Introduction
Narrator
Oriel Drax squeezes through a breach in the sewer stone, clutching a fungus-wrapped scrap of charcoal. Filthy water sloshes around his ankles as he ducks beneath a web of leaking pipes. The tunnel stinks of rust and old blood. Heart hammering, he murmurs a stanza into his scales, the forbidden syllables barely louder than the drip-drip above. Pale lizard eyes flicker as a patrol’s torchlight dances at the far curve, boots squelching in the mire. Oriel presses himself against the slime-coated wall, breath shallow, as a pair of tongue-carvers trudge past, blades gleaming. One pauses, sniffing the air, then grunts and moves on. Oriel waits, body coiled, ready to slip deeper toward the vault where the regime’s secrets rot in the dark.
Oriel Drax now present
Tongue-Carvers now present