Chapter 20. Temple of the Dead.

The forest of red trees was thick and tall, passing by like skyscrapers buried in moss and vines. Mist rolled across the night like golden breath, glowing in the moonlight as the clouds finally broke. The ocean could be heard bursting against the shore below the cliffs not far away. Every few minutes Dylan would swing his sword and hack away some bush or tree that had gotten in his way, but it had been mostly quiet besides that. Quiet and peaceful. Molly was helping Valery walk now: she’d grown exhausted after exerting herself with the wind.

Shawn tried not to think of the Renjin nests, but the sound of Goroth’s bellowing roar and the screaming horses would enter his mind whenever he remembered where they eventually had to go. He wondered where Manie was, and silently wished he was back in Denengear with her. This is for the cure, he reminded himself.

“There are carvings in the trees,” Molly said without an ounce of concern.

Shawn looked and saw faces, men in flames, rocks falling from the sky in fiery trails. Spears had been shoved into the ground along the path. Many were adorned with skulls, others with masks and straw.

Go back, read one message carved into a tree. You are entering a forbidden place.

“Ooh, spooky,” Molly said.

Shawn swallowed and tried to stay alert. It felt like they were being watched from the shadows behind the giant trees.

“Seems like they were paranoid,” Dylan said. “All this effort just to hide a little rock.”

“They must have understood its power,” Valery said in a dim voice. “Like I do. Except they were afraid of it. I’m not.”

None of this was making Shawn feel any more confident in the plan. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come out here with them afterall. Maybe it had been a mistake to leave Denengear.

“There it is,” Valery said. “The Skull Tree.”

Shawn looked up and saw a massive redwood standing before them, reaching what seemed like thousands of feet up into the sky. The tree was so large that a tunnel had been cut through its center, a tunnel wide enough to let fifteen people walk through side by side. In the roof of the tunnel a human skull had been carved out of the wood, eyes hollow and black, like a giant heart hanging down. The top jaw hung just above head height, teeth stained with soot and moss, and the lower jaw was protruding up out of the floor of the trunk.

“The Temple is just on the other side,” Valery said, a weight falling off her tone. “We made it.”

Everyone entered the tree, stepping over the bottom teeth as they went through. Shawn looked back out of the mouth, at the dark forest waiting beyond, wondering if it was too late to turn back.

As they came out of the other side of the tree, a sight of the moon above an endless ocean met their eyes. Near the edge of the cliffs was a bulge in the forest, where the grass and ferns rose up on the back of what looked like a stone structure buried in the years of growth.

“That must be it, right?” Molly asked.

“It’s gotta be,” Valery said.

“No point speculating,” Dylan said. “Let’s go see what we found.”

Shawn could hear the excitement in all of their voices, but he felt nothing but fear in his own. “Looks like it’s been lost for a long time.”

“For a Thousand years,” Molly said.

They came up to the front of the temple and froze, everyone standing at each other's side. Vines and roots were hanging across the front wall like a dense curtain of hair. You could hardly even see the structure underneath.

“It looks more like a bunker,” Shawn said. He could see words scratched into the stones beneath the vines. He grabbed a handful and ripped them away. He could see the message underneath more clearly now.

“We sealed this place of our own free will in the hopes that it would remain forgotten. This is not a place of honor. Nothing valuable is hidden here. We fashioned ourselves a powerful and wise order, and felt it important to leave this warning. Consider this land and all its secrets to be poisoned beyond the reach of man. What is here was considered repulsive to us. If you continue now, know that you have doomed yourself and the people you mean to save. The danger is still present in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the spirit…” The rest was too faded and corroded to read.

“Why would they leave these warnings?” Shawn asked.

“Why do you care?” Molly butted in. “Just do what you're told.”

Dylan said nothing, he just stared at Shawn, analyzing his every breath.

Valery unwrapped her arm from Molly’ shoulders and looked at Shawn with shallow eyes. “They were superstitious old men from a time when people considered the Crystals to be dangerous and evil devices. Forget what they thought. They’ve been dead for a thousand years. They don’t matter anymore.”

Shawn turned his eyes back to the carved letters. If you continue now, know that you have doomed the people you mean to save.

It felt like the message was somehow written for him, like these strange old wizards from a thousand years in the past had carved those words into the stone knowing that one day someone like Shawn would come here to unbury their past, and this would be their attempt to stop him.

“It really doesn’t seem like a good idea, Vee,” he said, turning back to her. “Maybe we should listen to these warnings.”

Valery’s smile faded into something displeased. “Shawn, this is the reason I brought you all this way. Only those chosen by the blood of Mikhail can unlock this door. This is why I need you.”

He could see the threat in her eyes. She’d never help him find a cure to the Gray Death if he didn’t agree to this. Shawn could see a glowing blue outline of a hand indented into the wall beneath the rest of the vines, seemingly powered by the moonlight. Just below it was a keyhole.

“This is it, Shawn,” Valery said, sounding hungry for whatever lay beyond. “What I’ve been waiting for–for so long.”

Valery brought a key out of the bag on her waist, a strange diamond shaped stone shaft with notches and teeth carved into its edge. “I’ve had this key since I was just a child… Darko wanted me to sell it, for gold, but I was smart enough to know its true value. I knew this key was worth more than all the gold in the rocks. And that only I could use it.”

“You’ve been planning this for a long time,” Shawn said, disappointed that he hadn’t seen it earlier.

She looked at Shawn, eyes stiff with determination. “I have. For a long, long time.” Valery’s voice was shaking as it fell low, almost to a whisper. “Together, we can make my destiny come true.”

Shawn could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Nothing about this seemed like a good idea. “And then you’ll help me with my destiny,” he said back, looking into her eyes for the truth.

Valery smiled, fangs as sharp as knives between her lips. “Of course I will,” she said, but it only robbed Shawn of what little confidence he had left. Still, he knew he didn’t have a choice but to trust her.

She took Shawn’s wrist in her hand and slowly raised up his fingers, and Shawn allowed her to do it, their eyes locked together the entire time. Shawn could almost taste the sweat bleeding out of her forehead, feel the cold in her cheeks as the blood rushed away from her face. Valery ripped away the vines and pushed Shawn’s palm against the glowing hand, smiling as a flash of warm, blue sparks erupted from the stone and coiled around his knuckles.

The stones under Shawn’s fingers glowed a bright blue, like ice over sapphire flame. At its edges spread a glowing web of blue lines that coiled across the temple's outer surface, forming vast patterns of flowers and winged creatures dancing amongst a forest–a forest populated by villages of peaceful people living in a symbiotic relationship with the world around them. At its center was a circle that Showed the seasons, beginning with a flower blooming in spring, and ending with the carcass of a deer decaying in winter.

The lines curved and grew like spreading veins, forming a wide arch of twisted branches around Shawn and the glowing imprint of the hand. Valery slowly pushed her key into the lock and twisted with a grind of dusty stone. Another burst of sparks erupted from the frame of the arch, making the twisted branches glow brighter until they were almost white.

The stone within the arch cracked and rumbled, then fell away from the rest of the wall, roaring with dust as it shivered and disappeared into the floor at the bottom of the temple’s wall, taking Valery’s key with it. “We’ve done it,” she said, breathless. “It actually worked.” She looked at Shawn, eyes wide and frosty. Before them waited an open doorway with a stairway of darkness carved down into the stones. A wall of cobwebs blocked the way.

“You really do have the blood of Mikhail in your veins,” Valery said. She looked at Shawn with eyes like black holes.

“Why would I lie about that?” Shawn asked.

“Lots of people do,” Valery said, turning back to look at Molly and Dylan, who had grown uncomfortably quiet.

“It seems empty,” Shawn said, feeling a sense of foreboding rise up inside him. He knew he’d just cracked the seal on something that should have remained long forgotten.

“How can you tell? I can’t even see the bottom.” Valery yanked the torch from Dylan’s hand and pushed it towards the shadow. The stairs went deep down into the Earth. The passage was thick with vines and roots breaking apart the stones and bending bricks as they found their way inside.

“Careful, Vee,” Molly said.

Valery pushed the torch at the webs and caught them aflame. A nest of thick spiders attempted to flee, but could not outpace the fire, and they crackled and popped with their webs. She turned back to Molly and Dylan. “You two stay out here. Keep a lookout for anything strange.”

“Whatever you say,” Dylan replied, his voice a dark display of displeasure.

“They’re just jealous,” Valery said under her breath as she whipped away and began to descend the stairs at a hurried pace.

Shawn had to fight his feet to keep up with her.

“Jealous of this power, of our destiny,” Valery said more loudly now that they were descending into the darkness. “That’s all that matters to them: power. They don't care about anything else.”

Shawn looked back and saw the light from the entrance to the temple already fading. He kept having to push vines and roots out of his way to slip by, and Valery continued to burn webs. “Why though? They’re your friends.”

“Are they?” Valery asked, turning back to Shawn. “Sometimes I wonder. They can’t use the Crystals like we can. Did you know that?”

“They still followed you all this way,” Shawn said.

“But for what reason? So they can break away a piece of the gift this temple is about to give to us. That’s what everyone becomes when you have power. My mother told me all about it. Just rats waiting for a chance to steal your bread.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What gift is about to be given to us?” Shawn asked, growing more and more unnerved by Valery’s speech.

“The gift of rebirth.”

She seemed to be coming unhinged. A darkness was rising inside her, a darkness Shawn didn’t know if he could control. More and more he thought about the warning carved into the stones above and wished he hadn’t disobeyed them. What had he awakened in her? Valery continued down the tunnel, a fierce determination in her steps. When they were almost at the bottom, Shawn started to see names carved into both walls. Horace Bodden. Janos fint. Terra Perci. Grenna Doridge. “What are all these names?”

“Who cares,” Valery said back, ignoring them. “They can’t stop us, now.”

Forgotten souls will never rise. Shawn read that message, and tried to read the list of names below it as they blurred past in the shadowy flicker of the torch. The next set of words he saw said, We failed them. And then, They will not be who you remember.

The steps flattened and the floor rose to meet them as they found the bottom of the temple’s stairs. A wide doorway opened into a chamber of impenetrable blackness. But at the center of all that inky darkness twinkled a small and insignificant green spark. A flame.

“Is that it?” Shawn asked, waving a cloud of dust from his face, coughing.

“It is,” Valery said slowly, her voice a tense whisper. She went around the room to light the torches. Each one she ignited made a new corner of the chamber glow into view, and with it came a new set of skeletons curled up on the floor. They were each wearing black robes, and had blindfolds across their eyes, but their hands were unbound.

As light flooded in, the center of the room became revealed, where there stood a pyramid, and at its tip was a nesting place carved out to house a green stone. A Crystal. The Turquoise Crystal. The Crystal that could speak to the dead.

“There it is,” Valery said, like she couldn’t believe it was real. “My Crystal.”

Shawn could see the green flame coiling inside, colliding with one wall then the other as it fought to escape its cage. The little fire seemed angry.

Valery approached the pedestal, her cheeks pale, her eyes dark. “I've been waiting for this moment for longer than I can remember.” She reached out but stopped with her fingers hovering just on the edge of the stone. It was like something was fighting inside her to make it stop. She scrunched her eyes together, then opened them again.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Shawn said, afraid to even suggest it. “These people left warnings; they died down here. It’s pretty obvious they wanted this Crystal to stay buried.”

Valery looked at Shawn like she was going to murder him, then she turned back to the Crystal and took a deep breath. She moved away from the pyramid towards the far corner, staring at the skeletons below more closely. “No injuries on the bones. They died of poison. Likely drank it themselves.” She looked at the Turquoise Crystal over her shoulder, then back to the skeletons. “I wonder what they’d tell us if we asked them?”

“This Crystal lets you speak to the dead?” Shawn asked, feeling his heartbeat rise.

Valery slowly nodded. “It does.”

Shawn looked at the Crystal on its pedestal, wondering silently why they’d consider a power like that to be repulsive and dangerous. Something took him over, and he imagined having a conversation with his long-dead father. Shawn’s heart seemed to skip a beat in his chest as he imagined his father’s voice. He almost thought he wanted that conversation more than a cure to the Gray Death. “Why would they hide this power away?...”

“Because they were afraid of it,” Valery said back. “And for good reason. Once we take this Crystal, everything is going to change.”

“Like what?...”

Valery looked at Shawn and paused for a moment, then said again, “Everything,” raising her brow. She went back to the Crystal and stood at Shawn’s side.

“Are you afraid?” Shawn asked, watching her shadow dance in the orange light of the torch.

“I’m terrified,” she said back.

“Then why are we here? This doesn’t make any sense. Let’s just leave and find our way back to Denengear so we can get the cure to the Gray Death.”

Valery slowly shook her head. “I came all this way. I’m not leaving without it. Even if it changes me forever.” She took Shawn’s hand and looked at him.

“What are you doing?” Shawn asked, repulsed by her cold, clammy touch. It somehow felt like Manie was watching him.

“For good luck,” Valery said back. She reached out and put her fingers around the Crystal, taking it into her grasp. The moment her skin touched the stone, the green fire inside burst to life and became a raging inferno jetting up the center. Valery breathed deeply, her chest going in and out with a slow rhythm. “I can feel it coming to life.”

Shawn could feel it, too, going up her hand and into his own fingers like a shock of cold lightning freezing up his veins. Sparks inside the Crystal began to swirl around the flame, forming two distinctive halos that intertwined and crossed. The rings turned faster and faster until it seemed there was a flaming orb of green light inside the stone, shining so brightly that all the torch-light inside the temple became consumed.

“What’s it doing?” Shawn asked, gritting his teeth from the pain surging through Valery’s fingers.

The green orb inside the stone exploded with a flash, showering the room in a wash of poison light. It looked like a swamp had filled the temple. The air seemed to hover and warp before Shawn’s eyes like mist in a bog. All the Torches in the room now burned a dark green, outlining what shadows still remained. Shawn breathed, and his breath came out as fog. The air had grown cold.

“Who has come to disturb the dead?” asked a deep and rumbling voice.

Shawn whipped back and saw a man standing beside him, flesh rotten and broken by bones visible beneath his skin. Shawn stumbled back, but Valery caught his arm, holding him by her side.

“The dead have grown quite many as of late,” Valery said back, fighting Shawn to keep him from running away.

“He’s a ghost,” Shawn said, heart kicking in his chest. He felt Valery squeeze his arm to quiet him.

Another ghost appeared, rising up out of the skeleton on the floor. She took her place beside the other.

“As they always do,” the man ghost said back. “Who are you?”

“My name is Valery. This is Shawn. Pleased to meet you?”

The ghost turned to look at the other as a third raised up from the bones. The third ghost took their place beside the others.

“I feel no warmth in your blood. Your heart is cold and empty.”

“She is a sickly and brittle thing!” Shouted the woman ghost, her voice loud and piercing. Shawn flinched, but Valery didn’t move. “Like to snap at the first hand that feeds her,” the ghost finished.

“I concur,” said the third.

“She should not have come,” said the woman ghost.

“Only the boy wields the blood of Mikhail,” said the lead ghost.

“Though he does not want this like she does,” said the third ghost.

“She tricked him. Lied to him,” said the woman ghost, her cheekbones rising and falling through her skin as she spoke. “She means to unleash the doom we fought so hard to conceal.”

Shawn looked over at Valery, wondering what that meant.

“I lied to no one,” Valery said, raising her eyes. “I made a deal.”

“A bargain with you can never be trusted!” The woman shouted. “I can see it in your eyes! You are a devious creature of soft cunning. Your ambition will undo the world.”

“My ambition will rebuild a world that’s been destroyed,” Valery said, her voice dark with ideas.

The ghosts looked at each other, seeming unsure of what that meant. Even Shawn was lost in the dark.

“A disease has been unleashed on our island. A disease so deadly, so transmissible, and so resistant, that no one has been able to stop it for seventy years. It has continued to eat away at Talmoria’s population unchecked, and now there are more dead than living. Shawn and I mean to stop it.”

“And how do you mean to do that?” the man ghost asked, crossing his arms.

“He has his way,” she said, looking over at Shawn, “And I have mine,” she finished, bringing her eyes to rest on the Turquoise Crystal in her hand.

“The road you travel will bring you to find your own destruction,” the ghost shouted, stepping forwards. “Thousands died trying to erase the damage this instrument wrought! Hundreds-of-thousands more will perish if you do not turn back!”

Valery shook her head at them. “I can’t turn back. There is no other way–not for me.”

“King Mikhail shared with us his blood, but he could not pass along his foresight, it seems,” said the ghost beside the first. “We should have collapsed the tunnel. Our Crystal may have stayed lost for another two, three-thousand years, hmm?”

“This moment was inevitable,” The woman ghost reminded them. “We all knew that. That’s why we sealed ourselves away with it.”

“Yet I don’t think our warning is having any effect on this one,” the ghost said, pointing at Valery. “Though her friend does seem a bit shaken.”

The man ghost turned to Shawn. “Mikhail passed you his gift, yet you waste its power on this forgotten, discarded creature. You will never need her help. She will only ever need yours. Do not let her lead you into doom. It is not too late to turn back. Kill her. Leave her to rest with us.”

“A sacrifice,” the woman ghost said. “To the future of the realm.”

“A necessary evil to preserve the good,” said the third ghost.

Shawn looked at Valery, and she looked at him. He could see distrust growing behind her eyes. “I won’t kill her,” Shawn said back to the ghosts.

“Then you are a fool,” said the lead ghost. “You have a sword on your hip. There is a dagger by my side.” The ghost looked to his skeleton in the corner, where a rusty dagger was laying on the stones beside his hand. “End this–here and now.”

Again Shawn and Valery met eyes, but they said nothing.

“I think our meeting here is over,” Valery said, raising up the Crystal as if she meant to flick them away.

“Wait,” the lead ghost said. He slowly reached out to grab at the Crystal, but his fingers melted through the stone like mist. “What if you are wrong?” he asked. “What if this device cannot give you what you seek? There will be no way to reverse what you have done.”

“You found a way,” Valery said back.

The ghost looked at the others, then to Shawn. “She will betray you in the end. We were forced to slay every man, woman and child who knew of this device’s existence. Our hands have spilled oceans of blood for this peace to exist. Do not let her break it.”

Valery looked at Shawn one last time, then back to the ghosts and said, “An ocean of blood has already been spilled. I mean to drain it.” She flicked the Crystal in her fingers, drawing in the green atmosphere like a breath being inhaled. The ghosts faded with the green mist until only their skeletons remained.

“See? I told you what they think doesn’t matter,” Valery said, slipping the Turquoise Crystal into the pouch on her hip. She slapped the leather flap after it was closed and looked at Shawn, smiling. Then her smile dropped, and her expression turned more dark. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Shawn looked back at the skeletons, wishing he had been given more time to speak with them. He now had no doubt that what he had just done was possibly the worst mistake he’d ever made.

Valery picked the torch off the ground and turned towards the stone steps. Shawn followed her, when he heard a great boom of stone, and then a grinding sound from above. He looked up and saw the roof of the inner chamber sprout metal spikes aimed at the floor. The stone ceiling fell, but it quickly got caught in the vines reaching through the walls and the weight crushed its rails. The roof shattered at the corners and broke into a waterfall of dust and debris.

“Move!” Shawn shouted. He pushed Valery up the stairs and dove after her, escaping a rain of heavy stones that pounded down behind him. Valery lay on her back, sprawled up the steps with Shawn half on her legs and the torch at his side.

“That was too close,” she said with an exhausted laugh. “Thanks.”

Before Shawn could take a breath, the walls of the starway began to rumble and grind, sliding in quickly towards the middle.

“Get up, hurry,” Valery shouted weakly, taking Shawn’s hand. They moved up the stairs as the walls clapped together behind them. Then the next section of walls began to slide together after the last. “Not like this,” Valery said.

“Faster, Vee!” Shawn called as he pushed her from behind. “We have to go faster or we’re going to get crushed!”

“I'm going as fast as I can!” she shouted back, almost whimpering. “My legs are shaking from the Crystal.”

Shawn kept pushing her, and the walls slapped together behind him, snagging the end of his shirt. “I’m caught!”

Valery looked back and gasped, sweat shining on her face in the torchlight. Shawn turned back and tugged on the fabric as the next walls began to come together around him. He tried to rip it, but the material was too strong.

“Just cut it!” Valery screamed.

Shawn yanked up his sword from the sheathe and slid the blade along the fabric, cutting through the shirt like butter. The last threads tore away as Shawn whipped back. He dropped his sword and left it as he ran up the stairs with Valery.

“We’re almost there! I can see moonlight!” she called back.

The next set of walls clapped together, biting at the back of Shawn’s boot. Molly came into the light at the top of the tunnel, waving her arms in a panic. “Run!” she screamed. “You aren’t going to make it!”

Yes we will, Shawn thought. I didn’t come all this way to be crushed to death! He tightened his jaw and pushed Valery from behind with all his strength. She fell, gasping, and Shawn grabbed her arm, bringing her back to stride. “Come on!”

The top of the stairs was closing in, but then a slab of stone started to slide across the entrance to the temple. Molly put her hands on top of her head. “Run Vee!” she screamed.

Stones clapped and thundered together behind Shawn, and the rumbling grew so fierce he thought the stairs were going to collapse beneath his feet. The light was growing thinner at the top, and the dust kept pouring in. The torch slipped out of Shawn’s hand and he watched it roll back down the steps, tumbling between the walls as they slammed together and crushed the wood like an eggshell, extinguishing the flame.

“Forget it!” Valery shrieked.

Shawn tried to push Valery ahead, but it was too late. They hadn’t made it in time.

“No no no!” Molly begged.

As Shawn and Valery came to the top of the steps, the stone slab slammed shut against the opposite wall, sealing them inside with the dead.