Anjiin. The same dark and noisome strength that I fought in the tentacles, that animated the spearmaw. It was not using Anjiin as it should be used, not working with the great city. Instead it bullied its way through thousands of tiny parasitic nodes, fed them power which was directed by something at the centre that burnt like a dark Light Above, the opposite of Ranya, the adversary of my god.
My enemy.
Our enemy, I feel it from the whole line of Udinnys past. I know it. This is a returning darkness, this is the Osere rising once more. The terrors of our past have set their sights upon the world above and that is why Ranya has put me upon this path, Golden Ranya, who steers my feet. I swear I will not fail.
Or I will do my best not to fail.
After all, I am only one, probably, dead monk set against the power of a god.
Syerfu bleats.
One dead woman and a magical crownhead, against a god.
The city of Anjiin screams its pain and outrage. A flash of light. I see something in the distance where the ropes of power had risen from, three great spires. That is wrong, there should be more. Eight.
The power stops flowing.
I wait, but nothing happens.
I mount Syerfu, and we walk through a ghostly dead city towards where I felt the focus of the power. Drawn there, I do not think I will find anything. I cannot explain this to one who is not dead, but I know that what has drawn the power, sent it up into the lands above, is no longer there. Whatever it has done has taken much from it and it has fled, for now at least. I was as sure of that as I was of dear Syerfu’s loyalty and the sharpness of my needle spear or needle bow or whatever it was at the moment. What had been in Ancient Anjiin is now gone, though not for ever, maybe it would be truer to say it sleeps. Its energies spent on some great endeavour, and I do not know if it had been successful or not.
A great groan passes through ancient Anjiin, the noise of rocks sheering, of vast trees falling in forests bringing down their smaller counterparts, the sound of destruction.
Syerfu bleats.
“No, I do not think that sounded good either.”
We head towards the noise, past a city that becomes clearer and more real to me with every step. Yet again I speak of things that are almost impossible for the living to understand of the dead. I am part of this place. Physically part of it, a stone that used to build the walls of it. I know it makes little sense but that is the way of it.
We pass vast ziggurats, the temples of gods long gone, the huge spinning leaves above now still. There are what looks like dry beds for water to run into, huge amounts of it, but I know they should be filled with glowing and pulsing golden energy.
We slow a little as we approach the place I felt the energy focused to, and here the city ceased to make sense. I see an approximation of two cities. Anjiin as was and Anjiin as is. In one, a huge temple is in this place, one of the largest buildings of the entire city, but now it is no longer there. What I had heard was the destruction of this building, the focus of power and sending of it has destroyed what was here, and I feel a pain deep within, a shock from Udinnys past. As if what had been done is somehow unthinkable, impossible. That Anjiin is sacred to all, both Osere and those who fought them. Never, since Iftal fell, had any desecrated one of the great Lens.
Lens.
A new word to me. I do not know what it meant, though I felt sure it was a place of great importance.
What its destruction meant is more clear. Whatever enemy we fight cares little for Crua. Little for what has been and little for the memory of glorious Iftal to whom the city is a memorial, a grave even. I wonder what could be so important that this place should be destroyed. Has the enemy done it out of hate, or because they have no use for it? Or maybe they are not from the past, not risen Osere at all and have no concept of what this place was.
Not that I know much apart from its importance.
What matters enough for this destruction?
As if in answer, I look up, and see movement. Two bright stars falling from above, hurtling down towards Ancient Anjiin.
“Well, Syerfu,” I say. “It seems Ranya answers my question.”