The silence that settled over the Archon Board after the roar of the sky intake valves subsided was different from any silence that had come before.
It wasn’t the respectful, scared hush of subjects awaiting a royal execution, nor was it the sterile, humming quiet of a self-running machine room. It was the heavy, pathetic silence of an empty throne room after the conquerors had smashed the gold-trimmed idols and kicked over the incense fire bowls.
Across the nine tiers of the Grand Octagonal Dais, the twelve supreme rulers of the high sky were scattered like discarded rags.
Some were weeping openly. Their faces were pressed against the cold marble flat stone slabs as they discovered the painful reality of physical pain. Others sat slumped against the gold-trimmed stone stands of their dead thrones. They stared at their trembling, mortal hands with vacant, shattered eyes. Without their self-running life-support bus and their unearned spiritual drain tubes, thirty thousand years of living decay had begun to assert its natural claim upon their flesh.
Their skin was gray and papery. Their eyes were bloodshot and watery. Their breathing was shallow, wheezing, and burdened by the weight of their own ribcages.
Archon Xuan Ming hauled himself to a sitting position on the second tier, groaning as his lower back seized in a violent muscle burst.
