Reaching out my hand I felt at the carving that seemed so lifelike as to be real. Only half of the statue was unspoiled like this though.
The woman's other arm was missing and half of her face had been smashed away. Even given the damage the statue had received the flawless rest of her creation would have commanded the attention of every museum in the world.
I moved deeper into the ruins set atop the bordering ring of stones that walled the village off from the rest of the island. Chartering a way through fallen pillars I came to perhaps the centerpiece display of this ancient site.
A bronze sculpture depicting a man with the royal bearing of a king stood with a sword in one hand, while with the other hand made a gesture that said 'Give me more or else!'. The casting of the bronze statue was flawless in its creation. However instead of being enthralled with the man of bronze and the commanding presence of his scowling gaze I found myself rather disliking him.
The man depicted in bronze was King Solomon, who more and more to me was nothing but a man of vanity with a penchant for roving maliciousness in order to get his way at any cost. In the height of his reign he had unlocked a means of descending to these lands, but he hadn't come alone.
He'd brought with him an unholy legion of demons that were subjected to his authority by the many sorceries he had enacted upon his fall from the ways of God by which to give himself more power and prestige over the courts of men. With his demon armies he had come down to war against the ancient kingdoms of this realm, who in the end had begged for his mercy to stop the torment that he had unleashed upon the islands of the inner Earth.
Solomon relented and he called his dogs off so to speak, but in return a yearly tariff of all the varied and vast wealth of the lands below was to be sent to the surface in order to fill his treasuries without fail. He took the princesses of the island kingdoms as hostages so that their fathers did his bidding without question and thus a hatred was formed in the hearts of those who lived below for those who ruled above on the surface of the world.
Towards the end of Solomon's reign however things went wrong. Ill in health and unable to muster the control he'd once possessed over his demon minions things began to fall apart.