Tisoreifadome did not speak, it was not his position to speak. His role was to escort the Courtesan to The Sacred Forbiddance.

They traveled along the boughs of Doreimefasolati.

The protector and destroyer.

The anchor for all the works of The People and the center of their efforts. The heart in which the catacombs and reliquaries of the past and the most precious of greatest masters were entombed.

Positioned in the very heart of the grove in which to trespass outside the compact is death. Not just for one’s own flesh and blood but every member of your family. Every student and master of your order.

If the trespass was sufficient enough it might even be sufficient to bring low all of The People in their entirety.

He had never seen The Sacred Forbiddance for himself, his children and their children and their great grandchildren likely would never see it either.

But when one of The Courtesan came it would be their training that was called on again to escort them to the great halls and secret caverns nestled deep in the crook of the branches of Doreimefasolati.

It was a journey of furtive drifting in a perimeter all around The Courtesan. As had been before, as would be for as long as there was need.

Each guardian positioned in synchronicity with his fellows. Armed with farcasters honed with the most vicious and potent munitions known to the people. A single strike readied for each of them.

Anything which was not destroyed, driven off or otherwise deterred by that strike would be beyond any act of any here.

But it would be enough to draw the rest of the People. And perhaps if it so was inclined even the ire of Doreimefasolati and the utter annihilation that entailed.

The bark of the branches to the Forbiddance was scrawled with the whorls and patterns thare not to be seen. His eyes drifted and turned away from all of them as was familiar and comforting.

As every child was taught before they ever were exposed outside of their creche. He was well trained to travel this road, even more than most of the People.

Only those that worked on securing and inspecting the foundations of the anchors themselves were more versed than one of the Escorts of Courtesan.

This was not the gentle and obscured sight you could glimpse from a distance.

This was the raw script of Doreimefasolati bare for the unwary and foolish and close enough to apprehend more completely then any but the greater adepts could experience and not be left tained. To travel so close to it was a trial that very well not all of his number would survive if they had to break focus to enact a defense.

Even he might not return to The People after this if it came to that. There were old legends of those that lived through their mission of defense but succumbed to the anethemic unknowable scripts.

Who had to be put to death in mercy and honor for having known what could not be known.

And this was just the familiar, the known danger of simply approaching so close to Doreimefasolati as the journey required.

But here now The Sacred Forbiddance looms.

A cleft grown naturally (not cut, NEVER cut, banish all thought of cutting the destroyer) in the flesh of the destroyer and protector. Closed like a great eye.

A testament to the wonder and horror that lived within every one of The Courtesan that had been told to arrive since his order was founded.

And before.

When there were less well honed tools for this mission. When the losses were far more certain among the escorts.

Going back to the first.

It was spoken among his order preserved in a dozen masters in far flung secret places in case it was ever forgotten.

The unbroken chain of wisdom.

The Courtesan had spoken and Doreimefasolati did part a hollow for them then. And into it they had poured terror, horror and despair for anything that trespassed into The Sacred Forbiddance.

And ever since were The Courtesan to be taken by the people to This place.

So too did he get to witness the opening himself now. What was a closed gnarl in a cleft shaded by the branches ground open at behest of The Courtesan. Parting and peeling back.

The vast canyon was soft and round, like a great maw, or the opening lids of a hollowed out eye.

Within was a rounding curve of the pale flesh of Doreimefasolati intricate and sharply detailed.

His gaze had to roll off of the surfaces even more swiftly and totally then any other place the People could travel in the grove unmolested.

He still had to watch for attack, for predator, for foolish things that might impede or harm The Courtesan.

But he also had to not see what was practically riddled on every single surface of this first trial.

He did not know how The Courtesan did so.

But they did not have eyes.

Perhaps they were guided by ritual and providence.

Perhaps they could see and read the unknowable, unseeable, forbidden and stand untainted?

Perhaps the Courtesan were forever irrevocably tainted and thus nothing the Destroyer could bring would impede them?

All of these questions had been asked and repeated back to him, part of his training was to know every question he could wonder and every mystery he could ask.

To know these thoughts familiar as his farcaster.

To know his own mind as deeply as any novice could be expected.

To run his thoughts through his own inner touch and catch any sign of snarl or intrusion.

So he could know himself and at least in some small chance know when he was changed.

Beyond the rounded walls of the cleft they spiraled around the branch, weaving back and forth into the darkness until the next challenge presented itself for The Courtesan.

And so they were before the second barrier, a vast gate made from the blunt horn of the great beast Orghujahd, who had battered a hundred greater dragons against it and taken the fire of ten thousand more without the slightest mark. A perfectly circular gentle dome wide enough that a hundred spans of Tisoreifadome’s own body across, so heavy it had taken a thousand dragons to move it noticeably even if it was floating freely in the void.

It had been etched and inlaid in the richest of metals and the pearl of the rarest upper canopy oyster. This had been done by the toil of a thousand novice lives. Two generations of work hardening and sure fasting the murals against the stress and potency of its working. And then a further work of ten thousand life times of novices to hone and then execute the craft of the frame. To work the stone and bone of equally durable beasts. The Limb struts of Hekatonkheires, the stone of a long dead wood dredged up from the great abyss below. Forged in alloys and wonders that are now unknown to any but deeply entombed masters.

And it was wedged in place, into the very flesh of Doreimefasolati. Which had grown around other bones just as solid and forged into a single unbroken mass, locking it into place with a circle of latches each the size of a building that could hold a dozen novices. One latch for each guardian.

They positioned themselves in silence, their farcasters having served their work. The munitions would no longer be needed.

So did Tisoreifadome and the other guardians bring the far casters in line into each of their own places among the sculptures. As one motion each inserted their farcaster. Fitting together as the keys they were, each unique.

Payload and caster together required for this act.

As one they fired. The vibrations rang out through the gate.

Trembling became greater and greater. As one they withdrew as vast plumes of fire spread out of each latch. With great explosions and violence each flew open and great chains uncoiled, jets of inferno spewed forth like the mating displays of dragons.

Bolts and seals of lesser tungsten boiled away. And ever so slowly the great seal started rotating, and far slower still it moved outwards, revealing great spiral ridges interlocking around it's edge, to ensure only the true opening of the latches and mechanisms from within could ever shift it. Turning and turning as it spun open.

After the departure to come, those thousand dragons would indeed come here again to pull it back into place. A thousand harvests would be distilled into the fuels needed for the next opening, and the bolts and seals reforged by awakened masters and their throngs of novices.

Then when the gate was secure once more Doreimefasolati would enclose and entomb it and the service of The People’s honor would be assured for another age.

The impact would be only minorly lessened by the bundle of meshes and nets honed of the same masterwork as the spring coils that anchored the lands of the people.

Cushioning to sap the vast mass from any but kissing the bark of the protector.

But that would be long in the future.

Here and now as the gate continued drifting away from the opening it revealed behind it a great funnel, starting almost as wide as the second barrier but soon narrowing to one fifth that.

Then again it widened, and split, two passages half twisting around each other but then they merged again.

The Courtesan traveled this way and the entourage followed in a great cloud of inspherement.

So did they come to the flat expanse of the third barrier.

Black stone polished smooth as a mirror, filling the passage beyond.

This too was known and trained, spoken of from teacher to student for generations. They arrayed themselves around The Courtesan for her approach.

She opened like a flower, parting wide and then exhaled a sparkling dust.

The black stone rippled, curdled, hollowing away in pits and pores. Like a bubbling vacuum drawing away from them. Frothing out around them as it dissolved before them to reveal a passage just barely wide enough to comfortably allow passage of this pilgrimage.

Now they would pass the triple file behind The Courtesan in the twisted helix. They would not stray from where she passed.

To do so would be death for this third leg of the journey.

Beyond the black wall the passages were a vast patchwork of lattice and filigree madness. Going off in every direction in the dark, in some vantages sight unfettered until the light failed, in others knotted whorls blocked off all sight in barely a body span.

They ignited their torches, and the wide space of voids and tissue extended out into the dark in every direction.

The trial of the invisible maze.

The Courtesan would move weaving through and around filaments, and empty bubbles, arches, hoops, bulbs, all blended and melted together. Sometimes going layering over each other in a chaotic weave with gaps wide enough to barely pass. In others arranged in neat rows that extended to the limit of sight.

They moved amongst it to no discernible reason, meandering amongst the maze.

It was said that if you ever strayed from The Courtesan here you would be lost immediately.

Even if you thought that you could travel in a straight path to their position it was not to be trusted.

A long and hungry vigil keeping tightly in formation continued.

The space was empty and then it was close in. It was almost like the expanse of the trunks of the forest itself seen at great distance, or the sensible branches of any foliage known to the people.

But there were convergences that made no sense, lines of verticality crisscrossed and spiraled wildly from one vantage to the next. And then as they proceeded further the straight sensible lines and thin branches grew bulbous, fat, like the marrow of great beasts.

Spongelike.

The turns and passages were disorienting. Columns and obstructions and caverns were turned around in spirals and even in a few places Tisoreifadome was almost certain they were doubling back the way they came. Passing next to his fellow guardians around an invisible bend that only the Courtesan knew.

It seemed pointlessly frustrating.

The open-spaces where they could still clearly see the exit suddenly demoralizing.

A true test of character for each of them in this hallowed mission.

But he did not deviate from his position in the helix.

At last for the last time he could look back and spot glimpses of the open passage out. But then they had moved through the wide branches of the maze’s thicket and it was invisible.

His dead reckoning told him how he could turn to travel directly back. It was not even particularly far.

But he had been told of the thousand and five deaths that had befallen novices that strayed in the maze in journeys past.

The worst were those that every witness had seen leave safely, but none ever saw again.

The fourth trial was one for The People and had been enacted by them as part of their role in defense in the The Sacred Forbiddance.

The People’s Gate was a well made door, a heavy door, but the latching mechanism was child’s play. It was a simple pale stone of the bones of an enemy tree from beyond the grove.

It took the work of seven of the people with their farcasters at obvious positions to push to activate the mechanism and pull it back to reveal the passage beyond.

While they worked it opened the prophesied unguents, oils and maintenance was applied and inspections performed. The accumulation of long generations left still cleaned away for the passing of the next in a distant future.

Beyond it was a simple cylindrical passage, only about twice as long as needed to fit the helix entourage and The Courtesan. It ended in a solid metal wall. No side passages, no hidden door, just a dead end.

And then, the whole chamber shuddered, with an unfathomably vast vibration that buzzed in every surface that gaze could be brought to, and the door behind them began to drift off center.

The whole structure slid around them. Soon the opening was completely gone, replaced by a wall thick out to the very flesh of the destroyer and Indestructible to any tool yet available to them. Further unassailable to any of the people lest they risk oblivion and extinction for all.

Entombing them irretrievably as the walls behind and in front of them slowly drifted. A bubble of space squashed to tolerances high enough to seal an atmosphere.

And yet the vacuum remained clean and dead as only a tomb could.

Here was the time which they could take their ablutions, drink the pure water and the tasteless rations. Hewn of any imperfection or taint that might sully this holy place and its purity.

In silence they eat, for no word was to be uttered. They did not embrace, they did not touch, for each of the entourage was to be a silent vigil alone as the sole representative of The People.

Untouchable until they could be redeemed and embraced by elder decree.

There was time to meditate, to let the mind close and sleep to embrace.

There was nothing to be done.

If danger befell here they would all perish.

At the prescribed time they all stirred, some awakening, others merely having waited in contemplation.

Tisoreifadome himself had slept with fits and starts behind his closed eyelids.

At least the most terrifying and last chamber was reached.

They exited into a spherical cavern hewn from the destroyer’s flesh!

It was not grown or shaped by will of the destroyer, for there were marks of tools and hands not of the people here. Chisels and carving and polish but all the more terrifying for them.

There were tools and housing for them. Old and ancient, but serviceable, repairable, restorable here now they would wait in vigil.

They would return these relics to full worthy usefulness, replacing what could not be repaired.

Ahead there was a circular aperture.

It was utterly empty, and looking upon it he could only see the darkness beyond but it had been said no one but The Courtesan could pass it and live.

The Courtesan drifted serenely into the dark, and in so doing showed that their light was strong and bright but unnoticeable for how all consuming and vast the space beyond was. The only object illuminated was The Courtesan’s figure.

Drifting further and further from their light, growing dimmer and dimmer in the abyss beyond, shrinking away with distance.

Until eye searingly bright illumination stung their eyes.

And Tisoreifadome beheld The Heart of The Sacred Forbiddance.

Lines along its edges shining harsher than the sun in utter black void. a simple geometric shape.

Four sides, three corners each.

With a single face directed towards them and in its center a pinprick that was blinding even from the vastness between them.

The Courtesan was a speck of shadow shading them, and then it was unresolvable even to the finest eyes.

And then the light was extinguished and the void beyond was absolute black once more.

Tisoreifadome silently took up his role and task to check on the stitching of the ancestral dwellings.

They would wait for her to return.

As they had since the compact had been made.

It was their Duty as The People.