Rex smiled, and I noticed that the insides of his throat were black, as if all of his internal organs had been fried, which may not be far from the truth.
Only the unreasonable vitality of a mage kept him alive, and he tried to move, to push himself up, but his arm gave way, and he fell back against the stone, gasping.
"I can’t... I can’t walk."
I rolled my eyes inside my head. Of course, you can’t walk; it would be strange to do so without legs. Oh, maybe he was thinking of crawling.
A thought like this would have horrified me before, but I had died too much to overly care about this sort of thing very much.
I reached down and picked him up. He weighed almost nothing, his body was failing, the flesh wasting away in front of my eyes, and his bones light as a bird’s. I cradled him against my chest, his head lolling against my shoulder, and I felt his heart stutter.
"The door," he whispered. "The red door. It’s... It’s closed. But I can open it. I have the... the mark inside my soul... it itches."
I carried him to the pyramid’s eastern face, and as we got closer, I felt a wave emerge from his body that rippled through the threads of my trousers. My eyes brightened a bit because my threads had caught the memory of that wave.
The smooth face of the pyramid suddenly developed a seam, appearing like a vertical line in the black facets. The line kept growing until it was a dozen storeys tall.
I stopped and watched red fog beginning to seep from it, pooling at our feet, and the line began to expand, until it created a door of giants. Even with all I had seen and what I was increasingly capable of, this casual display of magic still interested me.
"How?" I asked.
Rex raised his hand. His fingers were trembling, the nails black with dried blood, and he showed me his frail hand, and the center of his palm began to glow red as the few drops of blood within his body began to shine, resonating with the red glow of the pyramid before the eruption began.
"The blood," he said. "The Aldran bloodline. It’s the key; generations of my family members have been slaughtered inside the pyramid to create a bloodline resonance. Do you know that there was a time when the Aldran family was counted in the hundreds of thousands? Now, hehehe, there are barely a hundred left, it’s good the harvest is here, or I would have lost this opportunity."
His palm glowed brighter, the red light spread, tracing the outline of the gigantic door, and I smelled the red fog, and realized that what I was smelling was blood, old blood that had been forbidden from drying by the magic that gave it an unending vitality.
"The seals," Rex said. "It’s at the bottom. The deepest chamber, only there can we get our due, but we need to be quick..." His voice dropped to a whisper. "She is waking."
I looked at the mad thing in my arms for a moment, and I wanted to hold it as far away from me as possible, but I was afraid that he would die. A frown crossed my face, and I stepped through the door.
The darkness swallowed us, and the red fog closed around my legs. As I walked deeper, it soon reached my chest, but the threads pushed it back, clearing a path. The pyramid’s interior was the same as I remembered: metal walls, faceted and seamless.
However, I was different, and I could feel the pyramid now, the way I had felt the tribulation’s lightning. The stone was not dead. It was listening, and I think it knew me, or maybe a part of me.
"The way," Rex said. His voice was fading. "Down... always down."
However, I paused and closed my eyes, listening to the pyramid, and I turned to the side and began to walk towards the metallic wall. As I neared the wall, it rippled, revealing another passage, and I walked through the opening which closed behind us.
Rex became silent, and a dry chuckle emerged from him: "Of course, you know more about this place; you are ascending to become a god."
I glanced behind me before looking forward, noting that the passage sloped upwards instead of down, like Rex wanted to take us.
I began walking, and soon the passage became stairs, wide, shallow steps, carved from the same black metal, worn smooth by eras of nothing. There was no red fog here, but the air grew heavy, thick with what I thought was the weight of something ancient and patient.
Rex’s breathing was shallow, and each exhale was becoming a struggle. Afraid that he would die in the next moment, I gently shook him,
"Tell me about the harvest," I said. "While you still can."
His eyes flickered open. He seemed to be confused for a moment, and I thought he was not going to speak until he did, "The Sovereign of the Stars... he saw them fall from the stars ten thousand years ago, and he knew that it was a source of power, and he was right. How else did you think we defeated the gods?" He coughed. "Do you know why he is called the Sovereign of the Stars?"
Something in his tone made me look down at him, and there was something in his eyes that was no longer mad, and for a moment, I thought I was looking at Orath, his gaze was bright and clear,
"Voss, no, Adept Voss, do you know why he is called the Sovereign of Stars?"
I looked at him, and my frown deepened, lightning beginning to run below my skin, causing it to glow, "Why?" I said.
Rex... Orath smiled, "The Caelith brought the light of the stars to the earth, and he claimed them all."
Saying these cryptic words, the breath left his body, and I heard him whisper before he perished, "Your eyes..."