text: [Themes: Fiction]
  
  > Go down
  This rich foyer had been floored with brilliant marble tiles and draped with silks. One of the grand columns along its side had toppled, preventing movement into most of the palace complex. Holes in the wall – hard to tell if they had been intentional passages – led north and south, outside. A hidden door in the west had become a jagged hole. And a collapsed staircase still allowed an unsteady climb to an upstairs room.
  
  > go west
  Most walls had crumbled into impenetrable piles of rubble; all she found in this wing of the palace was a shaded, closet-sized room. The plaster on the walls had cracked into spiderwebs of grey-white flakes, showing the smooth stone beneath. Though once this wing of the palace had been a maze of passages, the rubble and damage meant she could only exit to the east, west, and north.
  
  Most furniture had become firewood, but she could see the collapsed remains of a bed.
  
  > examine the bed
  A pile of dirty hay on a pile of rotting wood.
  
  A speck of grey was visible among the hay, some kind of token or amulet made of iron.
  
  > examine the token
  (the obol)
  A heptagonal token made of steel, with a border in orichalcum. One side depicted an eye; the other side, a right hand. The god Pésazh collected a toll on the dead, taking from them parts of their body as repayment for their sins; these coins were struck as surrogate offerings, so that the wealthy dead could remain whole in the hereafter. Symbolically, this one was struck for a man of envy (the eye) and greed (the hand); he did not get a chance to be buried with it.
  
  > examine the iron
  Cast as a profile cameo of the god Azh. It was rusted around the edges. The amulet was a chambermaid's, a symbol of something she yearned for as she prepared for a life regimented by the path her masters had set before her.
  
  > go to the west
  She left the palace through a side door.
  
  One of the Palace Quarter's particular jewels was, upon a time, a long promenade flanked on both sides by spindly columns of pure silver, carved to resemble the ghost ash trees that used to blanket the island. This patch of the street endured, for a time; though the street rose sharply to the north and south, as though the whole wayfare was peeling off the earth at its ends. The back entrance of a grand villa was east; to the west, a temple remained.
  
  > examine Temple
  All but unrecognisable – soot had covered the pristine white façade. Imbelá's temple was unadorned on the outside; its simple entrance somehow endured, to the west.
  
  > Go west
  She stepped into a familiar, broken temple.
  
  Temple of Imbelá
  Imbelá, god of purity. Here the first daughters of noble families would come to be preached at by third and fourth daughters who had been promised to the temple as initiates. It was their virtue and purity, they were told, that sustained Atlantis. When the land cracked, blame was put upon all daughters of the great houses; blood was spilled over perceived slights against the gods.
  
  Though it had toppled to the ground, Imbelá's heavy stone effigy still seemed to judge her.
  
  > examine the effigy
  Imbelá, whose statue was made of simple soapstone, whose head was depicted as a featureless orb because she gave all her features to the god Pésazh to atone for her temptations. The god of purity, who had judged the novitiate's every step, like others before her. Even from the ground, it still seemed to judge and weigh her heart.
  
  > Go east
  She returned to the sunlight outside.
  
  One of the Palace Quarter's particular jewels was, upon a time, a long promenade flanked on both sides by spindly columns of pure silver, carved to resemble the ghost ash trees that used to blanket the island. This patch of the street endured, for a time; though the street rose sharply to the north and south, as though the whole wayfare was peeling off the earth at its ends. The back entrance of a grand villa was east; to the west, a temple remained.
  
  > go to the east
  Most walls had crumbled into impenetrable piles of rubble; all she found in this wing of the palace was a shaded, closet-sized room. The plaster on the walls had cracked into spiderwebs of grey-white flakes, showing the smooth stone beneath. Though once this wing of the palace had been a maze of passages, the rubble and damage meant she could only exit to the east, west, and north.
  
  Most furniture had become firewood, but she could see the collapsed remains of a bed.
  
  > Go north
  The weapons to fight Atlantis' enemies would be stored in armories like these, each noble house fielding its own gleaming-armoured soldier-slaves. When an enemy came that could not be fought off with weapons, their arms spilled out onto the streets. The armory seemed empty for its size, an arched stone gallery meant to supply a hundred fighting men. A passage led back south.
  
  She could see a broken spear here.
  
  > look at the spear
  (the broken spear)
  The weaponry of Atlantis comes in two classes: The vast bronze behemoths that stride over the ocean to bring fear and awe to the colonies to the east and west; and the arms of palace guards, the tools of enforcing order. This spear was the latter; stout and weighted, it was made as much to beat as to pierce, punishment as much as weapon. The ebony haft had been broken in half, perhaps an ill-thought strike. The spear point had a curious shape.
  
  > examine the point
  Shaped like the body of a squid, eight arms joined together into a barbed point, two arms outstretched like the spars on a boar spear. A bright bronze alloy polished to an imitation-gold sheen, two beady eyes inset with onyx. Part of a set of dozens, all of which would eventually be swallowed by the earth. All, but this one.
  
  > take the spear
  (the broken spear)
  Taken.
  
  > go north
  She found herself leaving the palace for the remains of the western quarter.
  
  The Palace Quarter did not so much have streets as extremely long plazas, promenades flanked by rows of gilded fountains that would stretch on towards the horizon. It had no alleys – servants and
  slaves
  would instead scurry between palaces and villas in tunnels beneath the earth, out of the sight of the nobility. The tunnels had burst into the surface when the land broke, cracking open the meticulously tiled squares, isolating each villa into an island. She found herself in an oddly preserved stretch of the quarter, surrounded mostly by unnatural chasms, connecting buildings to the south and northwest.
  
  > Go northwest
  She wandered into a dark temple.
  
  Temple of Pésazh
  Pésazh, king-god, father of god-kings. All that remained was a fraction of his temple complex, a windowless antechamber that lingered after the earth swallowed the rest of the temple. Sunlight filtered in from the southeast.
  
  A wooden altar, used for preliminary prayers, still survived in the antechamber.
  
  The god's stern visage stared north into a temple hall that was no longer there.
  
  > examine altar
  The altar was a softly curving parabola of wood, supported on legs of gold, upon which offerings would be laid. And as the stern god's chastisement of his pantheon sustained the world, so did symbols of his justice – almonds for eyes, ginger for hands, carrots for noses
  –
  become burnt offerings to him. And on bad years, the symbols would be altogether more direct.
  
  > examine the visage
  Pésazh was tall and severe, cast in a statue of white gold. He was the namer of sins, and as such, he was the only whole god; every other deity had given something of themselves as punishment, when the god-father identified their crime. He was wrapped in fine cloth and burdened by a heavy crown, his bearded face almost hidden under the finery.
  
  > examine crown
  Cast in traditional black bronze, the crown resembled a bulbous limb of a baobab tree that deigned to twist itself upon the god's head.
  
  > take it
  That seemed to be a part of the effigy of Pésazh.