Lux Aeterna :: Book One :: The Meager

by Steven Mayo

A very extensive novelization of FFI....kind of...read Author's notes at beginning of Chapter ONe for better idea.;

10. A Mending of Ways Pt 1

Lux Aeterna

by

Steven Mayo

Book One ~ The Meager

Chapter 10 ~ A Mending of Ways Pt. 1

            The professor led them out of the gaunt, heartless berg of Jrist, and into the heart of darkness.  The immense forest, that cupped the harbor town like hands do water against the sea, was inconceivably thick with steeple-tall trees, whose vines swooped low at the warriors' knees and feet, as might leather whips.  And the monstrous branches, most of them battering ram thick, jutted low off the trunk and writhed like broken arms, and they were covered in a silken, hanging moss of a dismal green, that made their step perilous whenever the warriors had to climb upon and over them.  As the hairline trail of flattened dirt diminished to a narrow tawny strand of a path, the spears and levers of old wood completely dominated the sight.  The trees all around were prison bars, and the branches the cross thatches.

            Seville, holding the middle ground with Edrick, tried once to climb a few branches upwards and pinpoint their path, but two branches up the trees started to run with an off-green, gelatinous sap.  Accidentally squeezing the substance into his hand after an unsteady move from limb to limb, the slathers quickly set hard on his skin, and he finally had to chip the stuff away with the point of his dagger. 

            "Not the path I would have chosen," he then said, to no particular response.  He didn't bother mentioning that it took over half of an hour for the feeling to course back into his fingers. 

            As they deepened into the woods the body of their vision seemed to sway in a preternatural motion, all the vines and foliage swept up in a light breeze they couldn't feel on their skin.  Far into the lair of such menacing density, it would seem unnatural that any wind could penetrate.  To the contrary, it was uncomfortably moist and stagnant, like a jungle climate very familiar to Herrik Gipson, but uncommon if not impossible on the Cornerian Strip.

            Any accounts of a discernable trail long past them, it looked like everything around them was pulsing, as if they stood on the heaving chest of some sleeping beast, and if only subconsciously they had walked whisper-quiet in hopes of not waking it.  But that quiet, that patience, hinging on the will of discontented individuals, only brought them to a point.

            "We're lost!" Seville said, forcibly enough to demand attention.  "We've been lost.  For hours!"           

            The leading Dr. Darrin Sylum hedged on stronger, without any nod, and as such the other two followed.

            "We have no idea where we're going.  Scratch that, we can't know where we're going, because there's nowhere for us to go.  And I don't mean to interject in this little gloom march we're having, but since we're just heading towards nowhere anyways, we probably could have chosen a better way to get there."

            By now Seville was deliberately aiming his voice at the professor a few feet before the rest of them.  Early that morning he might have been thankful for a release from the paralytic funk of their argument, but now any appreciation of that antidote as given by Sylum had been lost, even as quickly as the light warriors in the dark forest.

            "I've always been one for hikes featuring short stints of potentially neck-breaking acrobatics, and I dig being able to drink water from the air and everything." 

They finished a treacherous and unsteady crawl over a mountainous rise of overlaying tree branches, and faced a long downhill dip into blacker forest.  Without any kind of provocative hesitation they continued into it.  Their feet moved over dead bark, wood, leaves, and thick rotting vines.  All signs of a trail were shrouded in vegetation. 

The beams of the sun completely choked away as they advanced into the deeper forest, and without its light, the progress of the warriors was greatly hampered.  They had nothing to see by but the dim columns of white gold finishing as hazy circles on the retched tree trunks, a light produced from four of the small wooden flashlights that Seville had, now quite thankfully, taken along.

"And you know, scraping off killer tree sap is somewhat of a hobby of mine.  But I greatly recommend we at least try to start heading back.  I mean, there's no trail, we have no idea what direction we're going.  And the sun doesn't seem to come down this far anymore, so we've got no idea what time of day it is."

"It's about fifteen minutes past twelve," Gipson finally responded, "And we're heading generally northwest."

Seville looked around as if the knight was reading it off a sign, "How do you know that?  You can't know that?"

"Have you learned nothing yet, Seville?" Gipson asked.

"What?" said Seville.

"I know everything.  I'm amazing."  But Gipson didn't follow it with his characteristic chuckle, or bend it positively with one of his practiced smiles; just craned his head up to look for some kind of existing trail and then resumed the sulky march as if nothing had passed.

But to the rogue, it seemed something had passed.

"Then you know where we're going?  And how to get there?"

"I know we are going wherever it is that the professor is taking us, and clearly the way there is through the forest or else, being a sensible man, he would not have taken us this way."

Dr. Sylum still showed no response, and his light still sniffed the nearest ground to find surest footing.

"Sensible?  Right, sensible."  Seville jumped a few logs forward and turned to address the knight, "Because four glass orbs show up one day and suddenly you're a legendary hero; that's sensible.  Because we're out here in the middle of the creepiest forest in the entire world searching for a Princess which, if we even are the light warriors, we aren't destined to find; that's sensible.  Because..."

"Harking accusations at something neither you nor anybody understands is not sensible, Seville." Said Edrick, getting more and more accustomed by the day at speaking with his voice raised.

"Dry up, Eddie!  I know I'm not sensible."

"Still, I would take this dark forest before your dark words.  I ask once more today what you're trying to accomplish."

"You wouldn't take this dark forest for all the world, Eddie."

The pressing weight of the trees seemed now to circle around their entire forward vision, funneling them towards some unseen singularity.  As often as not they walked upon the slick branches while holding onto similar ones above for support.  The precarious movement became so dexterity intensive they could barely manage to keep the lights before their eyes.

"And in response, I am trying to get a rise out of our fearless leader.  He's been acting funny all day.  I just wanna know why we're in this forest, all right?  It doesn't have the most natural look to…"

"They say it is haunted, the people of Jrist." Dr. Sylum said suddenly, with a low and cool voice.  He had paused just briefly to take his magical short sword, still pristine from its Centennial vendor, to an entwined cable of vines.  After slashing and digging through, he created enough of a hole, and led the light warriors dauntlessly through a wall of trees.  Then he continued.

"A legend now, of course.  The story is of a corrupt king, named Lichern, who dwelled in a palace at the end of the forest.  He achieved his throne through villainy, and the common word of the day said that the king sprouted from the angry soil, a demon sent to punish the people.  Because the palace was said to crawl with the most hideous and awful of supernatural creatures, and because many of the Cornerian towns were set to waist by armies of these monsters, the palace became known as 'The Temple of Fiends'."

"How does it lead to the haunting of the forest?" Edrick asked.

"Well, actually there was no forest at the time, you could see the retched castle even from a high tower where Jrist is now located."  As he spoke the professor hacked mechanically through dead branches and trunks, looking for the path.  But he never looked back, and his voice was so very calm, very disinterested, serving if nothing else to quell the argumentative Seville.  "The people did what they always do, they rebelled.  Hereabouts is where the battle was fought.  When the villagers finally overtook Lichern they say he cursed them all for eternity and returned to the soil.  Or, as it's been more dramatically put, a great, earthy fissure opened at his command and he returned to his demon throne below."

"Forest, professor?"

"Well, that comes next.  Not wanting anything more to do with the foul refuse of the fallen fiends, the warriors that survived returned to their homes, leaving nature to sweep clean the battlefield.  But this was a grave mistake.  The quick decay of the hordes made the soil rich, but, and this is legend remember, it also infested the dirt with evil.  And worse yet, from the very spot where Lichern, the demon king, returned to the underworld, a sapling quickly emerged; the first tree of the evil forest."

"Evil?" the priest said, now returning to his normal, wavering voice.

"The trees grew at unnatural speeds, and were said to hide the Temple of Fiends from all who search for it; that only a single path could be cut to the palace, and that it was a dangerous road."  And then Sylum stopped and turned very quickly, his eyes but dim pricks of light under his brimmed hat, and he stared directly into Seville's eyes, a very precise and sharp look.  "Of course, it's just a legend.  Probably shouldn't let me choose what to do with it." 

He turned and began to walk again.  The path sloped downward quite noticeably, enough so that the heavy weight of each step fell hard on the ankle and they descended with their backs bent.  Each of them felt tired, none of them said so.

"You know, that doesn't actually answer…"

"The Temple of Fiends, Seville.  We're looking for the Temple of Fiends.  It's secluded and virtually impervious to any kind of large scale attack, the perfect place to keep a ransom … if it exists."

"But since we're counting on a legend here," Seville continued with his breathy, aggravated voice, "We can assume most of the rules we're going on aren't true."

The professor hopped a tall knot of wood and slid to a comfortable stance, then continued.  His answer came after a rest, after thought.

"Well, I know the Jrist folk used to maintain a path through the forest, and I can only think of one reason they might have done that; to keep a watchful eye on the palace.  Of course, that's long ago, and that path is overgrown."

"If the path is overgrown then how did the captors find it without leaving us a clue?"

Once again the professor stopped and turned to gaze forcefully into the rogue's face.

"Seville, I don't know.  I don't know anything.  But if I say we're going to look for the temple then we're going to look for the temple.  I don't know what we'll find when we get there, if we get there.  I don't know if we'll ever leave this forest again.  But for now this is our road, so let's just walk it, okay?"

Then Sylum spun back to his course and continued moving, showing no care to hear a response.  Seville stopped walking, so Edrick turned and waited for him to speak, and Gipson, in the back, had to stop.  Seville looked down to his feet, then up and around the forest, and then down again, clenching his fists and squinting his eyes.  He was inhaling and exhaling heavily from the stress of the hike, but anger was in it as well.  Once the professor got far enough ahead, he too stopped and regarded the rogue.  Seville spoke.

"No, no that's not okay.  I don't want to go on chasing nothing anymore.  I'm tired, and too much of our energy has been spent on this false mission.  It's just chaos, professor, whether we're in the right or wrong we're going to fail.  I'll do it with dignity, and admit it.  I'll tell everyone that we we're wrong at that we're sorry.  I'll apologize for you the most, professor.  I'm going home now, that march starts right here."

Seville veered off the hasty path they were forging and disappeared through two black trees without a word more.

"Seville!" Edrick cried.  "Seville, no!"  And the priest followed him in.

Left standing was Sylum and Gipson.  The knight was grasping the greatsword hilted on his back as he often did while traveling and keeping his light shining on the professor.  Sylum, who held his light down along the shaft of his leg, was motionless, so motionless that the oscillating rhythm of the unnatural forest seemed to settle into equivalent stillness, the mighty beast had taken its final lumbering breath and died.  There was so much darkness surrounding, and they were so small.

"You do not join them?" Sylum asked, almost aggressively.  Gipson did not move in response, but answered exactly as he stood.

"Seville is a good fighter; he can defend Edrick if such a situation comes up.  You would need help though.  So this is the choice I will make ... for the light warriors."

Again Sylum was slow and careful with his words.  Waiting for his replies was tedious.

"A knight's honor is a marvelous thing these days."

"And I also do it for Seville.  His emotions must be excused.  He is intelligent, but also young, too young for such an idealistic venture.  And despite his words, he still thinks very highly of you."

At this Sylum downcast his eyes, and he twisted the wooden rod of the flashlight between his fingers.

"But he is confused, doctor.  You do not seem yourself."  A pause.

"Nor does it feel that way, Master Gipson," Sylum said.  "I have felt many pangs of failure over the last four days, and even for all my experience with the stuff, I somehow can hardly take it this time."

"Built up too much?"

"Just too much hope.  I really thought we had something."  Sylum slowly turned and faced deeper into the jungle, deep into a fearsome blackness into which every step promised less and less chance of return.  With his light shooting down, he could only discern the faintest tall, cylindrical patterns of the trees before him, and he could just make out his shadow from Gipson's flash.

"He will return, doctor.  And wherever he goes Edrick will follow.  Where do we go from here then?" Gipson asked, with the noble quality of a servant awaiting a king's command. 

"To the palace, Master, to the palace.  As long as you wish to follow."

They started the sullen march again, and Gipson pulled closely in so that they could walk together.  But the knight was fearful, and kept a stern eye on the professor as he would a prisoner, one who might pull a hidden dagger and strike.  Some truth was in Sylum's words, no doubt, but also there was something hidden under.  A gray cloud the doctor would not puncture and let dissipate.  Heading into the very heart of darkness, Gipson felt weighing him down a prodigious pall of deceit.

********************

            "Seville!  Seville, just wait!"

            "You should not have come, Eddie.  You must have some rules in your church about allying with quitters; failures."

            "But there's no proof you are a failure and you are only a quitter because you so choose.  Just hold up a second."

            Seville was walking briskly through whatever cracks in the forest he could find, dexterously slashing away the green tendrils from the shadow-hidden canopy above.  Edrick the priest, who was ceaselessly catching his long white robe on the knobs and spikes of low branches, was huffing desperately to keep up.  The white robe was pathetic now, ripped into fleshy frays and streaked with brown and green; another trespass against the office of clergyman. 

            "It's over for me, Eddie, no turning back from turning back.  If it's not over for you then you've made a bad decision in trailing me."

            "But... but..." Edrick flummoxed as he always did, "But there is still hope, you can't let that braggart Domino control you like this.  Would this not be what he wanted?"

            "What he wanted?  He didn't want anything.  Remember, no agenda, just the truth.  You and Gipson were right, he's telling the truth, so I don't see why we'd continue.  He's right, we're not light warriors, we're not saviors.  We're just Seville the thief, Gipson the murderer, and Edrick the incompetent priest.  Spot on, Eddie, he was spot on."

            Seville stopped when there was nothing left to hurdle and he swayed the light all around.  He saw only the solid, sentry-like columns of trees, all pressed squarely against each other like fence posts.  No paths, nothing.  Edrick finally caught up with him and breathed heavily while crouching over and holding his hands on his knees.

            "You're just choosing to believe that.  Domino doesn't know anything that doesn't help him prove his point."

            "And I don't know anything that disproves it!"  Seville shouted back to the priest.  He walked up to the barrier of vegetation and felt his hands along it, gliding quickly around to find a break.  When he got to the end he kicked the final tree hard and stomped back into the middle of their path.  "Dead-end!"

            "Well," said Edrick.  "At least attempt to disprove it then.  We can at least get as far as the temple, and if that proves dry, then I'm sure everybody will join your sentiments.  Don't give up now.  You're acting rashly."

            "Oh, thanks for the expert counsel.  Look, here, we might be able to climb up over that."  

            Seville pulled a thick vine free and tested his weight upon it.  It held.  Bracing with his feet against the trees he climbed to a narrow rift in the wood and pulled himself into it.

            "Seville, you need to stop this now!"  Edrick said emphatically, walking up to the vine.  "I can't do that!"

            "Well, then you better head back to catch the others."

            "Seville..."

            "But you know, it's not that much of a climb."  Seville slipped over the crevice and disappeared.

********************

"I just remembered; you say the forest is haunted?"  Gipson asked.

            "I say that they say the forest is haunted.  The royal they."  Sylum returned.

            "How is it haunted?  And with what?  Complete the story," Gipson requested.  As the two drudged torpidly over the similar, gloomy scene of black and green the knight tried to keep the professor talking.  He was searching, probing for what was really on Sylum's mind.  The feelings were more extreme than disappointment, Gipson knew.

            "Well, there you're just getting into superstition, a bunch of old wives' tale nonsense."

            "Humor me, Sylum, humor me."  Gipson had to keep digging.

            "Just remember the story.  We stand on what is probably the largest battle field in Corneria history, hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures without proper burial, the entire mass left to rot.  An evil so great it affected the soil, and from there the ghosts of the fallen supposedly made home in these woods.  And they say..."

            "There's that they again..."

            "...well, they're the only ones that ever say things.  They say that the ghost of Lichern himself even makes residence in these woods occasionally, waiting for the day when Corneria is weakest and he could reclaim his castle from beyond the grave.  That's not even legend, that's just myth, a story used to keep kids out of the forest."

            "There are no recorded reports of ghost sightings, and they've had no trouble in the city limits?"
            "Not that I've heard of."

            Then Gipson sighed of relief quietly to himself.  If he'd had reason to truly suspect ghosts were near he would not have let Seville out of his sight.  He wasn't sure how one ghost my react to the rot inflicted by another, people rarely lived as long as Seville, and this was something he didn't want Seville to find out.  Still, his sigh of relief was almost completely for show, even though he had kept it personal.  The inner-chest pumps of worry began regardless.

            "Do you notice that?" asked the professor suddenly.

            "What?" Gipson said.

            "The light.  Quick, turn off your flashlight."

            They both twisted the bottom of the wooden rods but they didn't fall into absolute darkness.  There was a faint resonance settling on the roots and vines and the tall trunks.  Their eyes so accustomed now to pure darkness the colored haze looked like gray smoke, like an early morning fog.  They could just make out the design of the trees with their eyes, completely unaided by their magical lights.

            "Reaching a way out perhaps," said the knight.

            "Come, let's hurry," Sylum said.

********************

            "This just doesn't seem like the Seville I know, running away from things." Edrick employed earnestly.  After developing the energy to vault up through the rift, the apprentice clergyman had followed Seville in another ceaseless charge through the sticky maze of plant life.  "What happened to the Seville that pressed men twice his size to their last wits?"

            "You have to learn to change, Eddie, take that lesson from the great Herrik Gipson, and learn to change.  Look what rash behavior has got me, time in jail, a reputation as a thief, and the murder of three men not by me, but by a friend I forced into it.  If I leave that behind, then just maybe I can fix my problems.  I feel better already."

            "You don't feel better, you just tell yourself that."  The priest cried.

            "And how would ya know that?" Seville said conversationally.  He and Edrick alone, it almost felt like old times, but for a slight warning inside.

            "I know what people think of me, Seville." The priest responded.  "And it's not much.  I know my backbone isn't exactly made out of iron.  And my magic is sub-par in an understatement.  You think I don't realize it?  But that doesn't mean I can't read people, and you, Seville, are a clinger, you have been since I've known you, probably since your father died."

            Seville tightened as he always did at the mention of his father.  Why should the death of his father have anything to do with his life today?  Why did people always have to have such nerve to bring it up?  The rogue stopped hurtling around the fallen limbs and listened, the hairs on his neck crawling.

            "You're not a widely social person, but you always find those small things to hang on to.  This group, this adventure is no different.  I never believed for a second that you bought into this whole Lux Aeterna thing, that's not what this is about.  You came all this way because you wanted to be in the group, because this was a safe bet at the time.  Why change that, Seville?  They're depending on you, too.  You don't want to leave, I know you don't, and I don't want you to leave.  But you're afraid of something, and it's pushing you away."

            Seville turned and scratched the back of his head, sloshing around his scraggly neck-length hair.  Then he put his arms at his waist and sighed loudly.  He looked into the priest's eyes, the one he sometimes called a boy and sometimes a man, he now realized was much more man than him.  Despite Edrick's childish look, the chili-bowl hairstyle, the tender blonde, the face full of freckles, he was no child.  He didn't pass a kid's judgment, or yell and call names.  Just stated the facts, just tried to help.  Edrick had always been such a good friend, so impossibly good.

            "You've got a good bead on what it was, Eddie, but not so much on what it is."  Seville paused a moment, the ominous stillness of the surrounding ink pressing hard, and he tried to compose his thoughts.  Edrick only stood with his light cast at the rogue, and waited.  "The truth is that, I'm afraid I actually did start to believe, sometime that first day.  It just became so right.  But it's been downhill since then, and in my anger I've acted so stupid, so rash.  And I refuse to bring anymore pain to the group."

            "Seville..."

            "If we should fail our mission, and by my inclusion I truly think we will, then maybe you could get back in with the church, the minister always liked you.  And Gipson still has his book tour, nine-tenths of the world doesn't know any of this has happened.  But all that's left for me is to go back to the Lux and tell Mr. Dunnings that I messed up again, that I've done some more bad things, that I even got some people killed."

            "Seville, it's not..."

            "That night at the tavern, after ... well, you know, I had these thoughts in my head.  I thought that, if ever I was placed in Master Gipson's situation that I could have done what he did.  Just, killed'em!  And ... and what kind of thoughts are those to be having?  Did I ... did I look on it with some sick joy?  Or did I revel in causing it?  I don't know, I don't know what's wrong with me.  But this adventure, Eddie, this adventure brought me to it, and I don't think I should continue that way.  It is a terrible feeling when you realize how much awfulness is inside of you, and when you realize that you don't even understand it yourself.  That there's no contention, no ill will, just chaos, just some compulsion towards evil.  That you are just innately an evil human being.  And I'm sick about it.  I'm especially sick that I've clung to you all these years, you who actually manage to stay pure in this world.  And I have crushed the professor's dreams to the point that he's not himself anymore.  I did it all.  So I should stop doing that, right?  That's ... the right answer, isn't it?"

            Seville wore the gravest face Edrick had ever seen, even through his many ceremonies of the funeral sacraments.  The priest finally charged with his most honored office, advice and counsel, and he couldn't think of a thing to say.  He stuttered quiet syllables looking for the words.

            "Se ... Seville ... I ..."

            "Do you believe in the legend, Eddie?"  Seville asked like the last hope stint of a wounded child.   

            Edrick was hotter with nerve than he'd ever been.  He knew how delicate his friend now was, and cringed to realize that at so perilous a time his word was finally being tested, his knowledge was to be heeded.  Whatever he said now Seville would follow, the rogue had finally dropped all pretenses of the tough guy and just wanted to be lead by someone he could trust.  The wrong word and Seville would never harbor faith again.  Edrick thought of what he would say and drew the time out, fearing commitment, biting his lip in anger at his inability to be strong.

            "Do you, Eddie?"  Seville asked again.

            "I ..." he shook his head aimlessly, but then decided and stood tall, "I still believe in the group."

            Seville nodded affirmatively.  "Then so will I."

            "You will return with me?" asked the priest, reaching out a hand.

            "May it be the only rational thing I've ever done."  But when Seville reached out to offer his hand as well he suddenly yelped with pain, seized up tightly, and fell forward.

            "Seville!" Edrick cried as his friend toppled to the ground, and he hunkered to his knees to push him over.  Seville was board-stiff, just like another branch fallen to the ground, and there were growls of anguish coming from his throat.  Seville's eyes darted their hurt look to Edrick, confused and afraid.  Edrick started to shake once again, and cried, "What is it, what is it?  What do I do?" 

            But he stopped as his ears then caught a sound.  A serene, slithery whisper hanging on the air, coming from behind.

********************

            "This is remarkable," Gipson said, "But not altogether a good thing."

            The forest was gray, light gray.  The trees were ashen and peppery, and no trace of furry green moss could be seen.  And the afternoon sun trickled in from the sparse canopy and lit up diamond shapes within the shadows.  All the green, all the omnipresent lushness, had stopped instantly; a single, final battalion of life and then gray, rows and rows of thin, mirthless trees.  They were dead, the leaves long fallen, the once pumping sap dormant, and the hard shells of the bark was cragged from petrification.  No seasonal life would return to them.

            "The forest is dying," said Sylum.

            "But still, this is not natural," the knight replied.  "What do you think it could mean?"

"That we should be careful," was all the professor gave back.

The two men sauntered conscientiously down a rather wide and breathable path.  There were no scuff marks, like those from the trod of boots, making a particular way for them, but their course was straight and unhindered by refuse; they almost basked in the comfort of the sudden emptiness.

            "Did your gainful efforts ever receive such ... well, bad reception, Master Knight?"  Sylum asked with dark confidence.  Gipson sucked his breathe in a few times and planned his move; the curious professor might soon reveal something of his ponderous mindset.  Gipson had was too used to dealing with kings and players, or even small-time showmen like Seville or the rifle salesmen, but rarely the abstract; the obscure and recondite nature of Sylum was a challenge to his wits.

            "I have never been unpopular, no, but I have had some chastisement from the journalistic circles."  The professor looked at him sketchily, so he continued.  "I'm often accused of formulating 'been there, done that' ideas, though I don't hang around literary minds enough to realize it.  I'm a hunter, I just gather the facts."

            "What do you do when that happens?" Sylum asked.  This has much to do with Domino's column, Gipson thought to himself.

            "I try to decide for myself whether or not the critic is right, but always in the end I just decide that I'm happy with what I've got and to trust myself.  I've never harbored much anger over it."

            "Of course not.  But it sounds like you've never truly felt the pain of it either."

            "What's on your mind, doctor?"  Gipson asked directly but reflectively.  "You have not been yourself."

            Gipson watched Sylum think as they walked steadily and comfortably, and he saw the scholar tighten up at the thoughts.  He was searching, searching ceaselessly for the words.  But whether to express or conceal, the knight could not divine.

            "It's, well..." Sylum spoke cautiously.  "I don't entirely trust my ability to handle another failure."

            "If it should happen it would be one you share with others and not of your doing."         

            "Did you hear me claim fault?" the professor said with a swift snap of his head, a surreptitious glance of offense.  Gipson widened his eyes briefly and then shook in the negative.  They moved a few more paces before Sylum continued his thought.

            "I don't possess Seville's pension for dramatics, though I do envy him for it, and therefore I usually don't blame myself for my shortcomings, you get over that quickly when everything you do could be categorized as a shortcoming."

            Gipson repressed a supportive comment, better to let things come out while they could.

            "I don't even think I ever told Seville, but I also write books, or I did a long while ago."

            "I always felt you seemed the type."

            "Yeah ... I'm the type.  But in ten years of the craft I never got a single publication.  Not one.  Thirteen failures.  Thirteen books in ten years is quite an accomplishment in itself, but it could just have equally been zero for me.  Not that one my of my books never saw the light of a tour, just that my name wasn't on it."

            Gipson squinted.

            "My mentor, oh, I must have been about Seville's age, told me I didn't have the spirit to create publishable work and discontinued our relationship.  A while later one of my manuscripts got him famous ... and rich.  He didn't even change the author's note.  That at first made me believe that I at least had the stuff to make it, but my work was always so disenchanted after that.  As a nonfiction writer I'm sure you don't have that problem very often.  I lived in a kingdom in the northern continent called Gaia..."

            "Yes, I've been there many times."

            "Well, then you probably remember, or at least heard of the Books' Rebellion.  Gaia was under a smothering system of law, a dictatorship run with fear.  But the people lived with it because they didn't understand anything about rights and natural liberties.  When I was hired on as a history teacher there, I started to present such ideas to them, the ones I had collected through my books.  I didn't know my own popularity, nor did I know how extremely the duke despised me.  One night I was awoken by a mob come to my door, calling me to lead them to battle against the king and establish a democracy like my unpublished works preached.  I somewhat reluctantly told them that violence wasn't the answer, but the battle came anyways, and all those disciples I didn't even know I had until it was too late were slaughtered, and what survivors there were chastised me, and chased me out of the kingdom.  Then I came here."

            Sylum paused for a moment, allowing the knight to speak if he wished, but Gipson was looking down their path calmly, waiting for more.

            "Corneria is a much more civilized society, so my ideas have never gained popularity here.  But Gaia was just one more failure on my part.  A big one.  A costly one."

            "And now this?" Gipson asked.

            "And now this."

            "Ah, but we don't know everything yet.  There is still a destination before us."

            "You know," Sylum continued as if Gipson had never spoke, "I can't really decide what gets to me so much.  That it happened or that I was never officially affiliated with it.  The rebellion was my fault, no doubt in my mind now nor was there ever, but not a single text on the events leading up to the rebellion mention Darrin Sylum, teacher of history.  They cover extensive economic backgrounds, some texts go centuries back.  Some texts report crop yields in years before the rebellion, and mention every last word the king ever spoke.  But the true reason behind it remains in shadow.    

            "As if it were something you'd desire," said the knight sternly.  Sylum looked to Gipson coldly, as if he'd been challenged, contradicted.

            "Maybe I do.  For good or bad, maybe I do.  My problem is that I can't get any recognition at all.  No matter what great or evil thing I commit.  Like I don't exist.  What a cruel twist of fate that I should be likewise born with a crave of it.  It's an academic curse, Master Gipson.  I want to be known, like Unne or any of the others.  But I'm the ghost of academia.  And ... and I've got so many good ideas to share, but ... but I can't ... I'm unable!"  Sylum was getting angry.

            "That might not be in the cards for you, doctor," said Gipson rashly; not understanding what would be accomplished by it.

            "But it's the only game I've been playin'."

            "But if you believe in who you are now, then your fate has decided against it..."

            "Fate?  What fate?  I've given up on fate, Master Knight; our being the light warriors is really a toss up to me, given things as a whole.  No, I just continue because I truly believe the princess will be in this temple, if it exists.  But ... fate?  I just couldn't..." 

The professor stopped walking then and balled his fists.  He appeared that he would explode that very moment, and then he kicked his boot solidly into a tree and screamed, "Why couldn't something just work out for once?!" 

The loud, ferocious voice of Sylum echoed in the stillness, bounced from tree to tree and soared back to them from distances their eyes could not appropriate.  There followed a hushed rustle in the dead branches from an unfelt breeze, and then silence pervaded. 

Sylum didn't care about the disapproving look that Gipson started with, and the quick shift into a sad, empathetic semblance was almost disgusting to watch.  Inside was all fury.  When the knight raised his hand to lay down another steady line, Sylum viciously cut him off.

"I'm done talking," Sylum snapped, "If we're going to go to the temple, then let's go there already." 

Then the professor started with a vast stride and kept it at a pace so resolved that even Gipson himself had hurry to catch up.

The knight knew then how inadequate his preparation was, and he had nothing he could think to say to Sylum, nothing that would tarry him or give him brighter thoughts; for once he was useless, and therefore for once he was truly frightened.  Frightened that he was following this man, this stranger dressed in a maroon cloak with a feather-topped steepled hat, into a boundless terror, a man-made destiny of wickedness.  What malevolent ideas ricocheted in Sylum's mind?  Was it all really nothing?

"Wait!" Said Gipson fiercely, drawing his long sword Drâco.  Sylum swerved, choked at seeing the naked blade, and tumbled back over his foot.  He landed as a dull red pile on the forest floor.  Gipson approached carefully on light hunter's steps, and the professor threw a hand up and recoiled for the strike he knew was coming.  But then he paused, and saw the eyes of the knight; not staring menacingly into his destitute soul, but rather scanning some unknown spot in the distance.  Sylum made to get up, feeling horribly foolish, but Gipson just said "Wait" once more.  So the professor turned his head to look.

It wasn't hard to see, its vibrant color like a flare against night's helmet; a bright, alarming, almost breathtaking hue of pink.  So jarring a shade it was near violence to be set against the neutral, livid backdrop of endless pale forest.  At that distance, a goodly twenty trees away, its shape was unclear, but for sure its aggressive, flowery tincture did not agree with the bulbous mass it formed.  Hugging fatly to the bottom of a narrow trunk, the object of fascination most closely resembled a bean pod, though grossly large.  Herrik Gipson, Knight of the Coast, Lieutenant First Class, approached, and this time didn't stop Sylum from standing and following.

Half the distance to the odd pink distraction Gipson slowed once again; three more of them had come into vision, lying mostly in the same way, suckling on empty tree husks a few rows behind the most immediate.  They were soundless and motionless, but pulling closer to the front one the stench grew terrible.  Rotten, acrid, putrid smells permeated, and the climate grew syrupy again.  It was the funk of decaying flesh, of a long dead and sweating corpse, Gipson had no doubt.

The knight proceeded closely to the nearest pink blob, still looking for features, and more importantly, weapons.  He could just handle the mordant dew in his nostrils, so questioned the professor's stomach.  When two stern pokes came to his back he assumed that Sylum was falling, but turning to catch him, he was caught aback.  Behind them, squatting all over the very ground the two men had just tracked, Gipson saw a platoon of the creatures, at least twenty that were not there even a minute before.  And they were close, some on two trees away.

            "What are they?" exasperated Sylum, but the response did not come from Gipson.

            Off the nearest infected tree, the pink blob slithered down and took the shape of a fleshy slug, dripping with a translucent ooze.  Gipson turned and readied his long sword and took a short sword in his free hand.  He could not find the creature's eyes if it had them, but it made perfectly clear that instant it had a mouth.  The creeping slug opened its toothy, blood red maw and struck.

********************

            Neck hairs standing like soldiers, devilish whispers pervading his mind, and his friend, just moments from savior, stony and pained at his feet, Edrick was engulfed.  Sweat made curved streaks down his round face, and his eyes were unable to escape their dead stare forward.  Then came a curdling scream with enough force in it to push Edrick up and over the paralyzed Seville.  He completely flipped and landed sourly with a tree knot jutting into his back.  But the pain was secondary to his vision.  In his jaunting, reversed sight he saw the monster, floating on the air with a billowy black cloak that seemed made of no more than wisping gas.  It was topped with a smiling skull that glowed orange from its sockets and its two skeletal hands braced out to the sides and made clawing motions.  Edrick was frozen in his back-aching stance, wholly stopped with fear.  The awful, bulky breathing sounds of the specter seemed to press him flat into the rotting branches with each gust, and the fire from its eyes and the two dropped flashlights only gave the faintest idea of its terrible size.  It could have been half as tall as one of the lumbering trees.  Seville recognized it immediately, but could not for all his effort speak out a warning to the priest. 

            The ghost floated a little higher and crossed over the two pathetic men.  Its fluid body melted into the nearest solid patch of trees and for the brief second it was gone, but just as quickly is it had come the first time it flew back into sight with another banshee-like wail.  The poltergeist seemed to have resolved that its prey was passive enough, and it reached down its giant hands and clasped Seville and Edrick firmly between the hard, rawboned fingers.  Seville gurgled and choked, still inflexible, and Edrick squeezed his eyes shut and pressed against the tightness.  The wind rammed out of his chest and the lung-wrenching pain brought on tears.  The end was just upon them, when suddenly the wraith started moving, flying expeditiously through the tight-knit trees.  To Edrick's unavoidable wonderment, he noticed that he and Seville were passing through the trees just as smoothly as the apparition.  Soon the forest grew sparser, and light flushed over them.

********************

            "You're sword, man!" Gipson screamed, as he strafed and plunged a blade into the belly of the pink worm.  The loose innards, shiny garnet and hot enough to steam, splayed out onto the soil and dug a shallow crevice into it. 

            Sylum danced back in his surprise and recklessly fished his magic short sword from its hilt, so much so that it nearly flung from his hands.  He took a good grip of it and closed in with Gipson, who had stuck his short sword into the dirt and scraped the acidic blood of the creature off with Drâco; then he held it up.  The very outer skin of the blade was dull and pattered with miniature teeth marks. 

            "It eats the metal; I hope your blade's the real deal."  Gipson said.  "Stand at my back.  Here they come!"

            Sylum did as told and saw before him five of the horrid monsters deftly sliding towards.  A hasty glance over his shoulder showed that Gipson had just as many to handle.  Having nothing but to wait their approach, Sylum tried rigorously to stop the weakening tremble of his hand, but could not, so he held the small blade in both hands.  Gipson's monsters arrived first.

            "Dodge!" the knight roared and somersaulted to the right, leaving Sylum a standing target.  But the acrobatic attracted the slugs, and they turn and hissed.  Gipson ran into their fray and hacked at them across their width, beheading two before having to juggle his feet out of the pooling bleed.  "Act Sylum!" 

            The professor turned and made an incautious swing at the closest worm, but it ducked its head around and growled, and displayed its teeth.  It catapulted mouth wide, but only sided Sylum, who spun clockwise to meet the creature and did with a forceful thrust into its opened throat.  A geyser of red heat spattered onto Sylum's hand and all feeling was lost.  His grip fell away from the blade and the anguished slug flopped to either side, spitting its blood in higher and higher arcs until it finally died and slapped its heavy body once more to the ground.  The corpse shriveled as normal slugs do, and as the inner-lodged blade pierced more and more within, the freshly ripped pockets of the hot liquid splattered out the creature's wounds like popping boils.

            The doctor thought his right hand was dead; it hung limply and was completely without response.  And that was only one creature.  Sylum charged at Gipson and pulled from out of the knight's hilt his Werebane short sword, which Sylum readied in his off-hand. 

            "The blood is numbing!" cried Sylum in a girlish frenzy, but Gipson hadn't the time to give response.  The knight forcefully kicked another fallen worm to the side and dashed into melee with two others.  He pushed the first strike to the side with a dexterous slap of the flat side of his blade, and then fenced off the second strike by spiking the tip of Drâco into the slug's soft palate and twisting it to its back.  He pulled the sword out before the red streams could run to his hand.  Taking a quick inventory around him he tossed his head every direction, but then turned to meet the worm he'd only delayed. 

            Not even giving it the chance to finish its dramatic hiss, Gipson tore his sword into the monster's gums, slicing free the entire top row of teeth.  It spat with anger and gnashed its sore head into the dirt, but the knight quickly finished it with a lengthwise gash and ran off to aid Sylum, scraping the blood off his short sword as he did.

            The doctor had just axed through his second kill, and now his entire right arm slung haphazardly as he parried and thrust.  Three of the pink slugs approached from one side, and he caught the first attacker in its teeth and with a tiring shove he pushed the sack of ooze backwards.  It shook its head as if startled.  Sylum treaded backwards, uncertain of where the assault would come, and then as if initiating some kind of group tactics, all three approached with an equally weighty momentum.  Sylum almost keeled and fell to his back once more, but just then Gipson ran before him, and stopped one of the coursing slugs short with a savage drilling into the monster's side.  Losing the synch, another of the slugs stopped and twisted its head at the knight, leaving just one for Sylum to contend with, which he did with a timed sidestep and downward slash.  But he only cut a scar into its tail, and the worm slid around and scrunched in for a pounce.  Sidestepping once more the professor swung wide and met the flailing vermin as one would with a club, digging in and through and effectively bisecting it.  The two halves spurted inwards madly and landed and shook.  Then they shriveled. 

            Turning to Gipson to give him aid, Sylum couldn't help but notice that the knight looked impressed, but he couldn't hold that face for long.  He held his tongue between his lips and took combat to another of the pink creatures.  Sylum rushed in to double team, but was caught off guard when he accidentally put some distance into his vision, the slugs kept on coming.  To every direction he then looked; twenty, no, thirty more, moving fast and in large, organized squads.  Some still a ways back, but many that would be upon them directly.  Dead arm dangling at his side, Sylum screamed barbarically and charged an attacking worm. 

            He beat it accurately to its quick death, and helped Gipson put down another of them.  All around them they heard the crackling of sliding bodies and the sizzle of the blood cooking into the ground.  All the dirt under them was red and wet, and the ground and been burrowed until uneven.  Stepping into the pooling juice it melted their boots.

            "We move!" Gipson instructed, and they jumped over the thickening rivers of the boiling material and onto dry soil.  No direction they could choose would lead them away from the advancing army.  Once more the knight cleaned his blade and then did the same for the Werebane short sword.  Then he grabbed Sylum's arm and looked at it closely.

            "Pain?" he asked hurriedly.

            "None," answered the professor.             

            "Probably just paralysis," Gipson said knowingly with a raced but assured voice.  Sylum gulped and nodded, and quivered at the foreign feeling of his distant arm and at the surging adrenaline inside.  Then he readied his blade, with Gipson following suit. 

            "Be careful," Gipson said finally, and the second wave was upon them.

********************

            The wraith slung them down on the forest floor, Seville still suspended like a brick and Edrick tumbling over onto his stomach.  The priest coughed and sucked in short, spasmodic breaths and scurried crab-like over to Seville, who had landed on his back.

            At the end of their journey the forest had turned pale and lifeless, seamless acres of gray, stony trees.  And the sun shone in brightly so that it hurt their eyes.  Edrick, fighting his awe of this sudden sight, focused on Seville as well he could, but had trouble collecting his breath.

            The fearsome ghost, now revealing its gargantuan size, soared above them, its undulating black cloak making whipping and cracking noises as it sloshed in its own wind.  The demon eyes of the ghoul burned scars upon them as it floated there.  Then, with a menacing, cruel and stupid cock of its smiling head the ghost reached within itself and pulled out a colossal scythe that wreathed in and out of spectral nothingness and glowed an ugly white.  Edrick was sure then it meant to strike and finish them, but it did not.  Instead it took to speedy flight and maneuvered around the surrounding trees, sometimes venturing a good distance out.  And it started to screech its most awful sound through the trees, sailing over the two men again and again, calling its devil-voice out.  And the flight was so fast that the phantasmal scythe whistled in the real air and the orange glow of the eyes left tails in their vision.

            "Eddie..." came Seville's weak voice.

            "Seville!  You can speak!" the priest called.

            "Eddie ... sleeve ..."

            "What?  What is it?"  Edrick scampered his hands along Seville's body looking for injury.

            "Eddie!" Seville was finding strength from somewhere, but his words were almost all aspiration.  "Sleeve!"

            The priest cast a confused visage but followed the order and went to Seville's right arm and pulled the sleeve up carefully, afraid that harsh motion would injure his friend.  But then beside himself with nerve he shot his small hands away from what he saw.  The ghost rot, the usually dull and empty scars of black pelting Seville's arm glowed a ghastly, shocking shade of purple.  And the long veins of the underarm especially blazed with phosphorescence, so bright he could almost see it vessel like blood. 

            Edrick wanted to scream with fear but choked on his own voice, his tongue was too thick in his mouth.

            "I've ... seen this before ..." Seville revealed at no more than an utter. 

            "What?  What do you mean?  Where?  How?"  Edrick's voice trilled and quaked.  He grasped Seville by the shoulders and peered in to see and here.

            "I've ... seen this before ..." Seville could not move his limbs, but still he could cough and hack at the pain.  He could close his eyes and did so repeatedly, the pulsing agony so powerful he was sure his bones would shatter.  "Dream..."

            "What dream?  What dream?  I don't understand!"

            "Dream..." And then it looked that Seville would pass under forever, but just as uncertainly he opened his eyes wide and alert, and forced his stare into Edrick.

            "You have to be careful..."

            "What do you mean?  What do..."

            "The professor!  You have to watch out for..."  He stopped then, sickeningly aware of a sound.  Edrick picked it up that instant as well.  So loud and definite even to beat through the howls of the poltergeist, was the all too nearby shuffle of feet.

********************

            Gipson bullied the snarling worm up onto a tree, bracing his sword flat against it, and then ran it through with his other weapon, slashing out and away from himself to let the toxic blood spill there.  Then he sliced the flat of the sword against the tree to wipe away the blood, and the red poison instantly began to eat into the stone wood.

            The true offensive had come.  The brilliantly shaded pink slugs were only slowed by their trying to crawl over themselves.  Like pools of overgrown maggots the monsters slithered forward.  The knight took another of them, pronged it with both of his swords simultaneously, and flexed all his muscle to toss it into a patch of the others.  A yelp from behind and Gipson turned to join Sylum who was having a harder time of it; the first battle he'd had a part in and down one arm.

            "Together!" the knight declared, and the two warriors circled oppositely and flanked a slug.  It rotated its head either way but made no decision before Gipson and Sylum tore into it.  Now each of the warriors skillfully shifted on the balls of their feet and dodged the outpour of blood.  They turned face to rejoin, but as they moved an angry line of the barking slugs intercepted their rank and proceeded an attack on each.

            Gipson rolled into them, knocking two to the side with fierce kicks and then he skewered another down the long shaft of its body.  Unable to pull the sword from the tight flesh of the worm's mouth, Gipson had to release the blade, to which the monster then gnarled and thrashed.  It tried to swallow the short sword but only pressed its sharp edge inside of it, then it curled and died.  Gipson cleaned Drâco on the slug's shivering body and sheathed it.  Readying for the two he'd kicked behind him, Gipson pulled his greatsword.  As he turned he already set the five foot edge into motion.

            The apex caught the first monster while airborne from its pounce and split its head into halves, and Gipson cleaved it straight through to the second slug but only managed to catch it on the blunt side.  Although the worm lost its lethal aim, its formidable weight still thrust it into Gipson's side, and the knight flailed and toppled.  His knowing hands rummaged the ground, but a sly snap of the slug's tail put the blade out of reach.  It approached and showed its teeth.  But as the worm reveled in its victory Gipson found a glass vial on his belt and pulled it free.  The slug let out a hiss, but too late.  Gipson shook the bottle frantically and then shoved it directly into the monster's throat.  He rolled away quickly as he could and covered his eyes, then came the crystalline shatter of the vial.  Gipson only glanced to see his success before running to grab his greatsword.  The slug was motionless, in fact, completely frozen through, and covered with ice.

            Darrin Sylum was tired.  His endurance did not keep up with the skills he was discovering, and the creatures started to amass.  Their attacks had become routine, but his reflexes dragged slower and slower with every swing of the sword.  The heart in his chest was like a giant's hands beating on the prison of his ribcage.

            "Gipson!" he cried, desperately needing aid in this last leg of the battle, but had to concentrate too closely on the next move to see if the knight was coming.  He strafed, hammered the sword into a slug's head, cut away, and scooted to avoid the rogue spray of blood.  Three then grouped against him and covered three of his flanks.  Sylum backed but didn't know enough of what was behind him to risk a dash.  He waited for one or all to close in.  The middle one pounced and he met it hard at the mouth but only managed to slice at its lips, which started to perilously drip with the red venom, and then the other two followed with a second attack.  Sylum cringed and dropped, and then he heard a leathery pop.  The struck slug launched over him and rolled dead along the ground, an arrow protruding from its head.  His chest leaping at the opportunity Sylum took the Werebane and gutted the nearest worm and against all the pangs of his muscles he forced himself up one-handedly and prepared to continue.  But then he saw that most of his quarry had already been put down by Gipson's arrows.  And before he could turn to find the knight, Gipson was already upon him, brandishing his mighty greatsword and joining him in the foray. 

            The knight cleaved through four worms like air, bellowing ferocious war cries, and in the time it took those bodies to settle dead upon the ground, he had already scored extra lacerations into the arrowed slugs to finalize their defeat. 

            The end was near, just a few lucky slugs left in their proximity and none on the horizon.  This invigorated the fatigued Sylum, made his battle thirst unquenchable, and he charged opposite Gipson to handle a further flank.  He cut into an unready monster and then kicked the corpse off with his boot, already spinning to face the next one and final one in his obligation.  It must have realized it was alone, for it was careful, and it ducked its head and tried to fake.  Sylum made preemptive chops at its maw but could not land a solid hit.  It went like that for a few moments more, gain-less attempts from Sylum and slick retreats from the slug.  Finally, the professor could have no more.  He flipped the sword in his grasp so that the blade ran down his forearm and just javelined it into the worm.  It festered and rattled as they did, but when Sylum pulled the Werebane free, he heard not the sputtering sounds of its death, but the aching, gut-rending scream of a man.

            He turned and saw Gipson.  The knight's left shoulder was completely lost inside the mouth of a pink slug, and that slug swizzled its back end in the air as it chewed down on the bones.  Before Sylum even registered a thought he saw the only other remaining worm slide up to Gipson and pounce onto his side and starting digging its teeth in just the same.  Sylum cried in fury and charged them.

            There was so much inertia in his legs that Sylum could not even stop to aim the strike, but rather he just ran through with his blade out and halved the high slug.  The violent gushes of blood settled before Sylum returned and when he did he ferociously pummeled the Werebane into the final slug and tore it free of the knight.  It latched sternly to the blade as it could, but Sylum just kept hacking the air until enough strikes fell into the worm to leave it dead.  Gipson finally dropped his greatsword and fell to the ground, landing in a rippling pool of the hot entrails, and the misty cloud of jetting blood that Sylum reaped from the last two slugs rained down on the knight's back, completing the saturation.

            "Gipson!" Sylum whelped.  He knelt to embrace the knight but landing his left knee in the dirt it quickly ran numb, the sluices of red burning through his clothes and soaking against his skin.  He hobbled to his feet, with just barely enough left in his numb leg to stand and pulled Gipson over so that his face wasn't buried in the refuse.  Then he took the knight by his collar and pulled as mightily as he could to little avail.  But the burning of the hot blood left the dirt like mud, and Sylum, straining every bodily muscle, and stressing every artery, pulled Gipson to dry ground. 

            Most of Gipson's armor was deformed and warped, and enough of the stuff had dripped into the inner cavity to leave him completely paralyzed.  Sylum haggardly stepped into Gipson's vision and tried to speak.

            "Can you talk?"  But the old knight only gurgled.  Sylum couldn't tell what blood was Gipson's and what blood was that of the creatures, and against Gipson's plate mail, which was already red, the damage was hard to see.  But the deep incisions in Gipson's shoulder and side were not trifles.  A weak but steady spout of Gipson's blood was produced from a low shoulder wound, and the blood from his side ran black.  When Sylum lifted his good hand to his mouth to stifle a shiver he realized he could feel little of it, and saw that most of the left hand had soaked in the deathly life-venom of the slugs. 

            He peered at Gipson.

            "What do I do?"  The knight's life was waning.  "I can't help you with all of the ... stuff."

            It appeared then the knight was trying to speak.

            "What's that?"  Sylum was intimately forward.  "Can you talk?" 

            Sylum bended lowly and carefully on his good knee and put his ear to Gipson's mouth.  He clearly heard the only two words that Gipson was trying to make.

            "Find Edrick!"

            He looked at the knight gravely.

            "I ... I can't ..."  Gipson could not make a face, which was direly frightening to Sylum's composure.  "I can't.  They're gone.  I can barely walk." 

            But that cold, lifeless face stayed on the front of Gipson's head, and his eyes started to glaze, and they rolled up slightly and studied the back of their lids.

           "Gipson!" Sylum yelled one final time and then hunkered down and took the Werebane as best he could in the weak, unmanageable grasp of his left hand.  And then he staggered away from the battle scene, down a lonesome road of untouched gray forest, moving half a step at a time on his numb leg, and letting his lifeless arm flap at his side.  The unbelieving light warrior, lost in the middle of a haunted forest on way to a temple that might not exist, found himself searching for a priest.