Hierophantasm

Do you know where you are? The old woman croaked.

Ren & I both held our breath, trembling. Had it worked?

We'd been pulled in so many directions since last harvest, searching for the true motives behind the High Arcane's barbaric rituals. So many deaths and false promises. So many false leads and dead ends... We didn't dare believe it. Sensing our apprehension, the old woman nodded.

"How?" We exhaled in unison.

"Arcanists are not bound to the perceptive realities of humans. They have their own way of interacting with the natural energies, which in turn have their own ways. Many things that seem to disappear in fact simply fade from our awareness, to be replaced with something else. In our case, rot. Repulsive to some, but to others an ideal habitat and prime source of nourishment".

Ren pulled a face as the woman gestured to a nearby lamb carcass. One of it's eye sockets was riddled with maggots. I winced, as the image of Jonah popped back into my head: His wrists hanging limply from their shackles, one leg bloodied and deformed from where the dogs had dragged him. "This is why you're here" I reminded myself. Ren clutched my hand in an act of unspoken solidarity.

"These 'energies'... you make them sound like ghosts" Said Ren, questioningly.

"Ghosts, Gods..." the woman shrugged.

"Their world is just as real as ours, as is their magic. Bizarre, their traditions may be, though no more or less archaic than our own".

"How will we know if we've found what we're looking for?" I asked her.

"It will find you. All we have to do now is keep moving" she replied.

I looked out accross the desolate expanse of ashen desert, void of life save a few floating scavengers, hovering above the charred decay that laid our path. Their wings were leathery and shone with an eerie irridescence in the sunless fog; Talons snatching at nothing. Their futility somehow stranger and more fearsome than the jagged rows of fangs and razored feathers which their serpentine bodies bore like some blackened suit of armour.

Inverse iron maidens in flight.