Hello everyone! This update was a rather slow one, and I know that I am a bit random on posting updates anyway, but I am aiming to get a chapter or two in every 1-2 weeks.
When Mario and company arrived back at the city, they were surprised to see the citizens there gathered in flocks.
"Hoorah! They have slain the beasts from the north!" One villager said.
"Now I can scavenge for resources in the desert without fear! Praise the Goddess." another chimed in.
"I told the villagers that you would return having vanquished the matriarch." Mi'kotyana told them.
"It is our duty to provide protection to those who are in need of such services, Young nak'tol." Aragonite replied.
"My grandfather had instructed me to bring you to the temple after you had returned from your quest." She said to them as she began to motion towards the west of the city a bit.
"A temple?" Tails asked.
"Yes, The temple of the elders. It is where the elders of our village go to gather and discuss important matters. Grandfather wishes to have such a meeting with you and your companions." She replied.
"Well? What are we waiting for? Let's get this show on the road!" Sonic said impatiently tapping his foot ready to depart.
And with that Mi'kotyana began to guide them to where this meeting would be held at. When they arrived, the group couldn't help but stare in awe at the courtyard of the temple grounds. It was a large yard that was symmetrical in design.
The yard could be divided into four quadrants, each one being assigned to a specific corner. Within the epicenter of each area, was a small little fountain that was covered with floral life all around it's base. Strange looking amphibious creatures swam in these pools and filled the air with their mysterious sounds.
A path way that went down the border between two quadrants lead up to the temple. The stone path met with a set of stairs that allowed entrance on to the outer patio area of the temple. Alongside the end of the road were two jade statues depicting the goddess Tsukiyomi. Mi'kotyana lead them all the way up the stairs and into the main chamber of the temple. There in the center sat six elders around a circle that was carved into the floor.
"Welcome, Chosen ones." One said to them as they entered into the chamber. "Please let us begin the meeting."
Mario and company soon found themselves sitting down in front of the collective elders' and listening to the discussion they were having.
"In regards to your actions, we, the elders of Naza'rabar have come to the conclusion that you are of worthy enough status to receive the blessings of the goddess." Hek-tol said to them. "To accomplish this, we require that you all step within the circle of Balo and prepare to be blessed."
Not a single one of them hesitated on following through with the elder's instructions. Stepping into the circle, each one of them felt strong feelings of confidence flowing through them, nevertheless, a bit of intimidation coupled this feeling too. For some strange reason, even though the group's instincts told them otherwise, this ritual sent chills up their spines.
"Everything feels so weird... I'm feeling weird... It's like my whole body is being invigorated..." Sonic said.
"This force that so freely wraps around my frame and constrict it, but yet invigorates me at the same time, what strange power could it be?" Aragonite pondered as the energy provided his mind with motivational quandaries.
Mario felt the force focus it's pressure inside of his heart, and soul. A passing moment later, and the pressure caused by this empowering force increased. At the last second that everyone assumed they would burst at came about, a euphoric feeling of release triggered. The ritual had been completed and they had received the blessings of the goddess.
One elder stepped forwards into the circle and approached Mario. In his hands he held a map.
"This is the map that will guide you directly to the temple that you seek." he told them. "Be warned though, the way to the temple is littered with traps and all sorts of things to keep out even the most skillful of adventurers."
Hek'tol then began to speak to them. "I wish you luck on your trip young heroes. May you find exactly what you need."
And with this last statement the meeting had convened and the elders were now departing. All except for Hek'tol and his granddaughter.
"You all come back once in a while and visit before you depart from this world, okay?" Mi'kotyana said to them.
"Yeah, we will!" Tails replied.
The group all nodded in response to this. Sonic was getting a bit antsy again, and was wanting to leave right away. He displayed this with the signature tapping of his foot with his arms crossed and his frame being propped against a wall.
"Let's go man! We got temples to explore!" Sonic said imprudently.
"Okay Sonic! Mamamia!" Luigi said in response.
After saying their goodbyes the heroes stepped out of the temple and passed through the courtyard. Outside in the city they were faced with multitudes of different structures once again. By this time they had a good grasp on the layout of the city and could traverse it without much problem, but some places were still a bit unsettling.
The buildings themselves were carved from what appeared to be smooth sandstone. Designs of Nak'tol design were intricately woven into the very stone itself. Each building was different in height, shape, and design and three shades of sandstone colors were common among them.
On the higher parts of the buildings were the rafts that served as plank-like bridges for easy transit across the city. Mario and company remembered using this when they first arrived in the city. Among other things that they saw up there were floating statues that seemed to be empowered by Nak'tol prayers.
"I-a didn't see that when-a we first got here!" Mario said when they all discovered it.
From their position they could just barely see above the edges of the building tops. What they saw was the dome like tops of towers that lay in the upper tier of the city. Back down at the lower level of the city the citizens were busy with their daily routines.
When the group had started to leave, they passed by many denizens who were peddling and advertising their goods. One stand sold Jewels and amulets of luck and another sold Nak'tol-styled clothing. They soon came to the edge of the city and examined their map.
"So the map says we need to go this way." Tails said after having a look.
"Alright then let's go!" Sonic blurted out as he started to dart ahead of the group into the desert.
This invigorated the rest of the group into a run towards their next destination.
...
"Arrggghhhh" Hyotai roared. "I will decimate those plumbers and that hedgehog! They piss me off so much!"
Hyotai was raging in a sanctum of flowing water. The room looked like it was a simple one, only having one platform raised above a lake of crystal-clear water. On the sides of the walls, were holes for which slow-paced flows of water poured into the room from. The platform had a set of stairs that wrapped around at it's base and were submerged halfway into the water. Scattered about the water were smaller platforms that didn't rise as high as the center one.
This was Hyotai's chamber. It was were he could escape to when he wanted to be alone, when he wanted to express his emotions. He felt expressions of emotions other than anger to be a form of weakness. As he was throwing his tantrum, a crystal-like sheet connected to two crystal spires located in a corner of the room flickered with an image. It was that of another member of the Avenging Knights of Discord, Kuratai .
"Hyotai, Your presence is requested in the main hall." Kuratai told him. "I hope that you have stopped your bawling once you arrive up here by the way, I wouldn't want our leader to see you in such a state of distraught."
"Shut the hell up Kuratai, You know better than to try and tease me." He snapped back at her, as he got up and prepared himself to leave his room.
Kuratai shut the communications off after having let a smirk form on her lips and a snicker be heard from her. Hyotai was annoyed at her taunting. He didn't like for people to make fun of his emotions like that, let alone even know about them in the first place. Walking down one of the sets of stairs he jumped from platform to platform until he landed on one that was next to the wall. A door opened up instantly and he stepped into a hallway.
The hallway had marble flooring and the walls were lined with red wallpaper that was embroidered with gold trimming. Walking down about three rooms he reached an elevator and entered into it. Upon reaching the third floor he stepped out of the elevating platform and into a room of which the gathering would be held in.
"So good of you to join us Hyotai, we were worried you wouldn't show up!" Kuratai chastised him.
"I was.. busy with something." He stated while grinding his teeth. His better judgment told him that it was not a good idea to start anything in. Especially with the leader in the room.
Honootai began the meeting after glaring at two of his members who seemed to be having interpersonal problems. This stare from their leader made both Kuratai and Hyotai cringe. Soon both of them had taken their seats swiftly.
"The meeting shall begin now." He stated calmly. "We have located the temple that the elders have spoken of."
"Two of our members have already been dispatched to the area." Honootai continued. "I want two of our members to serve as a backup team, should the need arise for any assistance."
"Who shall go then?" Kuratai questioned.
"Simple, to improve your relations with Hyotai, I have decided that you shall partner up with him and distance yourselves from the temple about two-hundred feet." Honootai responded.
"Ughh, why him?" She replied with a sound of disgust.
"Is there a problem with my decision Kuratai?" he asked her while giving her his calm yet cold stare.
"No..." she replied in obedience.
"Good, You will set out in the morning tomorrow." after saying that he departed the room.
"Grrrr, Look I don't like this just as much as you don't like it, but if we value our existence then we will do it. You know how he gets sometimes, when he loses his cool he is an absolute monster" Hyotai told Kuratai.
"Don't say that so loud! He might be listening in to our conversation." Kuratai scolded him.
"Hmph, C'mon, the quicker we get this over with the quicker we don' have to endure this torture." Hyotai commanded.
"Who said you were giving the commands here?" she scoffed at his attempt to swipe control of the mission from her greedy paws.
"Just shut up and get moving" he ordered once more.
"Heh, why don't you make me?" She drew her sword ready for a fight.
"Tch, I don't have time for this, do what you want but I have an operation to finish, with or without you." Hyotai responded to her challenge in a somewhat shocking manner that baffled her.
He then proceeded to leave the main meeting room in preparation, leaving a annoyed and confused Kuratai there to contemplate on what just happened. Quickly realizing that Hyotai might actualy leave her, she also went to prepare herself.
Hours later the group could be seen ascending and scaling a rather large sand dune. They all appeared to have taken their toll from the sweltering rays of the sun and appeared to be completely exhausted. When Sonic reached the top he plopped down on his rear end and began to complain.
"We have been searching for hours and still have not found this damn temple" He said in annoyance.
"Patience my friend, we will discover the temple soon enough." Aragonite told him.
"Easier said than done pal, i'm melting out here and all I can see for miles is more sand. "I don't see us finding this place anytime soon"
Sonic kicked at the sand and suddenly his toe stubbed against something other then sand.
"Yeowch!" He yelped in pain. "What the hell was that!"
As Sonic was holding his foot and hopping around in pain Tails went to the spot he had kicked at and gave it an inspection. Mario and rest of the gang witnessed him un cover part of a temple obelisk. Strange text was carved into the stone and was indecipherable. When he started to uncover more of the sand a clicking noise was heard. Not even a split second of heart-stopping silence later and the sand they were standing on began to shift and move.
"Whoaa! Everyone try to stick together! Its a quicksand trap!" Tails called out to them though it was too late for them to do much of anything.
"Mario!" Luigi yelled to his brother as he saw him get swept into the center of this sand rapidly. To the horror of both Luigi and the group Mario was quickly swallowed up by the shifting sands.
This was the same fate that befell the rest of the members of the group. Their visions turning black as they sunk below the desert.
Thud! Their bodies had hit some kind of solid surface, and after shaking off a bit of daze they all rose to their feet. Examining their surroundings Mario deduced that they must be inside the temple. His reasoning for this was justified by the depictions of rings on the walls that were illuminated by smal strands of sun rays.
"Ugh my head hurts, where are we?" Sonic said
"It-a looks like the-a temple that we are-a looking for!" Mario told him as he dusted off from sand from his shoulder and his cap.
"Great, now we can start investigating this place for clues" Tails exclaimed with excitement towards being able to check this place out.
"I must be made aware of the exact clues that we are seeking out, my friends." Aragonite inquired.
"Thats-a easy! We-a are looking for clues on how to-a get back to-a our worlds" Luigi responded to his question.
Once they were aware of where they were located the group then fanned out and began to investigate the room. After a few seconds Mario discovered a tunnel that led to a bigger room. When they first entered into the room the smell of damp stone and the dry musty air befell their senses. Directly in front of them was the edge of a balcony which had no railing to prevent any unneccesary accidents. Peering over the edge, Sonic looked down to see a near-endless pit flush into his vision.
"Whoa, This place is crazy deep, how are we ever gonna find the answers to our problems in here?" Sonic yelled out in annoyance.
The others took a gander and felt some despair towards the gigantic search that lay before them, nevertheless, the pressed on. Sonic got back up on his feet and quickly zipped ahead inspecting several of the rooms that were nearby. One room contained the bones of a long-since deceased human, another room had an empty treasure chest, and a third room contained nothing but cobwebs.
Mario and company had also began covering more ground by splitting up, and for the next 30 minutes their searching yielded no results. It wasn't until Aragonite discovered a stair case that both descended and ascended that anything of big interest happened. When he arrived at the staircase a sound of some sort echoed from the upper floors. Since it was pitch black and he was all alone in this particular part of the temple he decided to head back and fetch a friend to investigate this.
He found Tails and had told him of the events that transpired. Upon hearing this, Tails followed Aragonite back to the scene of the noise.
"What did it sound like?" Tails asked, curious about it.
"Uncertainty clouds my ability to discern that, but if needed to give my best guess I would assume another being in pain." Aragonite answered.
"Let's go check it out then." Tails suggested to him as he started to climb up the stairwell. Upon reaching the next floor he was introduced to a room with a pedestal halfway across the other side. Aragonite and him discovered that on top of the pedestal was an orb that was dormant. With another quick glance at the room Tails spotted a door that was closed. When he gave the door a shove, it didn't budge or move at all.
"Drats the door won't open." Tails said with disappointment but then swiftly linked the orb on the pedestal to the door. "Wait a second I think I have an idea, but we need to figure out how to use that orb there first."
"That is quite the quandary, my friend. I don't see anything that would resemble a switch residing anywhere on neither the pedestal nor the orb itself." Aragonite replied to his proposal. "Perhaps caressing the orb in some sort of manner would do the trick?"
"It's a possibility that I am willing to try." Tails said as he moved closer to the orb. Aragonite watched as his hands rubbed against the glass like surface of the object, and to his surprise a light began to shine within the center of the orb. Within a minute of caressing the door suddenly rose up and opened a new path for the two. Tails found a hallway laying before him as did Aragonite who followed behind him closely.
"Hmm there are so many paths in this temple, do you think we will ever find the main chamber?" Tails questioned.
"It is a hard matter to envision, nevertheless, I do not falter in the belief that we will eventually discover that which we seek." he responded encouraging his young fox friend.
A faint gale of wind meandered through the foyer that lead to a menagerie of different chambers, but what most intrigued the heroes was the pattering of footsteps by people. Quickly hiding behind some pillars that happened to be in the surrounding area, they peeked their heads out just enough to get a good glance at who was walking around. To their surprise the sounds belonged to two individuals who they had not encountered before.
"Who are they?" Tails asked Aragonite to which he responded. "I have not the faintest clue."
It was then that, upon closer inspection when they were getting closer, their clothing and armaments had engraved in them, symbols similar to that of the Avenging Knights of Discord. This troubled the two who hid from these new enemies. Using great skill in sneaking, Tails and Aragonite shuffled away from this anteroom into a much larger chamber.
They could hear the voices of the new foes as they slipped past them unnoticed. After stopping, Tails exhaled a sigh of relief. What were members of that organization doing here? How could THEY of all people have been blessed by the goddess to even discover this temple? These thoughts crossed both of their minds and soon they were drowning in a sea of questions that this brought up. It was then that Aragonite began to speak up with a plan.
"We must inform Mario and the others of our discovery, It is best that they know what to look out for now." Aragonite told Tails, the features of his face containing a look of dead-seriousness.
All of the heroes except for Tails and Aragonite had returned from their exploring and were discussing what they had found. None of them had anything that would help them progress towards their goal of leaving this world. When the two others returned, they were stricken with a fierce intense look that Mario instantly recognized.
"Hey! You-a two, You-a seem to look-a like you found-a something out!" Mario inquired curious to see if his supposition was correct, to which he was hoping he would be wrong.
"I have bad news my friends, Tails and I discovered more vagrants from the band of thugs that refer to themselves as the Avenging Knights of Discord." Aragonite informed the group.
"So-a my suspicion was-a correct then!" Mario said a bit annoyed that his intuition had been correct like it usually was. "My-a instinct told me-a that you-a guys encountered something!"
"Thankfully, we didn't arouse their attention so they don't even know we are here yet." Tails chimed in.
"The question I want to ask is what the heck are they doing here in the first place? I mean come on, why would they even know where this place is, let alone even be allowed to enter here." Sonic said, his voice laced with anger.
"It-a doesn't matter how-a they got here, what-a matters is that-a we don't encounter them-a in anyway-a possible." Luigi said to them, not a single shred of cowardice being present within his words.
"I agree with Luigi, we are in dire need of a evasive maneuvering plan." Aragonite also said.
"Have any of you found any other paths that lead up to the next floor?" Tails inquired.
"Nah, this place ain't got nothing, we looked high and low." Sonic replied to his fox-friend's question.
"We-a always have the-a choice of-a jumping down from the-a ledge." Mario suggested.
"No way Mario, I really don't like the looks of what is down there. Not to mention I've been hearing running water ever since I went to go check the rooms back there." Sonic scoffed at the idea of jumping the ledge. He feared that there was large pools of water down the hole that Mario desired to traverse into.
"It might be our only choice at this point Sonic." Tails tried to convince him.
Before anyone else had a chance to even respond to the discussion a large blast-like sound was heard in the upper floors of the temple. When this blast occurred the shock waves shook the entire foundation, and whilst this shaking happened rocks fell from crumbled chunks of temple wall. One rock smashed into a very loosely fitted tile on the ground, and shattered it instantly. Aragonite who was standing a good distance from it, was the first to see what that tile was hiding underneath it.
"My companions, I encourage you to come take a gander at what I have just found, It may be the answer we have been seeking to our current problem." Aragonite announced to the group.
Upon closer inspection the area that the shattered tile had previously been was merely a cover up for a hole. Attached to the side of this perforation was a ladder that descended into the black-void that swallowed up most of the pit.
"It-a seems like a path has-a opened up for us!" Mario said while being the first to climb down into the darkness.
As always, if you like the story review it, favorite it, and tell your friends about it. Each and every review and view is appreciated very much! Thank you!