by S. C. Stokes
Not that I'd worked any such malady into the illusion. I'd simply used the mist to cover my advance. It took the figures all of a second to spot me and raise their assault rifles. I dove behind a piece of fallen masonry as the first of the Inquisition’s foot soldiers loosed a burst in my direction.
Bullets ricocheted off the stone wall and floor all around me, sending chips of fragments of stone and dust spraying from the impacts. The three soldiers split in an effort to flank me. The soldier on the right got lucky. His path took him onto the block that I had entered the chamber on. It was safe.
There was a grinding whir from the tile beside it. The whir was followed by a rush of air and a gout of flame erupted from one of the holes in the tile. The flames consumed the soldier, and his screams filled the chamber.
The third companion stepped onto another tile and was greeted by dozens of razor-sharp projectiles that launched at the space from multiple angles. The man fell to the floor. Dozens of razor sharp stakes the size of a human finger stuck out of his exposed flesh. He’d been turned into a pincushion in a matter of seconds.
The soldier that remained marked the square he stood on as others appeared through the mist behind him. The numbers were spiraling out of control quickly. Fortunately, none of them had seen the path I'd taken to get where I was.
A huge silhouette came through the mist, head and shoulders above the men around him. He surveyed the chamber, his mask facing down toward the floor as he searched for something.
I caught my breath until he shouted to his men.
“Follow the water. The trail of water marks the safe passage.”
My heart sank. I looked behind me. Sure enough, my soaked slacks and boots had left a visible trail of water from where I'd entered. The soldiers moved quickly, confident in their chosen path.
I needed to buy some time and cover my tracks. I held out a hand and whispered, “Fuego.”
Wisps of flame fanned to life above my outstretched hand as a fireball bigger than a basketball coalesced before me. Satisfied, I turned and hurled it at my pursuers. The superheated ball of flames whistled past the first soldier’s shoulder, but I'd chosen my target carefully: the man barking the orders. The one whose voice I recognized as ordering his subordinates to murder a child.
The ball of flames crossed the hall and I smiled with grim satisfaction as it raced toward him. At the last moment, he grabbed the soldier beside him and thrust him into the path of the fireball.
The human shield let out a scream as the blaze caught, but his callous commander shoved him out of the way. The commander raised his assault rifle and let out a short burst, driving me back into cover.
I groaned. My spell missed its mark, but the purpose of the flames had been twofold. Naturally, I'd hoped to get lucky with their leader, but I'd also hoped the sizzling inferno would do something about the water trail I had left through the chamber. It wasn't perfect but it would have to do.
Something bounced across the chamber floor. I stole a glance around the edge of the broken stone and spotted a grenade skittering across the floor. The grenade came to rest right behind the stone I was sheltering behind.
I had no choice. If I moved, I’d be exposing myself to the blast. If I didn’t, it could destroy my cover, leaving me in the open.
The grenade detonated before I could make up my mind, the force of the blast bracketing the stone and shifting it a good few inches as it slammed into my back. Stone shrapnel whizzed past me. Fortunately, the shattered masonry had taken the worst of the impact and sheltered me from the blast.
My luck wouldn’t hold out for a second, so I took off. Racing across the chamber, I darted right onto the next safe tile. Bullets whizzed about me as I threw myself forward, tucking into a roll and coming to a halt behind the next piece of fallen stone.
I was almost through the chamber. Up ahead, the entrance to the inner sanctum loomed. The thick white mist billowed through the tunnel. Behind me, the Inquisition scrambled after me.
I wasn’t going to make it in time. They were everywhere.
I didn’t even know what the mist was. My best guess was that it was another trap. From the carnage behind me, it seemed a distinct possibility.
With the Inquisition behind me, traps all around me, and a potentially deadly path ahead I was starting to really reconsider the choices I had made in my life.
Murdoch's words came back to my mind and a gradual descent into madness didn’t seem so bad. It certainly compared favorably to being used for target practice in the annex of a forsaken temple in the tropics of Panama.
“That's quitter talk,” I told myself.
I needed to move, and a shield was my only option. I couldn't just sit here slinging spells at the Inquisition. Sooner or later, I'd run out of juice or be overwhelmed.
I could raise a shield behind me and run for the doorway. It was a gamble, but it was the best I had before me.
Such a shield would draw power proportional to the impact it absorbed. An entire magazine from an assault rifle would be taxing. Trying to hold off the combined might of the Inquisition was doomed to failure. Likely in a matter of seconds.
I needed more time than that to reach the passage, and I needed more power.
The mask in my hand thrummed in response to my unspoken plea.
The arcane relic seemed to exude raw power.
I had felt such promises before. Power always comes at a price, and while it was common for such relics to be infused with power, one had to be mindful of where it had come from. Witches and wizards would enchant jewelry or other items like staves so that they could unleash far more power in battle than they could normally manage. It gave them greater flexibility in a fight and more stamina when outnumbered by their foes.
In my hand, I held the Máscara de la Muerte. The death mask of the high priestess of the Brujas de Sangre. And here at the seat of her power, it was singing with arcane energy. I clutched the mask in my hand and a single overwhelming thought rang in my mind. It wasn't my own voice. No, it was a woman’s voice. Ancient, powerful, and almost seductive in its promise of power.
“Put it on,” the voice commanded.
That's not good. Hearing the voices of the dead was never a good thing. I remembered the words of my father. He spoke of a maddening voice that pushed him to the edge of his sanity. Was this what he heard every day?
“Don't argue with me, child. Put on the mask,” the voice demanded. “There is more at stake than your petty debt.”
I turned over the mask, having memorized the last few tiles I needed to cross, and weighed my choices. It was almost certainly a terrible idea, but I needed more power than I had to make it to the door.
Gunfire filled the chamber as bullets impacted all around me.
“Even if you make it on your own, the mist will kill you. Put it on,” the voice said.
The overwhelming desire to put on the mask filled my mind. It was as if something had seized control of my being. The compulsion came from within me, but acted of its own accord.
I felt my hand raise the mask to my face and as the timber touched my flesh it took hold of me.
The ancient mask clung to my face without assistance. Power surged through my being, sending a shiver racing down my spine. I stood and faced down the Inquisition. With one hand, I swept a lance of crimson energy through the chamber. It carved straight through a cluster of the gathered soldiers, splitting them from shoulder to hip like they were made of paper.
Such a spell should have been taxing but the exertion didn’t even register. Power coursed through me and it felt great.
“Come get some,” I hollered.
I motioned at the wall beside them, as if raking it with my hands.
“Venir!” I bellowed. Stone fountained outward as if the walls had exploded. The stone shrapnel killed two more soldiers and blasted a third onto one of the trapped tiles. He died as had his companions before him, lanced with dozens of tiny spears. The Inquisition went to ground as I s
tared them down, radiating power and deadly majesty.
Looking ahead, the central path lay open. My vision grew red, and I could no longer see the mist.
That’s interesting. The mask had to act like some kind of protection. That was what the voice had meant. The mask was necessary to pass safely through the mist into the temple's inner sanctum.
The office of high priestess officiated in the rites of the temple. Without the mask, no others could access the temple or its secrets. The skeletons in the tunnel made a lot more sense now. They had never stood a chance of entering the temple unbidden.
I raised a shield behind me, a wall of crimson energy eight feet wide and seven feet tall. The Inquisition’s shots ricocheted uselessly off it. Bolstered by the mask’s power, I barely felt them register. At the entrance to the tunnel a lone skeleton stood, his morion still resting on his head. He had made it further than his companions, but he had not been permitted to enter the temple’s inner sanctum.
I stepped past him and plunged into the pitch-black tunnel. The floor rose upward as I went, and the noise of the inquisition fell away behind me.
The feminine voice spoke inside my mind.
“Welcome home, Seth.”
16
I strode through the mist choked passage into the temple. I could feel the mist all around me, a cool lingering sensation against my skin, but yet through the red tinged vision of the mask I could see nothing.
Footsteps echoed behind me, the Inquisition hot on my heels. I cursed my luck and shortsightedness for helping guide them through the entrance hall.
I felt rather than saw something enter the tunnel behind me. The footsteps were closer than I would have thought possible.
A shrill scream split the air. I stopped and turned, looking back toward the entrance hall. A figure crawled on its hands and knees towards me. The figure rose up, one hand stretched out toward me, but I knew in my heart it was already too late for that. They were dead. They simply didn’t know it yet.
The figure collapsed on the floor of the tunnel. It was still wearing its gas mask but it had made no difference. The mist was just as deadly whether it was inhaled or not.
I thanked my lucky stars that I had found the mask. Without it, there would have been no safe passage into the temple.
“Your lucky stars had nothing to do with it, and to think you were almost stupid enough not to listen,” the voice in my head said.
I was in a dangerous predicament. I’d always lived my life on the premise that disembodied voices in my mind were a bad thing, and here there was one that had just spared me from certain death. Why? To what end?
Could I honestly trust the voice? My head told me I knew better. Was it the same voice that tormented my father and had driven my grandfather to take his own life? It was impossible to tell but it warranted caution.
With the knowledge that I was protected by the mist, I pushed deeper into the temple. The entrance hall faded into the distance behind me as I climbed higher. In spite of the darkness, the walls were still visible through the augmented sight of the mask. The tunnel continued to climb.
Up ahead the walls vanished, opening into a cavernous space. I stepped over an unseen threshold and found myself in a room that was perhaps fifteen feet square. Torches flared to life around the chamber. It was as if the temple itself was aware of the presence of the mask. Three torches were set in golden brackets along each wall. They were almost blindingly bright when viewed through the mask.
I could no longer feel the mist against my flesh. I reached out with my senses, searching for danger but felt none. I couldn’t see clearly so I reached for my face and peeled away the timber. There was a sucking noise as it parted from my flesh and I feared that it had taken a layer of my skin with it.
The chamber was formed from a yellow sandstone. The walls themselves looked like a two-tiered hedge, in that one rose up roughly to my waist, and then behind it a second tier rose to meet the chamber’s roof. Carved into the surface of the wall were a series of arcane runes that glowed with a faint reddish hue.
Even from where I stood, I could feel the power of the wards. The temple might have been abandoned but the wards still burned with defiance, willing anyone foolish enough to try to break through them. There was no way out of the chamber but the entrance I had used.
Set in the center of the square chamber was an altar. It was formed from the same sandstone as the rest of the room. The altar was two feet high, a foot wide, and three feet long. It rose from the floor in a single slab. The entire affair was completely seamless but for a recess in the top of the altar.
The gap was a little wider than the palm of my hand and it seemed to be filled with something. I lay my hand over the recess and extended my will, searching for any sign of arcane traps that might have been set on the altar, but found none. I ran my hand through the granular sand that filled the recess. It moved readily but fell back into place as soon as I removed my hand.
I pushed my hand deeper, and it sank into the sand until it reached my elbow. It seemed the height of the altar was filled with the substance.
It had to be a test of some kind. The entire temple led to this point. This had to be the entrance to the inner sanctum, but if it was, there were no obvious paths forward and I had no intention of going back the way I had come.
I looked to the mask for guidance. The nose had helped me navigate the deadly entrance hall and it had protected me from the threat posed by the fog. There had to be another clue. The inscription my father had taught me ran down one side of the mask. Wealth begets misery. A useful proverb, but I couldn’t see how it was relevant here. On the other side it read, ‘All fates are not equal,’ which made even less sense as there was only a single path leading to this point. Or was there? I could hardly go back now and take a closer look.
I looked at the third inscription. ‘Tradition begins with blood’.
None of them gave any hint as to the course I should take, but on the back of the mask was a carving that resembled a ceramic bowl and over it, a teardrop, perhaps intended to be a droplet of blood.
The indentation in the altar was square and didn't resemble the pattern of the bowl at all. I considered testing it with a drop of my own blood, but paused. Blood magic was a potent force and I had no way of knowing how the altar would react. Trial and error was a dangerous choice when dealing with unknown magic. I would be better served spending the time to solve the puzzle rather than risk it backfiring in my face.
I gave a moment’s thought to trying to blast my way into the temple's inner sanctum, but there was no way of knowing how thick the walls were. I could well bring down the entire temple on top of me. Moreover, I got the sensation that the runes inscribed in the walls had more than enough juice left in them to really make me regret that course of action.
Clearly, the Spanish conquistadors had never made it this far. The last body I'd found had been in the entrance to the mist filled hallway. Perhaps that was why they had buried the temple. Unable to enter it, they had given up and buried its secrets along with the remnants of the heretical witch cult deep beneath the earth.
“Any help here?” I asked, turning to the voice in my head.
There was a sigh, and the voice replied, “You’re my heir. If you’re worthy, you’ll figure it out.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll die here in this room,” the voice replied, not a hint of concern evident in her voice.
I struck the altar with my fist. “Why bother helping me at all?”
“I couldn’t have the mask falling back into their hands,” she replied. “You have no idea what they have planned with it. Better you make it this far and die here, than they succeed in desecrating our temple.”
There was a ruthless economy in her words that gave me pause. The mask had found its way out of the temple. She’d ensured it made its way back inside where it would remain safe. Clearly, I could not rely on her for aid, so I returned my mind to the task
at hand.
I thrust my hand back into the sand, testing its depth. My arm plunged deep, sinking past the elbow before I found the base of it. At the bottom of the recess was something hard. It felt cold and metallic beneath my hand. As I pressed upon it, I could feel some give in it. Just a little, but enough to tell me it could move.
Shifting my weight, I pushed as hard as I could but buffered by the layer of sand, and the awkward size of the recess meant I couldn't really bring my weight to bear against it. I summoned my will into a blast of kinetic energy and channeled it through my fist, hoping it would get the job done.
The blast ran down my arm, into the recess, kicking sand up into my face. The glyphs on the altar flared red at the arcane assault but nothing moved. I stepped back and noticed that the runes throughout the chamber were glowing more brightly than they had before. The temple hadn't liked that at all. If the altar was a test, destroying it might prevent me from accessing the temple’s secrets forever.
I ran my hands over the altar, smoothing the sand back into the recess. As I did, the runes faded back to a dull glow.
What would my forebears have done? I thought of my ancestors, the ancient order of priestesses who had worked in the temple. This had been their home. If they were trying to protect it, how would they keep others from discovering its secrets?
Certainly their reputation for blood sacrifice would keep all but the most intrepid at bay. But what about those that wouldn't be deterred? The temple would need its own countermeasures. It certainly explained the entrance hall with its many traps and deadly mechanisms.
