The passage wasn’t totally dark; the occasional vent let in a little light. As he passed each one, Tenthé would peer through, noting several storerooms, a spotless bathroom, a few dormitories, and lots of empty offices. At an intersection, he followed the branch that led deeper into the temple, travelling a long way before coming across another vent.

The room on the other side differed from the earlier ones, containing a riot of luxurious foliage with pools and boulders strewn about. Sunlight streamed in from skylights, filling the space with a warm glow and making beams that reflected from the water and danced through the leaves. Tenthé had heard stories about jungles, but only now he realized he had not truly understood what they meant. He leaned forward for a better look.

At that point, the mesh gave way, causing him to tumble out and down into a pool, where he thrashed about, hindered by his cloak, the sheets of parchment stuffed in various pockets, and his inability to swim. After breathing in a fair amount of water, he was grabbed by the collar and hoisted into the air. Whoever it was, held him up while he hacked up a lung or two. Once he regained the ability to breathe normally, Tenthé rubbed his face to get the last of the water out of his nose and looked around. He had to be careful; if he raised his arms a little more, he would end up naked and in the pool again.

As best he could determine, the person behind him was either a giant or standing on something. Smoothly, his savior swung him toward the edge of the pool. Smoothly, that is, until he crashed through more than a few plants and was dropped to the ground.

He spun around to see how much trouble he was in.

A handspan from his face was the head of a dragon! Tenthé froze.

Oddly, the dragon had more of a parrot beak than a lizard mouth. While he watched, the beak opened, the tongue moved, and the dragon asked, “What have we here? Not one of my usual petitioners.”

The voice was so low that it rumbled in his chest.

Tenthé might be only a kid, but as screwed up as his life had been, he actually had experience with this sort of thing. If he had to guess, he’d say the dragon was more amused than angry.

“Um… I’m looking for… uh, water?” Internally, he cringed. Yeah, it was the truth, but still sounded lame.

The dragon moved so one huge eye could study at him. Now that he could see, Tenthé glanced at the rest of it.

Oh. The beast wasn’t a dragon. It was a gigantic turtle! What he had thought was a boulder was its body.

Oh-oh.

This was the Turtle. Not a useless washed up old god, but a strong new one. Tenthé alternated looking through each eye, studying the magic. What he saw was crazy! Much more than he could understand. He was surrounded by an ocean of power so intense that he could even feel a slight breeze as it swirled about the room. If he tried to eat all this, he would explode.

While he was coming to terms with what he could sense, the Turtle’s head moved to look down at a parchment floating on the water of the pond. The god scrutinized it, then picked it up in his mouth and placed it on the ground beside Tenthé, then went back to looking at him with one eye.

“This. Is it yours? Have you more?” The Turtle seemed to be serious.

Tenthé knew a losing position when he was in it. He reached into his cloak and brought out the rest of the sheets of parchment. A quick glance showed that the water hadn’t made the ink run. The markings on each page looked clear, whatever they said.

He placed everything on the ground, then stood up.

“Where did you get these?”

“Don’t know.” The fallback excuse of little boys everywhere.

“What’s written here?”

“Don’t know.”

“Were you going to cast the spell?”

“Don’t know.”

Usually, about now, he would have to duck a swat, but the Turtle simple stared.

“You are a very unusual boy. Not at all what you seem. No, not at all!”

“Don’t know.”

The Turtle swung his head down and scooped up the sheets in his beak, along with some plants and mud, then swallowed. He went back to face Tenthé, but with his beak gaping wide open. A moment later, a rumbling came from deep down inside the Turtle. The sound faded, then grew louder. The Turtle turned away and a huge blast of sickly green and yellow light blew out of its beak, annihilating everything in its path and slamming into the wall of the chamber! It just kept coming and coming, splashing and flowing down into a pond, causing the water to boil off. The noise was horrendous. Tenthé covered his ears for a long time until the torrent died down and stopped.

The Turtle swung its head back to look at Tenthé. Even with his hands over his ears, Tenthé could hear it say, “A very good thing this didn’t get into the wrong hands. A nasty piece of work.”

Tenthé was fairly screwed. It was a terrible idea to confront a god in its temple. Since its followers believed it was perfect, so it was. At least here. Quietly, he felt around for any ways he could use to escape, but even if there was something, the magic surrounding him blew away any sign. He did not want to start a fight. So far, the Turtle hadn’t really threatened him, but it had access to so much power! Maybe he could outrun it… but go where? He couldn’t see any doors, and a powerful new god would have some way to deal with a running boy.

Didn’t matter. He took off anyway.

He rushed away until he was behind some plants, and then darted deeper into the room. After scrambling up and down a few boulders, he realized he was beside the pond with the Turtle staring at him. He ran a different way and found himself back at the pond. He tried a bunch of other ways, hiding in other ponds, sneaking through the underbrush, running in every direction, but he always ended up where he started. Eating the magic gave him energy to keep going, but didn’t make a dent in the ocean surrounding him.

He even snuck up on the god and touched it, feeling a seething ball of different types of magic. Although it was information, all it did was verify how strong the Turtle was.

Finally, when he once again found himself back at the Turtle, he admitted, “All right. You win.” He slumped down onto his butt.

“Don’t be discouraged. You did well. I actually had to work a little to keep you here. You have an unexpectedly high capacity to absorb magic, and there’s a constant pressure to forget you. And, you have a taste of the Dreamer about you.”

In spite of everything else, Tenthé was still a boy. This gave him a nearly infinite ability to recover, especially if something distracted him.

He perked up and asked, “Hey. Am I the Dreamer?”

“I would say not, but you two are tangled up in some way.”

“Uh… okay.” Tenthé had no idea what it was talking about.

“What’s your name?”

“Tenthé.”

The Turtle made some deep huffing noises. Tenthé eventually figured out that it was laughing.

“Appropriate,” was all it said. Tenthé didn’t know what that meant.

“Well, Tenthé,” the Turtle continued, “What should we do now?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Tenthé was tired, so he simply sat, looking at the ground.

“I don’t know.”

But then he remembered his mission and perked up.

“Hey! I wasn’t lying, before. Where does your water go?”

The Turtle pulled his head back to get a better look at Tenthé. “What?” it asked.

Tenthé swung a hand around. “All this water, what happens to it?”

“Hum... it’s blessed once I have bathed in it. I assume it goes to the fountains. We bottle some of it. Other than that, I’m not exactly sure.”

“Did anything happen in the last little while to change… um, anything?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

There was a brief silence.

“I suppose you could follow the pipes and see where they go,” the Turtle offered.

“Aren’t you going to sacrifice me?”

“What? No, of course not! The old gods did that and look where they are.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told them.”

The Turtle turned his head to peer at Tenthé with his other eye, then swung back to the first one.

Its eyes were huge and entirely black. Everything went in and nothing came out. Tenthé couldn’t tell what it was thinking about, at all.

“If you check by that boulder over there,” he nodded in a certain direction, “You will find a sewer cover. You can climb down.”

“You are letting me go?”

“Apparently.”

Tenthé just stared.

“Yes! I’m letting you go! But you have to do something.”

God requests. Drat!

“What?”

“I only ask that you return to visit once in a while, or at least go to one of the fountains outside and tell me what’s happening in your life.”

Tenthé looked up at the Turtle.

“Yeah, sure!” he said, sarcastically. “The instant I step in your temple, they’ll toss me as out far as they can.”

“Hm. You have a point. Here, let me give you this.”

Nothing much happened. Perhaps the magic in the room had moved a teeny-tiny little bit.

“Give me what?”

“Check your arm.”

Tenthé pulled back his sleeve. Now he had a tattoo; a symbol of some sort. It hadn’t been there before.

He stared at it for a while. “Cool! What’s it say?”

“Doesn’t matter. If you show it to a priest, he or she will let you in.”

“Um… these don’t last on me.” Tenthé had tried to join the 5th Street gang once, but the tattoo they all had wouldn’t stick, so they kicked him out. For that, and other reasons, like most of them couldn’t remember him even if he did have the proper tattoo, at least while it lasted.

“Believe me, this one will stay.”

Tenthé kept looking at his arm as he walked over to the boulder the Turtle had indicated, which did indeed have a sewer cover near its base. Tenthé was certain that it hadn’t been there before. He pulled up the cover and sniffed. It was fresh. Tenthé looked back at the Turtle God, waved, then climbed down. As he reached the bottom, there was a clang, and everything went dark. Tenthé guessed the Turtle didn’t want holes in his jungle. He turned and began exploring, the absence of light no impediment to him.

The water did not run in pipes; it seeped down the walls and into a channel running along the floor. Crouching to take a drink, Tenthé discovered that blessed water tasted the same as ordinary water, but had a little magic that tingled on his tongue. The first time he’d had a chance to taste it, he’d been too busy drowning to notice.

Tenthé followed the flow. Periodically channels split off, feeding into holes in the walls. Tenthé guessed they supplied the temple fountains, somehow. Likely more magic.

He could hear some muted yelling and thumps. The priests were still at it, whatever it was that they were doing. As he advanced, the nature of the main channel changed. It flattened, so now the water ran all over the floor. The walls were no longer smooth, more like rough stone. Everything seemed older and probably was. Some plant growing in the water formed clumps that glowed a little. Tenthé could see the dim light they made extending into the distance ahead. Sloshing onward, he gathered up his cloak to keep it dry, but the water was getting deeper.

It didn’t look like he could keep going this way. Tenthé backtracked, searching for an exit. He hadn’t seen any normal manholes for a long time. That would be too easy. But he’d passed some alternatives.

He retraced his trail to a section of the sewer where a large horizontal crack cut through the wall above the waterline. Tenthé bent down and peered into it. The bedrock had heaved and split to form a gap leading off into the dark. He squeezed in. Worming his way forward, he found that the split fractured into several smaller passages. Tenthé paused, searching for anything. Down one passage, a glimmer showed in the distance. For lack of an alternative, he wriggled in that direction.

He was reaching ahead when the floor disappeared under his hand. Carefully inching forward, he felt only empty space. Poking his head out, he came face to face with a skull. Tenthé sighed with relief. Apparently, he’d found the catacombs. The old gods had loved their sacrifices and had interred the dead all over the temple sector, or rather, under it.

Tenthé rolled out onto the floor, accompanied by a cascade of bones and dried body parts. He rose, dusted dirt and powdered remains from himself, picked one direction and started along a narrow passage. Desiccated bodies lined the walls, with the occasional one lying in the passage, where it had fallen. The overhead was so low that even he had to crouch. As for the bones that blocked the way, he gave them the respect he felt they deserved, either stepping over them or kicking them aside.

He was looking for a place where the passages met. Most of the time, this was where he could gain access to other levels. His luck usually meant he didn’t have to search for too long, and today was no different. The current passageway opened up into an irregular room with multiple exits, which was promising.

Tenthé was investigating the walls for a ladder, or something similar, when he heard a noise behind him. He turned to find a thing sitting in the middle of the room. “Thing” was what he called manifestations he didn’t recognize. Most of them weren’t exactly weak, but his shields were good and he was adept at dodging. It came in handy if he wasn’t there when greeted by a sword or teeth.

This thing sat without moving. It was one of the ugly ones, lots of arms, legs, eyes, and insect parts. Tenthé decided to put it out of its misery and was reaching out to eat its magic, when it spoke. “Tenthé, I have a message for you.”

This was new. The thing knew his name. Silence followed. Tenthé waited. And waited.

“Okay, what?” he finally prompted.

“In my previous life I was a seer. I did what I had to… to be here to pass this message along.”

Tenthé waited some more. Eventually he sighed and asked, “Uh... yeah? What’s the message?”

Sonorously, the thing spoke, “Don’t eat the bad apple.”

Tenthé waited for more. Once again, he prompted, “And?”

“No more, that’s it.”

“Uh-huh. I wasn’t going to eat any bad apples, anyway.”

The thing didn’t answer.

“This is stupid.” Tenthé walked over and ate its magic. After it fell apart, Tenthé continued his search of the room. Finally, he found a few rusty metal hoops embedded in the wall, semi-hidden among the bodies. They looked iffy, and when he pulled one, it broke off in his hands. He peered up; the ones higher up seemed better. Tenthé couldn’t make out the details, but he thought the hoops made a ladder that went up to a wooden square. Likely a trapdoor.

He jumped up and grabbed onto the rungs at the top of the ladder, then pushed on the trapdoor. Which promptly disintegrated, resulting in pieces of rotten wood bouncing off of his head and shoulders before falling to the floor below. His shields spared him any damage.

Tenthé climbed up into a gloomy chamber where, as usual, holes in the roof provided dim illumination. He checked for traps, then examined the walls. After a little thought, he chose one spot on the wall, kicked it, and scurried to the other side of the room as a portion of the wall collapsed. Once everything stopped falling, Tenthé stepped through the new gap and found himself outside on a dead-end street. He jogged to the cross street, and after looking around, figured it was only a short distance to the temple of the old gods.

Turning back, he noted water flowing from the rubble that was all that remained of one of the small temples along the lane. Tenthé tasted the water, verifying it to be blessed. Most likely, the building had recently fallen in on itself, blocking the sewer. It would take a great deal of time to move the fairly impressive pile of debris. More than he wanted to spend. Besides, he knew nothing about fixing sewers and didn’t want to learn. After a little internal debate, he decided to bring the problem to the old gods. They were kind of like adults, and might have some idea of what to do.

He headed back to their temple. After wiggling inside, a bunch of them were waiting.

“Well?” asked the witch god.

“I found the water, but there’s an issue.”

Tenthé outlined what he’d discovered.

The wyvern god spoke up in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, sounding like a little girl. Even Tenthé knew enough not to comment. It was funny, though.

“That’s good. Not a problem. We can pass ourselves through the bottom of the fountain and travel to the break. Once we are close, we’ll absorb the magic and make holes to let the water through.”

All the gods nodded and appeared much relieved.

“Uh… I thought the wards kept you in here,” Tenthé commented.

The old gods looked at each other. When it became obvious that they weren’t going to admit to anything, Tenthé continued, “Okay, but if this was so important, why didn’t you try something before getting me to do your dirty work?”

The witch god glowered.

“What do you mean, boy? We are Gods! We do not solve problems! We make them!”

At this, the other gods barked their agreement and a number of them slapped each other's hands, or whatever they had that was the equivalent.

Tenthé just sighed and gave up. It was late. Time to go home. He made his way out to the streets.

While he walked, he thought over today’s events. It had been interesting. Certainly not his most exciting day ever, but a good one. To top it off, the evening was nice. He minimized his protections to enjoy the final rays of the sun as it set.

Walking past the last temple, a beam of sunlight momentarily blinded him as he stepped onto the street. Suddenly, he ate a burst of magic, heard a yell, and something slammed into him. He fell backward, hit his head on the cobblestone, and then… nothing.