Temple of Hamon, 1988
A faint, yet chilling, mountain wind howls distantly across the valley. Joseph stands with his hands on his hips surveying the dig site.
Reminds me of Italy. Though thankfully I didn't have to climb through a big stone mouth.
Although they had summited this smaller mountain, another ridge rose up on the right side of the temple grounds, casting a dim shadow over half of the site. Three and a half stone pillars poke through the layers of snow and frost coating the mountaintop. From a glance, it seemed as if the building below them had suffered from a landslide or something, leaving only the top of a Taj Mahal-esque building to poke through the layers of sediment and snow. Behind him, Joseph could hear the old mountain guide still shuffling after him.
Still following, hm?
"Old man, you said you were making a pilgrimage here?"
"Yes, indeed, young man. The words of the valley people around here spoke of a legendary place up here on the mountaintop. Ancient men taught the ancient art of Hamon, but now only the elderly speak of such things."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"I wanted to see this place for myself. I'm getting up there in age, and perhaps these ancient men were still here to keep me in the land of living." Joseph wipes across the front of his nose with his pointer finger and puts his hands behind his head before spinning around on his heel.
"Then I guess we better go down then. I'm looking for someone, too."
Following a worn path in the icy snow, both Joseph and the mountain guide find some temporary metal steps leading down into the dirt, illuminated by smaller work lights. Joseph takes careful steps down the slick metal stairs, eventually finding himself in a dim passage. All around him, there seem to be carved out layers of dirt and rock, and if he had to guess it appears that the scientists and researchers had been carving out the temple from whatever landed on it.
Up ahead, Joseph finds a large door, apparently the entrance to the temple. The massive stone entrance seems to have been painstakingly excavated and opened, and on touching the door itself Joseph feels a chill as the extremely frigid door bites into his skin. He winces in pain and backs up a bit to shake out his hand. A voice behind him pipes up.
"I figured that door was cold just from looking at it, trapped under all this ice." Joseph whips around to see the old man scratching the back of his head. The guide is only a few feet behind Joseph.
Quick old man, didn't have a single problem with those stairs…
"Yeah yeah. I'm not in the mood to shop for winter clothes, on a bit of a deadline." Joseph carefully squeezes himself through the medium sized gap in the door to slip into the temple proper. Once inside, he notices even more worklights set up, but this time they all point straight down to the floor of the temple. His eyes trace the carved stone beneath him, an intricate pattern covering almost all of the temple interior. Directly in the center of the pattern, the only recognizable shape is a small circular indent in the stone, about six inches in diameter.
With a few cautious steps, Joseph wanders to the center of the room. He kneels to examine the indent, and notices a stray pen lodged in one of the patterns engraved into the floor. Looking behind him for a brief moment, he snatches the pen with a flick of his wrist and examines the words printed on the side.
"Speedwagon Foundation". Hm.
Leaning back from his kneel to sit, he keeps one knee propped up as he straightens his other leg. Lost in thought, he twirls the pen around as he stares up at the dark ceiling above the lit part of the temple.
"Find any ancient men?"
"Just you, old man."
"Very funny." At that word, Joseph turns his head to glare at the man leaning against the temple wall, just inside the door.
"You're very nimble for an old fellow."
"My bones creak at every step, young man. Did you find what you're looking for?"
"Not yet. But I do think there's more to this temple."
"What makes you say that?" In response, Joseph pounds his hand into the stone and closes his eyes as he rests his palm on the engraved surface by his leg.
"Well, it's certainly not solid rock below me. I have a feeling…" Joseph traces his hand across the pattern all the way to the circular indent in the center, and then takes a deep breath, "Here!" He slams his fist into the indent, crackling with Hamon. Most of it dissipates on contact with the stone, but a small ripple of Hamon flows into a thin line on the edge of the indent, circling its way out and through the engravings.
"It's as I thought. A clever lock designed from Hamon, although I'm sure these researchers would've been able to figure it out sooner or later with just electricity. It's just an inset of iron that needed some energy…" Joseph straightens up, proud of his own ingenuity, before immediately losing balance as the floor shifts and twists beneath him. "What the-?"
The center of the temple floor descends in a spiral, following grooves in the revealed tunnel of stone as both Joseph and the old man struggle to keep their feet below them. The beams of the worklights disappear the further they go down, but after about thirty seconds of descent the patterned stone platform is bathed with light.
"How the hell is it brighter in here than it is on the damn mountain?" Joseph shields his eyes with his forearm, and he can hear the old man behind him regain his footing. However, the light seems to come from every direction, and all he can see is white.
This is an ancient temple, I don't think they had an option to install spotlights. Where's all this light coming from?
Joseph blindly fumbles forward, and after a foot or two the heat from the light dissipates on his arm. He glances around, and sees that the chamber is filled to the brim with large glass lenses. They are pointed in seeming disarray, but Joseph soon recognizes that the light they're carrying is being redirected further back. He turns to follow where he thinks the beam leads, and sees the old man on his knees trying to find his way around.
"Jeez, you're pathetic. Back up about ten inches and you'll be fine." The guide reels back from his crawling position and skitters back on his behind until he can see. "It's just a bunch of mirrors. And here I thought the mystical Hamon tribe had something a bit more…I don't know, magical." He stretches his arms wide and jumps up and down excitedly. "I'm just glad it's so damn warm in here!"
With pep in his step, Joseph wanders through the chamber of mirrors, soaking in the faded carvings on the stone walls while stopping to examine a few mirrors on the way.
He's really still following me? Senile idiot.
Time passes…
Having found himself in an even larger chamber than before, Joseph studies the massive lens in front of him. About twenty feet high, the lens is impossible clear and smooth. The light from the previous chamber confluxes on this particular lens, and focuses it further into this main room.
From what I gather, there must be a few tunnels of some sort leading up filled with these lens, which funnel and focus it all the way into this room. But why?
On the far side of the room, Joseph can barely make out a stone wall made of a different material than the temple's. His eyes bug open, and he sprints over in a panic.
"Goddammit, I thought I was done with Pillarmen!" As he gets closer, he sees the wall is more of a rock formation, and standing before it is a small, man-sized statue. Rather than a Pillarman, it appears to be a statue of a balded monk. The statue stands resolute facing the rock formation, his hand extended against it, and from the center of its palm a focused beam of light extends out. Like a man facing a tsunami head-on, the statue is dwarfed by the massive stone relief in front of him.
Well, I didn't think Pillarmen could get old and wrinkly. Though it appears it's more of an actual statue, the light from those lens seem to focus into this guy's back and out his palm…
Getting a closer look at the stone relief, it seems like it was indeed a Pillar at one point, standing about thirty five feet high. But the constant focused sunlight from the statue's palm has eroded the spot where the probable Pillarman was, leaving only a charred silhouette. The rock around that spot seems to have melted like ice as well, exposing halves of Stone Masks, with a few dropped to floor and shattered at the base of the wall. Joseph crouches by the statue, and notes a small plaque on the floor behind the figure's heels.
"You walk too fast, young man."
"You hobble too slow." Joseph squints at the text on the plaque, finding that it appears to be written in some language he doesn't know on the top, and in English on the bottom. "'In memory to Jonathan Joestar, brave Hamon warrior. His sacrifice at sea is a lesson against complacency. This, too, is a memorial to Master Tonpetty, who gave his life here to be a conduit of Hamon. Here he shall stand for all eternity, to rid this world of the Stone Masks and the monuments to their creators. Our Master leaves the temple in the care of Straights.'"
And then the bastard cleaned the place out. From what Granny Erina told me, Tonpetty was Caesar's grandfather's master. Looks like this Pillarman has had fifty years of concentrated sunlight administered as a suppository, so that's one way to kill a Pillarman. Too bad these brainless monks didn't excavate more, they missed a few masks…
He approaches the wall once more, and pries out a mask from the blisteringly hot stone. Despite the heat from the noon sun being focused on it, the Mask still feels like ice in his hands. He stares at it, face grim with portent, before tossing it up in the air and slamming it with his knee. "OVERDRIVE!" Stone splinters clatter against the floor and, before he grabs another, he sees the old man leaning against the monk's statue.
"What, why?" The mountain guide asks in confusion. "Aren't those precious artifacts?"
"Ugh, god, the jigs been up since we found you up here, Miller. I'm surprised you're just watching me break these." Joseph snatches another mask from rock and smashes it with his elbow, leaving only one intact Mask in the rock. "OVERDRIVE!"
The old man recoils a bit in shock, before straightening up and adopting a menacing posture. He lets out a low, rumbling laugh, and Joseph laughs as well, pointing his finger at him. "I thought I took care of you fifty years ago."
"You can't stop the ass kicking I'm going to give you. You only postponed." Joseph winks and holds his right hand up to his face, pointing right at Miller with his left.
"You can't stop me, Joseph Joestar. Even if you're in your prime, I have a power you'll never possess. Far beyond Hamon, the power of my Stand will either shred you here or send you far beyond the ability to interfere again!" He rushes straight towards Joseph, his hand locking into something resembling a martial arts claw. Bursting from his back, a large figure looms over Miller. Resembling a muscular but desiccated man, its arms faded at the elbow into large hawk heads and its skin was covered in markings from other languages, numbers, and symbols. Its face, too, is grotesque, the lips and eyes being stitched shut like a macabre embalming.
Smirking, Joseph dips back, almost laying on his back except still keeping himself off the ground a bit with his arms. Miller's combined right handed strike with his Stand goes right over Joseph and plows into the Stone above, showering Joseph with dust and pebbles. Through the dust, Joseph springs back on his arms and coils up his legs, before extending both feet in a handstand straight into Miller's solar plexus. A little blood flies out as the old man is launched in the air a bit, and in a split second Joseph, too, is airborne. With a spinning Hamon infused kick, Joseph full force propels his leg into Miller's ribs from the side, and sends the man flying about six feet back towards the massive lens.
"Oh, Miller, seems like age hasn't treated you well. Who knew accidentally sending a man fifty years in the future would leave you so outmatched?" Joseph grins widely, then snatches the last Mask from the wall.
"Jojo. No matter how good your fighting instinct, you'll still never match up to a Stand. Give up and hand me the Mask!" Miller spits a bit of blood through his teeth, and rips off the dust-covered cloak that rested in tatters on him. For some reason, the man seems to blur before Joseph, his body almost stuttering in the space around him. His Stand, too, blurred, but the symbols coating its skin glow with turquoise.
That's new! Okay, time to end this.
"Well, no. I don't think so." Joseph goes to chop at the Mask with a Hamon coated hand, and Miller lunges at him with his Stand. His trajectory seems to shift subtly as the Stand's right arm beak rushes at Joseph's abdomen. "And by the way, the next thing you're going to say is-" Joseph leans to his right, effortless avoiding the blow, and is about to make contact the Mask with his hand when he notices something. Somewhere in his dodge, the enemy Stand had suddenly appeared in his way, and plunged itself right into Joseph's gut. Again.
Both Miller and Joseph speak in unison.
"Time-"
Joseph is cut off as he is enveloped in turquoise light.
"Slip!"
Time passes…
After only about a minute of self reflection and staring at the Stone Mask still in his hands, Joseph feels the purple vine within him extend out into the turquoise void he's floating in. With an unexpected tug, Joseph feels a bit of motion sickness set it as the vine drags him back into the real world, chucking him unceremoniously onto the stone floor of the Pillar chamber.
"Oh god, how long has it been?" Joseph, in a panic, jumps to his feet and rests his hand on the statue beside him. Looking ahead, he sees a faint trail of trickled blood leading back into the lens room. The blood is still wet.
Thankfully not long. The poor senile bastard still thinks I don't have a Stand either. A real gamble to assume that Stand users get shelved for less time, but now I have the element of surprise.
Just as he's about to move, he feels some heat come from the statue of the monk his hand rested on. In his mind, he could hear a faint voice. Joseph focuses as hard as he can to hear it, the distant voice of a calm, wise old master.
END of CHAPTER 12