Arc 4: Chapter 12: Fallen Knight’s Sin
“Headsman.”
The Onsolain’s voice still resounded with a supernatural weight, but no longer tolled like metal thunder in my ears. Even still, the subtle impression that the monolithic tower reverberated with each syllable frayed my nerves.
Fighting against the shivers wracking my body from the grievously cold air — was it air? — I bowed to the angel. “Lord Umareon.”
I hadn’t ever met this particular member of the Choir of Onsolem in person, but I recognized his aspect. Ice cracked as the helmed head tilted to look down on me. The cold sharply increased at the touch of that frozen-star gaze, as did the intensity of my shivering.
“What is the meaning of this?” The Saint of Crusades demanded.
I risked lifting my eyes. I had to fight the urge to drop to my knees — from the cold, from the terrible weight of those alien eyes on me, from the hyperborean anger I felt in them.
“There are events of great consequence occurring in the realms,” I said, on the verge of stuttering. I kept my voice steady, fighting against the tremble I felt building in it. “I haven’t had contact from the Choir in months. I wanted to report what’s been happening. And… I wanted guidance.”
“That ritual is meant for cleansing. You have you suborned our priests.”
I'd known that. Even still, I'd taken the risk. "I used the resources I had at hand," I admitted.
The frozen warrior turned his helmed head to one side, as though listening to something else. He didn’t reply at once. The wait gave me time to feel the cold, and to grapple with the direness of my own situation.
This flat-topped pillar, the constellations, the behemoth bands of ice and other matter wreathing it… I had never seen it before, not from this angle, but I suspected I knew where I stood.