AVARICIOUS WYRM

from the palace Aperture of Heaven - where Her Carnelian Glory The Empress spends her days draped across her hoard bathing in the ruby sunlight, where hundreds if not thousands of kitchens and ballrooms and libraries and galleries and vaults spiral down through serpentinite catacombs to scrape the top of the upper mantle and siphon off heat for ovens and baths and iron foundries - from the gates of that palace there descend steps - and those steps themselves tall as mountains, their landings boasting fountains and gardens and statues of Her Grace in every bestial guise known to zoology or poetry, and having a population equal to a large neighborhood of lesser cities than The City, consisting of petitioners to Her Radiance (some of whom have been camped out on those steps for months), carts selling pilgrimage badges and icons and other mementos, the aides to palace officials and the stationery shops that support them, the proprietors and cooks and waiters of the myriad teashops and coffeehouses and restaurants and food carts of that district, and countless lazurite soldiers to descend upon the scene when the press of bodies threatens to erupt in madness. from the bottom of those stairs proceed the Victory Road, the vast parade grounds and scene of the triumphal procession, constantly covered in a fine layer of black sand and dust that stinks of gunpowder (the residue of innumerable fireworks displays), two miles wide and twenty-six miles long as it cuts through the Royal Gardens that ring Aperture of Heaven and provides a straight path to the Cosmodrome, the place where the heavens most deeply descend to kiss the sun-warmed earth.