Unsleeping Patron - March to the Hollow Canopy

A single step marked the end of Brierhold’s boundary.Silas crossed it first. The dry, static warmth of the Slate’s golden aura vanished the moment his boot hit the wet gravel outside, replaced by the damp, sulfurous grease of the Ash Miasma. He took a short, shallow breath through his teeth, refusing to let the bitter tang of coal dust settle into his throat.Behind him, seven pairs of boots crunched into the shale.Gideon walked at the rear, his iron-plated knife drawn, his grey windbreaker buttoned to the chin. Behind Silas came Hester, her hands wrapped tight around the straps of two heavy canvas packs containing stone bowls and sealed jars of river-water, her copper spectacles catching the last faint reflection of the sanctuary behind them. Samuel Wu and the four other candidates walked in a tight, nervous cluster, their shoulders practically touching, eyes wide as they stared at the wall of fog pressing in from all sides.”Keep three paces between each man,” Gideon’s voice came from the back, low and harsh. “If someone trips, don’t stop. Reach out and drag them.”Silas didn’t look back. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling the warm, amber core in his chest the golden heart forged by Mind-Light.He raised his right arm. From his wrist, two translucent, amber-tinted hands sprouted into the air. They weren’t made of flesh; they were woven from pure, condensed light, shaped like oversized human palms. They shot upward five meters, their golden fingers wrapping securely around the bone-and-rib handle of the Blood-Lantern.The lantern lifted into the grey gloom above the group’s heads.Silas unlocked the front cowl. A deep, cold crimson glare erupted from the iron ribs, sweeping outward in a wide, circular dome. The Ash Miasma recoiled, rolling back two hundred meters in every direction. The ground inside the red perimeter went cold, the gravel freezing into rigid ridges, but the choking grey dust was held at bay.Silas winced as a sharp, needle-like prick tugged at his forehead. Sustaining two Mind-Light limbs at that height while keeping his balance on the shifting slate drained his internal reservoir continuously. Every pulse of the lantern drew a microscopic drop of black, necrotic oil from his shadow-soul, making his gums bleed faintly.”Move,” Silas rasped, his voice carrying that strange, resonant metallic edge. “The light stays as long as I can walk.”They marched north along the Miasma Trail.The silence of the wasteland was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of forty-two soles on shale and the occasional, wet gasp of Samuel Wu fighting for breath. Silas kept his gaze fixed on the radar map inside his head. The yellow leather of the Parchment showed their golden arrow creeping steadily toward the northern blip where the Hollow Canopy waited.Two hours in, the trail narrowed into a dark, wind-scoured canyon bounded by vertical cliffs of grey slate.Silas stopped.The golden hands hovering five meters up shuddered, the Blood-Lantern swaying slightly. The crimson perimeter shrank by ten yards before Silas locked his jaw and forced his Mind-Light to stabilize.”Silas?” Hester’s voice was breathless from behind him. “What is it? Did the oil run out?””Stay still,” Silas commanded.High on the eastern cliff face, sixty feet above the shale floor, a shadow stood out against the grey fog.It was the Old Warden.The ancient entity stood motionless on a narrow ledge, its tattered grey rags clinging to its skeletal frame in the dead air. Its face was completely hairless, pale as bleached bone, and its dead, black-ringed eyes were locked directly on Silas. In its left hand, it held the long, notched wooden staff, the bottom tip resting on a pile of loose gravel without dislodging a single stone.It didn’t raise its hand. It didn’t project a domain or call down the blue soul-sucking eye from the sky. It simply stood there, watching the eleven humans pass through its canyon.Gideon shifted his weight behind Silas, his boots scraping the rock. “Is that… one of them? A Fel-Cat?””No,” Silas murmured, his throat tightening as a cold, heavy sensation settled over his spine.He had seen this thing before, months ago, when his body lay encased in the golden chrysalis at the edge of the Purpur-Blossoms. It was an observer. A remnant of an era so distant that even the Slate of Names held no record of it. Looking into those unblinking, dead eyes gave Silas an unsettling, suffocating feeling not of immediate danger, but of an absolute, predestined track. It felt as though every step he took, every trade he made with the Parchment, and every drop of black blood he bled into the lantern was merely executing an ancient script written long before Earth had even dreamed of stars.The Warden did not move. It watched Silas’s amber-glowing pupils, then shifted its gaze slightly, looking at the seven Pioneer candidates shielded beneath the Blood-Lantern’s light.”Don’t look at it,” Silas said, his voice cold as he took a step forward, forcing his boots to drag through the shale. “Keep your eyes on the stone in front of you. Walk.”Wu mumbled a frantic prayer under his breath, his knuckles turning white as he clutched a sharpened wooden stake. Hester kept her gaze fixed on Silas’s back, her spectacles reflecting the crimson glare from above.They passed beneath the ledge.When Silas glanced back five hundred yards later, the cliff face was empty. The grey fog had rolled back over the stone shelf, leaving behind only the cold, silent wasteland stretching into the north.