He reached an opening in the temple and made his way through it, into the dark. It took a few seconds for his eyes to start adjusting to the darkness, especially once he was away from the entryway and completely blanketed by the stone walls around him. The sun had no way to reach inside, making everything nearly impossible to see. That darkness would be helpful in keeping hidden from the Black Sun operatives, though, so he appreciated the lack of lighting inside of the ancient temple.
A beam of light appeared, cutting through the darkness around him. Purdue stayed low, avoiding the ray of light, but then more streams of it illuminated the room. Of course the Order of the Black Sun had come with flashlights. Perfect—there went his small advantage. They couldn't even give him that much.
“Come out here, Purdue!” Lucius shouted. “All of this running and fighting has gotten tiring, hasn't it? You're not going to be able to hide forever. We've always found you in the end, haven't we? Let's just get this over with!”
“I'm good, thanks!” Purdue called back and his voice echoed all throughout the temple, bouncing off the walls. “Why don't you tell me where you're keeping my friends prisoner and then maybe we'll negotiate!”
“Your friends? You mean Dr. Gould? And Jean-Luc Gerard? Or your butler? They're all alive, I can tell you that much...but Corvus is growing impatient. If you don't end this soon, we're just going to have to end them instead. And you deserve to lose that much. You talk about us taking your friends...you have killed a lot of mine! Victor Moore!”
Purdue hadn't killed Victor, not directly or intentionally at least. Victor had wielded a cursed sword that would kill its wielder if he lost possession of the blade. When Purdue had disarmed him, Victor dropped dead and that caused a whole stream of problems for Purdue in getting rid of that sword without dying.
“Vincent! Torsten! Clive!”
Those three tried to assassinate Purdue after Victor's death. They had their own ancient weapons that were imbued with power, and they would have been able to murder Purdue if not for one of the Black Sun's own, Sasha, betraying them and helping Purdue survive.
“Your friends were all terrible, terrible bastards! Murderers and hitmen! My friends did nothing wrong to anyone! That's the difference!”
Purdue's eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness around him as he crouched down against one of the temple's walls. He did his best not to look at the lights coming from the Black Sun as they walked nearby, all while trying to make sure none of those beams of lights found their way to him. If he could just stay away from them, and stay shrouded by the dark, he might be able to slip past his pursuers. They could be searching for hours in the temple while he made his way out.
He didn't want to abandon exploring the strange place but it might be the only way to survive. He got himself inside of there with the hopes that he could use the temple as an arena, but instead it was only going to be his tomb if he stayed.
Purdue kept low and tried to be light and quiet with each step he took. Lucius continued to try and talk to him, but Purdue stopped answering. The echoes of the chambers might have been helpful in keeping his actual location hidden, but he couldn't risk them hearing which direction he was actually in. His pursuers walked by, their flashlights just narrowly missing him.
He managed to reach the open entrance back toward the sunlight outside, but Charlotte and one other Black Sun operatives were standing guard. Purdue burst forth from the darkness within the temple, catching them off guard. He shoved Charlotte out of his way as he barreled through and slashed at the other operative, cutting the big man in the shoulder with his machete.
“He's here! He's escaping! Get the hell out here!” Charlotte shrieked into the darkness inside the temple before grabbing Purdue by the ankle, bringing him down onto his stomach. His machete went rolling out of his hand on impact, and he tried to pry the woman off of him.
There was a rumble beneath him, a tremor coming up through the ground that went right through his body as he lay there on the rocks. He tried to pry Charlotte’s hand off of him, but she had a tight grip. Her hands were like talons. He looked past her toward the temple and saw flashlights within, but the ground beneath them shook even more violently. Charlotte finally noticed the tremors and her eyes widened with concern. Both of their bodies jittered violently and they both realized that they probably weren't safe laying on the ground. Charlotte let go of his leg and the two of them jumped to their feet, taking some steps away from the temple.
The Mayan temple rumbled and groaned. Strange sounds rang out from inside the temple and cracks appeared in the earth, stretching out from the temple to the jungles outside. Purdue half expected the temple to collapse down into the dirt but instead it seemed to be folding in on itself. Despite being made of such old, solid stone, the structure started receding into itself.
The whole surrounding area shook hard like a high-level earthquake was taking place. Purdue and Charlotte could barely stay on their feet and she even used him to keep steady. There were screams from within the temple—Lucius and the other Black Sun grunts.
Reality itself seemed to be tearing apart.
There was a pop—and the temple was gone.
The entire ancient structure disappeared from view. It didn't slip beneath the earth or fly into the sky—it simply wasn't there anymore. Besides the toppled forestry around them, there was no sign that it had even ever been there at all. The temple and presumably Lucius and his cronies inside were gone, and there was no indication of where.
“Lucius!” Charlotte yelled, rushing over to where the temple had just been. She stomped on the dirt, looking around desperately for any sign of her allies, but there was nothing. She looked back to Purdue. “What the hell just happened!?”
“I...” Purdue wanted to give her some sort of witty retort but he couldn't. He was too fixated on his actual surprise over what happened. He didn't pity a murderous woman like Charlotte, but he also couldn't hide his own confusion. “I really have no idea.”
“That's not good enough!” Charlotte marched over to him. “You were studying this place! You must know!”
“I didn't have a lot of time to do much research...considering you and your friends decided to try and kill me the second I got here!”
Charlotte let out a frustrated sneer.
“You ruin everything, Purdue!”
“Only for the Order of the Black Sun, it seems.”
Purdue turned away and started walking back toward the tree line of the jungle, ready to have to hike back down from where he came from. Charlotte looked baffled when he started to leave and ran after him, grabbing his shoulder. “Where the hell do you think you're going!?”
“There's nothing left for me to study here, is there?”
“You can't leave! We have you! You're coming with us!”
Purdue gave a tired smile and looked past her at the empty space where the Mayan temple had stood minutes earlier. He then looked around in a few other directions. “And who is us, exactly?”
Charlotte's mouth fell open as she suddenly realized just how alone she was. There was no way she was going to be able to drag Purdue back to the Black Sun by herself and they both knew it. She may have had a strong grip when she was holding his ankle, but she didn't seem to be nearly as tough of a fighter as Sasha had been. Purdue smirked, slowly took her hand off of his shoulder and then turned away again.
“Good luck telling Julian Corvus about this,” Purdue said. “From everything I've seen, he seems like a very forgiving man. If I was in your shoes, love, I wouldn't go back. I would just find a nice quiet corner of the world and stay there. If I have things my way, the Order of the Black Sun won't be around much longer anyway. Better to jump off that sinking ship now before you get dragged down with it, aye?”
He didn't know Charlotte very well. For all he knew, her loyalty ran very deep and there was no way that he would abandon the order, even if it meant having to deal with Julian's wrath. But, he saw in her expression that she was
terrified of failing him and looked a little agreeable to his proposition. He knew in just those few brief moments, that she was a survivor first and foremost and would leave the Order of the Black Sun if it meant that she wouldn't be killed for her failure.
Purdue left her there, among the broken trees, knowing that she wouldn't be going back to Julian. That would be good for him, as she wouldn't be alerting her boss about Purdue's presence there. He didn't need the Black Sun getting any whiff of his location, or he would keep ending up in traps like this one.
He spent the entire walk back through the jungles of Honduras focused on what he had just seen. That Mayan temple had completely dissipated into thin air, leaving nothing. The physics of it didn't make sense. There should have at least been something left behind. An enormous structure like that simply ceased to be—or did it?
A troubling notion was itching at the back of his skull.
If the Mayan temple had suddenly appeared in Honduras one day, without ever having been built there...then it came from somewhere...and clearly that temple could disappear in an instant. It could no doubt reappear then as well. Maybe it would pop back up in that same spot—but it could just as likely reappear in another part of the world. It would just be a matter of where and when.
2
CHAPTER TWO – BIG NEWS FROM THE NORTH
It wasn't every day that someone saw an ancient temple vanish right before their eyes. It was all Purdue could think about. He just kept replaying that moment in his mind over and over again. One moment it had been towering right over him, just as it had been when he cut his way through that jungle. The next second, there was nothing at all. The physics of that just made no sense.
Purdue was sitting in the hotel room he had rented out in New Orleans. He was feeling a little directionless since seeing that temple vanish, and needed an old acquaintance's help to put him back on a clearer path.
For now, he was just doing his best to try and figure out more about the temple he'd seen. It obviously wasn't an ordinary Mayan temple like so many that had been discovered over the years in various states of disrepair. None of those temples had ever just up and disappeared for no reason. He had rented out as many books about Mayans as he could from the libraries in the city and had his laptop almost permanently in front of him to help with his research.
It had taken hours but he finally found a small piece of writing that caught his attention. There was an old Mayan legend about temple that had been built, but no one knew exactly who built it. It would appear one day and then would be gone another. That sounded incredibly familiar. The more he looked into this temple, the most interesting things he learned. For instance, the temple would disappear but reappear in a far-off location soon after. So it didn't just vanish into thin air after all. It traveled somewhere else...like it had teleported away from him, transporting instantaneously to somewhere far away. That confirmed the feeling he had after he watched it vanish. It could indeed reappear.
Some of the Maya called it the 'Moving Temple of Ah Puch'. It frightened many of the tribes back then, but many more went out seeking this temple. Ah Puch was one of the gods of death in their culture and soon after learning the temple's given name, he soon read something even more interesting facts about this mysterious temple.
The Moving Temple of Ah Puch was a temple of sacrifice. Many of the Maya temples were used for such occasion, and those temples' sacrifices were used for various purposes like blessings and for the helpful growth of food and resources. In fact, sacrifice was a big part of the Maya's culture. The most important sacrifices were done with fellow Maya, making human sacrifice somewhat of a normal thing back then for them. They would perform them in all sorts of ways that made Purdue cringe a little as he read about them. Some sacrifices were done with decapitation but those were usually reserved for rival rulers. Another way was with heart extraction, something that the Maya had picked up from the Aztecs. Sometimes the hearts they pulled out were still beating which made Purdue nearly vomit where he sat. Some were sacrificed by being pierced with arrows, or disemboweled, and others were hurled into sinkholes.
All Purdue had determined from his reading was that he was very glad to never have been a human sacrifice. It sounded like an absolutely wretched way to have to go out. If he had to pick between those options though, at least beheading would have been pretty quick.
But while most of the temples' sacrifices were used for mundane reasons, the Moving Temple's sacrifices were used for a far larger purpose. Purdue read the sentence he was on multiple times before he could fully comprehend it. He slowly read it aloud, just in the hopes that speaking it out loud ensured that he wasn't just seeing things.
“The Moving Temple of Ah Puch...” He was probably butchering the pronunciation of that particular god's name but he wasn't the best with linguistics. That was more Dr. Nina Gould's forte, but she wasn't going to be able to help him while she was still trapped as a prisoner… or worse. He wished she was there, but he had to keep moving. It might be the only way to get her back. “The alta
r in the bowels of the Moving Temple of Ah Puch was the site of sacrifices that would be used to grant someone any wish that they desired. That was the true power the gods had given when they forged that temple.”
He read it again, just to be safe and then leaned back where he sat, staring at the pile of books in front of him and the laptop that was, after hours of research, really starting to hurt his eyes. If this was true, then performing a sacrifice at the altar inside that teleporting temple meant that any wish you had would come true. It sounded farfetched but at the same time, the idea of an old temple that could pop in and out of existence was just as strange. If that part of it was true, then so could the part about the sacrifices and the wishes they could grant inside.
If he could get back to that temple—wherever the hell it was—then he might have a chance to make a wish inside. And if that wish really did come true, it could solve all of the many problems that had been plaguing his life in recent days.
This was his chance to fix everything. He could stop the Order of the Black Sun without having to get into a war. He could maybe even get his friends out of there. Hell, if it really granted any wish, he could maybe even completely fix the entire world. It could absolutely be bullshit but it had far too much potential to just pass up. He had to at least try.
Purdue kept up his research for the next few hours, but it felt like days. He learned all he could about the Moving Temple of Ah Puch but there wasn't much more to go off of. It was a legend that had been passed down orally through time. There was the occasional sighting over the centuries that stood out. One story came from a Spanish explorer during the sixteenth century, back when contact between the Spaniards and the Maya had first taken place. One man saw the temple from their ship and when he told his fellow sailors to look at it, he watched it vanish. It was incredible that the Moving Temple of Ah Puch had managed to stay under the radar for so long, especially nowadays with the creation of satellite images mapping out most of the planet.
He had hoped to find something that would indicate just how often this Mayan temple stayed in one place but there wasn't nearly enough research done. In fact, there was hardly any research at all. He spent most of his time just re-reading the same few tidbits he had managed to find. For the most part, the Moving Temple of Ah Puch remained nothing more than an ancient legend that no one really took too much notice of.
For most of his time researching, he had the TV in the room on for no other reason than to have some background noise. He hadn't heard a single thing that had been spoken. It was just chatter that was being drowned out by all of the research passing through his skull. He was absolutely waterlogged with everything he was learning but hearing one word seemed to breathe new life into him.
“A temple.”
The reporter on the news said the word and for the first time in hours, Purdue looked up from all of his studies. He fumbled for the TV remote which was buried under his
piles of rented books, and turned up the volume as loud as he could. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from reading so much writing to seeing images on the TV but when he did, he saw a very familiar sight on the screen. Except this time, he wasn't looking at a jungle. He was staring at the sprawling white vastness of the Arctic.
The reporter's commentary continued and Purdue was glad to actually be listening this time. “A Russian researcher studying global warming from a camp up in the region discovered the sight early this morning at daybreak.”
Purdue watched the news helicopters circle the ancient structure; it was a marvel that shouldn't have been able to ever be in that spot but Purdue had seen it before, very recently in Honduras. And that temple looked just like the one he had seen before—identical even. There was no doubt about it. He was staring directly at the Moving Temple of Ah Puch.
The newscasters spoke again. “From what we are hearing, this structure has never been seen up here until today. Despite satellite footage and well documented imaging of this landscape, it has somehow avoided detection, almost as if it is new to the area. Another marine biologist studying the waters in this region claims that the structure popped up here this morning, seemingly from nowhere. While some are claiming that climate change unearthed it from the ice, others refute that theory with visual evidence that disputes that notion. If we examine the chart showing melting--”
Purdue stopped listening to her voice, but couldn't look away from the video footage of the temple. It was the same—exactly the same as it had looked when it vanished into thin air in the jungle. It had somehow traversed from South America to the Arctic, probably in mere seconds—or even instantaneously. Something like that shouldn't have been scientifically possible...but it happened. He'd seen it happen. That Mayan temple had teleported from one hemisphere to another.
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