David

David woke to the sound of a guqin, which implied that he wasn't in a hospital. He also didn't think there were many people he knew other than Alice who could play a guqin, which implied that Alice was alive enough to be playing her guqin. That meant that they had both managed to survive the Lightning, so he opened his eyes and sat up with high spirits.

The guqin stopped.

At first, David thought they were still in the library, because he was roughly ten feet from a wall with a bunch of windows lining it.

"You're awake," Alice said from somewhere behind him to the left. She did not sound nearly as cheerful as he was but he could hear a touch of relief in her voice.

There was not a bookshelf or table or chairs in sight. Instead, large columns hewn of a dark stone were spread sporadically. The windows were not shaped like any he'd seen before - they were long and thin, like the sort cut into the face of a medieval castle for the benefit of defending archers. They let in rays of clear sunlight, some of which was in his eyes.

He blinked and then sneezed. It was dusty. Exactly how much dust was around was truly shocking.

David turned to Alice, who had started playing her guqin again. It was the same song as before. She was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, her guqin resting on her knees. Alice's ponytail had become a loose but intricate braid. Her lips sparkled in the sunlight, looking slightly wet. He frowned. She'd been awake long enough to do her hair and put on lip gloss, and now she was playing music.

"How long was I out?"

Alice stopped playing again. "I woke up early in the morning, as the sun was coming out. It's late afternoon now. I don't know how long it's been since the Lightning." She bit her lip. "I also have no idea where we are," she exclaimed, with mock cheerfulness. "But I wasn't going to wander around without you, in case I got lost."

She paused, then looked incredibly interested in the strings of the guqin. "I was afraid you wouldn't wake up. It's concerning when you're on the other side of it, isn't it," she said, referring to when he kept vigil over her while she'd been in that strange sleep in the library.

The question that he'd never gotten to ask finally bubbled to the forefront of his mind. "Why were you like that?"

Alice sighed again and started to slide the guqin off of her knees, then thought better of it, picked it up and placed it on the ground in front of her. "It's hard to answer."

David narrowed his eyes. However, she continued without prompting.

"You ever lose track of time when you're doing something you love?"

He nodded. Obviously.

She shook her head quickly. "Not, like, watching tv or reading or studying or something like that. I mean like, actually doing something, like playing an instrument or ballet or martial arts or painting. Something that needs a part of you in it."

David rolled his eyes. Obviously. Alice had been notorious for being a bit of a wonder child - talented at everything she put her mind to but he wasn't necessarily without his merits. He was going to apply to a conservatory for piano along with his list of universities. Also he spoke a lot of languages. And he'd read a lot of books. And his grades were great. Why was he being so defensive?

Alice continued, unaware of David's sudden crisis of confidence. "Playing Guangling San was really draining."

Of course David understood. Anyone who'd performed the entirety of a sonata, which were written in three movements lasting from four to eight minutes apiece, at a recital could understand that playing an instrument for over twenty minutes was hard. But nobody passed out on the piano bench while sitting up when they were done.

"This is going to sound crazy," Alice began, tapping her fingers against her knees.

David scoffed. "We've survived the lightning from the heavens after making an oath at the sky. That would be pretty crazy for a Greek myth. I'd probably believe anything right now."

She smiled despite herself, then busied herself by continuing to tap her fingers. As far as he could tell, Alice was never still when she was thinking hard.

"There are aspects of the Song in Guangling San and if you lean into them when you're playing you get this sense that you're emptying yourself out."

David frowned.

"But I couldn't stop," she said, suddenly animated. "No one just stops when they haven't finished playing, that's stupid. But it's much worse towards the end."

"But that couldn't have been your first time playing it," David said, bewildered. "You must have practiced it, you memorized the score."

Alice nodded. "I learned it in parts. You play the piano, no one just starts again from the beginning and goes through the whole piece to progress through it. That's stupid."

"Well usually, I'd give a full performance in practice before playing it in public," David said, realizing what she was getting at.

Alice shrugged. "I just finished the night before. That's why I was so excited to play it, it was super close. I signed up for the show because I knew there wouldn't be one for weeks otherwise." A touch of color showed on her cheeks. "And then I woke up really late and left five minutes after I got out of bed."

"Point is," she said, putting that aside, "I heard the Song one night when I was reading something and it's in a lot of stuff. And I mean a lot of stuff - poems, music, even some writing. I would bet that if we took a trip to the Met and looked at the exhibits I'd find it in some paintings or sculptures. But not as much as it's in Guangling San and I didn't realize it was even in Guangling San until I played the whole thing."

"Like what stuff?"

Alice frowned. "All sorts, and not the things you'd expect, even if they're from artists you might expect. Mozart's Prague. Daft Punk's Aerodynamic. Shakespeare's The Tempest. It's in some of the martial arts forms I practice but not all of them, not even most of them."

"And playing the Song is tiring," David hazarded.

She nodded. "Even following the Song is tiring, when it's in music or something you're reading. But you can feel it in the air, can't you? You can feel yourself drawing it in, naturally, like you're breathing."

David listened for the sound of the drums, for the way it seemed to resonate with the world and as he felt for it in his surroundings, the sudden cacophony of different sounds slowly aligned and became one with the one within him. It became louder, picking up in pace, echoing. He heard the sound of a guqin but he paid it no mind.

"Ground control to David, this is Ground Control, over." Alice was shaking him by the shoulder.

David gave a startled shake. "What?"

"You've been gone for ten minutes." He realized the guqin must have been Alice playing a song. "I thought you were just thinking about what I said, but you were listening to it, weren't you. It's really easy to lose track of time when you are."

The colors seemed a little brighter and the sounds of the world were more clear.

"Anyway, if you just sit and listen to the Song, you'll find yourself recovering from doing something intense, like playing something with the Song in it. That's the best way I can explain it. We've got a way more pressing concern right now. I'm hungry."

"Oh." It would have probably taken longer to notice if she hadn't said anything but David could feel the sudden pang in his stomach.

"You're not going to like this, but as I said earlier, I have no idea where we are but it's clearly abandoned," said Alice, as she slid her guqin back into its case, zipped it up, stood and then slung it over her back.

David stood as well and followed her.

"I think this used to be a temple of some sort," she said as they made their way between the pillars. She gestured at circular stones of different sizes which lined the walls. They were also covered with dust. "I think someone stole all the statues," said Alice. David then realized they had been plinths of some sort.

"That's a lot of statues," David said.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"A lot a lot of statues." They made their way towards a pair of imposing double doors. "Especially for someone to just cart off," she said. "Wait till you see what this place looks like on the outside."

The doors were surprisingly light. When they opened, the afternoon sun which had not quite begun to glow red flooded over them and clear, cool air rushed inwards. There was even more dust inside than David had thought.

They were standing in a small courtyard which had been paved with flat, grey stones. Weeds had long grown through the cracks in the stones. To their left, there were the remains of an enormous pillar of stone, which had been smashed. The elements had washed away all but the largest of the pieces, which from around thirty yards away looked like it had been covered in carvings.

The courtyard itself had been built on the side of an idyllic, sloping mountain which was imposing in size. David turned around to look at the building they'd left. It did, indeed, look like a temple. It had been cut into the mountain itself, at its peak. The windows within must have opened out into the other side of the mountain.

Over the door, which was carved into thick stone walls, was a deep gouge.

"Whoever did that must have really, really hated this place," Alice said softly, looking up at the gouge where David assumed the name of the temple had once been carved. Her voice echoed in the courtyard, even though David wasn't sure how.

There was a deep silence here too, like the Library before that first bolt of Lightning. It was more mournful, more contemplative, like a grave.

"What even did that?" David whispered, looking at the gouge more carefully. It looked like someone had scooped the stone out as if it had been a tub of butter.

Alice shrugged. "I couldn't think of anything that would leave a mark like that." She guided him over to the remains of the pillar, which was even larger up close. The cylindrical stone was nearly half their height in diameter. It must have stood nearly fifty feet tall, given the amount of pillar left on the ground. It was indeed covered in carvings.

"Whatever happened here happened in the last century, most likely," said Alice. "None of the words on the pillar have been eroded away but the edges where it had been broken have been worn down. I don't recognize the writing on it."

David examined the words which had covered the pillar in groups of two, three and four at even intervals with spaces in between them. He bent his head to the side, trying to imagine what they might have looked like upright. Each word was roughly the size of a palm.

"Hard to tell, but it looks almost like Chinese," David said. "There's too many unique symbols for this to be an alphabet. You can also see that some of the more complex characters have a pattern of radicals, like Chinese. There's words which share a bunch of these symbols."

Alice groaned. "I might have been looking at them at a ninety degree angle earlier."

David grinned.

"Stop laughing at me!"

His grin widened as Alice tilted her head in determination and started inching her way along the pillar, examining what were obviously groups of words.

"I don't think they were carved by the same person," David said, as he looked from group to group while pacing his way along the pillar they were examining. "There are some words which are clearly the same but carved in a different style."

Alice made a noise of agreement from several feet away then pointed excitedly in the corner of his eye. "Look here, there's a handful of groups that share the same first word," she said.

David walked over to where she was looking. Indeed, there were nearly eight groups of three words each, all of which shared the same first word and two different groups which shared two of the three words. He closed his eyes in thought, realizing it was something incredibly obvious, then it hit him.

"They're names. They're names of people. This is a family. You know how sometimes you'll have Chinese siblings who are given the same first word and different second words in the same name, this must be like that."

"So this is a list of people who lived here? That can't be the case. It's a pretty big temple. It's got to be at least three times the size of the library, but there's hundreds if not thousands of names on this pillar."

David shook his head. "It's a list of people who lived here, but not at the same time, I think."

Alice looked at the pillar in growing horror. "Who would do this?" she mumbled. "Who would possibly do this to a memorial?"

David pointed at the gouge over the front door. "Someone who hated this place enough to do that."

Alice walked along the pillars, trying to figure out more about the people who had lived in the temple. David followed behind her, stopping to examine the changes in the names and styles of carving.

"I don't think who did the carving was a matter of convenience," he finally said. "After the... handwriting?" he said, unsure of the proper word to use, "changes, it never repeats. It was probably done every however many years and they worked their way up the pillar. Not every spot on the pillar is filled in all around."

Alice muttered something unintelligible. David caught up to her. "What did you say?"

"I said it was done every generation," she said. Her look of horror hadn't abated. "Look, you can see entire lines of families, from the last of a name to appear all the way up to the first of a name. At least I assume we're going down the pillar as we get closer to the base."

She pointed at the plinth by the rounded archway at the far end of the courtyard, which wasn't so far anymore.

The names at the bottom of the pillar, still attached to the plinth, were twice as large as the other names on the pillar. There were five of them, spaced equidistantly around the band of stone they occupied. None of them had the same last names. One of them had been gouged out the same way the stone above the doors had been.

"I assume these are the people who created this place and whoever did this really hated one of them. Religious motivations, then," Alice said. "The people who founded this temple had some competing philosophies and this temple was destroyed in the distant future by their quarrel."

"So four of them believed the same thing and one guy didn't?"

Alice frowned, tapping her foot, then brightened. "How about this. The temple was destroyed and this person's ideas were blamed and someone did this because they were angry about it. Maybe it was the same person who did this and the name of the temple, maybe it wasn't. Maybe the name of the place was cut out symbolically? To indicate that it was all over or something. Statues and everything else of value were then stolen by whoever broke the pillar and probably murdered everyone inside and looters since the incident."

Satisfied, she marched past the edge of the courtyard and peered into the distance. "Anyway, I didn't go past the courtyard because I didn't want you to wake up and panic because I was missing or something, but I think I saw a village or town or something like that earlier." She was right. It must have been at least thirty or forty miles away but there was the telltale pattern of roofs surrounded by a wall in a distant valley.

David saw something far more important. "Look over there," he said, pointing to the left at a grove of trees. "Those are mulberry trees."

Alice shrugged. "So?"

"Mulberries."

Alice stared at him, bemused.

"Mulberries."

She looked concerned.

"We can eat them."

Alice turned and ran for the trees, partly in embarrassment, partly in hunger. By the time David reached the trees, Alice was already grabbing large, ripe mulberries off the branches and stuffing them into her mouth, whole.

"Watch out for silkworms," she said, her lips and fingers dyed dark red. "I've already had a mouthful."

David found that he was significantly more hungry than he'd believed.

"I'm glad whoever blew up the pillar didn't take their time to burn all these trees down or something," Alice shouted from several trees away. "There's got to be at least fifty of them. I'm not sure they'd grow here naturally."

After they'd both eaten their fill of fruit, the sun had nearly set.

"We should probably go back to the temple for tonight. I don't want to walk along the mountainside in the dark. And we'll probably be more welcome during the day, especially since we don't even know what language they speak."

David nodded and they made their way back up the mountain and through the archway in the courtyard, past the remains of the pillar and to the double doors, which swung open easily. He noted, happily, that billions of stars had started to appear in the sky, which he'd never been able to see in the city because of light pollution. A crescent moon hung in the distance, he was with a pretty girl and they wouldn't starve for at least a few days.

"It's a pity that we can't look around the temple after the sun's gone-" Alice stopped.

"I guess we're wizards after all," David said.

"Uh, why can I see in a pitch black temple with windows the width of my hand at night?"

"Do you think we take the Lightning with us wherever we go?" David asked, not even sure if he was joking.

"What are the chances I can put this on a college app?" Alice said. She was slightly ahead of him but David could almost hear the smile in her voice.

"Depends on whether or not you think they'll lock you up and experiment on you in a room somewhere."

Alice turned, her dimples showing. "I'll make sure to tell them that you're the only one who knows what's going on if they get me."

Their easy laughter echoed through the halls as they made their way around the edges of the room, until Alice found a series of doors. None of them were locked.

"Bedrooms?" David guessed as he opened the door closest to them. He was correct this time. There was a small bed in the corner which had gathered dust that it could have been mistaken for a thick blanket. Alice went straight for the wardrobe in the corner, which she threw open with a bang.

Inside were piles of clothing, which looked relatively well preserved.

"Jackpot! We can look like the locals," Alice said. "If they still wear clothes like these." She clucked her tongue. "Hopefully whoever destroyed this place isn't in charge of the town."

She unfolded what looked to be a light grey robe.

"In case we weren't clear about it, this is definitely somewhere in Asia. This looks like it came out of a period drama or a wuxia adaptation."

David examined the robe, which looked like it would barely reach his waist. Alice measured it against herself. It came midway down her thighs, barely past her jeans shorts.

"I bet it'll look pretty good on me," she said.

David agreed.

She opened one of the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe and withdrew a tiny strip of cloth and stared at it for a second. "Surprisingly modern,” she said with raised eyebrows, nodding. “And definitely a girl's room."

The other drawers didn't have many things of note, though she did find a book with a blue binding and words which were similar to those on the pillars outside. David leaned over her shoulder excitedly.

She flipped through it quickly, then sighed. "This is some country in Asia for sure, most likely China. This is written in the traditional scoring for some kind of flute, which is still used today for cultural purposes if not convenience. But..." she trailed off.

"That doesn't make any sense. If this were China, we'd be able to read those characters outside. There's a town with their lights on in the distance in the late afternoon, which implies people still live there but this place which is in walking distance isn't completely cleaned out of everything, even if it were by museums or something."

David had no answer for her. He could hear a touch of the existential dread that he felt at her next words.

"Exactly where are we?"