“Exia, what are you doing?” I reached out to grab her hand and get her to stop or just look at me, help me understand where her head was. She jerked away from me, or at least I thought it was from me until the wave of heat hit the side of my face, and I realized the portal was gone.
For the second time that day, the terrified cries of my crew filled the air.
“She’s going to kill us!”
“He brought her here! This is his fault!”
“Please. We didn’t do anything. Please!”
Exia ignored their screams and put her finger beneath my chin, turning my head to the left. “Look.”
There was a collection of rock pillars along the horizon. They went far back, covering the entrances to the tunnels and sloping down into a rocky valley. The one Exia pointed out was taller than the others, and the top of it was rounded like a half-moon. Shadows ghosted along the rock face as the clouds moved freely now, without the portal there to absorb them.
I was about to ask what I was supposed to be looking at when thousands of tiny light beams hit the pillar at the same time. They came from all over, and a few were coming from the direction of the sinkhole. I turned and scanned the field, trying to find the source, when a flicker winked from the top of the tripod I’d been standing beneath earlier. Around it, all the other tripods reflected light toward the pillar, too. At first, I thought they were all the same, but now I realize there were slight differences in their heights and shape. It was so minute that, had I not witnessed this light show, I never would have known otherwise. But they all pointed at the large pillar.
The shadows filled two craggy ovals near the top of the towering rock, giving it black eyes that looked out over the land. More shadows gathered in random places between the lights, carving out long limbs and facial features. It was a crude rendition, but I had seen that stance before and those black, all-consuming eyes. Anyone who had been to Dewar’s Hall of The Gifted had. The place where we kept paintings of all the past rulers of our people.
“That’s Xeonere, the first king.”
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