Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
We entered a narrow side passage, its walls lined with the same smooth stone as the corridors we had just traversed. Sconces mounted at regular intervals cast a warm, flickering light that made the shadows dance across the ancient masonry. The air felt different here—heavier somehow, laden with the scent of incense and something darker, more primal… smokier, perhaps, not just with the incense, but with something more? It made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end.
I glanced at Camille, walking beside me with her leash held by the girl who had called herself Nupta Viola. My sister’s face was pale, but her jaw was set in that determined line I’d come to recognize during our training together. Even in her humiliation, wearing nothing but the leather restraints that marked her as a captive, she maintained a dignity that made my heart swell with admiration and solidarity.
The passage opened suddenly into a vast chamber that took my breath away. This, then, must be the Hall of Fire that Marmareus had mentioned—it couldn’t be anything else. The ceiling soared overhead, supported by massive stone columns that seemed to stretch upward into infinity. Between them, intricate mosaics covered the walls and the floor, gleaming with gold and silver tiles that caught the light from dozens of braziers placed throughout the space.
“Kneel,” Cassandra commanded, giving a sharp tug on my leash.
My knees hit the cold stone floor before I could even think to resist. Beside me, Camille was similarly forced to her knees by Viola. The two Nuptae knelt beside us, their posture perfect, backs straight, knees spread slightly, hands resting palms up on their thighs. I found myself unconsciously mimicking their pose, my völva’s training in ritual and ceremony somehow surfacing even in this alien context.
“Look at the mosaics,” Cassandra instructed, her voice low, but clear. “Try to understand what you see.”
I raised my eyes to the wall before us, and a gasp escaped my lips before I could stop it. The mosaic depicted a naked man with a magnificent, muscular physique, his limbs powerful and graceful as he grappled with an enormous bull. The man’s face was serene despite the violence of the scene, his eyes focused on his task with an almost transcendent intensity. Most striking of all was his manhood—erect, massive, rendered in exquisite detail with tiles of deepest lapis lazuli veined with gold.
“That is Mithras,” Cassandra said, her voice taking on a reverent quality I hadn’t heard from her before. “The god who slays the cosmic bull, whose sacrifice brings order from chaos, civilization from barbarism.”
I stared at the image, transfixed. There was something familiar about it, something that resonated deep within me even as I recognized its alien-ness. The man—Mithras—reminded me both of Sven and of Leo Marmareus, of that same controlled power, that same certainty of purpose. The thought made my breath catch painfully in my throat.
My gaze followed the mosaic as it continued around the chamber, moving from the scene of Mithras and the bull to other images that made my breath catch in my throat. Men in red robes, their faces stern and purposeful, stood in various poses of dominance over naked women bound in leather restraints identical to those I now wore. Some of the women knelt before the men, their mouths opened to receive enormous phalluses. Others were bent over stone altars, their bodies positioned for penetration from behind. Still others were bound to posts, their flesh marked with the evidence of recent discipline.
“The sacred mysteries,” Cassandra whispered, following my gaze. “The act of civilization.”
I tore my eyes away from the disturbing images, only to find myself staring at something even more terrifying. At the center of the chamber, where the two halves of the Hall of Fire met, yawned an abyssal pit. From its depths rose fingers of flame, dancing and twisting in hypnotic patterns. The heat from it washed over us in waves, making sweat bead on my skin.
“The eternal flame,” Viola murmured, her voice carrying the same reverence as Cassandra’s. “It has burned in the Mithraea since the founding of the Pretorian Guard, millennia ago.”
CHAPTER 44
Mary
I looked back at the mosaics, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, of what it all meant. The images told a story, I realized—a narrative of domination and submission, of power wielded and surrendered, all in service to some greater purpose. The men in the red robes seemed to represent the Pretorian Guard itself, the inheritors of Mithras’ legacy. The bound women… I shuddered, understanding all too clearly what—who—they represented.
My eyes found Camille’s again, saw in them the same dawning comprehension, the same mixture of dread and unwilling fascination. Whatever was about to happen to us, it was connected to the rituals and beliefs depicted in these ancient mosaics. We were to be initiated into something as old and terrible as the Sons of Odin—perhaps even older and more terrible—something that had existed in the shadows of civilization for thousands of years.