Monster Party Book Seven: There's some things you're never gonna help or change, but hunger is something we can turn around!

Chapter Nine: If I had my way, if I had my way, if I had my way, I would tear this whole building down!

"What is the face of Zhakata?" That was the question asked by the next major group that the six adventurers encountered.

It wasn't directed at them so much as at the world in general, spoken by an elaborately adorned man who was being followed by a full dozen other priests. The man's face was familiar, especially given how many paintings of him they'd recently walked by.

Yagno Petrovna.

"The face… it must be the face of the Devourer, it must only be the face of the Devourer..." Yagno managed to speak in a strange mix of mumble and shout, as if he both wanted no one else to hear, yet was desperate for someone else to supply him with an answer all the same.

The priests who followed after him bobbed their heads in rapid agreement.

"Yes, Lord Petrovna. Absolutely my lord!" They all readily agreed.

It was hard to tell if their agreement was true conviction or simply a desire to avoid disagreeing with anything the high priest of Zhakata said.

Just as the two groups were about to pass, Yagno stopped shot, tilted his head upwards slightly so that he could look eyes to eye with Alexander Diamondclaw, and jabbed an accusatory finger at him.

"You! What is the face of Zhakata?!" He demanded to know at once.

Cal Wright, Devi Skye, and Florence Bastien all adjusted their robes so as to hide their faces from Yagno Petrovna then sent Alexander looks which all conveyed more or less the exact same message. Only to what degree the look was could be classified as either pleading or scolding changed.

Since they were standing behind him Alexander couldn't see those looks of course, but the gazes were so forceful they could practically make their presence known through the back of his head.

Alexander Diamondclaw promptly proceeded to completely ignore all of them.

"What is the face of Zhakata? What is the face of the greatest power we could ever know? High Priest Petrovna, I tell all who follow me that surely it is the face of a wolf." He declared without a moment of hesitation.

Twelve priestly faces (and a few of Alexander's companions) promptly went white with shock, even Yagno Petrovna's eyes (which up until now had possessed of a tired half squint) went wide with surprise.

The priests who had been following Yagno seemed more than ready to let loose with bellows of blasphemy, heresy, and who knew what other theological accusation, but Yagno stilled them with a single raised hand. He then draped that arm over Alexander's shoulder (thankfully failing to notice the feel of Wolfclaw's sheath beneath Alexander's robes) in an almost friendly gesture.

"A wolf? You must tell me, why do you see a wolf?" He asked, surprisingly sounding more curious than accusatory.

"What is there to be learned, what is there to be gained from knowing or worshiping gods if we can not know their faces, not know their minds? If they are so far beyond us as to be utterly incomprehensible, than why would they ever waste the effort to comprehend us? If they do not comprehend us, then why should we ever expect them to care for us? Gods must have a face, gods must have flesh, flesh that at times they can be able to fear for. I see the face of a wolf. It is is harsh, it is savage, but it is fair." The one eyed man declared solemnly.

Yagno slowly continued his walk down the corridor, and Alexander had little choice but to proceed alongside him, even if it was taking them further away from where he wanted to be.

"Fair? Why should the face, why should the rule of a god be fair?" The high priest of Zhakata questioned.

"Life is harsh enough already. Our lives are defined by how we scratch, hunt, battle, and struggle for every single breath that we can possibly draw. We never win in the end, sooner or later either due to our own mistakes, or simple ill fortune, we will fail, we fall, and we will perish. Yet, still we struggle all the same.

In the struggle, we are defined. In the struggle, we are glorious, we are each a star burning brightly against a sky of infinite darkness. There is no light in this world, but that we make for ourselves, that others make for us and we in turn make for them. Before the face of a wolf, is the struggle called life truly judged." Alexander answered.

Yagno was silent for a moment, the only sound was the collection of various footsteps echoing off the temple floor.

"You believe that Zhakata has the face of a wolf, because if he does not, then life itself is meaningless." He eventually concluded.

"If Zhakata does not have the face of a wolf then I would not serve him." Alexander agreed.

"Without that feral face gazing down upon us, we are lost in the darkness of our own petty bigotries and ignorance. Without that face to make us question ourselves, to make us struggle and redefine ourselves, what purpose could we hope to find in life? It is only when we see that face, only when we can stand proudly before it, that life is worth living.

Haven't you seen the face of Zhakata yourself high priest Yagno?" Alexander Diamondclaw further continued, concluding his comments with a question of his own.

Yagno Petrovna removed his arm from Alexander Diamondclaw's shoulder. He turned away from him and back to the gaggle of priests he'd been originally followed by.

"Yes, yes of course I have seen the face of Zhakata. I saw his name written upon a wall as but a child, and thus I dedicated my entire life to him. I have dedicated my entire life to Zhakata, and many times I have seen his face!" He insisted before shaking a finger at one of the priests.

"You, tell me off the first time you saw Zhakata's face!" He demanded at once.

The priest began to speak of his own conversion while shuffling along down the corridor away from Alexander and his companions.

Only once they'd vanish from sight did Cal speak up, and even then only in a whisper.

"You just gotta poke the dragon don't you Boss?" He sighed in exasperation.

Alexander resumed his journey in the direction he'd originally been going and the others followed after him.

"Yagno Petrovna asked me a sincere question from the bottom of his heart, was I supposed to lie to the poor man?" He shot back, sounding offended at the very concept of the idea.

"Yes!" The alchemist insisted at once.

"I've seen you lie to anyone, make that just about everyone we've ever met! I really hope putting on these robes didn't make you think that you're actually sort of a priest..." The dirty blond haired man muttered grinding his teeth together in irritation.

"Okay let ask another question. Did you really expect me to lie to Yagno Petrovna, if I thought I could hurt him more with the truth?" The group's leader countered.

To this Callan Wright could find only one very obvious answer, and so he simply stomped a foot in disapproval. Then he risked a glance in the direction the baker's dozen of priests had departed, as if to make doubly certain that no group of guards were about to come rushing down it with zealous murder on their minds.

"Maybe you could have told him that he could, just stop, believing in Zhakata? That would have been fun!" Mirri offered with a throaty chuckle.

Alexander sighed as he worked a hand under his hood so that he could stroke some of his currently hidden hair.

"Fun, but not exactly likely to succeed. Belief tends to be a lot harder to shake than we give it credit for. You could just stop believing in Kali any time you wanted after all, at least Yagno seems to get priestly magic as a result of his faith." The tall man pointed out.

Mirri turned away from him and possessively began to rub a hand over the wristband of skulls she wore on her right arms.

"Don't listen to him Black Mother. I know that the only reason you haven't given me magic is because where is the fun supposed to be in zapping someone with mystical energy when you could just tear their head off instead?" She insisted.

Luckily with Yagno's departure this particular hallway had been left completely deserted aside from the group meaning that there was no priests or soldiers around to hear their extremely incriminating conversation.

James slightly taken in by one of Mirri's rare sincerely faithful moments began to reach a red gloved hand into his robes.

Before said hand was able to complete it's journey however Mirri' let go of her arm and seized his.

"No, no no no, no." She insisted.

Mirri knew that James kept a black stone icon of Bastet concealed in one of his jacket's many pockets, only bringing it out on rare occasions. This was undoubtedly not the time for him to have one of said moments. They might be able to get away with a fair amount in here, but openly displaying the symbol of a god other than Zhakata was bound to be contraindicated.

James let his arm go limp and then nodded calmly as he realized the mistake he'd been about to make.

"As fun as dumping on religion is, and believe me, it is pretty much the national sport of Lamordia, surpassed only by skiing and grave robbing, we really should keep moving along." The alchemist suggested.

The group exchanged a series of curt nods, and then they kept moving along.

XXX XXX XXX

The room where they could supposedly find the Eye of Zhakata was a large room dedicated to his worship. It contained parallel rows of benches that could have held hundreds of priests stood thankfully empty at the moment. The walls were adorned with tapestries, icons and plaques honoring Zhakata as well as many skeletal figures who had probably become martyrs to his faith, through starvation if nothing else.

At one end of the chamber was a huge dais, on top of which hunched a twelve foot tall bronze statue of Zhakata the Devourer. The statue's head was mounted on a squat dwarfish body. Its wide open mouth, surrounded by a fence of two foot long teeth, was locked in a permanent howl of rage.

Around the statue's base was the charred remains of what had once probably been a small feast. The basin of this bizarre statue's mouth was filled with still more hot ash. Clearly this statue was used for some ritual involving placing the food in the statue's mouth, before lighting it aflame.

The room was occupied by four other people, two of them priests, and two of them soldiers who were busy gathering prayer sheets from a worship service that had most likely been recently concluded.

The two soldiers looked up suspiciously at the group when they first entered, but seeing their red robes quickly returned to their work.

The priests were if anything even more suspicious but didn't say anything, yet.

Alexander didn't intend to give them the chance.

He leaned back and seem to nonchalantly stretch, while in reality he was giving a series of complex hand signals behind his back.

Then he slowly began to approach one of the priests, with Mirri heading towards the other.

"Excuse me father I was just wondering..." He began, before promptly decking the priest of Zhakata without further ado.

Just as he finished speaking Mirri grabbed the other priest and wrestled him to the ground, headbutting him and grabbing both of his hands in her own suddenly bone crushing grip.

One of the soldiers began to cry out in shocked horror but he never got the chance. Before a word could even leave his mouth Devi's flail shot out from her priestly robes and wrapped tight around his neck choking him into silence.

The last soldier went down as James shoved a hand over his mouth and held him still before Cal whacked him upside the head with a simple small metal rod.

There was nothing at all technically advanced or magical about the item, it was just something easily concealable and more than hard enough to hit people with.

"Well that was fun. I give us five minutes at most before someone barges in here and we all end up running for our lives." Cal predicted as he then got to work closing the door, hoping that people wouldn't take this as a reason to investigate.

"He may be pessimistic, but the sooner we find the Eye of Zhakata, the better. Any idea where it is?" Devi pondered as she began to scan the room.

Alexander's single eye quickly alighted on the large statue of Zhakata.

"He said that Rega hid the Eye somewhere in this room. If I was going to hide something, I wouldn't put it somewhere no one would look, I'd put it somewhere no one could see." The group's leader surmised.

As he approached the statue he began to slide Wolfclaw free from its sheath. Then the silver haired man began to vigorously stab his blade into the piles of ash again and again and again and again.

The open jaws of the statue were about a foot and a half apart, and judging by how much of Wolfclaw had been able to penetrate them the ash was about three feet deep.

Only after well over two dozen stabs did he finally relent and re-sheath his weapon with a satisfied smirk on his face.

Florence meanwhile began to slowly approach the statue's mouth and the pile of ashes within it.

"Those look pretty freshly burnt Alex, do you want me to use magic to… well never mind." The dryad's offer of protection promptly gave way to a weary sigh as Alexander Diamondclaw simply grabbed hold of the statue's teeth and began to pull himself through its mouth so that he could properly lay on top of the ashes and inspect the entire basin.

"Sir, are you okay?" Mirri called out, a little worried that this might be too much abuse even for Alexander Diamondclaw.

"I've had worse. Anyway lets see what I can find..." He insisted.

Alexander began to reach a hand through the ashes, and almost instantly his expression grew more joyous.

"You found the Eye?" James asked, for some reason the werecat was feeling a great deal more skittish than normal.

"No, I just found some chunks of dead, I don't quite know what, but it was probably still alive and not very friendly before I stabbed it.

Then he went back to searching through the ashes. It took him almost a minute, but then his single eye went wide.

"There we go, there's something in here and it feels like has been bolted to the bottom of the basin. Just give me a few moments to work it loose..." He declared proudly.

At which point the statue's jaws suddenly slammed shut.

"Zhakata..." The statue somehow managed to rumble even though its mouth was shut.

Out of pure instinct Callan Wright brought up the single weapon that he'd brought with him into the temple.

Then the rational part of his brain took over, did a quick comparison between the massive bronze statue and the small metal rod, and realized it would take a much braver (that is to say stupider) man than him just to even try.

Which meant that instead he'd have to rely on the tools he'd brought with him instead.

Since the entire "sneak in, sneak out, nobody is left the wiser" part of the plan was pretty much shot he cast aside his red cloak completely to at least give him more freedom of movement.

He might not have been able to bring Phoenix or any of his guns… but he did still have a small collection of his favorite potions at hand.

"Bronze is made by mixing copper and tin, you know what those both have in common? Neither of them react well to sulfuric acid!" The alchemist declared proudly as he grabbed a bottle filled with ominously clear liquid and hurled it at the statue's teeth.

The huge thing tried to dodge but the even if the statue was somehow alive it wasn't possessed of truly unstatue like speed. The bottle smashed against its teeth and the liquid splashed over them, immediately starting to hiss and fizzle.

Cal was certain that he'd need a great deal more acid to get the job done, but it was a start at least.

"Zhakata..." The statue wheezed contemptuously as it began to stride forward towards the group.

Florence Bastien dropped her staff and instead pressed both of her green gloved hands against one of the statue's legs.

"Metal has never truly lived, and that makes it so very easy to kill." As she spoke tendrils of brown rust raced up the leg that she had pressed them against.

In scant seconds the leg had rusted worse than if it had spent a decade under water. When the beast took its next step forward the rusted leg let loose with a horrendous screech before breaking free and toppling to the ground.

The statue itself followed shortly after with bone rattling force.

Granted while a living being would probably be rather distressed over the lost of a limb, this statue didn't seem to be any less stoically determined to simply continue its murderous rampage.

"Zhakata..." Its voice boomed as it reached out a huge arm to grab Florence.

If anything loosing its leg seemed to make the statue's remaining limbs move faster, as its arm darted forward faster than Florence Bastien could move.

Not faster than James Firecat though.

Before the statue had even finished voicing another "Z", the werecat had started moving. He came up behind Florence, scooped her up in both arms and bounded into the air like his boots were made out of rubber.

Thus the statue's arm thus ended up closing only on empty air.

WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM!

A horrendous banging sound echoed from within the statue's mouth and a moment later one of its teeth (slightly eroded by the acid) popped out.

"I've got the Eye, just keep it distracted a little longer!" Alexander called out to his companions before he went back to battering away at the teeth.

"Easy for you to say Sir. Where is the fun in fighting this thing supposed to be?" Harrumphed Mirri Catwarrior as she managed a tremendous leap of her own to land atop the statue's head.

She began to stamp down upon it repeatedly, and somehow her feet managed to actually dent, the bronze, though they were unable to do any true sort of damage.

"Zhakata..." The statue growled, sounding as irritated as a unliving statue could.

It reached up one of its hands, determined to put a stop to the stomping.

This time it had better luck since James already had his hands full and Mirri was too busy attacking to worry about defending herself.

Except that the moment after it managed to close its massive fingers around Mirri, suddenly all it was holding was nothing, nothing but a handful of mist.

The mist flowed away from the monster, and then promptly pooled itself back together transforming back into Mirri Catwarrior who looked none the worse the wear from the experience.

"Vampirism. The solution to all of life's little problems, including life itself." Mirri chuckled.

While she was happily extolling the virtues of terminal anemia, Devi Skye was hard at work on the door. I seemed like some magical spell had been activated when the door had been closed which was now working to keep it from being opened, even from the inside.

"This is stupid." She muttered before taking a step back and removing the glove she wore on her right hand.

Each of her knuckles was adorned with a differently colored ring. The one she wore on her middle finger began to sparkle, and a moment later a bolt of lighting shot forth from her hand and slammed into the door blasting a roughly human sized hole in it.

Luckily, magical lighting wasn't accompanied by a thunderclap and so she hadn't just given way their position to everyone in the temple… at least not any more than the sound of people fighting a living statue already had.

A moment later another pair of the statue's teeth were knocked free and there now was an opening large enough for Alexander Diamondclaw to crawl through. He pulled himself along with one hand, the other gripped tightly around a broken necklace from which a black jewel dangled.

"Time to be leaving!" The silver haired man insisted not even glancing backwards as he started running the moment his feet hit the ground and barely outpaced the monstrous statue's arms as they attempted to grab hold of him.

"Don't have to tell me twice." Cal agreed as he ducked through the hole that Devi had blasted.

"When was the last time you carried me?" Mirri huffed, looking at James, who at the moment still had Florence in his arms.

The werecat shot the dryad a questioning look and once she was clearly prepared he slowly lowered her back to the ground. Then he turned his attention back to the vampire.

"I think it was the bridge in the Shadow Rift…. Why, would you like me to carry you now?" He asked in a distinctly befuddled tone.

Mirri's own face took on a distinctly befuddled expression as if she had no idea how to answer.

"ZHAKATA!" The monstrous statue roared as it began to drag itself across the room towards them.

"Yeah, guess I would." Mirri finally made up her mind, sounding far more composed than most would have in her situation.

James gave a perfunctory shrug, scooped the vampire up in his arms and raced for the door.

"I hope you have a plan." Devi warned Alexander as he reached the door.

"Yes. Step one is run, though I'll admit step two is still a bit of a work in progress..." The silver haired man answered.

"ZHAKATA!" The animated statue cried out as it managed to easily smash through the remains of what had sadly once been a very large door.

Large enough in fact that it was able to continue its pursuit.

As the half a dozen adventurers came barreling down the hall they ran into a roughly equal (nobody wanted to stop and count) number of priests of Zhakata coming the other way.

Alexander started lying like there was no tomorrow.

"I've got the prisoner!" He screamed authoritatively, grabbing Cal in a choke-hold that was perhaps just a little too tight.

To his credit the alchemist did managed to wheeze out at least a few words that could be heard above the statue's echoing movements.

"You're too late! I've already corrupted one of your precious statues! It will destroy you all!" He cackled malevolently.

James Firecat momentarily looked down to Mirri Catwarrior who he was currently holding in his hands and then back at the other priests.

"It has already injured one of our sister priests! I have to get her out of here!" He insisted.

The priests said something, it didn't really matter what. They were nearly as confused as the group of adventurers, and didn't quite have enough initiative to try and detain another group of people who seemed to be dressed as priests, give or take one prisoner they had clearly captured.

Whatever they said, by the time they said it, the group was among them.

Then they were past the priests and the genuine priests of Zhakata were now between them and the rampaging statue.

"Zhakata!" It called out again as it continued to crawl down the hallway.

Alexander still wasn't completely sure what had brought the statue to life, and he didn't really care. He was at the very least fairly certain that whatever it was, it probably wasn't great at telling friends from foes.

Even if it was, the hallway was too narrow for it to get at its true targets without going through the group of priests, and given that its vocabulary had so far consisted of only a single word, it probably wasn't capable of persuading those priests that they were actually on the same side even if it wanted to.

"Zhakata…." It hissed again, the sound growing fainter as the group turned a corner, and a few moments later it was joined by various arcane incantations.

The group ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. Whenever they encountered another group of priests Alexander kept repeating variations on the theme of his first lie. All those priest needed to know was that he had captured a prisoner and that they had to get him out of the temple before he was able to corrupt any more hallowed statues of Zhakata. This was accompanied by extravagant gestures in the direction the group had come running from.

Somehow, it worked.

No one was willing to directly order Alexander to stop running, and no one was able to keep up with him for long enough to ask any awkward to answer question.

In a small stampede of rapidly running adventures they burst out of the temple, practically flew by the guards outside with one more hastily shouted explanation, and then they were back into the city of Zhukar proper.

They were safe….ish.

End Chapter.

AN: I'm sorry we haven't seen much of Cal's potion belt in a while. Firearms are just so much simpler to use most of the time, and I'm not sure if it is my laziest or Cal's practicality (when in doubt try and shoot a monsters/bad guys first before worrying about getting fancy) which means he typically tries to resolve his problems with Phoenix or turn to Florence for magical support.

Speaking of Florence and magical support, the spell she's using here is "Rusting Grasp" a favorite of druids who want to punish foes for wielding metal weapons, metal weapon, or destroying metal barriers. It also mesh's well with her outlook on life. Trees can live for centuries, metal rusts well before then.