The Chronicles of t'Kaaarn

...ahead, the way was barred by two, vast, immeasurably immense Space Sphinxes - each of which was over two hundred krells in length. The sphinxes had the bodies of space cats with the heads of some other space cats. They sat there; implacably immense and immensely implacable. Who knew how long they had guarded the City? Millennia? Billennia? Trillennia? They had watched over the rise and decline and fall of countless civilisations and held, coiled within themselves, like a vast, coiled serpent, the knowledge that they would not share and the power that they also would not share.

Shivering briefly, Hju'Kaal clicked his teeth and his space donkey rose to its feet and trudged towards the two immense, silent sentinels and the untold terror that they heralded.