Graerlim

Graerlim blinked. Something had changed. What was it?

She took stock of the room around her. No, not merely a room. A grand hall, as large as any that might house a monarch’s throne, its marble walls inlaid with intricate patterns wrought in a delicate platinum filigree. Heavy tapestries larger than any she had ever seen hung down so that their lower hems would brush the heads of only the tallest people. A story played across their widths, though how the separate pieces linked together she wasn’t sure. Something tickled in the back of her mind. She felt like she should know.

Suddenly she became aware of something cool against her palms, and looked down. Atop a plinth – worked not only with those same filigree whorls but also with gemstones no smaller than thumbnails – in a slight recess, sat a sphere of stone. It clearly didn’t belong in the room. Where everything else was beautiful and decadent, it was plain and unadorned. A lump of granite smoothed into an orb. Her hands held it tightly, but its weight was still held by the plinth.

Why had she come here? It couldn’t have been for the orb. The gems below it would fetch a far higher price. She itched to pry them out. And yet she was holding the orb.

Registering the silence, she glanced around her. The exit to the room was still there, a dark square cut out of the wall behind her, exactly what she had expected to see. There was nowhere in the room to hide, no columns to obscure her view of anyone, friend or foe. It seemed lit from everywhere at once, with no light source to cast shadows.

Well then, I’d better get to work on those gems, she thought, letting go of the orb.

Graerlim blinked. Why had she let go of the Orb?

It sat on a crude block of stone, twinkling darkly in the gloom of the rough-hewn chamber, lit only by the flame of her torch from the ground beside her, where she had placed it. Around the room lay corpses, most of them reduced to bone, and in places they lay atop one another. Her eyes brushed across them, but she’d examined them already, and her focus now was on the wealth that the Orb would bring her. Thanking the gods that all of her work had finally paid off, she pushed aside a gnawing hunger, and went to lift her prize.

Graerlim blinked. Something had changed.

What was it?