At the center of Zlatlan three grand avenues— each wide enough that stegadon could be marched down their length, four abreast, met at an enormous plaza. To the southwest and south east stood the Grand Temple of Xholankha and the Temple Archives, while in the north stood the pyramid of Wik'keer'mal from which orders issued forth to all within the temple-city. Lesser pyramids and shrines crowded between them. Murals painted in vibrant hues decorated the steps of the temples, giving praise to the Old Ones and marking victories over the centuries.
Water ran down small channels alongside the paths and avenues, feeding gardens large and small as well as scattered fountains.
Lining each of the three avenues were a series of towering statues, a score in total. Each statue itself was equal in size with a stegadon, set atop a broad plinth that rose to be level with the broad shoulders of a kroxigor. Sleek, leonid bodies formed the main body while the head, surrounded by a spine frill like a halo, faces carved in the visage of the death mask of a mummified slann. Furthest from the central plaza the statues lay in repose, feet tucked up underneath their body and head laid across one paw so that they gazed out across the avenue at their opposite, but as one walked the avenue each successive statue rose out of its repose, until at last the final pair stood guard over the plaza beyond and cast their sightless gazes on all who approached.
Long ago, when Zlatlan had first been founded, enchantments had been laid over the statues so that when the need was great they could be commanded to defend the temple-city.
Several times during the Great Catastrophe they had defended the city, awoke by ritual and command, each time they had leapt from their perches with graze that belied their bulk. Constrained to within the walls of Zlatlan they proved powerful defensive tools time and time again; holding narrow avenues and filling breaks in lines, leaping and swatting to crush and batter the slaves of darkness as they sought to bring ruin about the City of Focus, even contending with greater servants of the Enemy— their unveiled gazes forcing the foe to fixate on them alone.
Each desperate defense had seen some of the lizard-sphinxes damaged, a handful even shattered wholly, but each time they were restored and returned to their posts. Becoming again naught but dead stone. Rising again when next magic surged through their forms and the words of command were uttered, waking them again to defend Zlatlan.
Until they didn't.
During the final defense of Zlatlan, before the flooding tides of the Winds had ebbed at last, when the ritual was performed and the commands issued they had remained dead stone. And from this failure stemmed some of the worst damage to the temple-city; it was during this battle that the Temples of Xokha and Huanchi fell, their inner sanctums only barely kept from being despoiled, and it was also during this battle that several of the spawning pools were damaged. Had it not been for the failure of the lizard-sphinx statues to awaken, Zlatlan might not have fallen so far.
Day 13 Chotec's Season, 11630
From afar the lizard-sphinx statues lining the avenue appeared featureless, collections of simple shapes and plane curves. Only their faces seemed to be anything but plain, carved stone; flattened, rectangular panels of stone marked out the broad brow ridge and sunken jowls of the cheeks, while rounded diamonds of bare rock composed the eyes, and a thin, darkened slit stretching nearly from side to side became a mouth. A death mask. Geometric etchings gave it an almost skeletal, haunted appearance that was at once both soothing and startling.
Huaxi teased back that thought, following its trail back and back until…
It was gone.
As if it had never been in the first place. One moment his thoughts were clear and untouched, absorbed in enumeration the gross details of the statues' construction, and then the next they were turned— fixated upon irrational, emotional responses. He reviewed his memories carefully, peeling apart the exact moment of incongruity.
Hmm, the slann thought, Encountering potential passive defenses.
Ecu'otta was on the other side of the plaza, approaching along the western avenue and examining the statues there. Within an instant the elder slann felt a response.
Yes. Crude. But targeted.
Huaxi nodded and turned his attention back to the statue before him. They were as they had been for centuries, ever since the Great Catastrophe, dead, without the slightest trickle of magic in them. Dead stone, dead eyes.
No thing upon the surface of the world could exist untouched by the Winds of Magic; azyr blew on the breeze and hysh fell from the heavens themselves, ulgu crept in with the shadows and shyish fed on even the smallest deaths. Ghyran seeped through the earth itself and aqshy burned even in embers. But not everything was touched equally and to be touched was not the same as to be steeped so deeply in a flow of magic that became a part of what it touched.
And yet, nothing. Though he could feel the slow thrum of the Geomantic Web beneath him, like a vast heartbeat whose pulse stretched out over weeks and months, there was no flow into the statues themselves.
Motes of sparking azyr and diaphanous strands of hysh drifted across the rough stone of the statues, clinging briefly before they scattered again. Finding no purchase in the stone. Drawn or pushed away by shifts in aethyric pressure much as liquids of different densities separated out into distinct layers. Artifacts such as the lizard-sphinx statues were designed to make use of the Winds themselves.
Before the collapse of the Polar Gates the Winds had been faint, present only as scattered flows moving through the world as some part of the earthbound magic that bubbled up through the crust of the planet, was transformed by the physical medium it transitioned through. A gentle drizzle. Not the unending tide that poured out from the tears in reality at the poles.
What ought to have flowed through the statues was the colorless energy of earthbound magic— though arguments abounded even between slann regarding that description.
Some referred to it as a gray-whiteness, the full spectrum of visible wavelengths rendered visible all at once.
Others, as a quasi-heat distortion, ripples in the fabric of reality.
Huaxi perceived earthbound magic much more as something not so much seen as felt, a lightening of pressure on the edges of his soul. Like coming up from the depths. It was a lessening of the constant, wrongness which every slann knew deep in their spirit since the coming of the Enemy.
Like a ghostly whisper, a deepening in the sharp edged shadows gathering in cracks and hollows that—
Sharpening his will, Huaxi fixed his attention on the statue once again and saw it. There. Wriggling in the geometric designs precisely carved into the faces of the statues; like pale grave worms, threads of shyish and ulgu clung to the shadows in a delicate weave on the precipice of violent dissolution. Just enough to form a weak version of the original spell worked into the sepulchral faces of the statues, intended to entrance a singular foe and force them to turn all their focus upon the statue.
His will swept outwith a wave of his hand. In an instant the weak spell shattered, the subtle pressure upon his mind and soul vanished, scattering motes of blue-gray and purple into the path of a patrol of saurus.
Vortices of magic swirled in their wake as the appearance of the Winds of Death and Shadows disturbed the aethyric equilibrium in the air, before, moments later the wards of the city reacted and drew away the excesses. It took but seconds. And not one of the saurus felt a thing.
Month after month, year in and year out, Ecu'otta and Huaxi examined the statues lining the avenues leading to the central plaza. They studied the statues themselves, pouring over every curve and cut, and the plinths on which they sat. Teams of masons and kroxigor were called in. Ancient records were dug up and compared against observations.
Models were carved at progressively larger scales and the enchantments replicated.
Not a one did anything more than gather bird droppings. And served as a curious display in one corner of one assembly yard for some months, drawing a few curious looks from Rheameninthys' retinue. They were each as dead as the originals.
"Whatever the fault, it is not in their construction," Huaxi said one evening as he and Ecu'otta meditated.
"Yes."
According to every record they could find and to every test they could perform— including two memorable afternoons spent personally drawing forth the earthbound magic necessary and guiding it into one of the statues, both replica and original matched every specification of those that had functioned centuries ago during and before the Great Catastrophe. Yet still they would not awake to the proper rituals and commands.
Wherever the problem was, it was not in the statues' themselves. There was only one other place it could be.
"You have more experience within the Web than I. You will lead."
"Agreed," murmured Ecu'otta, "Two days hence. When Tlazcotl's Eye is full."
Day 62 Yuxa's Season, 11633
Pulsing braids of pearlescent strands criss-crossed a vast terrain of shadows. Dark, towering mountains rose overhead like thunderclouds, edges indistinct and wavering, visible against the pitch-black sky only by contrast.
Every way he turned Ecu'otta saw a world of impressions and half-real mirages. This was not the deep Geomantic Web where arcane artifice and sacred geometry took on the tangible forms of mechanism or living-construct, this was a half step into the liminal boundaries. It was the shadow cast on the wall of reality by the flame of the aethyr.
He looked upon, not mountains, but the imprint of the temple-pyramids of Zlatlan upon the aethyr.
And flowing between them, those pearlescent weaves of energy, was the upper edge of the Geomantic Web as it moved from the metaphysical to the physical. Where theory moved to practice.
Volumetric flow rate within expected range, Huaxi thought from beside him.
Ecu'otta agreed, his spiritual senses playing across the braids before them. Size, heft, texture. All felt correct. There was nothing preventing the earthbound magic from reaching the statues.
Correspondence between place in the liminal space of the Geomantic Web (even here, at its very edge) and location in the material world was not often one-to-one. There was a direct relationship, but it was one mediated by metaphor, perception, and history. So while Ecu'otta and Huaxi had left their physical bodies right next to one of the statues, they had emerged in the Geomantic Web somewhere more analogous to a space near the Tomb Complex south of the central plaza of Zlatlan.
Here the connections of the Geomantic Web met and split, weaving in complex forms that in the physical world were on near opposite ends of the city, but that in the Web itself collapsed down to a single unified location. Direction was not so… settled within this layer of the Web.
Strands of earthbound magic spun away in every direction. Up. Down. Left. Right. North. West. South. East.
In.
Out.
Having already determined that the physical and arcane construction of the statues was without issue, they could dismiss whole swathes of options. Much of the Geomantic Web after all, was simply a representation or reflection of one or the other. Up or down would simply lead the slann to exploring those same aspects from the other end, while the other, primary directions, would take them away from the statues to explore other portions of the Web
But in and out…
[] In: Delve into the interface between the greater Web and the statues to see if that is where the fault lies.
[] Out: Step back, reorient, see if perhaps the structure of the Web has developed a fault.
Notes: Here we go, don't expect this action to last more than one or two updates. We should be moving along fairly quickly to the next action in the turn.
4 hour Moratorium
