Akurite Empire

Sabra lay amid the fortress' collapse, certain with every quake of the lunar surface that the ground would gape and the rubble fall, either or both to entomb her. She was spent beyond even thought of movement; the spirit of the Daishen had left her, Estarriol lay quiescent and even the inborn fire of the Star of Silveneir had dimmed. She could muster the strength only to lie on her back and stare up at the lunar sky. The great orb of the world rose overhead, a blue and green disc limned in silver. She saw the great chasm that they had thought the edge of the world, the great plains of ash and the bright fiery lake of Karak where once had stood the earthly fortress of the Psarrion. How long she lay there she did not know, but the tremors shuddering the moon went on and the world above continued to rise, turning slowly. She saw Uria before she recognised Kellia, Daricia and Silveneir; the Plain of Rust stood out red between the great golden swathe of the Dry Sea and a tiny patch of green surrounded by grey mountains. The lands that she had known all her life, that she had always been told comprised the entire world, were only a tiny plateau on a vast continent. She picked out the coastline of Heimjaro but could not see Far Hrinor; it was too small. Even the Dry Sea was smaller than she had supposed; the desert vast and trackless, but dwindling in comparison to the oceans and continents brought into view by the turning of the world. The plateau in the mountains where Sabra had been born moved into shadow and disappeared, but now the far western edge of the continent was in sight. She lay and stared, knowing without conscious thought that the coastline she now beheld was the birthplace of the Kellion race, the land from which Karonan and Noth Morden, Condor Baltu and Alzar Haroum, had come countless centuries ago. She wondered who might live there now. Beyond the western shore was nothing but a wide ocean, the ragged scar of the mountains hedging the Crystal Chasm curling around the northern hemisphere. At the Southern Pole lay a huge slab of white that she took to be an ice-bound continent. The ocean smothering the centre of the globe rolled by, punctuated by tiny green spots that looked like chains of islands in the vastness of the sea. Then a new continent appeared, huge and green, swathes of grasslands in the south and a vaster mass of deep emerald forest larger even than the Dry Sea. It rolled by slowly, a continent so huge that it curled around the world again to the easternmost end of the Crystal Chasm, and then the sea, and again the swell of the mountains and the tiny plateau of Daricia, Kellia and Silveneir. The world had turned completely and she had lain unmoving for a night and a day. Then a voice she had not thought to hear again spoke to her, but she did not at first understand the words. “Is this death?” Sabra said. “If this is death then it is not so bad. I could lie here forever.” “It is not death,” Menalowen replied. “For on the surface of this world only you and I now remain alive.”