Rythe Falls by Craig R. Saunders Page A

place since man first roamed the world of Rythe.
                  The images were indecipherable, to Reih. Perhaps they could be understood by the Sard alone. After all, it was their home. Their temple to their sun-God Carious, was it not?
                  At no point did Reih sense that she travelled up, or down...merely forward, deeper into the heart of this odd building. A sense of solidity, almost as though there were no rooms, just a gargantuan lump of solid rock, impossible, yet...
                  The corridor became a small hall, though, so someone, somehow, had managed to cut into this rock...Sventhan told her his ancestors built this place...but how? By what means? What did his people know of architecture so long ago to even conceive of such a thing? How did they move the rock, or cut it, or lay it? Where did such rock even exist? Almost black in the light, but turning golden with the absence of light...as though the rock on the outside were no more than a simple window, remembering the shape and feel of the suns and funnelling it, impossibly, through to its deepest reaches.
                  A wonder indeed, thought Reih, still moving forward, into the temple's heart. Forward to further secrets, to the answers to their prayers, some tool or weapon or knowledge with which to save Rythe, to save humankind.
                  Hall gave way to more corridors, her path straight, still. She wondered for a moment how it was that the Seer and her paladins had got so far ahead. Corridor turned to hall again, but then, something larger...the feel of a bright cavern, so simple its construction. Glowing rock carved with images, still, but now so high that she had little sense of how far the roof of this place reached. So bright she could barely see anything. Like the heart of a sun, perhaps, and perhaps that was what this place was meant to be.
                  She walked, closing her eyelids to no more than a slit in an attempt to see anything at all - the brightness now as much a hindrance to her as the earlier darkness had been.
                  So squinting, she walked across the great hall seeing little, until she was right upon what could only be the very centre of the entire building. An altar, perhaps where the Sard had once prayed or trained or slept. A simple thing, created from the same stone, pulsing with that immense light. So bright she could barely see a thing. She reached out and touched the idol atop only to realise it was no statute, but the Seer.
                  'Sia?' she said, unsure, suddenly, what was expected of her. She'd thought to meet the paladins and the builder. 'Where is everyone? What should I do?'
                  No reply came. The girl stayed, motionless in the glow.
                  Reih frowned, confused. The girl could speak, in her mind, if she wanted. But the child said nothing.
                  Footsteps sounded somewhere ahead of her...or behind? Hard to tell in the golden light of the echoing hall...she was next to completely blind, and what sound there was seemed to bounce around the walls.
                  'Who is it? Yuthran? Briskle?'
                  'No, lady...Sventhan.'
                  'Sventhan? What is going on? Can you...make it less bright? I can't see.'
                  'Everything is just as it should be, Reih Refren A'e Eril. Everyone is precisely where they are supposed to be.'
                  'Where are you?'
                  'I'm right here,' said the voice. She squinted. It seemed like the builder was directly in front of her. There, a shape in the blinding light. A face she didn't recognise.
                  For a moment only, she wondered if she was mistaken. She'd only meet the builder for a few moments, perhaps she'd forgotten what he looked