“Yes, I'm awake” Hawk answered, and then winced. Speaking was a mistake. A very, very big mistake. Her head felt like the Army Core of Engineers were using the drill on her cranium. “I don’t suppose you have a cure for a headache, do you?”

“Under normal circumstances, I would. A simple cantrip that usually handles most pains. But I spent a great deal of time rummaging around in your head already, and I’m afraid any further efforts will only make the headache worse.”

Hawk sat all the way up, despite the pain. She wasn’t in her fatigues anymore, but in a white silk shift that felt almost delightful. She ignored how nice it felt. “You were inside my head? Where the fuck are my clothes? Where am I?”

The man waited for her to calm down. “Those are several questions. Am I to have leave to answer?”

She made herself calm down. It wasn’t this…person’s fault she was here, after all. She’d only been dropped in their lap by a weird monster. “I’m sorry. I’m just…what did you mean you were inside my head?”

“To answer your latter questions first, you are in the Temple of Light, where you were dropped by a particularly nasty manifestation of the Shadowbeast. It might even have been the Shadowmaster themselves. Never good, clashing so directly. I recommend subtlety next time; they prefer it. As it was a manifestation, we had to make sure you were no devotee of the Shadow or any of its allies. So a rather unkind but thorough assessment of your mind was required.”

“Right,” Hawk said. “How?”

“Well, the unconscious mind is a simple nut to crack, though my methods are a bit hard on the meat. I was trained by the Archon of Earth and Nasheth Herself, to the Gods’ own pleasure, so of course I had to learn gentleness by rote. Your clothing was destroyed, for which I apologize.” The speaker now leaned over her bed. “This is your breakfast. You have been asleep for two days.”

She winced, knowing that everything else aside, she needed that sleep, and she took the tray he offered because she didn’t have much of a choice. She could starve by refusing his food. Her MREs were in her rucksack back in the geode. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head and mask. The blank glare of his eye-holes were unsettling.

“My name is Hawk West. I’m a Doctor. Do you know what that is?” She waited, and he shook his head, sending the band of silver in his mask sparkling. The rest of it looked like ivory. There were a few baubles hanging here and there. Now that she was looking she also spotted Honeypot abdomins on his belt, fashioned into carry-all containers. One of the cups on her tray was also gaster-like, though the leathery feel was practically ossified. Ivory. She glanced once at the Archon’s mask. She hoped it wasn’t actually ivory. That’d be a big bone. “It means I’m very educated on a particular subject.” She paused. “Though I don’t think that education will be useful here.”

This earned her a nod. “I assumed you were educated. You seem quite gifted in the Sacred Tongue.”

“The Sacred…” she trailed off, shaking her head.

“The words of the Gods. It is how we are conversing now. Your name is Hawkwest?” he said, turning it all into one word.

“No. Two words. Hawk, my first name,” she made something of a square with her fingers. “West, my family name. Well, it’s my husband’s family name. In our…land,” she chickened out of explaining what Earth was to this person. “Wives take the husband’s family name if they want to.” She thought a moment about her mother, nineteen boxes of cake pearls, and a pile of very ugly yarn. All those things belonged to another Hawk, on another planet…but still. “I wanted to.”

“That is our directive towards women as well, though we view it as less a choice and more an obligation. Please, eat.”

The food she’d been brought looked pretty good, for somewhere that didn’t seem to have microwaves or refridgerators. Two or three small rounds of flatbread, a white-fleshed root that had been cooked and that smelled like sunflower seeds, a few strips of medium-well meat (though she suspected this was less ‘medium rare’ and more ‘cooked’ to the stranger) and a sweet-and-sour sauce to pour over all of it. She tried a very small bite of each. It all seemed edible. The sauce was delicious, and served in the honeypot bowl. It definitely had honeypot nectar as an ingredient. “What’s your name?” She said, holding the flatbread in one hand.

This seemed to offend the stranger. “Truly? You ask that? Of me?”

Oh shit. She’d stepped on a land-mine without a warning. Hurriedly, she assembled the best explanation she could. “Forgive me, sir. Where I’m from, we don’t have…” she hesitated. “Where we don’t have Shadowbeasts. Or any food like this. Your sacred language is just…language, to us. It’s the words we use every day. So I’m sorry I don’t know your customs.”

A soft breath. “So you do claim to be from the Gods’ own world?”

Oh, GOD, she thought. She’d just jumped from a slightly wobbly subject to one suspended over lethal fire, the sword of Damocles in verbal form. An alien religion. God help her. “No,” she said this very firmly. “We are not your Gods. We did not come from a world with Gods. We have nothing to do with your Gods. My people are here because someone—an idiot—ripped a hole between…between my home and here. That’s the best I can explain it right now. And a whole bunch of my people fell down that hole. Now, I’m here to find them. I don’t know your customs. I don’t know how to…how to handle your God or their traditions.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to ask for your patience.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“So you don’t know what it means, that you were brought here by the Shadowbeast?” the man said. “And you still claim to be from the world beyond the Nexus?”

“What’s the nexus?” Hawk said.

“The spires of crystal above our head, or rather at their terminus, the great concatenations of them. The Nexus. Created by the Shadowmaster to cut us off from the God-World. A great calamity…and one we’ve lived with for two hundred years.”

Okay, Hawk thought, and neatly dodged every fact that left her feeling overwhelmed. She’d ask about Shadow masters and nexuses when she wasn’t in a stranger’s bed. “Well…that’s a lot. But to get back to the subject…I don’t know why it offends you that I asked for your name. I apologize for the slight.”

This brought a brightening of this person, though she couldn’t see if he actually smiled. “Well, then. It is a bit offensive, but not overly much. I was surprised, more than offended, by your question. It seemed like you meant it.”

“I did.”

“I am Archon of the Temple of Light. In theory, I am Archon for every Temple to the Master of Light, and I am His mouthpiece. And I will assume that is a bit more than you wanted to know. What you need to know, right now, is that in becoming Archon, one surrenders one’s own name and identity. We become as slaves and mouthpieces for our God.”

“So…something like a priest.” She said.

A shake of the masked head. “We are more than priests. We speak for the God, my lady of Elsewhere, wherever he or she may be. We also share in their power, though mine does come from elsewhere, because my God is dead.”

This statement fell like lead, and the Archon watched her as if she were supposed to be shocked. But she didn’t know enough to be shocked. Comparative mythology, she thought, and did her best not to roll her eyes. “So do the Gods live in the temples? Do you like…tend a sacred flame?” God she was not equipped to ask questions about religion. She felt like she was asking questions about Narnia, or Grim’s Fairy Tales.

Maybe I am, she thought, and had to bury her hysteria in her food.

“Well, something like that. Do try the Marrowroot, it’s especially good this year. Yes. In most temples the God lives in Their house, and sends Their Archon to do Their bidding. And in those Houses it is a yoke of some burden. No one sane wants to be Archon, you understand. But in my case, I am merely…keeping stock.” He gestured around the small, close, and oddly comfortable room they sat in. The walls of glowing crystal were comforting, like maybe being inside of a womb. “The Master of Light does not live in His House…or in anyone’s House. The God is fled, for He is dead. I suppose I could make use of His Rooms in the Temple—it is said all Archons may benefit from the largesse of their God as the price of their service—but I like my little quarters, and what little life I may glean from the excess. There are also the people’s tithes…what little there may be.”

“What sort of meat is this?” Hawk asked, pointing a two-pronged fork at the little strips.

“Rabbit,” answered the Archon. “Do they not even have rabbits where you are from?”

“No. We have rabbits. We’ve got lots of rabbits.” She ate the meat. It tasted pretty good. Very gamey, but the Archon (or, more likely, whoever cooked this donation to the Archon) had bridged that flavor very well with a lavender-like herb. Lavender and rosemary. Very herbs de provence. “This isn’t bad.”

“Thank you. I bred the rabbits myself. Furs and meat are a bit much to expect from a tithe…especially to a God who hears no prayers.” He held out a fired ceremic bowl to Hawk. It was dark black, with a radiant streak of blue and gold iridescence down one side. Whatever was inside of it smelled fragrant. If scent had color, these were jewel tones. She hesitated before taking the cup, and he managed to raise his mask without exposing a single inch of skin, took a sip, and turned the cup back to her. “It’s a juice made of Kine fruit and flowers. Quite delicious, and as I am Archon, unfermented.” This last line carried with it a note of regret.

“Can’t get drunk?” She said, and took a sip of the drink. Oh, it was spectacular. Smooth, cool, a creamy note, and just the right balance between tart and sweet. She’d compare it to passion fruit ice cream. She wondered what kind of fruit it came from. It had been sweetened with honeypots.

“It is forbidden,” the Archon agreed.

“Huh.” That didn’t surprise her. “How about women?”

“That is firmly forbidden. Though you would not be the first to try and make me break my vows.”

But she shook her head. “Just…trying to get a feel for who you and your religion are—”

“What is religion?” the Archon stumbled over the repeated word.

Hawk fumbled for a moment. “It’s…our word for the relationship between a human and their god.”

“Phagh,” the Archon made a disgusted sound. “One might as well talk about the relationship between the mouse and the cat.”

This surprised her. She busied herself with the delicious juice from the pretty cup, and watched the Archon out of the corner of her eye. She suspected he was doing the same from the safety of his mask. She’d never envied a piece of clothing quite so much. She decided to take a venture. “Weird statement from an Archon.”

“If you have never heard from us, how would you know I am strange?” This should have been delivered with a smile, an arched brow. All she got was the damned blank mask. Then he relaxed back into his own chair. “But I am odd. I serve a God who is not there, and perform a life of servitude in empty halls. You are the most interesting thing to happen in the Temple of Light for quite some time.”

She nodded, accepting it, and went right back to what bothered her the most. “So. You said you were inside my head?”

This actually got a small laugh. “Yes. Forgive me. I had to seek out traces of Shadow, or any other Gods that might have had a hand in you. Their touch is seldom so hidden as it would need to be, for you to belong to it, but…” he waved a hand from side to side. “You are clean. Or at least, unviolated by any God, let alone Shadow.”

“And this would have been a problem?” She asked.

“Well, if it were any God but Shadow, no. Though I would now be giving you a different sort of succor. One must always bend to the servants of the Gods, no matter how one feels about them. You would have been much celebrated. Likely in the Light’s own rooms, and from the Light’s own Table. But you are not that. You are, in fact, utterly mortal. And so the most I can offer you is what little I call my own.”

“Oh,” she said, and wondered just how much he had given her…and how hard it would be to replace her meal. “That’s…very kind of you.”

“And you’re suspicious of my kindness. Good. That will serve you well.”

“I need—”

“Rest. What thoughts I touched were fevered and heavy with grief. It made me thoroughly regret the violation. You will rest, because your body needs it, and your grief needs it more.”

“My husband—”

“Don’t tell me, yet.” A soft hand, male, but perfumed and well manicured, pressed against her lips. “What I know is a violation, and telling me your truths will not make it better. Time will diminish the effects of my sin. You will rest and let the bones of your sorrow lie buried for the night. We will exhume them all in the morrow.”

“Am I in your bed?” She asked.

“Yes. But tonight I am meant to tend to my God’s hearth. This bed would be fallow anyway. You may use it.”

And he took the cup from her, and the food. She laid back into her soft, furry pillow and watched the Archon carry the dirty dishes away.

She was asleep before he’d crossed all the way to the door.