The fractured gray slab thudded heavily onto the timber surface of the transport cart, scattering fine flakes of ancient mica over the open ledgers.
Iris stepped back from the cart, brushing volcanic ash from her leather gauntlets as the white courser behind her tossed its head against the cold summit draft. While the last stripped cultivators were scrambling down the ridges toward the distant silver rifts, she had ridden her mount through the smoking foundations of the shattered northern array camp, locating the artifact embedded deep inside the bedrock beneath the central altar. The tablet was three feet long and four inches thick, carved from dense abyssal basalt that resisted the sulfur vapors, its face crowded with dense, geometric characters filled with powdered cinnabar.
"This was
