Mistral
Man of honor
Ana Rix
Mistral was moving and he gave a nod to Ana as she spoke. There was a lot here and he turned around as he had circled but he was getting a better look at it and Aya spoke. "The garden." The air hung still and heavy, thick with the scent of wet stone and ancient earth. No breeze stirred the pale, phosphorescent fronds that climbed the walls in silent profusion, their luminescence casting a cold, unwavering glow over the interior. Water pooled in basins of black marble, their surfaces so perfectly still in the storm they seemed not like liquid but lenses of dark glass, reflecting the waning light in a single, steady gleam.
Here and among the twisted roots of subterranean trees, a carpet of moss grew in thick, cushioning layers a velvet hush that swallowed the echo of any footfall. The very air felt preserved, sealed away from the world's decay, and in that preservation, a profound silence reigned, broken only by the slow, deliberate drip of water from some unseen stalactite, each droplet a small, resonant note in the vast, hollow stillness. At the garden's heart, upon a dais of cyclopean stone carved with glyphs that predated any tongue on Spira, she sat. At first glance, she might have been a statue, so perfectly still she was sitting, a figure wrought by a master's hand and left to adorn this sepulchral sanctuary.
Her skin held the warm golden-bronze tone of sun-kissed earth, smooth and luminous even in the pale glow. She wore only ornate golden adornments of ancient design: a broad headdress of hammered gold with geometric patterns crowning her head, a heavy collar necklace resting against her collarbones, wide matching cuffs on both wrists, and a small golden pendant suspended low on her hips. Her long, straight black hair fell like a dark waterfall past her waist, framing her form. One hand rested lightly on her thigh, the other lay across the arm of a throne grown from living crystal, her fingers graceful and poised.
No breath visibly stirred her form at first glance; no flicker of life animated her face, which was serene in its repose, features of striking, classical beauty with high cheekbones and full lips. Mistral observed her and the impossible stillness that settled only after centuries usually. The moss and the luminous fungi crept to the very edge of the dais but did not encroach upon it, as if respecting a boundary that had been imposed. A fine dust, undisturbed, lay on the shoulders of her golden ornaments and in the hollow of her throat, lending her the aspect of an object unearthed from a tomb's slumber. The very water in the basins seemed to hold its breath in her presence, its surface unbroken by so much as a ripple.
Yet and this was the detail that caught the breath and held it there was no dust upon her lips. They were full and faintly parted, a warm shade that seemed impossible in this place of faded things. And in the hollow of her throat, beneath the fine layer of dust, a tremor, so slight it might have been a trick of the failing light, a pulse. It was the only movement in the chamber, the single flaw in the tableau of death. Aya was looking at her and then motioning for Mistral as she spoke crouching low. Neither going in closer or into the light. "Is that?" He said it and she gave a nod of her head when she was looking at it. "Your wife well the one you were chasing. Looks like you finally found her but."
The light shifted, perhaps from a tremor in the world above or the slow, imperceptible drift of the phosphorescent spores. In that subtle change, the illusion of the statue wavered. The shadows deepened in the hollows of her closed eyes, and the warm curve of her cheekbone was limned with a soft glow that revealed the faintest sheen of moisture not the cold damp of the stone, but the warmth of living skin. Her golden adornments, upon closer inspection, caught the light with a subtle gleam rather than lying dull like ancient relics. The fine dust that seemed to coat her was not the accumulation of ages but a delicate patina, a detail so exquisitely rendered it was almost indistinguishable from the real.
Then, the stillness was broken not by sound, but by the barest flutter of her lashes a single, involuntary movement, like the stirring of a moth's wing. It was not the waking of a sleeper, but the first, infinitesimal crack in the facade of the scene when Mistral was motioning with his hand for Ana to circle around. he was more looking. "We found her... but where is anyone else?"
