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MillionNovel > Falling Faster than the Speed of Light > The Modern Devout Pt. 2

The Modern Devout Pt. 2

    A passenger tevvy found its way down to the very end of a long, winding, mountain road. Once on level ground it was a short drive to the coastline. They’d been driving for the better part of four driev and Teramyn was just peachy with the journey through the rolling foothills and then the narrow mountain roads because he did not have to drive. Now that they had young Ahshka on the throne there were a great many things he did not have to do, should he choose it.


    The passengers included Teramyn, the driver naturally, Teramyn’s assistant Carmis, and the other head of church and Royal Advisor, Sahayna. They had gotten word of the events that transpired in the temple at Doss first but before they could organize and respond word was coming all the way from Desmek of another incident. Since that was the latest and closest sighting of the young woman carrying the Infinite Creature, that is where they were headed.


    It frustrated him to no end to be one step behind when they had been preparing for the Welcoming for ages. Everything had been perfect. They had accounted for everything, contingency after contingency. They thought they knew what they were dealing with but somehow they had never expected the host to survive the sacrifice. The creature was supposed to be under his control and instead it was at the whim of some girl who was causing him a myriad of problems including sowing doubt about the Great Plan and dissent amongst his followers.


    By the time the town came into view, Ahraan was almost setting on the horizon. Thankfully the larger moon Dhelarly was still high in the sky so the landscape was well lit in cool blue and purple tones. Teramyn could not wait to get out of the Tevvy. He felt like he’d been sitting for an eternity and he was dying to talk to the witnesses and get a reading on the fen if he could.


    The town was small, just a standard coastal thing. Nothing like the grandness of the new capitol city where they’d left Ahshka and his royal guard. The driver took the tevvy through the town until they could no longer proceed by vehicle. He parked the machine in a lot designated for personal vehicles and everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the tevvy came to a stop and they felt the drop of it touching down. They’d all been crammed in together for far too long. The first thing Teramyn did was release himself from the vehicle to bend and stretch. He reached down to touch his toes and then side to side, cracking his spine. Carmis and Sahayna followed right behind him in bailing out of the vehicle the moment it touched down. They were performing their own stretches and groans as they exited.


    “Are we ready?” He turned to the others, the driver would wait for them until they returned.


    “Ready to be anywhere but in a tevvy for as long as possible.” Sahayna grumbled. She was younger than Teramyn but old enough to have held her position as High Priestess for a decadi already. Her joints popped as she bent this way and that. She was tired of sleeping in the Tevvy and looking forward to a nente in town before the return trip.


    Carmis was quick to the back of the tevvy to unload their two compact bags, They’d traveled light, having been in a rush to get on site as soon as possible. He donned the one containing his and Teramyn’s things and Sahayna dragged herself over to gather her own bag up, sourcing her official hat from the bag. Teramyn preferred not to wear his own hat outside of the temple if he could help it. It was large enough to be burdensome in his opinion but Sahayna wore hers everywhere she went now that they effectively ran things. She wore it much like a fashion statement, much to his distaste, with the extra wide brim bent up in the front and dipping low down her back.


    Carmis fell into step behind him as he set off in the direction of the township’s temple. It wasn’t hard to find, not that anything was hard to find there. The streets were laid in a mostly grid-like pattern making it easy to navigate. The closer to the heart of the town they got and consequently closer to the sea, the more buildings were lightly coated in a layer of rhike, algae spores that blew in off the sea. The buildings in towns like this were planned and built so that their fronts faced inland, those sides painted and decorated while the others were left plain for when the rhike bleached the colors out anyway.


    The walk was not long and Teramyn was rather disappointed it was not further. He was enjoying the nice stretch in his legs, sorely needed after their ride. It felt good and he was not ready for it to be over, however the building loomed before them already.


    The temple in question looked like virtually every other temple across the countryside. Of course they each had their own flair, some less so than others, but when it came down to it they were all the same simple shell. Two pillars out front, a square boxy face with double doors that swung outward, beautifully adorned in intricate patterns of climbing flowers and filigree in a bright white against the dark wood. These were the first welcoming arms one could encounter within. The rest of the building was laid out mostly mirrored on each side with all halls converging on the worship hall at the very back and of course one basement level that doubled as a shelter should it ever be needed again. It was far easier to simply use the same blueprints, especially since many wizards and oracles traveled between temples as needed.


    Carmis predictably ran just ahead of them as they arrived finally and dragged the heavy front door open for Teramyn and Sahayna to enter.


    They were taken aback at the chaos of the scene that greeted them rather than an oracle. There were acolytes scrambling in every direction, most of them looked to be cleaning frantically. Though it seemed that things had mostly been cleaned up, Teramyn still spotted some questionable splatters high along the walls. Even more than that though was the stench of smoke and… meat, that flooded their senses on the first breath. Sahayna let out a harsh cough at the intrusion.


    “By and for the Gods, what happened in here?” She was the first to speak and when she did one of the frenzied acolytes noticed that they had arrived. He instantly snapped to attention, scrambling over to them. Teramyn noticed as he hastily wiped his hands on his robes that they left dark stains there. He quickly bowed before them.


    “Grand Wizards Teramyn, Sahayna. It is good to see you.” He stood straight, placing his stained hands behind his back. “I’m sorry you have to see this but we are still cleaning… the mess.” He quickly looked over his shoulder, back the way he’d come. He released one hand so that he could gesture to his right, toward a hall which seemed to have already been cleaned if the smell of scented cleaner was anything to go by. “Please, follow me.”


    He led them away from the main entrance and down the hall that led around the outer perimeter of the building. They passed a variety of doors along the way, most of which were closed but occasionally one stood open to reveal an office or dark room. The hall finally led them back to the main worship hall where unfortunately the smell of smoke was even stronger. The acolyte who led them wrinkled his nose against the smell before he turned and led them into the great room.


    There were scorch marks on almost every wall, the floor and the ceiling. They all led away from a single point near the front of the room. There were pock marks in the stone walls and floor where tevedev had ignited and exploded and small chunks of rubble and debris littered the floor. Teramyn looked up to see there was even a place in the ceiling now sporting a small hole into the attic above.


    All of the windows in the room had been opened and the doors at the back of the hall had been propped wide to get as much crossbreeze in as possible. It left the room rather chilled but thankfully the breeze was quickly carrying the stench of burnt out.


    The acolyte who’d led them quickly ducked aside as they came upon the group of elders who were gathered at the very back of the hall, near the open doors. Teramyn approached first and one of the elders spotted the newcomers quickly, ushering attention onto them. Sahayna stepped forward tipping her head and large hat to the others.


    “Envotton.” She greeted them with formality. Several voices repeated the sentiment back to her and Teramyn alike. “While we wish we were here under better circumstances, things are what they are. Please, can you tell us what happened here?” She asked.


    One of the elders stepped forward, a woman in her middle ages, her long hair bundled up into a loose and messy bun. She looked exhausted, dark rings and a vaguely haunted look in her eyes. Teraymn noticed the dark splatters along the hem of her green robes.


    “We will do our best, of course. However I would like to preface with this: We’re not entirely sure what happened. Much of what we saw is…difficult…to explain.” The woman wrung her hands.


    “Of course,” Teramyn stepped in. He kept his voice light, soft, “We understand that what happened here was devastating and traumatic for you, Please, we only ask that you do your best.” He barely had to imbue any fen into the words, just waited for the woman to drop her hands, relaxing just ever so slightly.


    “Yes, well…right.” she nodded, more to herself than anything, “Let us move this discussion to one of the private rooms that was not damaged.”


    They were led through the door at the very back of the worship hall. These were typically the High Wizard’s quarters but here they seemed to be used as storage space. There were a great deal of boxes and lumpy bags tucked up against the far wall. In the middle of the room however was a long rectangular table with a variety of detritus on it. There were papers and books and pens spread across it. There was a mug, forgotten and long gone cold sitting on one corner of the table where it had been left in haste.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Some of the chairs were neatly pushed in and others were haphazardly strewn around the table. The woman who had spoken rounded the table and took a seat at one end of the table. The others scattered about and Teramyn and Sahayna were ushered into seats next to each other near the woman.


    “Well then, please, tell us what you saw of the infinite creature and its vessel that was here.” Sahayna reached up to adjust her hat as she adjusted herself in the seat.


    “Of course.” The woman reached across the table and picked up a page, looking it over before she slid it over to Teramyn. “These are the official reports we have so far.” He took the offered page and briefly glanced over it, looking for specific key words before he passed it along to Sahayna for a more thorough read-through. That kind of thing was more her department than his, he was more of a people person than she was, his fen making for an excellent tool in that.


    “It was…I’ve never seen anything like it, never even imagined...It isn’t a thing so much as it is many things. Maybe everything, all at once. It shifts through forms as it moves and as it rests. Any living thing it came into contact with was…was…” she paused, eyebrows wrinkling as she tried to think of a word that conveyed what she’d seen happen.


    “As if they were sucked down through a tube from the inside out.” One of the men from the group piped up, stepping forward. “It happened so fast it’s hard to say but that’s the best I can sum it up. It shot out all these long, spindling, tube-fingers, or something, and anything those touched was pulled in through such a small point that it left behind all the meaty bits and the skeleton. We’ve been cleaning since we contacted you but as you’ve seen there’s still quite a mess.”


    “I see.” Teramyn nodded before he leaned in, “But what of the host? How did she get in here, how did she get away?” He asked, gathering himself back up and straightening in his seat. This was what he came all this way for, information about the girl that had stolen his God.


    “The woman?” the man asked.


    “Yes, the woman.” Teramyn repeated, gentle despite his desperation.


    “She was…tall, I think,” one of the others said. There were affirmative hems and haws as the group briefly discussed. They turned to one another, raising their hands up as they discussed how tall she might have been.


    “She was tall.” Teramyn nodded his head slowly as he waited for more but nothing came. He used his hands to prompt the man into saying more. “And?”


    “And she seemed…” he waved his hand, thinking. “Unorganized.”


    “Untrained.” Another voice added.


    “And she was with a boy.”


    “A boy?” Teramyn repeated.


    “Yes. He helped her escape.”


    “They left through a rift-”


    “A shimmering portal-”


    Teramyn held his hands up, trying to calm the group as they began to speak over each other. “Please, please. One at a time. Now, a child helped her escape?”


    “Not a child! He was a young man.” Another voice cried but now several people were talking, discussing whether the person with her was a child or not. Teramyn rubbed his fingers into his temples in slow, gentle circles, deeply regretting his decision not to send Carmis and a scribe rather than coming all the way himself. Wishing that this whole experience would be over already he glanced quickly to Sahayna and saw the same pained look on her face as well. She caught his eyes and though she did not visibly roll them he felt the eye roll she wanted to give. She placed her hands atop the table and pushed herself from her seat.


    “On second thought perhaps myself and my assistant will meet with everyone individually or in small groups to take statements.” She clapped her hands together once and tipped her overly large hat, her way of dismissing an audience and reached for the page she had been looking over. She turned and sure enough Carmis was there at her elbow, seemingly materializing from nowhere, as they often did. “A copy, please.” She handed the page off with a nod from Carmis and turned back to Teramyn. “While I do that, why don’t you have a look around and see if you can read anything.”


    “I think that might be a wise decision given the state of things.” The woman said with a sympathetic smile on her face. “I can walk you through the mess,” she offered.


    “Thank you…I must apologize I didn''t catch your name.” Teramyn stood and so did the woman across from him, reaching a hand out to him. He took it near the elbow, as did she and they shook once, firmly.


    “Of course, I am the now-acting High Wizard and Oracle of this temple, Moroa.”


    “Pleasure, Moroa. Grand Wizard Teramyn of the Royal Order.” Moroa quickly bowed her head.


    “Let me show you to one of our council rooms. I must apologize that it isn''t much but we''re somewhat limited at the moment.” She began to lead them away while the others dispersed on their own, more chatter rising up between them.


    “I''m sure whatever you have is better than the seat of a tevvy so we''ll be delighted,” Sahayna assured from behind Teramyn as they fell into step with Moroa, Carmis melting into the chaos but sure to appear later as needed. Things were going to be somewhat more challenging than he’d originally thought but hopefully he could glean something from the wreckage left behind.


    They went back through the worship hall and Teramyn took it all in again, prepared this time for the smell and the chaos. The worst of it had clearly been taken away but there was ash everywhere still, especially in the grout lines where it was harder to sweep up. The normally light and dark blue tiles were stained by sooty shoe prints and smears of grime. Nearly all of the seating had been removed, most likely all unsalvageable after the blaze. The huge windows on either side of the room were tinted dark under a fine layer of ash as well, those would take forever to clean and he didn’t envy the person whose task that was. He stopped when they passed the spot where the heaviest scorch marks originated, closing his eyes and holding his hand out into the space around there.


    “Go on ahead, I’ll be here a moment.” He said evenly as he focused on the residual fen lingering there. There was chatter as the other oracles and acolytes wandered through the hall as well until there were several harsh shhh’s before the chatter ceased, replaced by the sound of people trying very hard to be quiet. Teramyn took a deep breath and waited for them to pass by before trying to refocus.


    He released a breath slowly through his mouth before taking another deep breath, letting the air fill his lungs, then his belly. With his eyes still closed he tried to visualize with his third eye instead what was in front of him. Not the physical charred floor tiles, the small chunks of wall debris or the stink of flesh and cleaning herbs but the invisible residue of something otherworldly.


    It was hot, an inferno of heat compressed and waiting to explode. It was heavy, nearly suffocating as he breathed it in and it filled his lungs like wet sand, choking him. Within the blaze there was a form taking shape. The heat waves obscured any real view but he knew it was a person, slight in frame and not very tall. The flames flared bright, eliciting sweat to bead on Teramyn’s brow, before he was given one nearly- clear view of a figure whose long, dark hair glowed red-hot from within, as if burning up from the inside. It blended completely into the smoldering cape they seemed to wear across their shoulders and hung long down to their feet. Anything more was obscured once again by a flare, this time violent enough to knock the wind from him and Teramyn found himself back in the ruined worship hall, panting. He placed the outstretched hand over his racing heart willing himself to calm with quick success, he wasn’t immune to his own fen afterall.


    He had been occasionally plagued by visions and dreams of the figure since he was a considerably younger man. It was what pushed him to seek oracle training in a temple all those soltzet ago. The dreams were always different and the levels of destruction accompanying them varied greatly. What was always the same though was the heat, it was always so suffocatingly hot and he could not see the figure clearly, some strange glimmer obscuring them. The best he’d ever gotten was a glimpse out of the corner of his eye during one of the more terrifying dreams, enough that he believed the figure to be a young woman.


    Teramyn reached up and wiped at the sweat that had gathered on his brow. He could still clearly see the figure in his mind’s eye, could feel the heat on his skin. He focused solely on the image, poured all his thoughts into it and only it. He focused on the feeling of dread that being in the had moment held, the way it made his heart hammer just to be in their presence. With his mind steeled he called upon his fen, pooling it in his mind, capturing the vision and trapping it, like bottling it up. He held his hands together out in front of his face, leaning over just slightly when he felt the intense pressure build at a point just above his brow. He felt the spot swell, a pain coming with it that started like a small headache but quickly became a searing pain on his frontal lobe and just as quickly it was over and he felt a small item drop into his palm.


    Two prophetic visions in a single luel…now that was concerning. Especially when he felt confident in making the connection between the girl who’d upended his plans and the figure in his visions. They had to be connected when the vision came so clearly through the presence of the girl’s fen.


    He rolled the new blood-black bead in his hand and reached into his robe pocket for a very small flask he carried with him for just these moments. He carefully wrapped his fingers around the bead to open the flask before opening his hand to pour the water over the bead. The color immediately bled out leaving behind nothing but the color of the bone it was made of, a vision trapped within it. He pocketed the tiny object and the flask together and let out a heavy sigh, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple. The residual pain was only a dull ache but prophecy preservation was demanding and it often took several driev or even a ven to really recover. Teramyn had done two back to back and he was sure he would have a headache for a ven.


    He hoped that Sahayna was getting solid information from the acolytes and temple staff. He would need to join her and ensure that the situation that unfolded here had not dampened the people''s faith in the Prophecy. It had taken driev to bring the folks from the initial incident around, driev in ‘quarantine’ where he could easily keep track of people and use his fen to keep them faithful to the cause. It was exhausting but he was prepared to do it again if he had to. He’d come too far to give up now.


    At least now he had a taste for the girls’ fen so it wasn’t all for naught. He would be able to scry for her and hopefully give them at least a general idea of where she was hiding. Maybe not now, per se, but perhaps after a rest and after hearing what Sahayna had managed to drum up from the others. The pressure behind his eyes and the ache in his skull was building and he probably needed to lie down. He placed a hand to his forehead, squeezing to apply pressure as if that would help somehow.


    This girl, Mezalie, she couldn’t hide forever. Prophecy had ways of finding its subjects one way or another and it was often kinder when you didn''t fight it.
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