NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5168148" data-attributes="member: 60965">Session 30, Part 7 The estate guards, dressed in yellow-and-gold uniforms even finer than those worn by the guards outside the gate, led him along the circuitous path through the gardens.  They passed through immaculate flower gardens, a short hedge maze that smelled of honey and had fine marble statues tucked away at seemingly every turn, around the trunk of an apple tree with shining golden apples, through a tunnel of water created by a hundred arcing fountains, past a water garden where fish swam in spheres and cubes and toruses of water that drifted through the air like massive soap bubbles. Harold barely saw any of it, growing more and more impatient, frustrated, and angry at each new delay.  Do you know how many of my people died as you led me through this pointless showcase? he thought, wanting to scream it at the escorting soldiers.  Instead he fumed in silence until they reached the main double doors of the estate, towering things of some faintly glowing copper-colored wood tall enough for a giant to walk through.A dozen soldiers began to open them and he stepped through as soon as there was a crack barely wide enough to do so, ignoring the protestations of his escort. The hall inside was obviously designed to impress upon a visitor their insignificance and the power of the owners of the palace.  The hall rose a hundred feet or more into the air where arched domes were painted with frescoes so fine Harold could make out the tiniest details from where he stood. Perfect, gleaming mirrors thirty feet tall and ten feet wide were placed along the length of the hall, Harold's tiny reflection in them making the space seem even taller. The floor was a chess-board of black and white marble, specked with gold, immaculately clean and polished.Between each mirror was an alcove with more marble statues, floating in the air and slowly rotating.  Before each statue stood a guard, a hundred or more of them in all, each more still than the statues behind them, their uniforms woven with threads of silver and gold, weapons inlaid with ivory, the wooden stocks and grips of some polished wood that shone like gold.   Above it all floated a immense crystal chandelier fifty feet wide and nearly as tall lit by a hundred candles, their flicker reflected and scattered in rainbow hues through the ten-thousand facets of the crystals and gems that coated the chandelier like strange magical fruit on a stranger floating tree. In the center of the room was a table fifty feet long and thirty wide, the deep red wood of its surface polished to nearly a mirror sheen.  Only two high-backed chairs sat at the table, the one at the near end empty and pulled back from the table.  The other held the largest woman Harold had ever seen.  She was a mass of soft butter-colored silk and satin, hands encrusted with gems, wrists clinking with silver, gold, and platinum, her red hair curled and laced with pearls.  In front of her was a veritable feast, enough food to feed a village.  At a gesture, a bottle of wine poured itself into a bejeweled goblet that then floated into her outstretched hand.  A faint smile appeared on her face as he reached the table. “Come foreigner , sit sit.  Enjoy our humble hospitality, please, sit.” Harold sat, relief flooding through him as he sat down across from Lady Hadral, stirrings of hope welling up in his chest.</blockquote>

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