After a series of jumps across the rooftops I land on the roof of an alehouse at the edge of the plaza facing the Temple of God the Empowerer, a monument of Siskalian architecture, with a solid front of black marble and two smaller spires on either side of a third spire rising nearly two hundred feet from the base of the mountains. The double doors are carved from ironwood and reinforced with iron braces, opening onto semi-circular steps leading down to the plaza. But the temple has been taken over, or you might think of it as being under new management, by the cult of Baal the Possessor, as signified by the brass bull standing at the top of the stairs.
The chimney on the alehouse rooftop belches a cloud from the boiling fermented mash down in the tavern below, and it's making me feel a little light-headed.
Before I go down to the temple I decide to stay up here to do a bit of recon. Temple prostitutes dressed in pink robes lounge along the stairs and lean against the open doorways. The more aggressive hookers approach men in the plaza and escort their customers into the temple for a bit of “sacred worship.” I suppose that's one way to recruit new members to your church and boost attendance. Other potential customers refuse the temple prostitutes because they've come for the drugs. Soon I recognize the users even before they go inside the temple, because their bodies are covered with open, festering sores. The addicts go into the temple and some time later they stagger back out like zombies, slouching over, swaying as they stand like wax statues melting in the heat. One addict tumbles down the stairs and rolls nearly to the plaza, where she lies and looks up at the spire uncomprehendingly.
The clear lids roll down to cover my eyes—that's as close as I can get to closing them. “Lord, please help me to defeat the dark gods, starting with this temple.”
I scamper down the side of the alehouse, and hear a single customer singing a tavern song. I drop down to all fours and slink across the open plaza, with my long ringed tail swishing behind me. Being on all fours feels surprisingly comfortable, but I decide it's undignified and rise to walk upright like a human. To the addict sprawled on the steps staring up at the sky, I'm just another hallucination. To the prostitutes lounging around in pink, I'm just another customer.
One of the prostitutes waits for me to reach the top of the steps before approaching me. She has to work to slide her arm under my tiny arm. Leaning in on my smooth blue skin, she coos, “I thought your kind went extinct.”
“I'm back,” I tell her while scanning the interior of the temple.
“Let's celebrate your return.” She gives me a pat on the butt and winks. Her perfume is stronger than the brewery inside the tavern.
“Pack up your stuff and get the hell out. God the Empowerer is taking over.” I remove my arm from hers and look at her with my large green eyes. “If you want to get cleaned up, live right, and serve Lord Riyel, you're welcome to stay.”
She laughs, but her makeup is so thick that there's little movement in her face. “You're obviously here for the dram.”
The interior of the temple is filled with lines of wooden pews leading to an altar, where the statue of a muscular man with the head of a bull is seated on a throne. Fires burn in braziers on the outer edges of the pews, where disheveled addicts toss and moan, while others stand in that odd posture, hunched over and swaying slowly as they stare at the floor. The place is filled with an overpowering stench of decay, and I hear “sacred worship” coming from a curtained booth in the foyer. I stride over to the booth and seize the curtain in my beak. With a heave I rip away the curtain, tearing the iron rod it hangs on out of the sockets in the wall. With a toss backward the rod clangs over the floor and rolls, tangling up in the torn curtain. The temple prostitute and her customer are both naked.
“Get dressed and get the hell out, literally,” I warn them both.
“Hey, lizard man, I already paid, so you're just going to have to wait your turn.” He is fat, with thinning hair, but he compensates with gold rings on his fingers.
“You paid?” I ask. My eyes narrow on him, and he is confronted with the gaze of a predator. “You paid for sex? No, you haven't. I've paid.”
I hold up my hand, with its five broad pads. It catches fire and begins to glow. The pain is unbearable, like I've dunked my hand into molten iron, but the feeling isn't new to me. The pain is so intense that I can hardly think. The flames die, and in the time that they were burning they illuminated the terrified faces of the prostitute and her customer.
“That's paying for sex.” I see the john staring in amazement at my hand, looking for signs of damage. “Now get dressed and get the hell out.”
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I resume my march down the center aisle of the temple, headed toward the statue of the bull man, and I've decided that shit has got to go, one way or another. I'm in the middle of the pews, where some of the stupefied addicts stare through me, while others give me amazed looks as if to say, “Man, This stuff is good!”
A muscular man comes out from the room behind the altar and descends the steps. He is a giant of a man, maybe 6'7”, with thick muscles, wearing nothing other than a loin cloth and a ring in his nose, but it's a solid ring, like one you would put in the nose of a bull or a cow. He's huge and makes Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime look like the scrawny kid in the Charles Atlas ad having sand kicked in his face. Bull's horns curve outward from the sides of his head, which is bald and decorated with tattoos, including one of his god, the bull-head demon man seated on a throne.
“I thought you were here for the dram,” the giant thunders in his deep voice, and flexes his muscles not so much to impress, but to warm up.
“I'm here to kill you and restore the temple to God the Empowerer.” I'm on the lookout for followers of his, anybody in his posse who might represent a threat, but it's just addicts and hookers. He's apparently very confident in himself.
“I am the embodiment of Baal the Possessor.” He intentionally stands in front of the statue, which makes the tattoo in the very center of his head look like a reflection in a reflection.
“You're just a doped-up loser with implants.” I run at him with the characteristic side-to-side rolling of my hips and leap, leading with my snout open.
The giant catches me by the throat before I can land on him. His fingers feel like steel, but my neck is too broad for his hand. I seize his arm with both hands. To my surprise, even though I don't have opposable thumbs, my grip is tenacious.
I've slipped my throat out of his grasp and am trying to sink an armbar on him. I'm hanging onto his arm with both hands. His muscular arm is like a section of a telephone pole running down the center of my chest or belly, and my legs are pushing off against his shoulder and armpit. I'm trying to stretch out his arm, bending it against the elbow joint with the combined strength of my arms and legs, but I just can't get the armbar to work. I attended martial arts schools that bragged about teaching “realistic self-defense,” but they never explained how to get an armbar if I were reincarnated as a giant gecko, which I view as a huge hole in a fighting system.
The brute reaches with his other hand to strip my feet off his shoulder and armpit, then swings his arm outward in an arc, flinging me off of him. The force of his swing breaks my grip on him, and I find myself sailing through the air until I strike a pew with my back and knock it over. I hear a whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, as a domino effect occurs, with each toppled pew knocking over the one behind it.
Rolling over the back of a fallen pew, I stand up to face him, only to see him pick up a pew with both hands. For a moment he stands poised, holding the pew overhead, and the horned giant looks as if he's been sculpted out of pure muscle. He brings down the pew, slamming the twenty-foot long bench into the pews behind me, splintering them with a loud crack. Thank God geckos are fast, and I've managed to roll out into the aisle.
I spin and hit him solidly in the face with my tail. I'm gratified at the sound of bones in his face breaking. But as I turn back around I see the bones in his deformed, broken face rearrange themselves, and he's able to give me that cocky smile again, while his silver nose ring glints in the lamplight. My stomach sinks when I realize that maybe there's something to him being the incarnation of Baal the Possessor.
I scamper, staying low, and sink my teeth onto his calf. The muscle-bound giant bends over to grab my body, but I roll, climbing around his body and emerge on his back. I sink my snout onto his head, being careful not to get his horns in my mouth. I drive my teeth into his scalp and neck. My teeth aren't very long, but there are plenty of them and they grip securely. I push off with both feet in his back, while yanking backward. I bite down, but the brute's head is like a jawbreaker in my mouth.
With a crunch his head deflates inside my mouth, and he falls straight down over his feet. I release him, and I wish geckos could spit, because I don't like the lingering taste of his shaved head in my mouth. I think I need a big, fat moth with lots of dust on its wings as a palate cleanser.
I'm walking down the aisle, and make as if to brush my hands against each other to show I've finished off the giant with the bull horns, but my arms are too short, and it looks goofy.
“All right! Everyone clear out! Now!” I yell as I march down the aisle.
Something isn't right. I turn to look behind me and see the fallen giant's head, which resembles a flat tire, or a melted watch in a Salvador Dali painting, slowly inflate until the horns are jutting out from the sides of his skull. The colossus rises again and flexes his muscles, still wearing that same damned smile.
Clearly this man is possessed, and I'm not fighting a roid rage jockey fresh from the gym and a hit of human growth hormone. The words from the Dirge of Possession come to mind:
Fight not against the man, but against the shadow controlling him
In the noonday sun he is free, but as the daylight wanes his shadow lengthens
and he is a slave to his shade, even in the palace
I feel I need to strike before he can fully regain his strength, but how am I going to bring this guy down? I charge down the aisle, leaping through the air with my jaws open wide. I lead with both feet, slamming into his chest and knocking him backward into the statue of the bull-head man seated on the throne. I try to get a lock onto his head, but he's turning and gouging my throat with his horns. At the same time he's wrapped both arms around my back in a bear hug, and is squeezing ferociously, making me feel like I'm a frog about to cough out my guts.
I'm feeling woozy here, and little sparkly moths are fluttering in my vision. Am I blacking out?