1-Million-Words

Eyes closed, Kavan the familiar slow build up of power as it brought him nearer to the epicenter of memory and the history he sought. It had never been summer when he had been here, he had never experienced the pickling build up of summer heat across his skin, had never, he realized when he stopped to look around him, seen the clearing adorned with white and yellow blooms that poked up through the cracks between the stones, a floral frame like a crown encircling the blood-stained altar stone and the center pillar beside it. He could imagine wild, orgiastic parties here, celebrations of spring, of life, ceremonies as far removed from the horrific death sacrifices and eventual slaughter of Zythan’s followers that this place had become synonymous with as was possible to be. When Zerio stopped beside him, his eyes wide as he beheld the mountainous boulders positioned so near to one another that it was difficult to pass between them in many places. Some lay on their sides now, toppled by erosion and other acts of nature, with earth mounded around them where it had given way when the stones had fallen or where the passage of time had blown it into place.