by M. Coulray
Hm. So I wouldn’t have died permanently, but still, losing all my levels to that damned priestess would have rankled the shit out of me. Not to mention it would have cut our trek very short. I came over and helped move the last of the shattered pews from the wall.
“Here,” said Votess, her voice unchanged by the heavy labour. I envied her stamina.
A doorway revealed itself. It was made of the same unidentifiable metal that had clad the entrance to the nave of the temple. Where that doorway had been enormous and imposing, this one was plain, and low enough that I would have to duck to enter it. Without waiting for consensus, Votess swung the door open.
Beyond it was a charnel house. Dead humans and lizard folk lay everywhere, their bodies twisted and shattered by brutal combat. Blood covered the stairs that descended from the doorway. Adrenaline shot through me when I realized what was wrong with the scene. Every body looked fresh, and there was no odour of decay, only the stench of opened bellies and spilled blood. I retched and behind me I heard Mika do the same.
“What the hell is this?” Mika’s voice shook.
“Dunno. Votess?”
My friend kicked a human corpse aside and entered the wide stairs fully. “They are dead,” she said in her businesslike tone. “Why they are not desiccated, I do not know. Let us proceed.”
“When the Goddess spoke to me, She said she’d done something here. Froze time somehow, maybe?” Nobody answered me.
Votess led the way, with Mika following and lighting the stairs with her spell. We trod carefully over corpses, and I gradually realized that the bodies, and where they lay, told a story. The lizard folk had been defending the stairs against the humans ascending them. I imagined the scene, lizard folk standing three wide and blocking the stone steps , thrusting their spears against waves of attackers. The humans all wore the same colours, although I didn’t recognize the heraldry.
As we descended, the bodies thinned out until the stairs were free of them. However, the rivulets of blood that ran down the steps remained, and my boots were soon soaked through. I tried to ignore the feeling of thick fluid between my toes. Mika was suffering the same troubles. Votess didn’t seem to care, although she was covered from the knees down in the gore of the past battle.
At the bottom of the steps, a hall wide enough for three to walk abreast presented itself. Leaned here and there against the wall were the corpses of more fighters, once again appearing freshly dead. We took in the scene and then Votess held her fist up.
“Wait. I hear movement. Scaleless.”
I listened intently. I could hear it too, slow steps that scraped with the gentle sound of metal sliding against metal. I made sure everyone was shielded and then took my backline position.
A wooden door creaked just past the limits of Mika’s light spell, and Votess drew her arm back for a throw. I gently touched her bicep and whispered to her. “Wait. We don’t know what it is yet.”
“Does it matter? It trespasses,” said Votess with a grumble, but she lowered her arm. We watched for a moment until the opener of the door appeared.
An armoured figure, human and about six feet tall appeared. Its armour was covered in crimson and black, the residue of a battle fought and apparently won. In its hand it held a longsword. No scabbard appeared on its waist.
When it turned to face us, I realized it was a human woman. Her hair was cut short and her face smeared with blood. Her eyes lit up at the sight of us, only to harden when she saw Votess.
“Are you here with that thing? Is it a slave? Did we win?”
I blinked at her words. “We’re here to reclaim the temple,” I said carefully. “How did you get here?”
The woman started laughing, first slowly, and then with an increasingly maniacal tone. She spun in place, swinging the sword and striking sparks from the walls. “I have never left!” Her chive contained a note of panic. “We have been here all this time, and now you have released me!”
“What is she saying?” Votess sounded as tense as I’d ever heard her.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the woman screamed at us. “It speaks! The abominations are still free! Why did you come here?!”
Votess raised her spear and Mika drew her sword. The woman stared at them and then back at me. “Come to me, then! If time has begun again, I will gladly embrace death!”
The warrior woman charged at us, and Votess’ spear met her. The tip of the spear slipped on her plate armour. As she passed Votess, she thrust her blade and shrieked when it slid off the shield I’d cast. Mika closed to meet her, and the pair of them engaged in battle.
I’d never watched a proper sword fight, but what I’d imagined was nothing like this. The two women faced each other at a greater distance than I expected, with each of them taking a different guard position. The insane woman held her blade out in front, while Mika rested hers against her right shoulder. When the woman attacked with a quick thrust, Mika swept her blade aside and retaliated with a thrust of her own at the woman’s unprotected face.
The woman moved quickly, and the thrust only opened a narrow cut across her cheek, but first blood had been drawn. She stepped back and once again came at Mika, this time with a diagonal strike. Once again, Mika parried the blade and struck, this time slashing at her opponent’s wrist. However, her heavy gauntlet and bracers deflected the blow. I imagined that an unarmored opponent would have had their sword hand taken off at the wrist. They clashed again, and their blades struggled against each other. This time, it was Mika who backed off.
Each exchange had been lightning-quick. I couldn’t imagine being able to react to the attacks the way Mika had.
I was getting nervous, and I started to move towards the pair, intending to flank the enemy. Votess held me back with an iron grip. “This is Mika’s fight to win or lose,” she said to me. My hands shook with adrenaline, but I nodded and forced myself to calm down. If Mika died, she’d wake up outside the village. We could always return if we retreated.
I realized also that this was a test of sorts. Votess and I had never seen Mika fight anything that wasn’t undead. If for some reason she was going to betray us, which I doubted more and more, she might have sided with this unknown human. Watching the two of them fight, I wondered if we could have resisted them both.
The woman struck again with her diagonal overhand strike. Mika parried and pushed her blade aside, then thrust forward. Her opponent forced her sword up and out of the line of danger, but Mika wasn’t finished with her. She kicked the woman in the torso and knocked her back slightly, and followed up with a rapid strike to the top of her head.
The blade connected and cut into the madwoman’s skull. She froze and then fell to the ground, her sword rattling against the stone floor. I watched as Mika finished her with a thrust through the throat. “All that armour and no helmet,” she muttered.
“Well done,” said Votess.
“Thanks,” said Mika, flashing yellow energy through her blade to burn off the blood of her enemy. “She was good.”
“But you’re Mika,” I said.
“Damn straight.” She sheathed her sword. “I fence in real life, and the skill system in here lets me take advantage of my experience. It’s great.”
“She was crazy,” I said. “She said she’d been here the whole time, that she’d never left. But the temple’s been sealed for centuries, right?”
“Yes,” said Votess. “Yet here she is.”
Mika looked down at the woman’s body. “There’s something here,” she said. She fumbled inside the armour and pulled out a chain that the woman had worn around her neck, then yanked it until it broke.
Suspended from the broken chain was a shard of material that we all recognized. It was crystallized blood wrapped in silver thread, and as soon as we saw it we all flinched.
“Shit!” I fell on my ass, desperate to avoid touching it. Not that the goddess did anything bad to me last time, but who knew what would happen here.
“What’s the big deal?” Mika po
ked the crystal. Nothing happened.
“It is the blood of the Goddess. We must safeguard it. There will likely be more.”
We went through the woman’s things, but she had very little of interest. Her armour was unenchanted and sturdy, but Mika absolutely refused to put it on. I couldn’t blame her, really. I wouldn’t wear a dead man’s clothes either, at least not fresh. My leather armour didn’t count, I told myself before deciding to never think about it again. Her sword was also unenchanted, but Mika kept it anyway. It disappeared into her inventory, along with two crystal vials containing potions of healing.
“She had no food or water,” said Votess. “How did she survive here?”
“I don’t think she really did,” said Mika. “Look over here.”
Behind us, Mika was crouching down and inspecting the blood that pooled at the bottom of the stairs. “When we came in here, all this was fresh. Now look.” She poked at the blood with a piece of cloth. It was congealing rapidly. “It does seem as if time was frozen here until we entered.”
I thought of what the woman had said. “I wonder if she was awake, even if she wasn’t able to move. That would drive anyone crazy, spending hundreds or thousands of years locked in your own mind.”
“They are members of the original pack of despoilers,” said Votess. Her tail thrashed with anger. “They must die!”
“Yeah, I’m with you.” I stood up and took a long drink of water.
The three of us stood in silence for a moment. Then a shriek of rage came from down the hallway, followed by cursing, and then silence. All three of us looked in that direction at once.
It had spoken the language of the lizard folk.
27
Votess led the charge down the hall, with me following behind. Mika followed us, her sword lighting the hallway with its purifying glow. I couldn’t keep up with my warrior friend. We passed two open doors that held nothing alive, and then Votess turned hard, entering a room and disappearing from my view.
When I arrived, Votess was cradling a downed lizardman. His wounds looked grievous; a long blade of some kind was broken off in his ribcage and he’d lost a limb. His face and general body shape told me he was one of the ancient ones, the ones that Votess had said were less animalistic. I was staring at a relic from another age. When Mika and I entered the room, he raised his remaining arm and hissed a warning.
“They are with me,” she said. “I am Votess, warrior. This is Denel, teacher, and Mika, priest of Minolt.”
“I am Unmat, temple guardian,” said the injured lizardman. He spit blood and dropped his arm. “We were taken by surprise. A traitor brought the Scaleless to the dormitories with magic. We fought, but we fell. I was—we were—betrayed.”
Mika approached and lit her hands with the healing light of Minolt. She laid her hands on his torso and turned to me. “I can’t regenerate his arm,” she said worriedly.
“I think it’ll be all right,” I said.
“His arm will regenerate, given time. If he survives the next hour, he will live.” Votess seized the shattered blade and pulled it from Unmat’s belly.
“They speak our tongue?” Unmat’s voice gained strength as Mika poured mana into him, closing his wounds and staunching the flow of blood.
“They are special,” said Votess. “They return after death, and Denel has died once serving my village. The Goddess blessed them herself!”
Unmat clearly didn’t buy it. His tail told me he thought Votess was lying or confused. “What village are you from?”
“Goddess Watch,” said Votess.
Unmat stared at her. “I have never heard of this village. Is it far?”
“We are the guardians of the ruins of the temple, and we preserve the memory of the Goddess until her return.”
Unmat tried to stand, but immediately fell over. “You are speaking madness. The temple is not yet fallen.”
Votess looked at me, a rare expression on her face: uncertainty. “I don’t think he was conscious during the intervening time,” I said. “He’s not crazy like that human woman, just confused.”
Votess gave Unmat some of her cooked food, and while he regained his strength, she explained the history as she knew it. When we told him about the human woman who had lived through the centuries, frozen and unable to act, Unmat chittered with cruel laughter.
“Good. I hope her suffering was immense. They came and plundered us, striking down the guards and murdering the priests and priestesses. I will kill any that remain! You say that the people have survived even into this age? We are strong indeed. But the Goddess, she cannot truly be dead.”
“She isn’t,” I said. I recounted the story of how I’d spoken with a shard of her consciousness when I had released the blood. I held up the shard of crimson that we’d found on the insane woman’s corpse. “I believe there’s more of the blood of the Goddess here, amongst the invaders. I’m not sure what will happen if we get it all, but hopefully we can do so.”
Unmat narrowed his eyes. “This temporal magic is beyond the ability of any priest. The Goddess herself must have manifested to cast it and halt time for the invaders. The door that guards the depths is sealed with magic. That shard is part of the key. Each temple guardian carries one embedded in their hand.” He shrugged his destroyed shoulder. “It is implanted when we are Named. Mine was cut from me and taken by a Scaleless. That one could be mine.”
“So what do they do?”
“Five of the shards must be pressed to the door at once. Blood of the People merges them into one, and the door may be opened. The blood must be given willingly, and the shards must be held by individuals. No one person may ever enter the depths without the knowledge and assistance of others.”
I wanted to ask why, but that wasn’t important at the moment. It seemed that if we wanted to proceed, we needed four more of these shards. “We’re going to reclaim the temple. We’ve already cleared the main floor, the worship area. I want to kill everything that isn’t of the people that I find on this floor, but we will need to access the depths in order to fully purge the temple. Can you help us?”
Unmat looked at me. “I am wounded, but I can fight. Do you have a blade I can borrow?”
I handed him my boneforged knife, and he appraised it. “Boneforging? Is this what the people have had to resort to using? What of the orichalcum mines?”
Votess stared blankly. “I know of no such things. We forge our weapons from bone, and have for centuries. These mines may have drowned when the waters came and flooded the land.”
Unmat grunted. “Then the people have fallen far indeed.” He rose to his feet, much steadier now that he had eaten. Mika rose as well, having prayed for mana recovery. Once again, I found myself almost starved for mana; I had to use 284 mana to fully shield all of us with Physical Barrier. Even with the Ring of Power I wore, I was left with barely any power at all.
Unmat nodded at my magic, recognizing it instantly for what it was. “You are a spell caster, and a teacher as well? I am glad to have you at my side. And you, little Scaleless priestess, thank you for healing my wounds. Already I itch with regeneration.”
Mika blushed and nodded at him. “It’s nothing, really. Minolt’s domain is purifying and healing, and this temple is in dire need of some serious purification.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
“Why? I understood her words,” said Unmat with a confused flick of his tail.
“He speaks oddly at times,” said Votess. “You will become accustomed to it.”
“Foolishness. We will take vengeance on the betrayers.”
We prowled the dormitory, checking inside doors that opened into devastated rooms. At my request, we backtracked to more fully examine the rooms we’d passed earlier. Mika kept watch while Votess, Unmat and I searched.
“They’re all dead,” I said, shocked at the body count. Every room we examined contained four beds, and most of the rooms contained dead bodies. The lizard folk had not given up their
lives easily. “Why wasn’t anyone armed?”
“Most of the people living here were serving staff, priests and priestesses, and others of that sort. Of the temple guards, there are—were—ten of us. We are armed with blades and magic. At any time, three would be on the main floor, two outside, and the remaining five down here in the dormitory.”
We continued our grim search until Unmat held up his hand. “Wait. This is the barracks. If there is anyone left alive, we may find them here. Let me lead.” Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Inside the barracks, we found a scene much the same as before. Three dead lizard folk, all missing their right arm. I assumed that meant they were temple guards, and their crystals had been taken for the door.
“You capture these ones?” A male voice spoke from a dim corner. When I looked over, a tall figure coalesced from the shadows. He wore leather and held a short blade that dripped lizard folk blood. “We only need one more. Why’d you bring one we already harvested? Or is that the one that let us in?”
I realized he was talking to me. I glanced at Votess and Unmat, but they were standing stock still, both of them watching my reaction. I took a deep breath; time for some bullshit.
“This one says he knows a way past the door without the crystals.” I gestured at Votess. This guy was obviously with the invaders, and he wasn’t insane. I was starting to wonder if there was a pattern, if the crystals somehow blocked the time stop spell from affecting the consciousness of the bearer. If so, that was definitely not a blessing.
The man squinted at me. “Impossible. The wards are unbreakable. Who are you, anyway? I don’t recognize you, or the little girl there.” He wiped his sword on his forearm. “Why don’t we get acquainted? We can start by killing those two monsters you brought.”
So much for talking. I nodded to the man and drew my blade, but I did’t attack my friends. Instead I thrust Excruciator at him, trying to land a lucky hit, but he was a lot faster than I was. His short sword swatted my knife aside, then thrust at my belly. My armour and my spell protected me, and I turned to present him with a smaller target.