Darkness envelopes the heart of Antioch. Beneath the palace of their phoenix queen gatherers, the ashes of her fief.
-The Journal of the Bannerman
A glowing path gathered before the Goddess as she walked along the long-abandoned field. Far above, the people of Antioch had begun to rebuild their homes and lives. Meager settlements lay built on one another like a house of cards supported by rotting metal frames.
Hurona walked along a dark green river. The desperation of the villages above dropped down to this level to sneak away its irradiated water. Their flesh burned, and their cancers boiled beneath their skin. Her eyes danced along the riverbank, hovering over rotting corpses until she spied an old soviet tank through an obsidian archway.
The Specter of Death loomed over the chamber, peering through cracks as Hurona stepped gracefully towards an opening in the stone.
“In fear, man locks away the unknown,” she whispered as she stepped into the chamber. On poisonous water, she graced the ground and let her cloak draw from the toxic river. At the heart of the chamber lay a glowing portal next to an abandoned, overgrown soviet tank. Its passengers long lay dead, rotted away, but her victim remained twisted in the boiling green vines of the radiation-enriched earth.
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“I’m not certain if I feel pity for you, child…” She whispered as the corpse roused and meagerly tried to reach out to her, “let your God, Atom, bring you comfort now,” beside him lay a crumpled silver mirror, half buried in the ground. The corpse writhed in pain as she picked up the mirror and stepped toward the glowing portal at the center of the stone sarcophagus.
Into the desert of death, her mind wandered, far from antique Gor. On forgotten dunes, she looked upon a weary, corpse-like spirit hiding in the shade of a verdant oasis.
“Mother…” Reijl’s rasped voice pierced the howling sands, “I did not expect to see you here,” Reijl noted. Hurona glared at the mewling form of her fallen son.
“Can I not rest now that I am dead?” Pleaded Reijl.
“You are done when I say so. A servant in life, and death,” Her groaning voice filled the empty desert and the chamber where her body lay. The corpse of Alex recoiled in fear at her powerful voice. The Demon retreated into the darkness, and Hurona tossed the mirror aside into a thicket of vines that grew from the depths of the portal’s edge.
“One day,” she whispered, “I will need you…” She whispered darkly, “There is someone else here I must see,” she returned to her flesh and gazed around the hollow chamber.
