Heleitia’s protection never wavered as we traveled step after careful step through the underground passage. The minutes stretched out, our senses exquisitely focused, but we found neither signs of traps nor creatures. Even the insects had all vanished; likely kept them at bay by the threat of soul corrosion. The feeling was like walking through syrup—an acidic, clingy morass.

Eventually, we came to a circular room about thirty yards in diameter. A staircase twisted around itself at the center leading up, while around the room passages traveled back into the city. They matched up to what we knew of the Arc of Knowledge, so odds were the openings led to the other temples.

The air was drier here, and a thin layer of dust covered a floor inscribed in a web of runes. They stretched from each of the passages and focused on the staircase, almost like it was a cable carrying magic up to the structure above us—which might not be that far off of a supposition with how the Temple of Wanting had been sending silverlight to the pyramid.

Do the other temples also collect light, or do they serve some other magical purpose? I wondered. My curiosity pricked at me to go find out. Maybe once everything was said and done I would.

For now, I noted how the big, empty room didn’t feel empty. No ghosts, but there was an anticipation in my belly, a dull ache in my teeth, a… a sense that something was present but out of sight. Whatever magics these enchantments held, they were active, even if the Deer God and I had wrecked one of its foundations. But this was more than magic I sensed.

“Do you feel it?” I signed.

Ikfael nodded as she used the lantern to illuminate the area around the staircase. It looked like we’d have to climb to get a proper view of the room above.

“When Diriktot came to reward me for helping you, the god brought me to… he called it a rest stop—it was where he introduced me to coffee. That place felt like this.”

I’d been angling for a better view up the staircase, but my feet stopped at hearing her description. “Are you saying we’re dealing with a god?”

Ikfael smacked my shoulder. “Don’t jump to the least steady of stones. This is a temple, so it of course has the characteristics of one.” Then more gently, she signed, “Also, when spirits of the land grow in power…”

“Don’t tell me,” I signed. “They approach divinity.”

“You knew?” Ikfael asked, surprised.

“Not for certain,” I replied, “but it makes sense given how much of everything else is on a spectrum. Why not that too? I mean, people worship the spirits of the land for a reason, right?”

“They do,” Ikfael signed.

“So… is Heleitia a god?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Our zasha does not have the qualifications.”

“But Amleila might,” I signed, testing the idea.

Ikfael nodded slowly in consideration. “There is the chance.”

“Are we…” I paused to consider my words. “Are we on a fool’s errand?”

Ikfael thought about the question before responding, “Our zasha has waited for centuries for a path to emerge. She would not spoil it on those who would waste the opportunity. Moreover, for an exchange of this scope, the benefit to those participating will be enormous. You and I will be rewarded. The balance demands it.”

###

The room above contained the biggest dasekua I’d ever seen. A full ten yards in diameter, the disk floated in the air above the staircase’s landing. It had clearly seen better days; unlike the enchanted stonework elsewhere, the city core showed evidence of damage. There were chunks missing, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.

The ceiling above was domed, and a set of stairs to one side led to a balcony circling the room. Someone standing on that second floor could look down at the disk’s surface. A short platform jutted out, looking like one could even stand partially over it.

Five circular depressions had been carved into the floor around the dasekua. They looked like the work spaces I’d seen in Albei’s pyramid—the Diakshan equivalent of a cubicle, though all that was left within them were piles of debris. There weren’t even the ghosts of long-gone clerks.

The feeling of spiritual fullness continued into this space, as did the bitter scent in the air. The odor was stronger when we approached the room’s only exit. On the other side was the landing to a narrow spiral staircase that corkscrewed up through the stone.

On my shoulder, Ikfael nodded to let me know she was ready to move on. She snaked the lantern up to illuminate the steps ahead. It seemed none of the surfaces were covered in runes. Brushing the dust aside, I noted how the stone was discolored compared to the other spaces we’d found.

I took the steps one at a time, testing each as I went. It was claustrophobic, but there were no traps, and the stone held my weight. So upward we went about two and a half stories. The distance seemed to be enough to rise above the dome in the dasekua room and add a healthy amount of padding in between.

At the top, we emerged from the floor into a massive flower-shaped room, the walls curving to match the shape of the petals engraved into the floor. It looked like a hibiscus to me, with the nearby stigma reaching up from the floor like a pole to connect to the ceiling above, which made me incredibly nervous.

The pole was only about four inches in diameter, so there was no way it could support the ceiling here. However, a closer look revealed that it was thickly inscribed with runes, so maybe magic carried the weight? Although…

I paced back to the stairs and oriented as best I could.

‘You’re right,’ Yuki said. ‘The flower is centered on the dasekua below.’

“The pole is some kind of connector, then? A part of a larger magical apparatus? But that still doesn’t explain how the ceiling is being held in place.”

“What’s this?” Ikfael asked, and once I’d explained, she said, “A clever enchanter can incorporate more than one form of magic in their creations. More importantly, the ceiling has held for a very long time. It will not fall on us now.”

“Probably not,” I said, but the nervousness didn’t go away. My whole previous life had been spent living in a region prone to earthquakes, and this big empty room gave me the heebie-jeebies. “Let’s get out of here.”

There were four exits, so I headed toward one at random. Then, I changed course to the direction indicated by Heleitia’s mark.

###

Outside of the flower room, the rest of the pyramid seemed similar to the one in Albei. There were meeting rooms, office and living areas, and even a multi-seat latrine. That last one we didn’t investigate too closely, but we poked through the others looking for anything of interest.

As we explored, it became clear that the people who’d once inhabited this place must have had time to evacuate with their precious belongings before disaster had befallen the city. Obviously, nothing wooden or textile survived the centuries in between, but there were also surprisingly few ceramics, statues, or bronzes left behind.

Even the candle stones that once would’ve been embedded in the walls had been pried loose.

Finally, we came across a kitchen whose stone shelves held stacks of cookware and drinking mugs. The adjacent room was also full of ceramics: big, empty pots so tightly packed together that only a small child could fit between them. Their interiors were discolored, and I wondered at what they could’ve contained.

Back in the kitchen, Ikfael asked, “Where did the people get their water?”

Which was a good question. There were stone basins with drains, yet there’d been no sign of wells or cisterns in any of the places we’d explored. The pots in the other room weren’t big enough to supply the needs of the people who’d lived and worked here.

“Magic?” I asked.

“It would’ve been a waste of mana,” Ikfael replied, “especially during the Long Dark.”

“They didn’t seem to be people who cared about wastage,” I remarked.

Ikfael nodded to acknowledge the observation, and we moved on.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

In a nearby dining hall, we found a couple of stone busts, their eyes made of jade. And a little farther along, we came across a ritual room containing a series of bone masks set into the walls; they’d quite literally been fused to the stone. A bronze long knife, green-patinaed with age, was also embedded in the floor, also merged. Neither Ikfael or I were willing to touch any of the pieces.

At the stairway leading up to the next level, we encountered a skeleton sprawled on the bottom step. Only a few of the larger bones were left, but his skull bore evidence of being caved in, probably by whoever had been in front of him at the time. His light was obviously missing, and who knew what else had been looted from his body.

What was left behind under the fragile bones was a small jade pendant of a bear, a collection of yellowed figurines—mostly of animals, but it included some people too—and a handful of bronze coins stamped with a stylized image of the sun on one side and the moon on the other.

None of the items appeared magical or cursed, so Ikfael put them in her pocket for distribution later. In an ideal world, they would’ve gone to a museum, but this was Diaksha. Such things didn’t exist, and the logistics of keeping anything simply for posterity would be enormous. I’d made my peace with that early on when the expedition had first formed.

At the top of the stairs, we found the remains of another body. This time the back of the skull had been shattered and the sternum clearly cracked in two; maybe it’d been a blow to the chest that sent the victim slamming into the wall? The pelvis and leg bones were mostly intact, and judging by those it seemed like it was a woman who had been killed.

She also wore a jade pendant, although this one was of an alligator. At her side was an enchanted pouch. It had to have been to be so shiny and supple, and inside were a collection of bronze needles, looking as new as the day they’d been forged. Each was about five inches long and thin enough to easily pierce through flesh.

The needles weren’t weighted for throwing, so they were likely meant for close-quarters, unless their owner had been Metal-Touched and could wield them that way. In any case, these were weapons meant for surprise and assassination.

Had someone been cleaning house on their way out of the pyramid? Using the chaos to get rid of their enemies? We left the questions behind us, along with the bones, but we took everything else. In addition to the pendant and the enchanted needles, there were more coins, a comb made from polished bone, and a gold ring studded with amethyst stars.

The next floor was more of the same but in greater numbers—more work and living areas, including the main doors into the temple. They were big enough to let a dragon through and were sealed tight, without anything resembling a lock or way to open them.

A direct path led from the doors to what must’ve been the main worship hall. At its center was a grand statue of a man crushing a snake’s skull under his foot. I thought it might be a representation of Barakas the Warrior, but closer examination revealed that the face was wrong and the symbology of the items surrounding him didn’t match up with what I knew of the god.

“Who do you think it is?” I whispered.

“Someone dead,” Ikfael replied. Then she gestured to the room’s far corner, where something gleamed.

Crouched within the shadows was a throne in the shape of jaguar. The thing was about twice my size and appeared to have been carved out of stucco then painted a deep blue. Embedded along the back and armrests were seashells and disks of gold and jade. They glimmered in the lantern’s light like stars.

Looking more closely, I found patches of the same blue paint around the rest of the room, but it hadn’t been preserved as well.

“Blue is the color of war,” I muttered.

Ikfael quirked her head. “That’s what the dolbecs say. It comes from their stories of fighting against the conquerors of Baxteiyel.”

Where the walls weren’t painted, they contained engravings of creatures being overwhelmed by human warriors. There were also alcoves with drainage holes at the bottom that looked to have been used for ritual bloodletting. We found small animal bones in one, though they disintegrated as soon as I poked them.

The people who’d built this place had been supremely confident in their capacity to dominate the local wildlife. And yet the worship hall had sat abandoned for centuries after the city had fallen. Truly, one had to be wary of hubris.

Ikfael and I eyed the gold and precious stones embedded in the throne, then agreed to come back later to get them. It’d take too long to carefully pry each piece free.

I thought the Deer God might spring loose from my body to nibble at any power left behind in the worship hall, but he remained tightly coiled around my gut, watching and waiting.

A doorway lay hidden behind the throne; it called to us.

###

A steady light shone at the top of an ornately carved spiral staircase. Ikfael and I crouched behind the topmost curve to observe if anything cast a shadow across the opening. So far, after about twenty minutes, nothing had. Nor had there been any sounds. Still, this was the first light we’d seen that hadn’t come from us, so we were being careful.

Our lantern was tucked safely away in Ikfael’s pocket.

“That’s a candle stone above us,” she signed.

Based on how the light hadn’t flickered once, that was likely true. And from the amount of light put out… “It’s more than one stone,” I signed.

Ikfael repositioned on my shoulder, though she continued to grip my hood in case I had to move suddenly.

‘There’ve been no shifts in the flow of qi,’ Yuki observed.

Did the occupants flee and leave the lights on behind them? I wondered.

Yuki shrugged, and then I did as well. Ikfael rode the motion and looked at me curiously.

I signed, “Moving, okay?”

Ikfael nodded, and when I slipped into Camouflage, she dove into the figurine hanging from my neck to hide there. A couple of beats passed with nothing happening, so I took the steps up as softly as I knew how.

My jaw dropped the moment I peeked into the room.

Before me was a table of polished walnut topped by a creamy white vase full of preserved flowers. To my left, a cabinet displayed a collection of small skulls. To my right, larger skulls hung on the opposite wall. I recognized the ones from a bear, lion, and kalesk, but there were others that were new to me—apparently not local to the area.

Paintings hung wherever there was room for them, including one large piece that featured the same man as the sculpture downstairs. He stood at the top of a hill, covered in the blood of his enemies, who lay crumpled in heaps below him. His mouth was open in an apparent cry of victory. The clouds pictured behind him made the shape a jaguar’s face.

A chandelier hung from the ceiling embedded with a ring of candle stones. The light glimmered off a gold mask placed above an open doorway leading to the next room.

Everything looked pristine. The rest of the pyramid had been so very empty; for there to suddenly be this abundance, it was hard to reconcile.

Eye-level with the ground, I saw the same thin layer of undisturbed dust on the ground as elsewhere in the pyramid, so I cautiously crept into the room.

Immediately, I stopped. My movement had caused a change, but I couldn’t place exactly what. My eyes roved about, yet nothing looked out place.

‘Everything is as it was,’ Yuki observed.

I nodded, but that didn’t change the fact that my breathing was easier. The bitterness in the air was gone, and the sense of syrupy constriction around me had loosened. A look at my Status showed that the influence from earlier—the soul corrosion—was gone.

“Influence disappeared,” I whispered.

Within her figurine, Ikfael nodded. The stone arms moved to sign, “Confirmed, but we should still hunt with care.”

Right, the rest of the pyramid might’ve been barren because of the soul corrosion. Without it, who knew what we’d find.

A flicker of motion caught my attention. The room beyond was just as richly appointed, with a ghostly attendant moving among the furnishings. She wore a skirt of beaded jade, a colorful tunic edged with fur, and a net of shells to bundle her hair into a topknot.

“Ghost,” I whispered.

Within the figurine, Ikfael nodded.

I edged around the room but didn’t see anything alive next door. Then my Camouflage lapsed, yet the ghost still didn’t seem to notice my presence.

Moving to the open doorway, I confirmed that it was a parlor or reception room of some kind. In the center of the room was an ornately carved chair padded with a thick green cushion, while wooden benches ran along each of the walls. Above them were more paintings, and the whole space was lit by another chandelier of candle stones.

The ghostly servant wiped at the chair with a cloth. Then, when she seemed to be done, she bowed to it and left. Her exit was through a closed wooden door on the wall opposite, the surface of which was carved with the face of a jaguar.

“Ghost’s gone. Room’s empty.”

Ikfael hopped out of her figurine to stare at the room’s furnishings. She padded over to the closest bench to use her claws on it. When she saw she couldn’t scratch the wood, a knife appeared in her paws, but the blade’s edge didn’t work either.

The otter looked at me, her eyes wide. The bench must’ve been enchanted to at least Level 5.

She brought out her magic dagger, the one I’d traded to her all those years ago, and that finally left a scratch on the wood’s surface.

“Confirmed at Level 5,” I muttered.

Ikfael ran her paws through the fur on her head, clearly not believing the amount of wealth around us. We were looking at a fortune, and my mind automatically started making an inventory: the chair, the mask, the vase, the paintings, the cabinet. The benches too? Maybe. It’ll depend on what else we find deeper in.

Ikfael ran to the first room to start emptying out her Hoarder’s Pocket of anything nonessential. Mostly, there were a number of otter-shaped sculptures and dolls—offerings from Voorhei, some of them quite old. That didn’t seem to be enough for her, though, because the growing pile of effigies was soon joined by a collection of baskets, pottery, and blankets.

Only once she was satisfied did the room’s furnishings disappear into her pocket. Then she had me lift her up so she could snag the chandelier too. The skulls on the walls didn’t seem to have anything special about them. Those, we left behind.

Once the first room was done, Ikfael did take the benches in the second. She could always ditch them later if she needed to free up space in her pocket. Then I picked her up again so that she could steal the chandelier, which dropped us into darkness.

A line of steady light shone from under the closed door. Probably another chandelier, I thought.

Ikfael brought out our lantern to make it easier to examine the door. The thing didn’t budge when I tried it, but there wasn’t a lock that I could see. Maybe it was barred? Or it required magic to open?

Like everything else, the wood seemed to have been enchanted to a high degree. Breaking through would require both time and effort. And the hinges were on the other side, so I wouldn’t be able to get through by taking them off. When I dropped to the ground to peek through the gap underneath, I found it too narrow to see anything.

“What do you want to do?” I asked Ikfael. “Stone or water?”

Ikfael tapped the floor with her foot, then shifted her attention to the door jamb. “The stone refuses me.”

“Is it enchanted too?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The feeling is similar but different. It could be a talent of the builder or a spell of some kind.”

“If it’s spell,” I said, “then there’s a caster needed to refresh it.”

Ikfael made a “maybe” motion then signed, “As long as there’s access to mana, a spell can last a long time.”

“Even a thousand years?” I asked. “That’s a lot of Long Darks get through.”

“A truth,” Ikfael said, then poured a puddle of water onto the ground. Once it had seeped under the door, she merged with it. A moment later, she came back to say, “Another room—a place for resting, I think. There are several chairs and couches. The door is barred, but I should be able to open it. There are three other doorways within, all open. Nothing in the room moves, although the dust on the ground is disturbed.”

“Is it the living or undead?” I asked, putting my game face on.

“From the smell? Undead.”