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Darrowfig slashed through a curtain of thorny vines and finally broke into the open.

Rainwater streamed down her face as she looked up in awe. A vast structure loomed over the jungle. This was her destination, Vishrac-Uramis, an ancient temple of Sumat, the Face of Death. It had stood abandoned for four centuries. Now her target was reported to be hiding within its dark halls.

Quickly, Fig ducked back into the canopy for cover and wiped her cutlass blade clean as she listened for movement. Except for the persistent drum of rainfall on the canopy above, the jungle around her was strangely quiet and the area seemed empty.

Asking around Saltcrust before starting her journey, she’d been able to learn that the temple was a relic of the old southern kingdom of Cthalvaliss, a nation which fell to ruin during the Forgotten War, like so many others.

Sumat and his worshippers chose to withdraw from this holy site following the conflict. They had other temples spread across Sedalia, most of them a good deal more accessible in the modern age. Now, Vishrac-Uramis was nothing but a forgotten tomb, which Fig supposed remained quite in keeping with its Aspect patron.

She hoped Sumat wasn’t going to take great offence to her intrusion. Fig was never quite sure where she stood with the Aspects and she tried to avoid them where she could.

There were fifteen in total, although there had once been one more, now lost to mortal memory.

Each was a portion of Orot, the creator of Splinterra, given a measure of individual agency, and dominion over an aspect of Orot’s experience. They were at once a single being of unified purpose, and a divided host with their own values and ambitions that caused conflicts both minor and, at one time during the Forgotten War, disastrous.

The dual nature of Orot as both one and many was a concept she’d had some trouble wrapping her head around as a child.

Of course, she’d been brought up to worship Vandrin, the Face of Day. He was the patron Aspect of the Radiant Dynasty, who now ruled most of the continent of Sedalia.

As a child, she’d learned his doctrines, and stood for Dawn Communion in the Sunspire with her family and the Royal Court of Vostrel. There was a time when she had prayed to the Aspects with childlike devotion.

But time changed things. Her relationship to Orot changed. It wasn’t a question of belief in its existence, Orot was as real as the ground beneath her feet, but as she learned the histories of Splinterra, she couldn’t help but question the unwavering benevolence she’d once taken for fact.

The legends she’d absorbed without thought as an infant painted the Aspects in a far less favourable light when she revisited them with a critical eye. They showed a disturbing capacity for pettiness, jealousy, pride, and careless destruction. While they often tried to make up for their mistakes, they weren’t immune to making them, and some things couldn’t be fixed after the fact. What better evidence of fallibility than that one of the Aspects had to be destroyed and erased from memory by the others.

Aspects weren’t all knowing, or particularly divine in a philosophical sense. The only thing that really separated them from the many people they ruled, was the sheer scope of their power.

Darrowfig knew power; she especially understood how easily it could be abused. You had to be careful around the powerful, lest you be crushed underfoot.

She still prayed. It seemed like a smart choice, and she was more than willing to ask for whatever help she could get. But she wasn’t particularly faithful, she liked to hedge her bets and never lose sight of how quickly an Aspect’s favour could turn to indifference, or scorn.

With that in mind…

Dear Sumat, I’m sorry that I’m about to intrude upon your holy temple. Hopefully I’m here to clear out an unwanted tenant, and if you’ll refrain from cursing me with an early death, I’ll be as quick and respectful about it as possible, to our mutual benefit.

There was no response, as usual, but at least she’d made her case.

Fig peered out of the jungle at the grand structure before her, taking in as much detail as she could. It was a menacing sight.

The frontispiece of Vishrac-Uramis was carved directly into a rocky cliff face that rose hundreds of metres high. Its dark stone glistened, so smooth from centuries of rainfall that it became like a black mirror, reflecting back distorted shadows of the jungle, and of anyone who ventured near.

In stark contrast to every overgrown ruin she’d passed on her journey, the stone carvings across the temple’s face stood unnervingly free of vegetation. In fact, the jungle shied away as if unwilling to reclaim this place. It left a strange barren crescent of land before the entrance, across which Fig could see ancient iconography of the Face of Death in astounding condition considering its lack of upkeep.

Rivulets of rain poured off titanic stone figures, carved as guardians of the entranceway. They were so large she barely came up to their ankles.

Fig recognised them as Sumat’s dread Shepherds, angelic servants of myth who herded the dead to their proper rest. Voluminous cloaks hung around them in exquisitely carved facsimiles of rippling fabric. They held long crooks and bowed their heads in solemn witness to the procession of the passing dead, who were carved in their masses, walking past the Shepherds’ feet towards the entrance and door within.

The door itself was set deep within the cliff face, at the end of a passageway a dozen metres long. She couldn’t make out details except to see that the door, like the rest of the frontispiece, was built on a grand scale and would likely tower over her when she got up close. The passageway to the door was shrouded with angular shadows that fell from the surrounding carvings and gave it the appearance of a dripping maw.

It was also her only obvious way into Vithrac-Uramis’ forbidding depths.

You can really see why the jungle keeps its distance

‘No kidding’, she whispered.

The place looked about as inviting as… well, the doors of death.

Fig knelt in the undergrowth, looking around for signs of habitation or regular passage. Her visibility through the rain wasn’t great, although the cliff provided some shelter as the storm moved inland and started to wane in strength.

From her vantage she saw no footprints or drag marks in the earth, nor any debris that might suggest discarded provisions. There was no sign that Vishrac-Uramis was anything but abandoned, but Mirabelle the Black had it on the good authority of Silkworm, a local clairvoyant who listened to ripples in the veil, that her treasure had been brought here a few months past by the thief known as Slimy Lez.

Fig had never met Lez in person, but his reputation preceded him, and she’d heard stories.

Slimy Lez was a sentient orb of gelatinous slime, capable of taking on the rough form of a person. If he focused enough he could firm up his surface to wear clothes, carry packs and weapons, and otherwise navigate society when it suited him.

His unique physiology allowed him to turn corrosive at a moment's notice or squeeze himself through the tiniest cracks. It made him an infiltration specialist in high demand. As Fig heard it, following a number of high profile heists in his early career, Lez had almost single handedly caused a revolution in the business of magical locking and infiltration countermeasures amongst the wealthy collectors and financial institutions in the Heartland.

Things started to go downhill for Lez a couple of years ago. Having made several enemies in criminal circles throughout the Wine Sea, and garnering a princely bounty, Lez made a move to the Outerlands and fell in with Mirabelle the Black. He’d taken on a job for her in the Ashram desert, raiding an archeological dig to steal a floating treasure chest from the head of the Illisar family, with whom Fig herself shared some unfortunate history.

The job had seemed a success, when an unexpected double cross by Lez led to the death of several members of the heist crew and the loss of the prized treasure chest.

That chest was the artefact Fig was tasked with recovering, and if Lez got in her way, she was to kill him too.

That’s where things got difficult. One of Lez’s few weaknesses as a slime was his risk of dissolving in large quantities of water. In theory, if diluted enough, his identity would dissipate and he would effectively die. To exploit that vulnerability, Fig’s pack for this expedition contained an enchanted gourd that could spray out gallons upon gallons of seawater at a time.

It was a precious tool, imparted to her by Mirabelle for the express purpose of dealing with Slimy Lez. Unfortunately, the gourd, along with the rest of her packs and provisions were lost outside the ruins of Xish following the Ragon’ta ambush.

Short of backtracking a day’s travel into the hunting grounds of the tribe and risking getting caught, she doubted she had a chance of recovering any of her stuff, which left her in a tricky spot.

Fig shook her head and started sharpening her cutlass. Her mind continued to work away on the problem of how to approach the temple. She spent a few quiet minutes using the small whetstone she kept on a string around her neck to undo some of the dulling the edge had picked up as she cut her way through the jungle.

A crash sounded in the vicinity. Fig whirled, her blade ready in an instant, trying to pinpoint the sound. She prepared herself for the pale glint of snapping jaws, or a volley of sunglass arrows, but no attack came. Instead the crash was followed by a distant groan, and then the sound of thrashing branches further along the treeline.

Cautious not to reveal herself, she peered out and saw a dishevelled robed figure stumbling out of the jungle on the far side of the barren clearing which lay before the temple.

He looked male, although it was hard to be absolutely sure underneath the many layers of cloaks and bandages the stranger wore.

Loops of vines and bristly leaves clung to his clothes. As Fig watched from the shadows of the jungle, he tripped and fell into the dirt where he spent several uncomfortable looking moments extricating himself from the foliage before crawling to his feet.

Free at last, he turned to gaze up at Vishrac-Uramis, apparently sharing the same wonder she had felt laying eyes upon it for the first time.

Fig’s instincts told her with near certainty that this was not Slimy Lez.

She couldn’t see who was under the layered robes, but Lez was by all accounts a slick professional with a reputation for agility and stealth, this graceless interloper possessed neither quality.

Scrawny arms, sleeved and gloved, emerging from the bundle of layers indicated he was lightly built. He walked with difficulty, using a twisted walking stick that may have been a length of sand smoothed driftwood.

Upon further observation Fig could see his clothes were extremely worn. Not that her outfit was faring much better after the journey, but she could see extensive tears and burn holes in the shoddy amalgamation of overlapping garments that hid every inch of skin from sight.

A large pack seemed to weigh on him heavily as he shambled towards the temple and took shelter in the alcove of the entranceway.

What are the chances of another visitor showing up to a centuries-old abandoned temple at exactly the same time as us?

‘Slim at best,’ she whispered.

My thoughts exactly.

Fig continued to watch the strange, robed man as he hunkered in the temple entrance, taking a moment to recover. She saw him sit with his back against the wall and start digging through his pack. He withdrew a hefty oilskin package, and from it a book, which he began to examine with care.

It was obvious he had no idea she was there. Fig relaxed slightly, but her mind spun with conjecture around the stranger’s origins.

Where could he have come from? If he’d travelled on foot from Brandish, she’d likely have passed him in the jungle. He would have needed to evade the Ragon’ta of Xish as well, and judging from how much he appeared to rely on his walking stick, it didn’t seem likely. He arrived minutes after her, but from the opposite direction, if his exit from the jungle was anything to go by. There was nowhere, within a hundred miles, for him to have come from.

Was he looking for Slimy Lez? That was Fig’s most burning question because it was the one most vital to understanding whether this stranger was a foe or simply an unlucky explorer who’d quite literally stumbled into her path.

The man got up and shuffled deeper into the entranceway, peering at the temple door through the darkness. He had no torch lit, and Fig doubted he could make out much in the gloom, but he gently laid his book down and began to run gloved hands over the stone, searching for something.

Whoever he was, he was trying to open the temple door, surely locked by some hidden mechanism. A hurdle Fig had yet to even approach. Damned Sixteen, If not for the burden of her considerable debt to Mirabelle, she never would have accepted a job for which she was so ill prepared and unequipped!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

If he did manage to open the door, that solved a problem for her. She could just wait in hiding and follow him in. Thinking pessimistically, there was the possibility he’d struggle for hours to no avail while she waited pointlessly in the rain, not to mention the fact the sun was setting.

Just to point out, if our strange friend does manage to open the door, there’s no way Lez, sneaky bastard that he is, hasn’t set traps inside.

‘It’s what I’d do,’ Fig muttered.

Great minds and all that… Judging from his lack of general agility, this bookworm is probably going to trigger every single trap, getting himself killed in the process and alerting Lez to our presence, maybe even giving him time to flee out the back door with the treasure before we even enter the temple.

‘You assume there’s another way out of the temple,’ she said.

Are you willing to take that chance and go home empty handed?

Fig weighed her options and sighed.

She crossed the clearing on silent feet and ducked in close to the wall of the entranceway.

The stranger was intent on his investigation of the door, peering between it and the book at his feet. He was oblivious to her presence as she dragged his pack quietly around the corner and into the rain.

She quickly dug through its pockets, turning up very little; a few scraps of dried meat and biscuits in a pouch, a waterskin she sniffed experimentally and then took a swig from, writing implements, rope, a meagre coin purse containing barely enough for a night’s lodging, and finally a warped and blackened cloak-pin.

The pin was too damaged to wear, but even bent and scorched, the insignia upon its brooch portion was unmistakable to Darrowfig as a native of the Radiant Dynasty. She’d seen it everywhere growing up, it was on banners at official events in Vostrel, children had it painted on the hilts of the wooden swords they used to play at battle in the parks and school grounds across the Heartland.

A mutation of the Dynasty’s own rising sun crest, this insignia showed a shield emblazoned with a red sun atop crossed swords; the sun shot burning rays to the very rim of the crest. It was the symbol of The Knights of Enduring Dawn, Vandrin’s most dedicated order of holy warriors.

Fig had seen and met many of their number, prior to her fall from grace. They tended towards the hulking and athletic. Glancing around the corner at the unwitting stranger, hunched and spindly as he fretted over the door, Fig frowned. He didn’t look like any knight.

The man gave a yelp and stiffened up when her sword came to rest between his shoulder blades.

‘It’s ok,’ she said with a clear and relaxed tone, weaving some of her old aristocratic command into the cadence, ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions. If you answer calmly and without any sudden movements, we won’t have any problems. Understood?’

‘Y-yes,’ the man stammered, nodding slowly as he raised his hands in a gesture of submission. He was trembling. She still couldn’t see his face but his muffled voice was incredibly hoarse and higher than she’d expected, like that of a youth.

‘First off, turn around for me,’ she said.

Very gradually with his arms splayed, the man turned to face her. She took a half step back and levelled the cutlass at him while she studied his features. He wore a patch over his left eye, and his whole face was bandaged with dirty rags. A scarf covered his chin and mouth, and the only exposed portion of skin was around his right eye, which was partially milky and glazed. The flesh there was marbled with inflamed red and yellow. It looked blistered and sickly. He had no eyebrow, and she dreaded to think what the rest of his face looked like under the bandages.

Close up, he smelled strongly and she wrinkled her nose trying to parse out the mix of odours. Firstly there was a strong stench of unwashed bodies mixed with the rich smell of woodsmoke, but simmering beneath that was something darker, burning flesh and decay. This man had obviously been caught in a fire, recently from the look of it, but there was something else going on too, that smell of decay she couldn't quite place...

He looked back at her and she saw something flicker into his one exposed eye, recognition.

Here we go.

‘You’re Darrowfig Sable…’ he rasped, ‘I can’t believe it!’

She extended the cutlass forward a fraction and he looked suddenly embarrassed as he pressed himself back against the door in the little space her blade left him. She could hear his nervous breathing, laboured and wheezing .

‘Sorry…’ he said.

‘You know me?’ She asked.

He looked up at her, she had a good few inches on him.

‘I saw you,’ he said, ‘At the Solstice Tournament, when you fought Corundum Illisar.’

Of course he did.

‘You and half of Vostrel,’ she muttered dryly, ‘My embarrassment was a public event. But that tells me very little about you. Start with who you are, and why you’re out here in the jungle, at Vishrac-Uramis of all places? I wasn’t expecting company.’

He squirmed as her blade grazed the front of his robes above his chest.

‘I’m Rickard Crichét,’ he said, ‘I’m an explorer from the Heartland, like you.’

She recognised the surname, although she’d never seen this man before; Crichét, a client family of good repute, bound to the Brightwillows of Brightlodge. The Crichét family were of the Orend caste, typically tall with skin that held a faint shimmer, even in low light. She would not have guessed Rickard’s heritage to look at him, but if he was telling the truth, they had a lot in common. The Crichéts moved in similar lower aristocratic circles to the Sable family, though they all remained firmly below the ruling Alfir in the Dynasty hierarchy.

It still told her nothing about why he was here.

‘You’re poorly equipped,’ she observed.

He grimaced. She could only see the one eye squint. It looked like he didn’t have any eyelids.

Unsettling.

‘It’s my first time out here,’ he muttered.

‘Quite the choice of destination, Rick,’ She gave him an appraising look, ‘It’s hard to tell with all of those bandages, but I have a feeling you’re younger than you look. What’s going on with your skin, by the way? I don’t have to worry about catching something, do I?’

‘No… I just… got burned,’ he seemed to be struggling to find the words.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘and what are you doing here?’

‘I came to explore the temple. I was…’ he started to say more but stopped, ‘I really didn’t know anyone else would be here.’

You know there’s more to this story.

Oh I’m sure there is, but I believe him when he says he wasn’t expecting anyone else out here, and I doubt he knows about Slimy Lez.

‘How old are you?’ she demanded.

Rick looked at the ground, ‘Nineteen.’

She lowered the point of her sword, but kept it drawn and held in a ready stance. She was less on edge now, but still gave him a cautionary glower that roughly translated to ‘Don’t fuck with me.’

Rick deflated as the sword moved away, but stayed backed against the wall.

Fig took a deep breath and released it slowly.

‘Kid… how the fuck did you even get out here? I saw you falling over yourself on the way in and it doesn’t look like you can walk too well. You have no business being this far from home.’

‘...I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,’ he said.

‘Try me,’ she replied, raising an eyebrow.

He glanced at her sword and at the book at his feet, then nodded.

‘Ok,’ he said and nudged the book with his toe, ‘I have a magic book. It opened a door for me to get here. I don’t really know how it works, which is probably why the door dropped me in the jungle over there instead of inside the temple, and now I’m trying to get in.’

Fig paused, ‘Huh, yeah. You know what? You were right.’

‘I can show you…’ he bent down.

‘Whoa there!’ she said, her sword back at his throat, urging him up to his toes against the wall as she caught him halfway to picking up the book, ‘Hold your horses. I may be dubious but I’m not taking chances where magic is concerned.’

He gasped as the flat of the cutlass pressed on his throat, ‘Sorry!’

‘Oh that’s alright, I’m not holding it against you. I just need to be careful, that’s all,’ she said pleasantly, ‘You just stay right there.’

Fig gave the book an experimental nudge with her boot, to no reaction. Peering down at the open pages, the script was one she didn’t recognise. True, language had never been a particular passion of hers, but the benefits of an aristocratic education meant she could at least identify a dozen of the more widely spoken languages from the Dynasty and beyond. This book was something a little more niche.

‘You can read this?’ she asked.

Rick nodded.

‘What language is it?’ The characters on the page were arranged in a dizzying maelstrom, without much apparent logical organisation.

‘The Swirling Words of Eire, old tongue of the Eire Coast,’ he said.

‘Dawn’s light!’ She swore, ‘No wonder I don’t even recognise it, it’s a dead language! My tutors told me there was no one alive who could speak this.’

Rick shrugged. His nonchalance looked forced.

‘I can… I’m pretty good with languages, I used to study them… before.’ He looked uncomfortable and didn’t continue.

‘Aww now, don’t be so mysterious, Rick,’ Fig said. She took the blackened cloak pin out of her pocket and tossed it to Rick, who barely caught it. Seems like he didn’t see so well out of that milky eye.

‘Knights of the Enduring Dawn, you a member?’ she asked, ‘or did you steal that off someone’s body?’

Rick clutched the pin to his chest and looked genuinely offended, his rasping voice took on an edge of malice for the first time, ‘I wouldn’t… I didn’t steal anything. I am a part of the Order!’

He faltered for a second and looked down at his dirty rags, ‘...I was.’

Fig looked at him, his hunched back, the way he couldn't get his trembling under control.

Whatever else is going on, he's just a kid who's out of his depth.

If you're sure.

I am.

She nodded to herself, ‘Ok. I believe you.’

She lowered her sword once more, and stepped back to give him some room.

‘What,’ he said, not moving ‘Just like that?’

‘Yep. You can pick up your magic book,’ she said, ‘Just know that if you start casting a spell on me, I’m very capable of cutting you to pieces before you raise so much as a puff of smoke.’

‘I wasn’t going to do anything.’ he said, gingerly bending to gather up the book and his walking stick.

‘Good. So don’t,’ she responded, ‘Oh, and I don’t suppose Slimy Lez means anything to you?’

‘What’s a… “Slimy Lez”?’ Rick asked.

‘Well, in this case, Slimy Lez is the murderous thief who’s holed up inside this here temple, and has likely set up lethal traps right behind the door you were just trying to open,’ She flashed him a smile, ‘Luckily for you, I was feeling magnanimous and decided to interrupt you before you triggered them.’

With his damaged skin, Fig didn’t think it was possible for Rick’s face to go pale, but she liked to think he would have if he could. He froze and stared between her and the temple door.

'What did I just walk into?' he asked.

‘Oh it’s turning into quite a party,’ she said.

We should have brought snacks.

Now you’re making me hungry.

----------------------------------------

Fig leaned against the wall in the entranceway, keeping one eye on Rick as he worked on the door. It turned out that book of his contained a guide to opening the temple, which was shockingly convenient. Needless to say, her sword remained drawn and ready.

Rick hadn’t revealed much more about himself or his motives, except to say that there were supposedly documents inside the temple he wanted to study. More of a scholar, than a knight, really. Fig supposed every order needed record keepers and librarians to keep the more meat-brained members on task, and to remind them why they had their traditions and rites.

She certainly didn’t trust him, not with a half told story and an ominous magic tome in his hands, but if he was her ticket into the temple, she’d at least let him do his job in peace.

Fortunately for her, the entranceway was a dry place to wait, surprisingly so. The floor sloped down very slightly towards the door, and water trickled in from the rainy clearing outside. It should have been pooling around their ankles, but there were gutters and small openings cut into the walls and doorway at ground level to let the rainwater drain.

Even with the glut of rainfall from the storm, every drop flowed away without backing up or flooding, leaving the ground dry. Who knew how extensive the temple was underground, or how far this drainage system extended. Fig got down on her knees and checked the holes. If it had been dry, this was exactly the kind of small opening Lez could have squeezed through to surprise them. Once again, the storm had proven very lucky.

Fig was struck by a sense of foreboding. There had been too many fortunate coincidences today. The luck had to run out soon.

It was a good half hour before Rick finally exclaimed in triumph.

She watched as, book held in front of him, he traced his fingers along a particular section of the door. Previously invisible sigils glowed into being, sickly green and trailing smoke. From there, his hands danced over the door activating other clusters of script, each matching the Words of Eire in his book. When they had formed a spiral worming into the centre of the door, Rick placed his hand into the middle of the design and pushed.

The door swung easily open, with nothing but a whisper of moving air, to reveal a set of gloomy stairs descending into darkness and the bowels of the temple. He looked back at her, and she suppressed a shiver at the sight of that sickly green sigil light reflected in his milky eye.

Nothing immediately flew out of the depths to assail them, so they began preparing to descend.

Fig limbered up. She was feeling a tad more energetic having snacked on Rick’s remaining rations. He offered them up freely, stating he ate very little.

As she approached the dark stairway, Rick stopped her. He picked up a small smooth stone from the ground and flipped through the book. ‘Hold on one second, and please don’t stab me,’ he said.

Fig shrugged and waited, watching him carefully.

Finding the page he wanted, he began to intone harsh and hissing words that seemed to suit his ruined voice. The stone in his hand started to glow, at first dimly, and then with enough bright white light to illuminate the entranceway in stark detail.

Rick looked tired for a moment and leant against the wall, but quickly shook his head and righted himself.

‘I’m not sure how long it’ll last,’ he said, and offered the glowing stone to her. She accepted gingerly before realising that the stone was still cool to the touch. She tested slipping it in and out of her damp pocket, alternately revealing and smothering the light.

‘Convenient!’ Fig said, ‘but why not just bring a torch.’

‘I don’t like fire,’ Rick said.

‘Ah,’ she nodded, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay here until I’ve cleared the place out?’

‘I’m probably safer sticking next to you,’ he said, looking out at the dark jungle beyond the clearing. Night had almost fallen, bringing with it a gradual end to the storm, and the previously quiet jungle had begun to echo with the ominous nocturnal cries of whatever wildlife decided it was comfortable living in the shadow of Vishrac-Uramis. Nothing either of them particularly wanted to meet.

‘As you like,’ she said, relieved he’d be staying where she could see him, and not behind her where he could simply shut the door to seal her inside.

Together they stood at the top of the steps and peered down into the darkness.

[End of Chapter 2]