She stepped forward just as Enver reached the final step, pressing her hand flat against the indentation. The stone parted, revealing the temple’s narthex—simple rectangular room about ten by fifteen feet with a series of columns down its center that held up the ceiling and city above. On the far side, past the columns, she saw another doorway that let out into the space she knew would be the sanctuary. Her eyes, however, caught on the bas relief carvings that spanned across the entire length of the walls, circling the room. Three men were depicted throughout. The first was short and lithe, a wave-bladed keris clutched tightly in hand. The second was taller but willowy, dressed in the long robes of wizard, a quarterstaff in one hand while the other held an ornately carved skull. The last, and the one uniformly depicted at the center of the trio, was a much taller warrior, barehanded but gauntleted, his right hand raised and haloed. She had studied the ascent of the Dark Three extensively during her childhood and adolescence, and so she recognized nearly every scene on the left side of the narthex. There was Ironfang Keep, depicted here as a fortress in the center of a river, just above a waterfall. Below it, was a creature that reminded Julian of illuminations she’d seen of behirs, with its long serpentine body and lightning sparking from between its razor sharp teeth. The Dark Three surrounded it in tandem, Bhaal to the left of it, Myrkul to the right, and Bane prominently in the foreground with the viewer looking over His shoulder. They had bound that creature there, or so the story went. There were other such battles scattered across the wall, the Dark Three pitted against great beasts of fire and ice, storm and rot. The primordials they had battled across Cormyr and the Moonsea. She recognized Tyranthraxus as a column of fire, bringing its fist down upon Bane—and the viewer. Further down the line was Borem of the Lake of Boiling Mud. In this one, Borem was already defeated, its heart held aloft, curled inside Bane’s right fist, reminding Julian vaguely of how His symbol had shifted in the time since His resurrection. At the corner of the room, the scene shifted from those of battle to the Dark Three’s final descent. Three mortal men walked in line, following a path that shifted like smoke. Along the door frame a fourth figure appeared who looked more skeletal than man—Jergal, the Lord of the End of Everything, and the final stepping stone to their apotheosis. Above the doorway to the sanctuary, the Dark Three rose as the Lords of Murder, Bones, and Darkness, having wrested the King of the Walking Dead’s domains out of His gnarled and aged hands.
Read Chapter 2 of Black Hands Clasped here.
This got way longer than I expected it to get because during betaing @shadow-djinni was very insistent on adding more description. But hey, that's how we got this banger of an excerpt, so really how can I complain? 👀👀
