The Stone porch of Sovereign Bones was the stone-built spine of the fifth sector.
It was an avenue four hundred arm-lengths long and forty arm-lengths wide, flanked on either side by sixteen massive stone thrones carved from solid blocks of black hard speckled rock. Each throne rose twelve arm-lengths from the floor, resting upon a square stone base of pink coarse grey rock. Upon these thrones sat the thirty-two Kings of the Drowned Epoch. The legendary sovereigns who had surrendered their earthly empires during the Great Flooding to become the living cornerstones of the Ark Nadir. They had chosen turning to stone over dissolving. They allowed their mortal marrow to crystallize into permanent spirit anchors so that their people’s memories might survive the deluge.
Unlike the common scribes and hydrologists in the lower entry halls, these statues were clad in the royal ritual armor of the First Age. Segmented dragon-bone breastplates, high fluted pauldrons shaped like rising waves, and horned coronets wrought from stone-hard coral.
Their stone hands rested upon the pommels of great double-handed cleavers planted point-downward between their knees. Their faces were carved with terrible, unblinking majesty—not eyes of flesh, but deep, recessed level slits that seemed to watch the dark avenues of time itself. Along the margins of their thrones ran deep intaglio stone carvings listing the names of sunken provinces. The Archipelago of the Nine Pearls, the Drowned Basin of the Red Lotus, the Submerged Marches of the Iron Cloud.
