The Threads of Destiny - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Temple

They’d been walking for the better part of two days. Once Captain Lockewood let them go, they’d managed to make it out of Farvale with no additional issues. Cinder had even managed to find them, although where he’d been hiding, Osric didn’t know. They hadn’t seen the wolf even as they made their way out of the city, but as soon as they were out of sight of it and there were no people around, the animal appeared out of the underbrush, nearly scaring Grace to death.

Osric wondered if he’d been in the city watching them the whole time but staying out of sight as ordered, or if he’d left the city and been waiting outside of it for them. Not that he’d ever get an answer from the animal, but he once again wondered just how smart Cinder was.

Although Jasper hadn’t been able to bring any of Godfrey’s books with him, and had only looked at them for a few minutes, he still seemed fairly confident he knew where they were going and could get them fairly close to the location of the temple.

They were heading into backcountry, off any roads or even most rails, eventually ending on a cart path that roughly went the direction they were headed. They weren’t far from the forest, but this corner of the Barony, away from Great Road, didn’t have a lot of people. Rowan had said he’d heard the land wasn’t great for crops, which is why most farmers stuck to the northern side of the Great Road or further to the west, outside of the Barony.

Osric was just happy they had some kind of trail, rather than just trekking blindly cross country. A few hours before, Jasper had said they were around the area the book had suggested, but to Osric it all looked the same. There was definitely no signs that an ancient battle was fought anyone along here, let alone the remnants of a temple. Heck, there weren’t even any people.

Or there hadn’t been.

As they crested a small rise, a weathered farmhouse came into view, up against a field that looked more like dry dirt and rocks than it did a proper field. The farmhouse was still in good order and looked to be lived in though. That was confirmed a moment later when a man in a wide-brimmed hat came around a corner, pushing a rickety wheelbarrow full of, what looked to Osric, to be weeds.

“Ho there, travelers,” he called out as they drew near. “What brings you out this way?”

“Just passing through,” Rowan said.

“Nothing but rough round south all the way to the border, and no people that I know of,” the farmer said, setting down his wheelbarrow. “You’ve come from the direction of the village and I don’t think you’re here to see me, so I have to ask, what are you looking for? You seem out of place, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“We were looking for the sight of some old ruins. They’d be ancient, maybe just a stone or two, since way back at the founding of the kingdom,” Jasper said.

“You don’t want to go there,” the farmer said, suddenly serious.

“So you do know of them?” Osric asked, suddenly hopeful.

“I know there are some ruins to the west of here, not that I’ve ever seen them. Can’t be what you’re looking for, though. That area’s cursed. Most people who go there come back mad. Or don’t come back at all.”

“But someone went there once, right?” Osric asked. “For you to know there are ruins there. Is this curse new? Something that happened recently?”

As soon as the man mentioned a curse, Osric’s mind instantly went to the creature at the lake. The villagers there had talked of a curse too, and it made sense that, if this was where a great battle was fought at the fall of the Calaphium, there might be a weak point in the veil near it, where something could have come through and caused similar disruption to the area.

“No, no,” the farmer said, waving a hand. “Been that way for generations. My grandfather warned me about it, and his grandfather before him. Nobody goes out there, not if they value their life.”

“But you know there are ruins?” Jasper asked.

“I know some of those who’ve gotten lost and gone that way have come back, talking of ruins. But they spoke of other madness, forgot their own names, and weren’t good for much else beside sitting on a stool, watching the sky all day. So who knows what’s really out there other than death or madness.”

“It sounds like that’s exactly what we’re looking for, then,” Jasper said.

“Suit yourselves,” the farmer said with a shrug. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Writing them off as dead men, apparently, the farmer picked up his wheelbarrow and began pushing it again to the corner of his plot, dumping out the weeds and who knew what else into a pile with a collection of other vegetation and scrap.

“Well, we thank you for the warning,” Osric said, turning west.

Grace looked back after a few minutes, as the farmhouse had already started to disappear in the distance. “If it’s cursed, maybe that’s exactly where we should go.”

“No, Jasper was right,” Talia said. “If it’s cursed, it’s almost certainly just where we want to go. We’ve encountered curses like this before.”

“That was recent, though,” Osric pointed out. “Something escaped through the veil a few months before and became trapped there. The veil is failing but, based on what the Sage said, it’s only started tearing again in the last fifty or a hundred years. The farmer said his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather knew this place was cursed. If this has always been like this, maybe it’s different.”

“This isn’t the first time the veil has been broken,” Talia reminded him. “The Sage said that too. When the Calaphium fell, it tore open holes in the veil then too. So there’s a chance whatever this is has been stuck here for thousands of years.”

“If that’s true, and if it’s some kind of animal like the last one, don’t expect such a reasonable response,” Rowan said. “That other thing, it was nearly mad, and it had only come recently. Imagine what it would have been like after hundreds of years.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Osric said. “We don’t exactly have a choice.”

***

They continued west for several more hours. It was still early afternoon, and they had a lot of light ahead of them, but Osric hoped they’d find the area they were looking for soon. If this place was cursed, he’d rather not have to camp here.

He didn’t have to wait much longer. He knew Talia well enough to tell when something was off, and for the past ten minutes, she had not been her normal self. She’d been agitated and twitchy, like she’d rolled in a bed of ants and had a few she couldn’t get off.

“There’s something off about this place,” Talia finally said. “Can you feel it? It’s like the very air is...tainted.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“I do,” Jasper said. “There’s an...unnatural stillness.”

“The animals do too,” Rowan said. “Have you noticed, no birds, no small animals in the underbrush. We’ve seen those for the last several days, but they’ve all disappeared as we’ve headed further this way.”

“That just means we’re still going the right way, doesn’t it?” Osric said.

“I guess,” Talia said, but she didn’t sound as confident as he did.

Even as she said that, the sky darkened, turning a deep shade of red and orange. These were the reds and oranges of sunset, which should still be hours away, though. These were deeper. More sickly.

It wasn’t all at once or slowly. It was more like they had been that way for a while, but Osric just noticed.

“What’s that?” Grace said, ranging a little ahead of them.

It took a moment for Osric to make out what she was pointing at. The grass and foliage had taken it over so completely, it was hard to notice it wasn’t just a lump of vegetation. At least not without looking at where Grace was pointing.

He did see it, eventually. Old, weathered stone, pitted and crumbling with age. As old as the keep he and Talia had found. Maybe older.

“These are ancient. Older than any settlement I’ve seen,” Rowan said.

“Creepy is what it is. Let’s just find what we’re looking for and get out of here. This place gives me the shivers,” Grace said, kicking a part of the stone loose.

Osric barely heard their words, his attention drawn to a strange shimmer in the air ahead. It was like a heat haze, but directly over his head. Close enough he felt he could grab it if he jumped up. We wanted to reach out, and try to touch it. 

As he started to raise his hand, Talia hissed, “Osric, what are you doing?”

“There’s something…”

Before he could finish the sentence, the shimmer pulsed, expanding outwards and dropping to the ground in front of him. The air grew cold as it shifted, becoming more translucent than transparent, its shape slowly coalescing into that of a man. A specter.

“You will die for coming to this place,” it said, its voice both hollow and echoing.

Not angrily. Not threatening. More matter-of-factly. It floated towards them, its feet not touching the ground, as it raised a hand, reaching for Osric. Behind him, Osric heard the creak of Rowan’s bowstring as the ranger pulled it taut.

“Wait!” Osric stepped back, away from it, his hands raised. “We know why you’re here. You came through the veil, didn’t you?”

The specter halted. Its placid face shifting for the first time. It was hard to tell, but Osric would say it almost looked … curious.

“What do you know of the veil?”

“I know it’s tearing, that it’s in danger. Things are coming through from other realities. That’s how you got trapped here, isn’t it?”

The specter’s form flickered.

“No, I wasn’t trapped here. I died here.”

“Were you here when the temple was attacked?” Jasper asked.

The specter’s face turned, looking to the cleric, “Yes. There was so much destruction. Fire rained down. Burning my family. My city. Everything.”

“You were trapped here?” Talia asked.

“I fell,” it said in its echoing voice, as if a dozen people were speaking at once. “My soul reached for the heavens, to rejoin the veil. There was … a flash of energy as a great tear opened above the temple. Things came through. Horrible things. I could see the veil. So close. So close.”

“The energies kept you from it?”

“Yes. So close, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t rise. The tear closed, in time, but even still, I couldn’t leave. Locked here. In this place. In this damnable place.”

It was becoming agitated. Angry. The pulsing of its form quickened.

“We’re trying to repair that damage,” Osric said, hoping to calm it down, unsure of what it would do if it got angry. “We’ve closed the veil elsewhere, I think. I think there’s something in that temple keeping the veil unrepaired. Otherwise, it would have fixed itself when the veil fixed elsewhere. The tear is gone, but it isn’t repaired. I think that’s why you can’t go through.”

“This should allow me to finally pass on?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I think so. I can try, at any rate.”

The specter nodded, its form beginning to fade. “Then you may pass. I hope you succeed. I am tired of this place.”

“I’ll come back and make sure. I promise.”

The specter only looked at him. Stared through him, before it vanished, the oppressive atmosphere lifted slightly. Grace let out a low whistle.

“Well, that was spooky. You sure you know what you’re doing, Osric?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I have to try. We have to try.”

***

The walk to the site of the temple was not long, but it was disquieting. Most of the way, they could make out the outline of the city where the specter had lived, now little more than faint outlines of stone buildings etched into the earth. People had lived, and ultimately, died here, caught in a fight that wasn’t theirs.

Even Cinder, who normally trotted next to Osric happily or ran off searching for game, was on edge, every now and then letting out a soft, mournful whimper.

“We’re here,” Jasper said, almost reverently.

They hadn’t needed the cleric’s help to know they had arrived at their destination. Directly in front of them was a massive rend in the ground, torn open across a mile or more and hundreds of feet wide, as if the gods themselves had cut the land open. The edges had been worn and dulled over time, but here and there jagged rocks still protruded out, speaking to just how violent the event had been.

Walking to the edge and looking in was like looking into a deep, endless void.

“If they are guarding this, how do they even get there?” Osric said. “I guess they’ve had time to figure out a way to get past the specter, since it’s been here since the temple vanished into the ground, but they’d have to get down to it, right? I mean, they were guarding the other one, and I saw a note in Godfrey’s office from someone named Ranulf talking about the hall, I think, and sending more men. If they did, they’d have a way to get up and down from it, right?”

“You saw a letter about this?” Jasper asked.

“It was a partial note, damaged in the fight, and it just said to send more guards. We already assumed they were holding onto the other half, so it didn’t seem important. Besides, a moment later you found your clue and then the guards showed up. After that it slipped my mind.”

“Reasonable,” Jasper said. “And you’re right, it does mean they must have a way down. Let’s spread out. Look for it.”

The group spread out, some going one direction along the chasm and the rest going the other direction. Osric hoped it wasn’t on the other side, requiring them to go all the way around the massive hole in the ground.

Thankfully, it wasn’t.

“Over here!” Rowan called out after only a few minutes of searching.

They all hurried over. There, hidden behind a large boulder, were a set of rough stairs carved into the rock face, leading down. They were narrow and irregular, and seemed like a very dangerous way down. If someone slipped, there would be nothing to grab onto before they plummeted into the darkness.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Grace said. “They must have spent years carving these out. And now we have to go down them.”

“Hold on,” Talia said, handing Rowan her staff.

A few quick motions later, a globe of bluish light appeared above her hand.

“Good thinking,” Osric said. “Lead the way. Just watch your step. These don’t seem very stable.”

With the globe floating slightly above them, Talia led them down, Osric right behind her.

As they made their way down, an excited Jasper said, “I’ve spent the last fifteen years researching the veil and the Calaphium, trying to understand what happened all those years ago and how far the Brethren’s lies went. There were so many references to this place. To think that I am going to see it is just … I don’t have the words.”

“Did you learn anything about it we might find useful?” Osric asked.

“Not a lot. Most of what I found were references to earlier writings that don’t exist, so it’s a little like trying to piece together a story from little notes where each generation has to remove a word until you’re left with a few scattered sentences. That is to say, what I know is very much conjecture.”

“Noted,” Osric said.

“I believe this place was used by the Calaphium to have some effect on the veil, although whether that was to manipulate it, repair it, or limit it was never really clear. I just know that it was somehow important to their understanding of the veil and the way magic worked, which is maybe why the Brethren attacked it.

Before he could explain anything else, Talia let out a yelp as a part of the stair she stepped on cracked and broke away. In almost slow motion, she began to flail sideways as her foot dropped and the rest of her body began to follow after it.

Osric leapt forward, his hand darting out to grab her outstretched hand that was pawing at the air, his hand locking around hers just before it got out of reach. He leaned back until the rear plate of his armor clanged against the rocky side of the chasm wall, trying not to go over after her. He managed to keep both of them from going over … but just barely.

She wrapped both arms around him, clutching to him on the narrow steps, her whole body trembling as she lay her head on his shoulder and steadied herself.

“It’s alright,” he said softly in her ear. “I’ve got you.”

“Thank you,” she said, pulling herself together. “You should probably put me back on my own two feet.”

Osric realized he was holding onto her as much as she was holding onto him, her feet dangling in the air. He twisted and sat her down on the steps, in the lead again.

“Just be careful this time,” he said, which got a smile out of her, although a half-hearted one.

“I’ll try.”

Thankfully, the rest of their trip down was uneventful, if long and slow. When they finally found the bottom, they might as well have transcended into another world. The sky was not visible from this far down, and they could only see as far as the light of Talia’s orb could illuminate.

What they could see, though, was impressive. It was also hard to work out what they were looking at, or even standing on. It was clearly man-made, created out of stone and fired clay, but it wasn’t paving stones or any other kind of flooring Osric could think of.

“We’re on the roof,” Jasper said, figuring out what was actually happening. “Look, I think this used to be railing, part of a top deck, separating it from … I think these are some kind of roofing tile, maybe.”

He was right. They were worn and chipped and had settled into a flat rather than slanted design, making them look like strange paving stones at first. But the larger parts did look like clay roofing tiles. He could also see what the cleric meant about a top deck. There were holes, evenly spaced in some kind of marble or granite that could have once held a wooden railing, although the wood would have rotted long ago. There was, however, a clear delineation between the marble and the roofing tiles, so some kind of deck or top section for people on the roof made sense.

“I believe I saw something about part of the temple’s function for observing the heavens,” Jasper said. “This must have been where they did that from.”

“If that’s the case, and this is the roof, then there has to be a way down. Inside. Right?” Osric asked.

“Yes. There would have been stairs. I imagine the Brethren have hidden it, even far down here. They’re paranoid like that. Look around for it.”

The group spread out, but it was Cinder who found it first, scratching against what looked like a rocky side of the cliff with vegetation growing out of it. It wasn’t that at all. IT had been well camouflaged though. Part of the side of the ravine had been pulled down around it, making it look like an extension of rock and dirt. What Cinder had found, seemingly sniffing out the smells of the people who’d passed through here, was a cloth stretched over the entrance painstakingly designed to look like rock, with vegetation artfully applied to it, extending the effect and making it more three dimensional.

They pulled the sheet aside, but before anyone said anything, a sound echoed from down below. A metallic clank. Osric froze, holding up a hand for everyone else to hold.

Talia’s hand whipped around and the orb blinked out in an instant, blanketing them in darkness. Not complete darkness, though. There was a flicker of faint light down the stairwell.

Osric pulled his sword and started down, with Rowan following after him. They descended the stairs as silently as possible. It was a short stairwell, which opened up into a large chamber. In the center stood a man, his back to them, digging through a satchel of some kind.

Rowan drew his bow, the string creaking as he pulled it back. The sound made the man whirl around, his eyes widening as he saw them. He moved fast, lunging for the lever, but Rowan was faster. His arrow whistled shot out and caught the man in the chest, sending him staggering back. He crashed to the ground, the arrow protruding from his chest, and lay still.

They all held in place for a moment, looking around, but nothing stirred. Jasper pushed past them, approaching the lever and kneeling down to examine it, as well as looking over the side of the sharp drop-off next to it.

“There are tracks. I’m betting this lever brings whatever carries people down back up, or maybe alerts the people below to send it up. He was probably trying to alert someone below. I’m betting these tracks are a part of an elevator system, of some kind.”

“We can’t use that to go down,” Osric said. “It would alert them that we’re here. There’s no way of telling how many Brethren are down there. You said this level was for worship. Do you think it had this big drop-off? I can’t imagine this elevator goes all the way back to its destruction.”

“No, this was a second floor, and I think just had stairs that lead down to the bottom floor, although that looks much further down than the second floor would have been from the first. Maybe it separated as it landed down here. This,” Jasper said, waving his hand, indicating the room. “is much too small for what should have been the second floor. I wonder if it’s all that remains and the rest of the second floor collapsed into the first, the roof getting caught up here.”

“What about this,” Talia said. “This looks like a doorway, or a door frame. someone has bricked over it. These don’t look nearly as old as everything else.”

“We can probably break through,” Osric said.

“Maybe we should consider not going into the area these guys were so scared of they bricked it off and made an elevator down.”

“Just because they bricked it off doesn’t mean there’s something dangerous through there,” Jasper said.

“You’re so naive, Jasper.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Osric said. “There should be another way down, and we can’t throw ourselves down there, into who knows what. We’ve got to be careful about this. Let’s break through.”