Queen of Heaven, Part One

6 November 2004

The spiral on the ground was crude and shallow. Benedict knelt and ran his fingers along it, feeling the jagged edges. It was composed of short straight lines, five or six abreast, with each set slightly angled from the one next to it. From a distance, it could give the illusion of a smooth curve, but it was clearly unfinished. The scratches suggested it had been scraped in quickly, almost frantically. They hadn’t had time to finish it to the state of the others he’d found around the world, and probably never got to the point where it could be painted red. Not that it mattered. The blood that had flowed into it took care of that.

Seven bodies in all were scattered around the room. Four of them could probably have been identified by family, a couple years ago when they first died. The gashes across their chests and throats betrayed the use of a sword; a sword that was no longer in the room. The heads of the other three were crushed in. Every one of them smelled like sulfur, a sign of their connection to Nachash that he had picked up ever since waking at Yggdrasil a year and a day after arriving there. Benedict stood and slowly stepped around the corpses to the broken and bloody idol that appeared the likely murder weapon. He picked the idol up, a bust emerging from a pillar, and examined it.

​It was broken off about three inches below the shoulders, so he carried it over to the disfigured idols and pillars and began testing the fit until he found the one it belonged to. Having found it he looked down at the name engraved on the post and scowled. He didn’t know the language and couldn’t understand what name the idol had, so he set the bust down and pulled his bag around to the front and dug through until he pulled out a notebook and pencil. His superiors had been concerned about his lengthy absence in the Arctic, and now he knew he would need to bring more samples back to justify his globetrotting. As he was taking a rubbing of the engraving, he heard a stone drag across the floor behind him. He turned quickly and looked around, but saw nothing.

He'd been tracking information around the world ever since he left Yggdrasil, looking for any lore related to serpents that may give some indication on a source for the Brood of Nachash or at least an idea of what they were seeking. His search had brought him to the region around Lahore, Pakistan, where he had now found three ritual sites claimed by the Brood, all of them filled with dead cultists.

He finished his work and then began exploring the rest of the cavern, which had multiple branches cutting off into the rock. As he approached the second side passage, something further down the chamber scraped against the rock. He ran down the passage, following the faint noise of very light footsteps ahead of him. He rounded one corner and got a brief glimpse of her, a woman with twin swords and a movement that flowed like water. She was quick, but he saw enough of her face and arms to recognize her as a local. When he rounded the corner she had disappeared around, he found no evidence of her passing. Just a small stream of water, flowing through the stone, not large enough to hide a person or allow one to escape. He slipped into the spiritual realm and looked around, but found little more than a faint trace that led into the water. He scowled, then turned and headed back to finish his report.

previous

beginning

next

---

< Previous

start here

next >