The Tears of Kas̆dael

Easing Erin to the ground, Jasper ran back to the door and, grabbing one of the ornate statues, pulled with all his might. The rapidly approaching tendrils of darkness were enough to spike his adrenaline to dangerously high levels, but despite his best efforts, the door didn't even budge as he grabbed it. "Move, damn it!"

The door shuddered as the others slammed into place beside him, creaking forward at a glacial pace. The black cloud was only a few thousand feet away now, flooding over the temple walls on a direct path toward them, and panic set in. We're not going to make it.

Then his foot lost its traction as the door surged forward on its own, accompanied by an anguished howl of pain from behind them. The door clicked into position mere seconds before a roar like hail filled the silent halls as the storm cloud reached the gates, but it did not penetrate. "Holy crap, that was close." With a sigh of relief, Jasper turned away from the door and winced as he caught sight of the scout.

Erin lay facedown on the ground in a tangle of limbs far too uncomfortable to remain in unless he was out cold - and judging from his overall condition, Jasper deemed that a small mercy. Exposed muscles and tendons, where the skin had withered and shrunk, covered large swathes of his body, and the few places where he still had some skin were pocked with open, oozing sores.

He cast Circle of Forgiveness immediately, recasting it four times before the oozing sores had mostly dried and the exposed muscles were once again hidden beneath a layer of flesh. Despite his best efforts, though, the scout was not as good as new. The regrown flesh was dark and rough, reminding Jasper of bark, and it stood out painfully against his usual Irish pallor.

"Damn it," Jasper groaned. "He's going to kill me when he wakes up. He looks like a bloody Appaloosa. What happened?"

"Likely something to do with his ancestry," S̆ams̆ādur grunted as he bent down to pick the unconscious scout up and flung him over his shoulder. "But better speckled than dead."

While technically true, Jasper doubted Erin was going to be so blasé about the change, but there was nothing that could be done about it, at least now. He cast one last glance at the door to reassure himself that it was still holding, before turning to inspect the temple.

The vestibule they stood in was as fine as any cathedral in Europe. Thanks to the unnatural storm raging outside, there was no light shining through the gilded glass on the dome above them, but the room was still far from dark. Hundreds of enchanted orbs dangled from the ceiling, their light unfaded despite the untold years that had passed since the city's fall, and in their light, the room truly glowed.

Gold and silver, copper and emerald covered nearly every inch of the walls, while the floor sparkled with a massive glass mosaic of a sun surrounded by a council of rather anthropomorphic-looking animals.

"That looks like those creatures we fought," Ihra pointed to one of the servants prostrated before the sun god with the legs, head, and wings of a bird, but the torso of a man. Jasper nodded silently, as his eyes flitted over the other creatures.

A dragon seemingly caught mid-transformation into a person. Something that resembled a centaur mixed with a dinosaur. A shadow with ruby colored eyes. When he reached the depiction of a creature with thick, black horns and a red, humanoid body, he realized these weren't just myths. Sure, it looked a little more animalistic than the Djinn he knew, but he had no doubt that was what it depicted. Were all of these real races? And what happened to the rest of them?

But as stunning as the room they were in was, it was also clearly just the entrance. Directly ahead of them was a set of gilded doors every bit as grandiose as the ones that led outside. Unfortunately, with Erin unconscious, Jasper doubted they had any chance of opening them. "How much do you want to bet what we're looking for is right through those gilded monstrosities," he grumbled.

"I certainly wouldn't want to bet against it, but unless you've been holding out on us," he shrugged his shoulder at Ihra's teasing glance, "we aren't getting through on our own. Maybe when Erin wakes up…"

"We don't have time to wait around for that. Ardûl can't hold the gate forever," he grimaced, as he swiveled his gaze between the two other gates leading out of the vestibule. While still ridiculously oversized compared to any normal human, the doors were small enough that he was fairly certain they could move them without Erin's help. "The real question is left or right?"

Ihra cocked her head silently, seemingly focusing on something, but Tsia was quick to respond. "Why pick? If we split up, we can hit both sides."

But Jasper was hesitant. "I know we haven't encountered anything alive in the city thus far, but those chimeras had to come from somewhere. And if they survived, there's no saying one of these other creatures," he gestured at the mosaic beneath their feet, "didn't survive as well. I think we should stick together."

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"We should go left," Ihra spoke up. "I'm fairly certain I heard something moving around in that direction."

"Isn't that exactly what we want to avoid?" Tsia countered, but Jasper quickly grasped her line of thought.

"You think they're guarding what we're looking for."

"It seems as good a guess as any."

He pondered it for a moment longer before bobbing his head. "To the left it is."

As predicted, the doors gave way under their combined efforts, revealing a hall that stretched a hundred feet before dead-ending in another pair of doors. The hall was empty aside from a row of podiums spaced at regular intervals that displayed an odd assortment of items. They passed a goblet carved from a silver skull, a crown sparkling with moonstones, and a carefully preserved femur, coated in a thick layer of gold, before it finally clicked that they were relics.

I wonder if they actually do anything? He'd never put much stock in stories of saintly relics back home, although, given his discovery that there was some magic on Earth, perhaps he'd been too quick to dismiss them. There wasn't any doubt here, though, that magic and the divine were very, very real. As he ran past them, he debated whether he should scope them into his bag, but decided against it. They might have been relics at one point, but after rotting for thousands of years in the corrupted city, he'd be surprised if they weren't outright cursed.

They were forced to pause as they reached the end of the hall, and once again strained to open the ridiculously oversized doors. By now, even Jasper could hear faint sounds of movement ahead, so they moved slowly, hoping to muffle the sound as the ancient gates creaked open.

The first thing Jasper noticed as he squeezed through doors was the shrine at the center of the room. The second was motion, as a positively gigantic form eclipsed the shrine.

The doors no longer seemed so oversized as Jasper processed what was now standing in front of the shrine. It was one of the strange dino-centaurs he'd seen in the mosaic, a term that seemed even more appropriate than he had realized now that he was seeing it in the flesh.

Easily twice the size of a bull elephant, the bottom half of the creature vaguely resembled a sauropod, with four legs covered in thick, green scales and a long, scaled tail that ended in a spike. As the legs merged into the belly, the scales were replaced with bright white and purple plumage, but it was no mere beast.

A white linen caparison, decorated with finely embroidered flowers and glittering with real jewels, was draped over its back and a matching halter covered the chest of the almost human-looking torso and head that sprouted from its front. A silver crown sat on its brow, holding back the cascade of pure white hair that tumbled down its back, and for a moment, Jasper hoped that the creature could be reasoned with. Then he saw its eyes.

They were not black. No, they were voids made flesh, perfect replicas of the accursed sun that sent a shiver down his spine. Yet the creature seemed not to notice them as it continued walking, making the ground tremble with each step.

And as the shrine came back into view, Jasper realized it was not alone. Four shrine maidens circled a shrine that, judging from the remarkable resemblance of the gilded statue to their own form, was most likely dedicated to their ancestor. There was no intelligence in their blighted eyes, no sign that they had even noticed them, but Jasper knew better than to assume they were harmless.

Taking cover behind a bench facing the shrine, he took quick note of the exits as he waited for the others to gather round. This room had four exits - the one they'd just come through, two to their right, at opposite ends of the wall, and one directly ahead. "I assume we're heading to the right?" he asked, glancing at Ihra to see if she thought otherwise.

She cocked her head and closed her eyes, listening intently before replying. "There's movement in both directions."

"Then we go right," Jasper decided. "We've got to get deeper into this compound if we want to find the main dome."

With the destination agreed upon, the group began creeping toward the doors on the right. It was a slow process, though, not only because they wished to avoid the attention of the four shrine maidens, but also because the room was a veritable minefield.

Unlike the previous rooms they'd passed through, the shrine was clearly used for regular services. Rows of alabaster pews surrounded it on all four sides, their backs decorated with motifs etched with finely filigreed silver, amethysts and moonstones. At the ends of most rows, elegant shafts, decorated with garlands of porcelain flowers, supported either enchanted orbs, whose gentle light still suffused the room, or shallow censers from which Jasper could still catch the occasional whiff of the fossilized remains of incense.

Unfortunately, the rows were also clogged with dozens of stout, padded stools that Jasper suspected were for kneeling on, giant handheld bells perched precariously on the seat, along with sundry other items whose purpose he couldn't even guess at. Thus, they were forced to move at a crawl, not wanting to draw any attention from the maidens trapped in their perpetual orbit around the shrine, but it was not to be.

As they neared the end of the pews, Erin's head, still slung over Samsadur's shoulder, smacked into one of the floor lamps. It wobbled on its stand and, unbalanced by the seafoam orb, toppled over. Tsia sprang forward as it fell, but it only grazed her fingers. The porcelain flowers hit the ground with a resounding crash and the enchanted orb rolled toward the shrine as its socket broke.

Time seemed to flow like molasses as Jasper watched the maidens abruptly stop and crane their heads in their direction. He ducked down immediately, crouching on one of the small padded stools as he sheltered behind the pew and waited to see if the maids would respond.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence, until the sound of soft 'thwap' echoed through the hall as the still-glowing orb smacked into the leg of one of the maidens. By now, his heartbeat was thundering so loudly in his ears, it was hard to believe that everyone else couldn't hear it, but he stayed hidden, praying the shrine maids would resume their silent march.

And then Jasper sneezed as a few millennia of dust went up his nose. Damn it.