Leon, Maia, and Gaius stood before this giant temple, taking in the sight of the countless serpents covering the columns, and the gigantic Horned Serpent hanging down from the ceiling over the portico, its ruby eyes seeming to track their every move.  With a closer inspection, each one of these seemingly crudely made reliefs were anything but, with extremely detailed scale patterns covering their bodies, and every one was different.  Some were as large as giant cobras, some were of more medium size with long fangs bared and rattles on the end of their tails raised, but the vast majority were only about the size of garden snakes.  Still, there were countless serpent statues covering the portico’s columns, thousands in all.

If Leon had been told that these were real snakes that had been somehow petrified as they writhed and coiled about each other as they tried to slither their way up these columns, he’d have found it easy to believe, for the detail in these otherwise roughly-cut reliefs was so fine, though their overall shapes were still fairly crude.

The massive Horned Serpent in the entrance, likewise, was immaculately detailed, and lacked the shapely drawbacks of the cruder serpent statues, being covered in millions of tiny carved scales, its horn and eyes fitting so perfectly in its skull that it almost looked like they had been naturally grown within the shining jade.

But all of this wasn’t the most eye-catching thing, however.  As he’d approached, Leon had managed to tear his attention away from these art pieces to examine the temple entrance as a whole, and found that it radiated an immense amount of magic power.  There was a horrifying amount of magic flowing through the stone bricks of this temple, enough that Leon had a thought enter the back of his mind that maybe these were real snakes that had been somehow petrified.  There was more than enough magic here to do something like that…

“No one… touch anything…” Leon said in a breathy whisper, his voice tinged with fear.  “There’s enough magic flowing through these walls to turn each one of us into a fine red mist…”

“Noted…” Gaius muttered as he took a step back from the temple, his eyes wide with fear and anxiety.  “What in the name of all of our Ancestors is this place?”

“Hard to say,” Leon replied as he took a few deep breaths to steady himself and examine the magic in the temple more closely.  The power felt wrong, like oily water was covering his skin.  It was incredibly disquieting, but he was able to at least identify it as some awful combination of darkness and water magic.  “Whatever this place was built for, it wasn’t for any orthodox rituals…”

“I think that much is obvious,” Gaius said.  “Look at the floor just in front of the door.”

Leon obliged, and his mouth instantly began to curl in revulsion.  It had been subtle enough that he’d failed to notice in the face of all the rest of the temple’s artwork, but seeping out from the crack between the bottom of the titanic stone doors—themselves covered in serpentine reliefs—and the floor was some kind of dark red liquid that Leon didn’t need to take too much time to identify.

Maia remained quiet, but Leon could feel her taking a few steps closer to him and lightly taking some of the Skyflax padding of his armor into her hand.  When Leon glanced at her, he could see that while she was maintaining a stoic façade, her wide eyes spoke volumes about how much fear she was feeling.  Leon took a quick step back and entwined his fingers with hers for a brief moment before he turned back to the temple’s entrance.

He wasn’t sure what to make of this.  He was only a hair’s breadth away from asking Xaphan and Nestor for their opinions of this place when a voice suddenly rang out in the entrance chamber, a smooth, confident voice that Leon recognized.

“Well, well, well,” said the voice of Turiel—or rather, Jormun.  “Looks like the guest of honor has finally arrived, and he brought a couple friends…”

Leon’s blade was in his hand in an instant, and his magic surged through his body as his eyes danced around every corner of the chamber, searching for the pirate.  Maia likewise prepared herself for battle as a small water dragon erupted from her bronze skin and wrapped around the three of them.  Gaius reacted the slowest of them, but he drew his blade and assumed a defensive stance, too.

“Now, now,” Jormun smugly said, “is that any way to act when you stand upon someone’s threshold?  Maybe I ought to teach you three some manners…”

A deep thrumming sound reverberated through the chamber, originating somewhere behind the gargantuan doors, and Leon, Maia, and Gaius turned to face them.  The ground began to subtly shake and the magical currents flowing through the chamber bent and flexed toward and away from the doors in time with each thrum.

The doors slowly began to slide open, but nothing beyond them was revealed, not even as both Leon and Maia flooded the room with their magic senses.  Just beyond the doors was a curtain of inky black darkness that flowed downward from the ceiling of the next chamber like oil running down glass.  Leon’s magic senses couldn’t penetrate this power, and he couldn’t otherwise see through it.

As the doors continued to open, Jormun seemed unable to refrain from talking.  “I’ve always held it true,” he said, “that you can tell a lot about a person’s character by how they treat those creatures that are lower than them on the totem pole, so to speak.  I’d like to introduce you to some of my lovely pets.  They love meeting new people, so I hope the three of you get along smashingly…”

Emerging from the darkness that filled the doorway was a giant feline that radiated sixth-tier power.  It had deep black fur, a pair of deep-set eyes that glowed in its skull like lit coals, long obsidian fangs that looked sharp enough to pierce even Leon’s armor, and vicious claws that looked more than up to the task of skinning even the most powerful of mages alive.

This great cat was not alone; following behind it was something altogether more unsettling: some massive beast covered in dark green scales, with a long, thin body, a narrow triangular skull set with what looked like easily a hundred eyes or more, and a huge gaping maw filled with countless teeth.  All along its spine—covering a length of thirty feet at least—were a series of barbs that grew as they extended back along its body, eventually ending in a ball of scaled flesh spiked like a morning star at the end.  Emanating from its body was another robust sixth-tier aura, but Leon had no doubt that its power was not limited solely to magic given the obvious thickness of its scales and its muscles that rippled beneath them.

Finally, one more creature came crawling out, and it was, without a doubt, the worst of the bunch.  A centipede almost as long as the scaled thing, covered in glistening black chiton, dozens of antennae and other long thin appendages protruding out from its head, all of which were covered in fine hairs.  It had a sickening number of legs that clicked incessantly as it crawled first across the floor, and then up the wall and onto the ceiling.  It had a pair of sickly yellow stripes running down its body, and as it paused, it dangled its head off the ceiling for just long enough to snap at Leon with its half a dozen mandibles that covered its small, toothy mouth.  Like the previous two, it only had a sixth-tier aura, but Leon couldn’t help but gulp and take a step back, his disgust only growing the longer he stared at this monstrosity.

These three monsters, from the moment they walked out the door, filled the chamber with killing intent—there was no doubt in Leon’s mind at all about what was about to happen.  With his magic surging through his body, he turned to look at Gaius, intent on ordering him to retreat back to the stairs where Leon and Maia could protect him.  However, as the words were leaving Leon’s mouth, sliding doors hidden in the walls at the narrow, claustrophobic exit to the stairway slammed shut behind them, trapping them in with these three creatures.

‘Shit,’ Leon thought, as Gaius echoed the thought out loud.

“All right, then,” Leon stated as he quickly waved to Gaius to get behind him, “I suppose this is how it’s going to be, huh?”

As far as he could tell, the big cat was the smallest threat.  All three creatures were only of the sixth-tier, but the reptile’s scales and the centipede’s carapace would prove themselves to be difficult to pierce, of that Leon felt certain.  As a result, without waiting for another moment, Leon conjured a lightning spear in his off hand and hurled it with all the force he could muster at the cat.  He wanted that thing gone as soon as possible so that he and Maia could each concentrate on one enemy apiece.

The cat, however, had seemingly sensed Leon’s power, and hadn’t immediately approached.  Instead, it, the reptile, and the centipede had merely circled around or above Leon, Maia, and Gaius, wisely taking their measure instead of just charging right in.

Leon’s lightning bolt instantly changed the dynamic.  Those few brief seconds of calm were shattered as a bolt of silver-blue lightning appeared in Leon’s hand one moment, and then exploded across the hide of the big cat the next.

The cat shrieked in pain and recoiled, but only a moment later, its shadow lengthened and thinned, and black smoky tentacles peeled off the floor and whipped toward Leon, only to glance off his armor.  At the same time, the reptile snapped its long jaws and the surface of Maia’s water dragon rippled, causing a large amount of water that made up its body to lose cohesion and spill out onto the floor, while from above, the centipede let the front third of its body peel off the ceiling, letting its head hang down almost level with Leon’s head, its six mandibles peeling off of its mouth.  Leon had just enough time to shift his attention to the centipede before jets of viscous, foul-smelling liquid were shot from each of its six mandibles.

Leon had no idea what that liquid was, and he was not of a mind to find out.  He channeled as much power as his panicked and utterly repelled body was capable of using right now into his family’s sword and swiped it toward the massive insect in a swift horizontal slash.  A wave of lightning ripped through the air, sizzling through the liquid and flash-boiling it all away before it could touch any in Leon’s party.

A moment later, Maia’s water dragon abandoned its defensive posture and lunged for the reptile.  With seeming ease, it snapped the creature up in its jaws, but when it bit down, not much happened apart from the monster making some sounds of vague discomfort.  It then snapped its jaws again, and the bottom jaw of Maia’s water dragon returned to formless liquid, splashing onto the cold stone floor.

The cat returned to its feet and bounded forward.  Leon nimbly twisted out of the way as the creature’s claws raked through the space he just occupied.  He countered with a blast of lightning sent through his legs, knocking the cat back, while at the same time conjuring another lightning bolt in his off hand and hurling it at the centipede.

The bolt splashed across the centipede’s chitin, not doing much visible damage, but still ripping the insect off the ceiling and sending it flying across the room.

“Oof!” Jormun’s disembodied voice called out.  “You two are truly some wicked people, treating my pets like this!  All they want to do is play a little bit!”  The pirate’s voice was mocking, and Leon could tell that he was wearing a wide smile.

Even if Leon wanted to respond, he wouldn’t.  He focused instead on the fight as he side-stepped another whip of darkness that cracked right past him.  A moment later, he snapped his fingers and let loose with a gout of flame that consumed another half-dozen jets of venom or whatever liquid the centipede shot at him.

With a sickening crunch, Leon noticed that Maia had finally managed to snap the reptile in half.  Whatever powers it had were strong, but clearly not strong enough in the face of Maia’s overwhelming might; her water dragon had managed to reform its jaws and snapped them around the reptile’s neck.  Its scaled hide hadn’t been penetrated, but the water dragon had still managed to break the reptile’s neck and kill it almost instantly.

Maia wore a look of hatred and mild frustration, one that was mirrored on Leon’s face.  Jormun’s monsters weren’t particularly powerful, and their attacks weren’t putting all that much pressure on either of them, but they still had some traits that made them hard to deal with.

As the large cat’s shadows began to swirl around it again in clear preparation to lash out at Leon with more tendrils, Leon leaped toward it, ignoring the centipede for the moment and trusting in Maia to keep it in check.  Lightning coursed through his body and into his blade, and when Leon lunged forward, the cat’s darkness magic melted away before the tip of the blade.

The cat almost managed to twist out of the way, but the blade still raked across its spine and sent countless arcs of lightning into its body.  The cat shrieked in pain once more and sped away from Leon as fast as it could, clearly not having taken enough damage to cripple it entirely.  Leon recognized the look of a defeated animal, and let it go.  Whatever Jormun had done to make it loyal and to fight for him paled in comparison to the pain Leon had just inflicted.  Now, its fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and the cat had settled on flight.

Turning back around, Leon saw the serpentine water dragon imposing itself between him and the centipede, a few dark streaks flowing through Maia’s water that Leon assumed to be more of the centipede’s venom that the dragon had blocked.

Leon gathered lightning in his hand once more, conjuring a great bolt of silver-blue energy.  All it took was a thought directed toward Maia, and the dragon twisted out of the way just in time for Leon to hurl the bolt at the centipede.  The insect’s body rippled and vibrated as it tried to dodge, but the bolt was too fast.  It splashed across the centipede’s face, boiling away its eyes and burning away its antennae.  Lightning dancing across its form, scorching its chiton and seeking out any chink in its armor.  It seemed to find a few, for only a moment or two after the explosion of lightning died down, the insect had ceased to move, laying there on the floor, its body gently smoking as the stench of fried meat filled the air.

Leon glanced back at the cat just in case it decided that it had to fight if it couldn’t find a way out of this chamber.  He was briefly concerned that it might try to run up the stairs and make trouble for the marines at the top, but he saw the cat quickly melt away into its shadow, which then disappeared into the masonry of the temple.

Leon, Maia, and Gaius all took deep breaths now that the fight was over, at least for now.

“Damn…” Gaius muttered as he stared at the hideous bodies of the reptile and the centipede, “I think… maybe following you two down here may have been a mistake.”

“Maybe it was,” Leon replied, though his tone was light and without a shred of accusation.  “Maybe it wasn’t.  I get the feeling that there’s going to be more to this place than just fighting…”

“And you wouldn’t be wrong, Leon Raime,” Jormun’s disembodied voice replied as it echoed throughout the chamber.  Leon did his best, but he couldn’t detect anything—not from the sound, nor from the way that the magic in the air responded to his words—that might’ve indicated where Jormun was speaking from, nor how he could see and hear them, nor how he was speaking with them.  For all Leon knew, Jormun was in the room with them, just invisible and somehow masking his voice.

With that chilling thought, Leon quickly summoned his magic once more and sent great arcs of lightning surging out from his body and bathing the room in his power.  He didn’t put too much power into the attack, but he knew from his own ring of invisibility that if Jormun were here, even the mildest of attacks would reveal him.

Or so Leon hoped.

However, no pirate was revealed, and the room soon echoed with the sound of Jormun’s laughter even as Maia stared at Leon in surprise and Gaius covered his eyes and ears and ducked for cover as bolts of lightning flashed past him.  These bolts painted great black burn marks over the walls and shattered some of the serpentine reliefs covering the temple’s columns, though.

As Jormun’s great guffaws died down, he asked slightly breathlessly, “Looking for me, Leon?  I’m not in there with you, but I can understand why you might be worried about that.  No, I’m a bit further in, and I’m waiting for you.  After the show you just put on, I daresay that you’ve proven yourself worthy to enter this temple and join me.  Don’t keep me waiting, now…”

With Jormun’s voice dying down, the great stone doors of the temple began to rumble and swing inward, once more revealing the completely opaque inky black curtain of darkness that obscured the interior of the temple from view.  Not even Leon or Maia’s magic senses could penetrate that barrier.

“Are we… going in there?” Gaius asked as he straightened himself up, his voice cracking one with fear.

Leon frowned.  If Jormun was in here, then he wanted to go in, but he knew that it wouldn’t be quite so easy as exploring some empty rooms and finding the pirate lounging in some ruined furniture.  This was a trap, there was no way two ways about it.  If Leon were to enter, he’d essentially be agreeing to play Jormun’s game.

But Jormun was right here, Leon couldn’t just turn away, not even as the possibility of the pirate simply lying to him passed through his mind.

‘No, he’s telling the truth,’ Leon thought to himself, certain in his belief.  ‘He’s here just to fuck with our heads.  Maybe he could do this from farther away, but being here would make it just that much easier to toy around with us.  He’s here.’

“I am,” Leon whispered, and when he glanced at Maia, she nodded, too.  When Leon turned his eyes toward Gaius, he saw the young blond nobleman go pale as he stared at the black curtain just beyond the temple’s doors.  “I won’t force you to come with, Gaius.  Just make up your mind quickly, I don’t want to leave you here alone.  If you’re not going to come with, just head back up the stairs and wait with everyone else.”

Gaius took a deep breath, and then another, and then another, almost as if he were starting to hyperventilate.  However, after only a few seconds, he said, “I’ll go with.  I may not be of much help, especially if things turn violent in there, but you never know, I might also prove useful…”

Leon nodded.  “As I said, I don’t think there’s going to be too much violence from here on out, but you never know.  Stay behind either myself or Naiad, and don’t take any chances.”

Gaius was a smart man, that much Leon knew.  He didn’t have to go over every possible scenario and give Gaius instructions.  Leon felt like he’d said enough, and he turned back to the temple’s entrance.

“All right, no use in delaying this.  Keep your eyes open, be on the lookout for anything unusual.’

“That might describe a lot of things down here,” Gaius pointed out.

“True, but use your best judgment.  I don’t want Jormun to lead us around by the nose, and this has all the makings of a trap, but… I don’t know… I’m just certain that things aren’t going to be quite so clear-cut from here on out…”

“How do you know that?” Gaius asked.

Leon paused in his answer.  He wasn’t sure how to explain it, he just had a feeling that he couldn’t identify that, while Jormun was using this as a trap, the temple was designed more as some kind of test.  He could almost hear a voice in the back of his head telling him that entering the temple wouldn’t prove to be quite as terrible a decision as it seemed right now.

And suddenly, a terrible thought went through Leon’s head, and he made sure his mental defenses were raised while at the same time he sent a bolt of the Thunderbird’s power surging through his brain.  Nothing seemed to change, but Leon was still moderately unnerved.

“On second thought…” Leon said as he glanced back toward Gaius, for the most part ignoring Gaius’ question.  “How about we run back upstairs real quick and grab the others?  Now that we know what’s down here, they can at least secure this entrance chamber.”

Gaius agreed, and twenty minutes or so later, a dozen marines and the rest of Leon’s squad had come down.  The Centurions remained topside, while a messenger was sent back to Leon’s camp to relay what they’d found to Sigebert and ask about possible reinforcements now that they had a solid lead on Jormun.

Those of Leon’s party that had come down weren’t looking too good, however, with Alix staring apprehensively at the temple doors, while Marcus and Alcander hovered nearby, clearly uncomfortable.  Anzu was the only member of Leon’s party that had remained at the top of the stairs since he couldn’t fit down the stairway.

“I can’t believe you’re going in there,” Alix muttered to Leon.  She’d spent a great deal of time as they headed down the stairs trying to convince him not to do so, or at least to wait for Sigebert’s reply to his report, but Leon felt like he’d already delayed this too long.  If he waited too much longer, then Jormun would probably leave the temple, or the doors might close for good.  He’d already taken something of a risk in that regard by taking the time to head back up to the surface to gather his squad and send his report.

“I can’t entirely believe it, either,” Leon muttered.

With a grimace, Leon started to walk toward the doors with Maia just a step behind him.  So far, only she and Gaius had agreed to enter the temple with him.  Leon couldn’t blame the others for their apprehension, his heart was racing madly at the thought of entering the temple and seeing what fresh horrors might await them.

[Are you… sure about this?] Maia asked.

[Not at all,] Leon truthfully replied.  [This whole thing is a bad idea, I know that, but I think we can get through it.  We can’t go running away just because this seems like a terrible thing.  We can’t give ground just because it seems like a trap.  Let’s just take this slow and keep our guards up.  If we run into something we can’t handle, we’ll turn around and make our way out however we can.]

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy Maia, but she nodded and kept her head on a swivel as she watched for any threats.

When the three of them reached the curtain, Leon halted.  He examined it in great detail, looking for any runes or anything of that nature.  He briefly consulted with Nestor and Xaphan, and when they told him that these markings didn’t seem to be anything directly dangerous, Leon reached out and touched the curtain.  Indeed, his hand passed through the curtain like it wasn’t even there, showing that it was no more than an illusion.

With a deep sigh and a quick meaningful look exchanged with Maia and Gaius, Leon committed to his decision and walked through the curtain.

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