7ish

Five nights later, Sula woke, and slipped into her simple robe. She walked quietly through the empty halls in her bare feet, not stopping to light a candle. When she reached the robing room, she found her vestments in the dark, and pinned her hair up in the mass of braids normally worn during a ritual. She reached into the closet for a jar of gold paint, but her fingers shook, and the jar smashed to the floor.

Sula froze; the echoes raced down the hallway, but no-one came to investigate. She carefully avoided the shards of glass on the floor, and took out another jar of paint. Within a few moments, her face was masked with the dull gleam of gold, and she went out into the night.

The stars were brighter than Sula had ever seen them; the planet Temala hung over the horizon, shining so brightly that Sula could have sworn it cast a faint shadow behind her as she raced through the moonlit gardens. The temple looked dark and intimidating as she approached; but as she entered and wound her way through the corridors, she could see light on the walls ahead. She slowed, and placed a hand against the wall to steady herself.

Sula took a few moments to calm her breathing; she could hear rustlings from the room, and the sound of low voices murmuring. As she stepped into the light, the light from the fire that burned on the edges of the altar caught the gold paint on her face, and broke into a thousand pieces across the walls. Her white robes shone in the dim light, and seemed to be almost a source of the light. The priests paused in their preperations, and looked up at her. She recognized most of them, as they had led the main prayers at one time or another, but knew almost none of them by name.

“Sula,” one of them intoned, stepping forward. Vikt, she thought his name was; he had steel gray hair and a long beard that was kept carefully oiled and curled. His white robes draped in stately folds from his shoulders, and his arms and hair were ornamented with gold coils. “Serna has told us to expect you. We are sorry that there could not be more priestesses, but we cannot risk having anyone else know about this, not until we are sure that it works.” The other priests gathered around quietly.

“I do not know how this will work. Since I am only one, where shall I stand?” Sula gestured towards the bronze stars on the floor. “If I stand on one of these, I will be swept away by the energies. If I do not stand here, the connection will be weaker.” She looked around for other points, but the bronze insets on the temple floor were different here than in the temple she served at. The familiar stars were there, but the were circles, lines, triangles, and other designs she did not recognize.

Vikt pointed at a bronze disc set into the floor at the intersection of a circle and a triangle: several of the other lines seemed to connect to it as well. “There. You should be able to control the energies from there, since those lines connect to all the others. Keep us rooted, and we will direct the energies.”

Sula nodded, and quietly took her place, keeping both feet firmly planted on the large disc. The metal was cold beneath her bare feet, and she could feel the preliminary prickling as the brone interacted with her innate energies.

The priests and acolytes gathered at their appointed places, each touching a brone marker with a bare foot. Sula did not see Serna, but she assumed that he would be the one bringing in the sacrifice, since she did not see anything to be used as a gift for the god.

“Blessings be to Su, great god of the sun, sleeping in the night!” Vikt chanted in the ancient Suktisian tongue.

“We give thanks for the light of the day,” the priests echoed, raising their arms in unison. Sula felt a jolt of energy pass from the brone disc to her feet.

“Blessings be to the Sacred Twins, guardians of the night!”

“We give thanks for the light of the night.”

“We worship by the light of Temala, bringer of a righteous death, he who guards the doorways.”

“We worship him who leads us through.”

Suddenly, a great music of drums and flutes began to echo through the chamber, and Sula also broke her stance. She had heard rumors of the music used in the priests’ rites in the great temple, but had not anticipated the rush of power that came with it. She could feel the power surging through the bronze lines, up her feet, through her carefully positioned hands, and out to the chamber at large. With each beat of music, the power pulsed, and as the pace increased, so did the strength of the magics. Soon, she could not have moved even if she had wanted to; the river of power flowing up through her feet rooted her to her spot as firmly as if she had been one of the bronze disks. Even blinking took effort, and her breathing was labored.

There was a moment, a space that opened in the energies, and Serna stepped forward out of the shadows. He had a golden flask that hung from his belt, but in his arms he bore the limp form of a girl. Her eyes were open, and she breathed, but even Sula could tell that she saw nothing that was going on. A drug, she wondered, or a spell? And what was the need of another priestess?

With horror, she watched as Serna lifted the girl onto the altar, and crossed her arms across her chest. In the light that fell upon the altar, Sula could make out the face of the girl, and screamed.

“Ledan! No, you cannot do this! The price is too high!” but her words were drowned out as the durms and flutes struck up a new, faster song. Sula tried to step forward, to rescue the girl, but could not lift a finger.

“From the people of Suktis, we give of ourselves to the great gods. “ Serna intoned, as he lifted the golden flask. “The wine of the earth, the blood of the gods, the fruit of our lives, we offer up to you. “ He poured the wine into a channel that ran around the edge of the altar, and the flames leaped high with the added fuel.

Serna stepped back into the shadows, but Sula could see the flames reflecting in his eyes, and she had a wild fancy that they were the green eyes of a serpent, waiting to strike.

Vikt raised his arms once again, and the priests began a complex dance around the inner circle, each foot falling on a precisely marked section of the bronze circle. With each footfall, a sharp jolt ran through Sula’s body; with each drum beat, the power increased, and the music of the flutes was so sweet and piercing that she thought she might die from the beauty.

The energies ceased swirling about the chamber, and began to focus on the altar. The flames climbed high, higher than any natural flame could, forming an impenetrable wall around the altar. She could see Ledan through the flames, entombed in fire.

With a great shout, the priests planted both feet firmly on the circle, and brought their arms down to point at the altar. Ledan’s eyes widened as she screamed in pain, an unworldly howl of terror. The flames dived down to meet her, and tongues of fire seemed to shoot from the ends of her blond hair.

Sula stood transfixed by the power; her body was nothing but a conduit now, and her mind was one unending scream. The gold on Vikt’s clothes and hair began to melt, to run, and the molten metal began to sink into his skin, tracing new runes and lines of power. His eyes glowed with more than the light of the fire, and his voice deepened until it rumbled like thunder.

She stared in horror as the other priests began to transform as well, and the clamour of their voices filled the chamber. She could no longer see Ledan, only a column of flame that went up from the altar and pierced the skylight of the chamber, filling the night sky with fire and smoke.

At first, the rumbling she felt in the floor seemed to come from the voices of the priests, but soon even they noticed it. The floor shooke, shuddered, and bucked, and all inside the chamber were hard put to hold their places.

With a silence as terrible as lightning, all the noises ceased. The flames were extinguished as quickly as if it had been thrown into the sea, and the chamber was dark.

Then, with a crack that split her eardrums, Sula saw the floor of the chamber break in two; the altar fell into the chasm, trailing ashes like a comet’s tail behind it. Two of the priests were swallowed up immediately; the circle of power was broken, and the energies ran wild around the room, playing like lightning along the walls. She saw one priest consumed by blue fire, and another run screaming from the room with a trail of red smoke behind him. Sula’s foot slipped from the bronze disk, and she fell to the floor.

She gasped for breath, and found that her lungs would no longer open, nor her heart pound. The power had emptied her when it was released so suddenly, and she was no more than an empty shell. Her eyes flickered across the room, and she saw Serna rushing towards her. Silver fire enveloped his fingers, and he knelt beside her.

“Don’t worry, this will all be over soon. Your memories of this night will be most helpful to my people.” He placed his fingertips on her temples, and the silver fire flickered over her face. She tried to whisper, to plead, but no sound came forth.

Sula felt as if she was being pulled, drawn out of the shell of her body and into Serna’s silver fire. She could feel the bonds that tied her soul to her flesh breaking free, and slipping into the void. But then, as she began to move into the silver flame, another light struck her eyes: the roof of the great temple had fallen in, and Temala shone bright in the sky. His cold clear white light drew her away from the silver flickering, and she ran joyfully into the light. She could almost see someone coming towards her from the center of the light, a small figure, with a halo of blond hair…

Serna could see the light of Temala shine brilliantly across Sula’s face, then her eyes closed, and he knew she was gone.

“No,” he shouted, “I almost had her! I must—“ But his pursuit was over; as the walls began to fall, a large stone fell and his spine was crushed.

The quakes rocked Suktis all through the night, and strange lights were seen in the sky and flickering across the ground. The priests and priestesses from the other houses of the temple tried to perform rites that would heal the land, but it was too late. Suktis split, great chasms carving up the land, and the sea rushed in. It boiled through the valleys, and crashed against the great mountain. By the next morning, the island nation had sunk into the sea, and only a few boats dotted the waters.

In one of the boats sat a priestess, her ginger hair loose and flowing, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched the last of the land slip below the surface. She raised her eyes to the horizon, where the other ships were sailing into the west, towards the Astaldak lands. She knew that few would survive the journey; those waters were ruled by the warrior priests of Temalta, and they would likely claim any that the survived the sea.

“Lady,” she heard a whisper. Magda turned, as a sailor approached. “Lady, we must go now. If we do not, we will not be able to reach the other ships in time.”

She shook her head, and looked back out to sea. “No, not to the west. We go east, and we will start anew.”

The sailor opened his mouth to question her, then stopped, turned, and shouted instructions to his crew. The great sails were raised, shining red in the dawn, and the boat moved across the waters toward the rising sun.