by Stone Thomas
Another block down, however, was someone death had come for already. I left Hinnabee’s behind and stalked closer to a fallen body. She lay against the corner of a building, one leg jutting out into the street. A bright green hairband held brown hair away from her unnaturally pale face. Dried blood stained the street beneath her. There was no risk a new lumentor would escape Reyna’s grasp here though. This woman’s soul departed long ago.
There was nothing I could do for her, but there were other good people here I could help. People bearing Duul’s angry curse. People forced into labor by the goddess of chaos. I followed the sounds of their voices and the hammering of their tools until I reached the edge of the city’s main street. Here, I was one step closer to confronting the goddess responsible for ending that poor girl’s life.
I peeked around the corner and down the long, main street that ran through the heart of the small city. To my right was a hive of activity. Men and women carried building materials toward the metal spire, climbing scaffolding to add sheets of metal and resin-soaked canvas to a needle-like structure much higher than the city’s walls.
The construction site was ringed by cretins, with one of Duul’s generals and an army of gray-tinged cursed men further behind. They were the force driving the other workers to build day and night.
Further down that street sat the front gates, tall dark slabs of heavy solid metal. A loud bang echoed through the city as our lumber launcher shot another wooden beam into the doors, adding a small dent but failing to knock them from their hinges. Nola floated high above the gates, observing the city’s activity and overseeing our team’s attempt to break in.
I wanted to wave to her, to let her know I was inside and working on a way to let them in. I couldn’t risk drawing attention though. Hang on, Nola, I thought. We’re halfway there.
Across the street from me, hiding in the shadows, were more lumentors. They inched back as the shadows receded, chased by the sun as it rose higher toward noon. Once the sun reached its peak, it would sink toward the horizon and allow hell’s escapees to roam further, clinging to the shadows that protected their naked energy.
I turned left, away from the construction and away from Nola.
I stared up at the belfry. Lilac energy lit the temple’s tower, beaming its soft purple light from the arched windows four stories up. Whatever Kāya was doing up there, it was absolutely no good. And I was the only one close enough to stop her.
+21
Kāya herself was up there, this much I knew for certain. I steeled myself and cracked the temple door to press one eye against the narrow opening and spy inside. It was empty. Quiet. A respite at the end of a street otherwise teeming with noise and activity.
The inside of Gowes’ temple had always been blue as far as I knew, with a sky blue flame burning in the hearth behind the altar to match the god of wishful thinking’s cyan skin. Now, the cheery blueness had dimmed. The fire had gone out.
“Kāya?” I asked. There was no answer.
“Brion? Here, kitty kitty. Here, pussy pussy pussy.” No sign of him either, the lionkin head priest that had deceived Nola and stolen our energems. We had three of them back, but I wouldn’t stop until we reclaimed them all and put a leash on the double-crossing feline.
An uncharacteristic stillness ran through the temple, as if the goddess of exploding rabbits hadn’t made this building her home yet. I pressed forward, past the undisturbed pews and the empty altar, to a large door at the temple’s rear.
Akrin’s silver minion still followed my every move. He nodded his smooth reflective head as I pushed open the door to a long, narrow room that served as the vestry. Eranza’s blue pants and blouses hung on hangers here, left behind when Gowes’ head priest last departed the temple.
A small desk sat against one wall, with happy little trinkets and a feather quill next to piles of Eranza’s notes and drawings. An inspirational phrase that might make its way into a holiday worship. A doodle of Eranza standing alongside her god on a sunny day.
There was a long roll of parchment here that didn’t look like Eranza’s handiwork. Unrolling it revealed a complex diagram of a hollow cylindrical shape. It bore precise lines, equations, measurements of angles. A list of materials was scrawled in messy writing. It looked like a recipe. I held onto the scroll and pressed on.
A long corridor curved from the back of the vestry toward the steps to the temple’s belfry tower. I heard only the faintest sound from further ahead, but I followed it. To a door. I pressed my ear against it. Something inside sounded like running water.
“Brion?”
No reply. My stomach sank.
“Kāya?”
“Kāya’s not available,” said a voice that definitely belonged to Kāya.
“Kāya,” I said, “I know it’s you.” I bent my knees and gripped my weapon tighter, expecting her to burst through that door in an explosion of lilac smoke.
“Nope,” she said. “That’s not my name anymore. These days I go by ∉.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“∉,” Kāya replied. “It’s a symbol shaped like an ‘E’ with a sort of line through it. I pronounce it like this.” She made a sound that was mostly like vowels with a slight gag at the end.
“Kāya,” I said. “You’re already the only one that uses that ridiculous accent mark. Now you want to be a symbol?”
“I’m reinventing myself,” she said. “It’s how I stay relevant and cool.”
“If you want to stay alive,” I said, “you’ll give up this association with Duul. He’s using you. He’ll toss you aside like a sack of used tea bags.”
“I reuse tea bags,” she said.
“And that’s very environmentally friendly, but not everyone does! Including Duul.” I kicked the door, but it held firm. “Open up, Kāya!” I kicked again, forcing the wooden doorframe to crack near the hinges.
“I told you,” she said, “to call me ∉!”
“Fine,” I said. “Euwaughch, divine mother of the wingding, goddess of uncomfortable typography. I’m coming in there!” I lifted my foot one more time and stomped the door’s face.
The door swung inward with full force, revealing the purple goddess. She was in a small room. Sitting. On a toilet.
“I can’t un-see this,” I said. “I can’t ever un-see this.”
The goddess’s only clothing was a black corset that covered her privates, her stomach, and her lower cleavage all in one continuous piece of tight fabric. I didn’t want to think about her relieving herself in that getup, let alone witness it. Two large, green eyes were painted on her corset, one on each breast. They had minds of their own, tracking me with their pupils, watching me trying desperately not to watch what came next.
Kāya stood up, making things infinitely worse. She reached down and fastened the straps on her corseted one-piece, tucking all of her bits back into the places they belonged. “How’s that?” she asked. “A little more dignified?”
I reluctantly looked her over. “You have more adjusting to do. You have a holy case of cameltoe.”
She flared her nostrils and tossed her long dark ponytail behind her. “That’s rude. Would you talk to your mother that way?”
“First, no, the words ‘Mom, you have cameltoe’ would never leave my lips. Second, my mother is long gone. She left me at an orphanage well before I could form memories.”
“Oh,” Kāya said. “Sorry to dredge that up.”
I shrugged. “If you didn’t make everything uncomfortable all the time, you wouldn’t be you.”
The exchange had left me unsettled and unfocused. When Kāya reached for her crotch with one hand and pointed her finger in a “turn around and give me privacy” motion, I stupidly did just that.
One second. That’s how long it took to realize Kāya had harnessed the power of her awkward moments to take control of a situation I had formerly owned. She was trapped in a small room, in a compromising position, while I blocked the door with a weapon made of f
atal vile ore. By the time I spun back around, it was too late. She held a small lilac anibomb in her hands.
“Catch!” she said, tossing that live grenade in the air.
My Vile Lance clattered to the floor as I raised both hands high overhead, catching that rabbit-shaped creature before it could destroy me or the portion of the building we stood in. Akrin’s useless familiar just stood there behind me, inert.
“What would happen,” Kāya said, “if you dropped my little familiar?” She stepped toward me. I shook my head very slowly.
“Goddess,” I said, which was infinitely more respectable than mumbling through her new symbolic name. “Don’t do this. Please.”
“Now he begs,” she said. She placed her hands on my hips, then crept her fingers up, poking them into my sides, trailing up toward my underarms.
I twitched and laughed despite myself. She didn’t care that this bomb would blast us both, she was going to tickle me to death.
And the worst part was, she hadn’t even washed her hands first.
“As much as I’d like to keep this going,” Kāya said, “I have a dedication to attend to. Try not to let your arms fall asleep.”
She brushed past me and sauntered up the steps that led to the top of the temple.
I craned my neck to peek at the silver pawn, but he wasn’t bothered at all by this predicament. He wouldn’t spring into action until there were humans to recruit.
A noise behind the toilet drew my attention. “Now what?” I asked. “Gods help me, I will throw this anibomb and run like hell.”
“Darn it!” a man’s voice said. “Too clumsy for proper sneaking. It’s me, Greggin with three G’s!”
“Greggin,” I asked, “how long have you been back there?”
“I’m sure this looks tremendously bad for me,” Greggin said, “but I promise I can explain.”
The little blue elf climbed out from behind the toilet. I knew he was there, because I sort of saw him, but I kept glancing away. It was like my mind thought I should look at him, but I shouldn’t bother remembering he was there.
“Fine,” I said, “explain to me why you were perving out in the women’s restroom.”
“My sneak socks weren’t working before because one was inside out.” He lifted one foot toward me as proof. He wore no shoes, just thick, coarse socks that stretched almost to his knee. “Once I got that fixed I was able to march through the temple without anyone noticing. Even these bomb-type familiars don’t react to me.
“I was here in the bathroom peeking out the rear window when the goddess came in. I didn’t watch her business though, I have too much respect for the divine for that.”
“Okay,” I said, “you were in here the whole time and managed to avoid visual trauma. Kudos. Actually, I’m glad to run into you. I have a little problem on my hands. In my hands. Do you still have any of those instakill runes?”
“Yes,” he said. “Will one be enough?”
“Better make it two,” I said.
I struggled to keep an eye on him while he dug two small stones from the pouch at his side. He held them to his mouth, muttered something unintelligible, and the stones crumbled to dust in his palm. After a brief pulse of light, the anibomb over my head burst with a splash of lilac liquid. The threat was gone, even if it did slick my hair with the remnants of its goopy lifeblood.
“Now,” I said, shaking the pins and needles from my arms. “What was so interesting about the bathroom window?”
“It’s rare for anyone other than a deity or head priest to come this far into a temple,” Greggin said. “I’ve been exploring every nook, on the assumption that neither Gowes nor Kāya are in true control of it, so it’s really just sort of abandoned at the moment. While I was inspecting the divine commode, I noticed something glowing outside the window. Come look.”
He was right. Behind the temple sat a small graveyard, with tombstones marking the graves of the city’s dead. Adventurers usually got special treatment, buried in expensive catacombs under the temples that sent them off on their ultimate quests. The common folk, however, were tucked behind the temple out of sight and settled for small shards of rock with their names hastily scratched instead of massive tombs covered with engravings that memorialized their heroic deeds.
“I see it,” I said. “It’s a lumentor. There are dozens in the city, the souls of the dead returned through the rift. Unless…” This person — this ghost — knelt by a tombstone. She had long hair, but it was impossible to judge its color. She was made of white light like the lumentors I had seen, but she wasn’t violent, and she didn’t cower in the shade. A hairband across her head kept her face clear, and she stared at that grave through hollowed eyes.
“I’ve seen that face, that hairband,” I said. “She died on the streets here.”
“It’s not unheard of,” Greggin said, pacing behind me, “for a soul to linger. I was observing her when Kāya entered. My socks hid me from view, so I just stayed still and hoped it would be over soon. She won’t last long out in the open like that, the sun—”
The little elf gasped and snatched a roll of parchment from the floor. I didn’t realize I dropped it when I moved to catch Kāya’s anibomb.
“Do you have any idea what this is?” he asked, unfurling the roll of paper.
“A geometry puzzle I don’t care to solve?” I asked.
“These are blueprints,” he said. “For a shrine, but no one has built a shrine in a hundred years.”
“Is that different than a temple?” I asked.
“Very,” he said. “There aren’t many texts on the topic since most of our historical tomes failed to survive the first god war. What we know is that the gods originally founded their own cities and built temples, much as they do today. However, a god could build a shrine so that their worshippers’ souls would feed another god as well, one that lived in another city.
“A shrine creates a sort of echo chamber,” he continued. “Yes, it attracts a portion of the nourishing soul vibrations and channels them toward another god. But it also reverberates, sending some of those vibes back to the original god, amplifying the original signal even as it divides it.
“As a theoretical example, the city’s god keeps 70% of the vibrations, sends 30% through to the god associated with the shrine, then the shrine bounces back a bonus 30% of what it receives. Now the original god has 79%, and the receiving god keeps 30%. It increases the overall energy!
“The best part is that additional shrines don’t detract from the first god’s soul energy any further, but its reflection bonus stacks with the other shrines. A second shrine would feed back another 9% to the city’s founding god, for a total of 88%. A third shrine bumps it another nine points to 97%. With a fourth shrine, that god would amplify her own nourishment well above the original 100% mark. The actual numbers depend on the skill of the shrine builder, but you get the point.
“Once the gods realized this potential, they created a vast network of shrines. Then the drama started. This god and that goddess fought, so they canceled each other’s shrines. Each asked the gods to whom they maintained shrines to cut off the other deities they fought with. The politics became too much.
“Shrines have become a thing of the past,” Greggin concluded, handing back the blueprints. “Things are much simpler now.”
“But Kāya is building a shrine,” I said. “To Duul?”
“That’s a good guess,” Greggin said. “There’s no way to tell until she finishes dedicating it. I assume that’s what all that magic light is about at the top of the temple’s bell tower.”
“I can’t let her finish this ritual,” I said, tucking the folded up paper into my pocket. “Greggin, this is the end of the line. You need to get out of here.”
“And miss witnessing the first shrine in a century?” he asked. “I think not. Divinity school is not for cowards. Onward!”
+22
I stalked up the spiral steps to the temple’s final level, a silver pawn an
d a blue-skinned elf trailing behind me. Beyond this wooden door was the temple’s belfry, and Kāya. It creaked open after a slight nudge.
In the center of the small room was a stone cylinder. It was hollow, and would have formed a perfect circle of stone except that its walls failed to meet in the middle, forming more of a “C” shape instead. Kāya knelt inside it.
This structure looked roughly like the shape on Brion’s blueprints, but it wasn’t the shrine itself that scared me; it was the dozen women surrounding it. Each held an eyeless lilac rabbit in her arms, and an expression of pure terror on her face.
The shrine’s walls began to pulsate. Lines cracked along the cylinder’s smooth surface, pulsing in Kāya’s signature lilac hue as the walls deepened to charcoal, then pitch black. Kāya was lost in the effort of her dedication ceremony. I was powerless to interrupt her though. If I stepped inside that room, those bombs and those women would all explode.
Akrin’s familiar brushed past me, marching into the bell tower as if the hostile goddess were irrelevant. In a way, she was. The pawn’s only purpose was to find new citizens to grow Akrin’s human city, and these twelve women were prime candidates. The pawn marched toward the unfinished shrine and sent a ripple of silver magic outward, washing over Kāya and the women at the edge of its blast radius.
Kāya turned back, unaffected. The women, however, took on a silver sheen as the time-halting spell encompassed them.
“You can drop those,” Akrin called from outside. He hovered near one of the tower’s arched windows while the women, immobilized, didn’t drop anything. “I take it you girls are ready to start a new life in the glorious city of Roseknob, soon to be the largest in all the world! If so, just aim to climb over the city’s southern wall and make your way there. I’ve got the rest.”
“These are my worshippers!” Kāya said, climbing from the floor. The shrine dulled, but didn’t darken. Some of the energy she had poured into it remained, thick veins of lilac throbbing in the cylinder’s core. “They pledged fealty to me!”
