In shape, the garden labyrinth was how Ashtaroth remembered it, but its familiarity only made it more sinister. It was as though something large and slithering writhed beneath the surface, stretching the skin of this place over itself in order to remain hidden. The trees were the same, yet strangers, and it dredged up memories of the streets he'd walked months earlier, the phantom city in which his own people had spoken a foreign tongue, and alien architecture had rent the skyline.
Someone giggled behind him. Ashtaroth swerved to look.
What ghosts and monsters would Lilit send to torment him in this dark place?
"Lilit?"
That laugh again. It didn't sound like the demon.
An unnatural light flickered further up the path, followed by the trill of a songbird. A few paces away from Ashtaroth, sheer, colourful scarves darted around one of the passages that lay ahead, as though someone had been standing there and he'd only just missed her. The same shrill laughter followed, dancing on a wind that had grown eerily calm.
If he entered here, there was no coming back. His home would be closed to him.
Ashtaroth's home had been closed to him a long time.
He took the final step.
YOU ARE READING
The Wings of Ashtaroth
FantasyThe great city of Qemassen is at a crossroads. A powerful empire from beyond the ocean threatens to reignite a centuries-old feud. A slave rebellion brews in the tangled labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city streets. And Crown Prince Ashtaroth, the...
