ARCHIVE ARTIFACT 022: THE GUARDED PORTAL
ARTIFACT 022: THE GUARDED PORTAL There are gates on Arsas that were built to keep men out. There are gates that were built to keep beasts in. There are gates that were never built at all, but found standing in the dark after the Hammer of Heaven broke the old world open and let older things look through. The Portal of Damoxx is the last kind. I found no road to it. Only a descent. The path began beneath a ruin without a name, where the stone had been blackened by fires no living hand had tended in centuries. The outer halls were collapsed. The inner halls were wet with cold mineral seep. Every surface was marked by the passing of Moribund pilgrims: bone-scratches, death-prayers, finger-grooves, bits of hair tied around iron nails, fragments of jawbone pressed into cracks in the wall. None of it was meant for me. I knew that before I crossed the first threshold. There are places where a man feels unwelcome because he is weak. There are others where he feels unwelcome beca...
