“You deceived him.”
“Never. I swore to gather the...Artifacts.” I glance at Meridiana, hoping the word doesn’t offend her. “And I swore to gather them for the rightful king of Loria.”
Meridiana grips my arm tighter. The Gardener stands before us for what feels like eternity, silent.
It occurs how trapped I am here, how beholden to crazed rules. Passing Meridiana’s trial guarantees nothing.
“You are clever, deceptive, and righteous,” The Gardener pauses, “I take great pleasure in the unexpected.”
She slides from the corridor, leaving our way open.
“Told you not to worry,” I whisper against Meridiana’s ear.
Her tail whips up, stabs under my belt and into my leathers, caressing my thigh.
“Whoa!” Here, now? I freeze, not prepared but definitely not hating what she’s doing. Mostly just getting hard all over again.
She pinches my chin in the sharp vice of her nails and licks my lips. “I would have had more sport with you had I known what a trickster you are.”
“Oh, don’t hesitate. I mean, you’ve been in that ruin for so long. If I need to make the sacrifice then right here, right-”
Meridiana takes fistfuls of my hair and drags her mouth across mine. “Very selfless.” She prods me along. “We know where to find each other.”
For now...
-The Garden-
The garden’s center is a lush green copse of trees like a small forest, the tallest ones being what I saw from the ridge. A pond sits ahead, curving out of sight around the copse.
The top of the circle looks like the temple’s exterior, a curve supported by columns. It’s divided into four open chambers, with a long staircase in between that stops at a set of doors like the ones at the entrance.
“The way out?”
Meridiana shrugs. The Gardener stops moving over the ground ahead of us. “The Trial room. You will likely never see it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“The rooms are for the first four artifacts,” explains Meridiana. “That much I know. I’ve rested there during the trials of other aspirants.”
The Gardener leads us away from the gate.
“So, you don’t know everything about the temple?” I ask as we follow over a rolling lawn.
“Hardly anything. Each of us is a servant of the mad god. We were put here as a reward but also as...a lure? Bait to bring mortals in for Cocidius’s sport.”
The lower half of the ring, what should be the backside of the entry hall if this place made any sense, is a covered veranda. Beneath the canopy are a couch, a handful of chairs, and a dining area. Birds hop in the small purple flowers along the border, whistling to each other. This place is as peaceful and beautiful as the forests at home. It’s easy to see why men lose themselves between chambers. Add in an ‘artifact’ or two...
The thought brings another question to my mind. “Do the artifacts just sit in here for a decade between trials?”
“No. We have our own realms beyond the Pantheon. We’re summoned here at sunset before the solstice and kept until sunset the following day, or until the last aspirant has perished. I make short work of as many as possible.” She winks and licks her lips before settling on the plush blue one-sided couch.
My cock stirs despite some genuine terror at her information.
The Gardener appears, bearing an amphora and cups, and fare similar to what was in Meridiana’s chamber. The cheese is biting, ham salty, fruit crisp and sweet. A breeze stirs the trees and the air is filled with an odor of musky flowers. Water laps the pond’s shore. Above the ring stretches a blue, clear sky. I came in at sundown. Is it morning? Did Meridiana’s chamber take a whole night, or is the garden always like this? I have no idea the time of day or how long I’ve been here. “It’s a trial.”
Meridiana half opens her eyes. “Hmm?”
“Nothing.” I had suspicions about the temple before entering and she confirmed most of them. Even the garden is a trial, everything created to seduce just as skillfully as Meridiana. I have to keep both eyes open, and there’s no trusting anyone.
I feel a chill beneath my skin. There’s a quick sensation that mimics the feel of pushing myself inside Meridiana’s pussy, and then it fades.
She’s still lying on the couch, but her eyes are open and watching me, eyes merry.
“You can’t just get inside me like that!”
“I said I could if I needed to, if it helps you.” She sits up, tits bobbing against the gold claws. “Once you activate and bond with an artifact, it serves only you. There’s no deceit or danger.”
“Seems like Cocidius is shorting himself, giving each of you away.”
Meridiana's smile is hollow. “But he gets us back when an aspirant loses, so what has he really wagered?”
“No one has ever won the temple?”
“Not this temple, but others. Two.”
“Others?”
Her gray eyes widen. “We learn things, tidbits, in our service. Cocidius has dealings in many realms. In one, the temple is a spire up into the clouds. Another is under an ocean, fashioned in a series of giant bubbles breathed from the mouth of a sea-beast. In another, he created a picture-box animated by lightning that speaks to the aspirant in ones and zeroes. In return the aspirant must use wit, increasingly clever pictures, or flame, to defeat his opponents.” Meridiana shakes her head, clearly confused.
“Huh. I get why Cocidius is the mad god.”
The Gardener hovers while I eat, looking ready to satisfy any request. Meridiana asks for plum wine. The Gardener plucks it from nothing, like it was already in her hand. Where does it come from? It’s hard, even after a year of studying and training, to wrap my head around the magic that exists here. There’s magic in Loria, but it’s parlor tricks compared to the temple. Well, aside from Two, but no one knows where she came from, and there’s never been another like it that anyone can remember.
Contemplating this, I sink in my chair, arms and legs relaxing.
Meridiana licks a drop of wine from her lips. The feel of her mouth is fresh in my mind. Her hips curve out from the line of her silk drape, body full and tempting.
I’m going to fuck her on that couch.
Her tail snaps, slapping my cheek when I get close. “Don’t.”
“What?”
She scoots up the cushion putting space between us. Her consciousness slips inside, and I hear the warning: Princess Esmanth.
I shudder, and lassitude drains away. I knew this place could manipulate me, and I still got pulled in. I almost forgot everything. “I have to go.”
Meridiana nods. “The garden has been fertilized with the souls of countless aspirants. Don’t linger here.”
The Gardener slides beside me, picks up my pack, and holds it a moment. She does not open it, or look inside, but a moment later she holds it out. “Eight items have been removed.”
“Which items?” I packed with some serious intent.
“Forbidden ones.”
“Uh...No, I get that. Which specific items?”
She makes a tittering sound. “The ones you are missing.”
A talking pain-in-the-ass statue with a weird sense of humor? This might be the greatest trial in the whole temple.
“See you after?” I ask Meridiana.
“It would please me, I suppose, if you didn’t die.”
“Whoa. No need to get emotional.”
She hits me with her tail as I turn away. Need to keep both eyes on that one.
The Gardener leads me back the way we came. Meridiana’s door has vanished. The white marble is set with a pair of wooden doors as high as some buildings in Loria, banded and riveted with hammered black iron.
They shudder, shaking the ground. But when they part, swinging inward just enough for me to slip through, there’s no sound. They move as easily and quietly as sheets of paper. Blue light radiates from the crack and tendrils of cold air work into my lea
ther armor, stiffening it.
I heft up my pack, settling it more comfortably between my shoulders, getting my head together for whatever is on the other side. “Any hints?” I ask the Gardener.
“These artifacts will be your weapons in the southern chambers. If you do not learn the lessons they each have to teach, the temple will consume you.”
Did I learn a lesson from Meridiana? I outwitted her, and I won my objective. If there was more, I missed it.
“The first chamber is meant to teach that deceiving your foe is not unheroic and need not be immoral. It is possible to follow the rules and change the battlefield. Freya’s realm may help you better understand this.”
The doors shudder softly, calling me in. I didn’t know there were lessons. I didn’t come here for anything but vengeance.
And suddenly I’m a lot more preoccupied by what the Gardener took from my bag.
-The Second Chamber-
Niflheim
The frost blue shoulders of glaciers fall away on either side of the path where I stand. A shallow ditch weaves up the mountain face before me. It disappears in a smoke-wisp of cloud line where land meets sky, but I couldn’t see beyond this if I wanted to. Wind howls in one steady shrieking gust, sending crystalline snow stars sparkling in the air, cutting my exposed skin like small razors. Their light half-blinds me in the radiant blue glow all around, and the fog they create obscures nearly everything.
Maybe that’s the trial. Not freezing to death in the first few moments after you step through the door. I dig in my pack for a pelt mantle. It’s still there; thank the gods. The bottomless bag can only give what’s there, not reveal what’s missing, so after the Gardener’s meddling my time in the temple will hold real suspense.
I don the thick fur mantle and draw my iron blade, my mind filled with legends of yetis and mountain trolls. A glance behind me confirms the door is gone. It’s just a cragged snow-capped glacier for as far I can see, so vast and bright that it dizzies me. My head settles after a second, and I start up the path.
Cold bites through the mantle and turns leather to iron that shortens my steps. I regret not bringing more than the mantle, but I doubt it would have mattered. This isn’t the icy grip of a storm. I spent half my training in the Issop mountains with the monks, long enough to know the difference. This is supernatural, right down to how it stiffens my fingers and whips my eyes, leaving them cold, dry, and swollen.
The path becomes slick, snow-crusted stone steps. Quickly, despite my crawl, it morphs to slabs embedded in a cliff by a few degrees’ angle. I heft myself up one after another, slapping hands together for feeling if not warmth. The inner skin of my thighs feels scalded. I’m too frozen to give thought to what waits at the top.
Thunder echoes across the valley. I curse my luck that a storm is moving in when the noise comes again...and again. Not thunder. It’s more like a drum beat. The winds die to a soft breeze and the snow becomes lace over a blue sky, and for a few moments my visibility increases tenfold.
I kind of wish it hadn’t. Far across the icefields, miles and miles away, another cliff stretches up to the sun, becoming a horizon that forces me to crane my head fully back. Its size doesn’t make sense, like something that cannot exist in the natural world, and my mind quails.
Furious storming grey clouds swirl above it. Something like lightning shoots down from them, white and electric but regularly shaped. It impacts the cliff face, and even as far away as I am, I can almost feel the violence of it. A hammer appears, a tool as big as the mountain I’m climbing, plunging from the cloud cover. The first object is a chisel, I realize; the hammer, gripped by thick silver fingers, strikes a blow. Debris the size of cities, of mountains, flies into the air, flickering across the pale winter sun. Chunks slide down into a valley between the icefields and the cliff, a valley so deep it seems unending.
For a second, I forget to climb and just watch, until the hammer and chisel move further up the colossal slope and out of sight beyond its ridge.
I knew there’d be wonders and terror inside the temple, but this? Thinking too long about the existence of some of what I’ve seen here would drive me insane.
If I have to fight that thing…
I shake this off. I’ll fight whatever I have to fight. If that’s one of the trials, there must be a way to pass it. My resolve hardens. Mynogin took everything from me. If I die here, I’ll make a pact with my soul to Cocidius. Heijl. Another god. Whatever it takes.
I trudge on, trying not to look toward the cliff, or down into the ravines next to me. One slip...I shudder, come to another steppe.
One more jump and pull gets me over the lip – all the strength I have left. I lie panting on the snow while it melts and trickles beneath my armor.
Ahead lies a plateau, not very large, no more than a farmer’s field. Along the edge that faces the valley stands a longhouse. Its timber uprights are made of varnished golden wood – magic in its own right because I haven’t seen a single tree since entering this realm. Black iron horses and dragons are mounted on the upper half, running beneath the ice-crusted thatch roof. Smoke trails in a wisp from the stone chimney. That’s all I need to know. I don’t care who is inside or what the building is; there’s fire.
This doesn’t mean I’m barging in the door, though. I strip my pack and reach inside for the invisibility potion.
Gone.
Stealth potion?
Gone.
That’s two of the eight items taken by the gardener.
Slow Time? A glass bottle jumps into my palm.
I’ll take it. After the last trial, I want the lay of the land before I go charging in. The liquid swirls blue as the sky inside thick glass, sparkling in the sun with lapis and arcane dust when I uncork it. It smells like the sea, lavender, and oak bark. It fizzes on my tongue and pours like syrup down my throat. Whistling wind becomes a low breath. I pinch a snowflake from the air and watch it melt on my finger tip. For a boy who grew up Talentless, without magic, this is incredible. Let’s hope that feeling lasts once I’m inside.
As I open the wide front door it blurs, becomes insubstantial, caught between its place in time and my influence. It’s surreal to watch the heat mirage form in flickering bands one at a time as cold crawls in.
The interior is welcoming, and not just because I nearly froze to death getting here. Its stone floor is polished to a well-worn gleam. Firelight from the center burrow spills across it like amber river water and winks from beams running the hall’s length. The woodwork – chests, tables, chairs, a bed with head and footboard like fighting dragons – is on a level of craftsmanship I’ve never seen. Dark and light wood inlay perfectly into iron plackets and handles carved into exotic, ancient shapes. It reminds me of my father’s hall, how he spared no expense but never spared comfort, either. He paid for nice things because they made him happy. Made my mother happy.
The memory, the pain, passes and my resolve doubles.
So far, the house is calm, quiet. No people or demons. No giant hammer and chisel crushing me to oblivion. A spider hangs between the scalloped shield carvings on the upstairs railing. A small songbird perches above, rose and teal, something domestic and from warmer places than this. It feels bizarrely out of place up here in the mountain bleakness, but after everything else I’ve seen, it seems almost normal. Its beak is parted, body canted out beyond the rail. When time picks up, it’ll probably get the best of its velvety black prey. I’m usually a circle of life kind of guy, but this last year has changed that. Not that I have such a complicated revelation. It hits me rapidly in the gut in the last few seconds that time drags by. I sweep through the line of web, catching the trailer with my finger.
The spider lies unsteadily on my arm, legs still splayed from her descent. Earthy musk fades from my mouth. Time picks up. The bird overreaches, then flutters back in panicked surprise. Her prey trills tiny legs over my armor, descends again, and disappears beneath the table. I feel maybe a little more powerful than I shou
ld.
A single doorway is set into the far wall. No door, just a wood and copper frame in the stone partition. Peeking inside, I get a better look at the massive bed and the room in general.
She’s seated on the bed atop white linen sheets drawn halfway up a pelt cover. Her back is to me, and the robe she wears covers her neck and swags low on her hips, leaving her back bare. She has her ocean of white-gold hair over one shoulder, brushing its thick waves.
I hardly notice the motion, hypnotic as it is. Her skin is beyond just pale. It’s soft and nearly as white as the snow outside. This makes the tracery of lines over her back stark, almost three-dimensional. The tattoo begins at the tops of her shoulders where her robe is tied and runs along both sides to the tops of her backside. Wings. They’re scallop-tipped, thick from the taper and increase of ink lines, but also delicate. Maybe that’s the effect of her soft skin in between the feathers.
“You can enter.” Her voice is soft, words exotically formed.
She hasn’t looked and I’m sure I haven’t made a sound, but she knows I’m here. I keep my sword palmed tight. She may be an artifact, but that doesn’t make her friendly – Meridiana taught me that.
I step just inside the door. Her chamber smells like soft white flowers and, aside from the bed, the furnishings are more delicately crafted. So is the woman. She stands. She’s easily as tall as I am, maybe a little more, and I stand a head taller than most men in the west leighs. Our women? Not even close. Despite her height, Freya’s body isn’t masculine or big. Hair spills over slight shoulders and down graceful arms. Her full hips and long legs are visible through the sheer fabric of her robe. And her tits. They’re high and mounded, the deeper skin around her nipples, which thrust, blatant behind the white linen. I swallow and look away. I mean, I pretty much crept in on her in her nightgown.
She laughs, setting the brush on a table beside the bed. “Would you be more comfortable if I covered up? The other aspirants never seemed to mind.”
With Meridiana I couldn’t get naked fast enough and now? So ridiculous how I’m struggling.
Temple of Cocidius Page 4
