Race Through Time:
The Batrishan Sanctuary
Owl hoots echoed in the night as Rosetta and the three pilgrims sailed through the left currant of the river. They spent almost the entire day on the boat. By the time the sun began to set, the group had gone miles away from the isle and a big distance away from the Eastern Highlands. The water level was getting lower and darker that Harry had to get off the boat and pull it with a rope while walking in the water, which got colder and darker as they went further down the river. By the time darkness began to fill the sky, gray mist could be seen floating on the river's surface.
"Your motherland is rather creepy, Tristan!" Harry called out to the squire while squinting in order to have a better view despite the fog.
"We haven't reached it yet," Tristan said quietly as he searched through his satchel until he pulled out three wooden amulets and tossed one at Harry. "Catch!"
The monk didn't miss the catch and caught the amulet. "An amulet of Ashiva?" He asked after inspecting it.
"The Evil One was heartless enough to unleash diverse horrors upon the Batrishan Sanctuary," Tristan said. He handed the other two amulets to Eglantine and Rosetta. "Only Ashiva's blessing can protect anyone when stepping inside our ruined city."
"That's what the amulets are for?" Eglantine asked while putting the amulet around her neck.
"Indeed. Ashiva is not known for being merciful to those who wronged him; the Batrishan priests who tried to kill the Evil One's child after Svjetla's death learned that fact the hard way."
"Your god has a thing against infanticide?" Harry asked.
"That, and killing someone of his bloodline. Svjetla's family was said to be descended from Ashiva himself, thus making the Evil One's child the descendant of Ashiva as well. Or at least that's what the old Batrishans believe." Tristan sighed. "The least we can do is pray that Ashiva protects us as we step inside the Batrishan Sanctuary."
"Didn't he give you your medallion, Tristan?" Rosetta's question was rather surprising to the pilgrims.
"How did you know about that?" Tristan frowned.
"I read it in a book, Batrishans: An Ancient Species, from the library back in Storybrooke. Apparently, once a Batrishan is born, Ashiva is supposed to give him or her a medallion depending on his or her role in Batrishan society and the soul's worth. Is that true?"
The Batrishan's only response was to pull out something from his shirt: a medallion made of medium garnet with a depiction of Ashiva guiding a Batrishan out of some sort of dark cave. "This is among the new medallions that our god gave the survivors' newborns, specifically for those who became loyal to the king and his court. My father and I both got medium garnet medallions."
"What's the garnet supposed to symbolize?" Eglantine asked.
"Protection," Tristan answered.
"Well that makes sense," Rosetta commented. "Your father was the Knight going on crusades to protect both the kingdom of Camberley and traditional Batrishan customs, and you've been protecting the other pilgrims during your travels."
Tristan smiled. "Why thank you. Which reminds me: does your Batrishan friend Fidget have his own medallion?"
"He does. It's very golden, with an illustration of Ashiva wielding fire in his four arms while a bunch of Batrishans are kneeling before him..."
"Pure gold? A carving of Ashiva the Fire-Wielder?" Tristan's eyebrows gave quite a scowl that made Rosetta cringe. "Your friend is almost 300 years old and he just happens to be born from the Batrishan priests with a very rare gold that hardly comes to any Batrishan priest?"
"Uh..."
"Quit the yapping!" Harry called from the mist! "I see a grotto at the end of the river!"
Later
From the outside, the entrance of the grotto was shaped like Batrishans in antiquity outfits, which almost reminded Rosetta of a blend between Roman and Middle Eastern clothing, standing upright, their open wings forming an arch, and their hands joined together in union.
"The Gates of Cuvanje," Tristan had said when their boat pulled into the dark grotto, full of more mist, stalagmites and stalactites sprouting off the ceiling and floor like broken mirror shards trying desperately to go back to their original source, and a small coast made of coal that made irritating noises when Harry pulled the boat onto it and secured it. "One of the four gates leading in and out of the Batrishan Sanctuary. This used to be a much lovelier beach until the Evil One spread his wrath."
"Were the stalagmites and stalactites actually made of broken glass?" Eglantine asked as her webbed feet tried to avoid stepping on any of the shards.
"They used to be crystals. Apparently, when the sun shot its rays from the entrance of the grotto, the light would reflect onto the crystals and brightened the grotto even during the darkest of storms. I guess the Evil One wanted to give us the pun of seven years of bad luck by turning the crystals into broken glass."
"More like several centuries of bad luck," Harry grunted.
The group then walked up a stoned staircase going upward, leading out of the grotto. Ironically, the sounds of bats flying echoed onto the tunnel's walls. Each step the pilgrims took made disturbing splashing sounds.
Eglantine gave a weak look at the black substance her webbed feet were walking on. "Tell me this isn't Batrishan blood," she said sheepishly.
"Nope, that's just bat dung," Tristan said casually. The prioress squealed in disgust while Rosetta, on the other hand, didn't really mind the dung. After all, there have been dozens of days when she walked onto the jackal poop that her half-brothers kept trailing around after eating.
Harry, who was leading the group through the tunnel with a lit torch at hand, pointed to an approaching light up ahead. "We must be getting close."
They walked a few more steps until they reached an opening that led to a small cliff giving away the worst view in the entire planet.
"Welcome to the Batrishan Sanctuary," Tristan said mournfully to his companions.
A few minutes later
Back when Rosetta was still a young child in the Enchanted Forest, her father had told her stories of how sometimes, the diverse underworlds ruled by gods had certain aspects depending on the souls that resided, and those occupied by the cursed and sinned were usually the most apocalyptic. Rosetta had seen in a vision what the Ancient Egyptian underworld looked like for such bad souls: ruined temples, pyramids falling apart like dominos, the Nile drying, and corpse-like animals terrorizing the souls. It was almost as bad as Egypt's state during Moses' unleashing of the ten plagues, and even Anubis himself admitted that he did not enjoy ferrying souls to that underworld.
Seeing the state of the Batrishan Sanctuary only reminded Rosetta of that vision as she walked the dead streets of the Batrishan Sanctuary.
The city itself was located in a ring of cliffs with one river coming from another grotto in the West and flowing through the Sanctuary. Some of the cliffs had masses of rocks, bigger than mountains, crushing farmhouses in what would have been the agricultural sectors of the Batrishan Sanctuary during landslides. The river itself looked black and icky, and when the group had walked through a bridge standing on top of the river, its dreadful stench was one of tar and its shores were full of dried coal, destroyed boats, and skeletons of what could have been fish in nets.
Rosetta clung onto Tristan, who held her protectively as they walked through plazas filled with nothing but dried crash, crushed stone sidewalks, destroyed statues of Batrishans, and dead trees hosting locusts and other bugs that no one wanted to identify. Destroyed Greco-Roman houses and temples, burned out Arabian-like street markets, grey clouds blocking the sun...
No life could be seen in the Batrishan Sanctuary. This was by far the worst thing that Rosetta had ever seen in her life.
"The Batrishan Sanctuary looks worse than the way my father described it," Tristan said. The group had decided to take a brief rest stop in a house that might have been the home of a Batrishan historian and his or her family, judging by the ruins of it.
"Did he come here?" Eglantine sat on a nearby rock, since trying to sit on one of the ancient mahogany chairs would not have been a good idea.
"He tried...once," Tristan sighed as he swiped his hand on an old tapestry of Ashiva looking down at the Batrishan Sanctuary (in a much glorious way) from the Heavens. "My father wasn't the first among several of the next generation to have tried to return to the Batrishan Sanctuary in order to find more clues concerning both Ashiva's prophecy and the race through time...And he wasn't the first to have narrowly escaped certain death. It all happened before I was even born..."
Meanwhile, Rosetta, out of curiosity, dared to look around the house until she found what could have been an old study. It definetly looked much older than the one in the Sorcerer's Mansion back in Storybrooke, with a medieval ashwood table and chair, bookshelf, a glass hanging lamp, and one red carpet. The only things messy about this room were the insane amount of dust, books and scrolls spread all over the floor as if no one called the house cleaning services. Ironically, out of all the things Rosetta had seen so far in this ruined, apocalyptic city, this was by far the cleanest area ever.
Rosetta managed to find a handle on the wall that brought the lamp down from the ceiling once Rosetta pulled the handle. She took out two granite stones that Harry had given her (the pilgrims each kept granite stones in case they needed fire for emergencies) from her dress's pocket and tried rubbing them together in order to create some fire to light up the lamp. She managed to create a small flame, but once she tried to put it through the lamp's opening, it extinguished itself. She tried again several times, but the flame got away once more.
Maybe it only responds to magical fire, Rosetta thought to herself. She knew the risks of using magic she was unfamiliar with, but this was worth the shot. She had seen in both real life and in her visions the way witchcraft users like Regina, the Dark One, Zelena, and Maleficent summoned fireballs from their hands, but she preferred to use a technique she had seen Fidget use once when she came to his cottage on another one of their Tea Thursdays and he couldn't use the stove to heat up the tea kettle.
Rosetta took a deep breath, put her hands together, and rubbed them. She began to feel small warmth growing on her skin, and when her hands opened, she saw a small, black single flame fit for a candle. Unlike Fidget's Batrishan black fire, which emitted heat of rage, fury, and darkness, Rosetta could feel that the fire she just created was the one of the Ancient Egyptians: black as a symbol of both death and a resurrection. The fragile, helpless child in her was now gone.
She brought her flame inside the lamp, which instantly lit up with a bright, neon dark light. Surprisingly, the light from the lamp formed a single ray pointing at one of the shelves in the bookshelf. Unlike the other shelves, this one was filled with what appeared to be books, but when Rosetta touched the 'books', she realized that it was only a wooden painting of books. Her hands did some scavenging until one of her fingers touched the light's center on the painting. The painting dissolved like magic, revealing a secret compartment with a single scroll in it.
"Whoever owned this place must have been some sort of sorcerer," she told herself as she grabbed the scroll. The ancient parchment didn't even turn into dust at the girl's touch; whoever owned this must have casted a protection spell on it.
"Rosie, where are you?" Harry called from downstairs. "The moon is about to rise and Darwin is expecting us!"
"Coming!" Rosie began to run out of the study after hiding and securing the scroll underneath the layers of her dress.