The Return of the Rightful One: Part 2
The nothingness solidified fast.
“Fuck,” I wheezed. I smacked sideways into a narrow stone surface. Nyc’arra rolled with me in an undignified heap down to an ornately tiled floor. I realized she had managed to protect my head with her hand--an impressive feat since I didn’t even have time to register falling. I accidentally inhaled part of the dust cloud we’d dislodged and flopped over, hacking like a beached whale. Each cough sent a shockwave of pain up my side to my throbbing shoulder. I hoped it was only a nasty bruise, not a cracked rib. Knowing my luck, it was the latter.
“Are you alright?” Nyc’arra barked, pushing herself to her feet. She sounded significantly less winded than I felt. “Where are we?”
I shifted onto my back gingerly, cradling my ribs with one hand and my poor knee with the other. I was going to look like an overripe banana tomorrow if I survived what was happening. I found myself looking up into the tranquil face of the first First Mya–we’d landed on her sarcophagus. I knew that the sarcophagus was empty, for the First Myax was actually entombed with her wife in the First Auhtula’s burial chamber.
“The Myax Burial Chamber,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. “This shouldn’t be happening again. Azo’lah deactivated the temple’s security protocols. It’s been dormant for the last 26 binary cycles.”
Nyc’arra scowled at the sarcophagus. “She is a hard bitch.”
I raised my eyebrow at the unexpected English curse word, then reminded myself who she shared a ship with. I levered myself into a sitting position and hissed as my hip twinged. I took the hand up that she offered me. “Do you mean the sarcophagus or Azo’lah?”
“Both,” Nyc’arra replied dryly. I reached into my bandolier and pulled out a glowstick--the only non-technological light source available to me and cracked one. I dropped it in the center of the chamber’s floor. I hadn’t spent any time here at all, really, except for the first day of our dig, where I let myself have a tour of the ancient wonder that was the Temple of Aluthua when it wasn’t trying to kill me.
The chamber originally intended to inter the body of the First Myax was, in some ways, a smaller version of the First Auhtula’s burial chamber. The walls were covered in delicate mosaics that depicted the First Myax’s Cinderella-like rise from humble servant to the Auhtula’s protector and consort. One wall showed the First Myax with her students--the fledgling beginnings of the current Myax order. The largest one featured the famous lovers, not in state as shown upstairs, but in a moment of blissful quiet beneath the moonlit sky. The First Ahutula was laid across her wife’s lap, her hair a silver river of captured starlight. The First Myax gazed down at her in adoration. On the First Myax’s forhead, rested a simple, elegant, silver circlet. The circlet was present in the murals starting when the First Myax was named protector of the First Auhtula.
“This can’t be,” Nyc’arra whispered, sounding the closest to awed and humbled that I’d ever heard. I turned to find her across the room at a small, altar-like table inscribed with the glyphs for love, protection, and another one I wasn’t familiar with. There, resting in a crystal case next to an intricately carved, iridescent box, was a pair of zali’thir. Nyc’arra lifted the lid on the box.
The First Myax’s signature weapons looked almost identical to the wickedly sharp blades that were wielded by Myax today. Tarnished by time and disuse, these looked somehow more lethal.
“You can’t take them!” I tried to slap her hand away, but she merely caught mine without looking. “They’re artifacts.”
“They’re weapons,” Nyc’arra retorted. She twirled one of them in her free hand, a lustful glint in her gaze as she watched the elegant arc of the blade through the air, “Plus, they don’t have any technology in them.”
At her pronouncement, the floor shivered. The glyphs above the murals ignited a blinding blue for a fraction of a second before dying out. “Shit,” I murmured, the terror of my first trip into the Temple of Aluthua hitting me all over again.
“She’s looking for us,” Nyc’arra said grimly, sheathing the First Myax’s zali’thir in a holster on her thigh next to a knife. “We need to leave, and get back to the ship.”
I brushed the dust off of the box next to the zali’thir’s case, only half paying attention to the ancient inlaid glyphs. “What makes you so sure it’s Azo’lah?”
Nyc’arra paused in the process of sheathing the second zali’thir. I would be taking those back later if we survived this. “What makes you so sure it’s not?” Nyc’arra snorted. “Are you really that naive, or worse, that pathetically in love with her?”
I inhaled sharply. Nyc’arra’s words, painful in their truth, felt like getting flayed straight through the most private, vulnerable part of me. How did someone who barely knew me see through me so effortlessly?
Nyc’arra took my chin in her hand firmly, but not unkindly, and forced me to meet her gaze. “I loved her, too, once. I thought she would never harm me, and she violated that trust by using her powers in a way that might have killed me. She took my home, my family, my calling, and my planet to protect herself. You need to be prepared that if she’s here, she might do the same, or worse, to you.”
I turned my attention to the shimmering box, trying to hide the frustrated, heartbroken tears stinging my eyes.
“What does it say?” Nyc’arra asked, giving me a moment to gather myself. “Anything useful?”
Grateful for the distraction, I leaned forward for a better look. “A gift to protect my protector, from all those who carry my gifts, but not my love.” I squinted as I inspected the final line once more.
Nyc’arra flipped the lid of the box, clearly expecting a weapon of some kind. There, resting on an aged woven cushion, was a simple silver circlet. I glanced up, recognizing it from the mosaic murals. The First Myax almost always wore it later in her life. Nyc’arra scoffed, “Looks pretty useless to me.”
“It’s not useless,” I corrected. “It’s a priceless piece of history! Just because-”
The temple gave a violent back-and-forth heave. The table slid forward, sending the contents flying. The circlet was ejected from the box. Nyc’arra caught as it sailed through the air leaping over the zali’thir case that shattered at her feet.
A doorway appeared in the wall, its outline sparking like a live wire as it tried to slide shut again. It was like the temple had opened the door, and something--no, the technopath, was forcing it to close.
“We have to move!” Nyc’arra grabbed my hand and sprinted toward the rapidly closing exit. She snared me around the waist and practically threw me out into the corridor, the First Myax’s circlet clattering onto the shivering floor. I scooped it up, lamenting that I had no safe place to store it. I didn’t have a bag or pocket large enough for it, and I worried it might get crushed if the temple really started shaking again. When no other ideas occurred to me, I shoved it onto my head.
“You look ridiculous,” Nyc’arra observed, nudging in front of me and moving for the exit. “What happened to not stealing the precious artifacts?”
I flipped her the middle finger behind her back. “You know what they say, when with a mercenary…”
Nyc’arra raced down the corridor, one of my glowsticks clutched in her left hand, one of the First Myax’s zali’thirs in her right. “Move faster,” she instructed curtly. The temple trembled violently around us, bits of stone breaking off the wall and pinging to the floor like unnatural hail.
“I’m moving as fast as I can,” I bit back, jumping over a pile of rubble that Nyc’arra, with her much easier stride, had easily side-stepped. My banged-up knee almost gave out on me as I landed.
My throat was dry, my ribs and hip ached, and my legs–regardless of Milyna’s exemplary physical training–burned from exertion and exhaustion.
We reached the winding central staircase, and my stomach convulsed. No matter how much time passed since my first time in this temple, when its security system almost compacted us into a human-Destyrian zip drive, I still hated those stairs.
Nyc’arra, having no patience for any hesitation, shepherded me up the steps. Designed for Destyrian physiology, to humans, they were steep. My injured knee screamed as I climbed.
“Once we reach the top,” Nyc’arra said, “we head straight for the ship–”
“Gretchen! Gretchen! Can you hear me?” A familiar voice boomed around us as though someone had just installed surround sound.
I stopped so abruptly that I almost sent Nyc’arra and myself toppling backward down the steps. “Azo’lah?” My voice cracked.
Nyc’arra unsheathed the second zali’thir. She used one forearm to push me against the wall, covering me protectively.
“Azo’lah, what is happening? How can I hear you?” A terrible, wretched, bone-chilling thought stole through me. “Are you here?”
“No,” Azo’lah’s voice echoed down the stairs. “Shockley called us! We’re on our way, Gretchen!”
My relief was so strong I wanted to weep. Azo’lah was coming, I would be safe soon.
A single head shake from Nyc’arra stopped me cold. No matter how much I hated it, she might be right. Was I sure I could still trust Azo’lah? Hell, could I even trust that this was actually Azo’lah speaking? Was voice-phishing in the technopathic repertoire? Probably, right?
Tentatively, I asked, “Max got through?”
“Yes, seems the idiot has some use after all,” Azo’lah replied. Well, that at least sounded very much like Azo’lah.
“Is he–is he okay? And if you’re not here, how are you talking to me?”
“We aren’t sure about Shockley. His message was cut short, but it was enough to let us know you are in danger. And, as for being able to speak with you now: it is an iz’waij perk,” Azo’lah said.
As though sensing my wariness, the staircase below us shivered, and Azo’lah’s voice was replaced with Shockley’s. “Gretchen, I can’t–”
“Max!” Nyc’arra and I shouted in unison. We both looked up into the gloom at the top of the stairway, like we were half-expecting Shockley’s handsome face would be smirking down at us from the top of the staircase.
“No, no, Favored, it is still me,” Azo’lah’s voice returned. “Do not worry for Shockley. I’m sure he is fine.”
Favored. She had called me Favored when there was no one to perform our charade for. Azo’lah–my Azo’lah–would never do that.
I edged as close to Nyc’arra’s ear as I dared and murmured, “That’s not Azo’lah.”
Nyc’arra’s chin tilt was more word-filled than an actual sentence. Was I sure? Was I being delusional? Was I willing to bet our lives and Max’s on a gut instinct?
Shockley cut back in, bellowing, “Gretch! Don’t–”
The temple quaked, shifting more stones. Nyc’arra threw her arms over our heads to protect us from newly created debris. I closed my eyes as plumes of rock dust curled in the air.
“Matt has engaged the fusion drive, we will be there shortly,” Azo’lah’s voice promised.
“No, you won’t,” I yelled at the temple, no longer having the patience for subtlety. If I was about to die, I was going to know who this asshole was. “Because you’re not Azo’lah, and you’re already here.”
Not-Azo’lah made a noise of disbelief. “My beloved Favored, are you unwell? Of course, it’s me!”
“Cut the crap,” I demanded. “I’m tired, and I’m pissed. Who are you?”
The stairs beneath us juddered so vehemently I lost my footing and would’ve somersaulted the rest of the way down if Nyc’arra hadn’t deftly grabbed me by my bandolier.
She yanked me close, wrapping a protective arm around my waist. “Please don’t get yourself killed with your own idiocy.”
“Favored,” Azo’lah’s voice trilled like a songbird over the quaking of the temple. Her voice never sounded like that, even in her softest of moments. “Where are you? The Fulyiti and I will come straight to you when we land.”
I snorted at that. “I’m not falling for that, whoever the fuck you are! I’m not just going to give you my location.”
“But why not?” Azo’lah’s voice warped horrifyingly, taking on a booming baritone. “Do you not love me, Favored?”
“Fuck you,” I told the disembodied voice. As far as witty rejoinders went, it was lacking. But I no longer cared. I wanted out of this temple. And also to leave Nyc’arra alone in a room with this asshole for five minutes to see how many tiny pieces she could slice him into.
The temple went eerily, suspiciously still. Nyc’arra hauled me bodily up the stairs, her long legs traversing the high steps two at a time.
“Such a temper,” the voice chided, its distorted timber hurting my ears. “It’s a shame that most human rage is impotent.”
“Ugh, gross,” I said. “If you’re going to be condescending, at least have the balls to do it to my face.”
“I will,” the voice promised. “Tell me where you are!”
“Up your ass!” I supplied as we reached the second-subfloor landing. Nyc’arra actually barked out a laugh.
“We’re almost there,” she whispered.
But almost wasn’t close enough.
The voice said, “Just because the temple is hiding you now doesn’t mean I won’t find you, Gretchen of Earth.”
The temple was hiding me?
“What?” I asked no one in particular. There was a sonic whoompf, and the world exploded around me.
Or at least the temple did. I flew backward and slammed into a crumbling wall. My aching hip, ribs, and legs screamed almost as loudly as I did upon impact.
I heard a muffled, high-pitched ringing as though it was reaching my ear canals through cotton.
Nyc’arra’s face moved fully into my field of vision.Her lacerated hands, dripping with yellow blood, went to my cheeks as she studied me.
Nyc’arra shifted to help me up, but her eyes widened. The floor below us fell away, leaving us suspended for a long moment.
This was it, this was the end. I couldn’t help but be grateful that Azo’lah and the others weren’t here. At least my friends were somewhere safe.
I inhaled, prepared for the literal sky to fall onto my head, but Nyc’arra tackled me backward.
My back met an unyielding surface once more, but instead of being buried in an apocryphal temple collapse, I was now in a stable, quiet room.
A room I recognized. The glow of the silver liquid in the trenches illuminated the room as I stared at the central stone effigy of the First Auhtula, now bare that once featured the coronet, staff, and (ultimately forged) cloak that had been the focus of my first adventure.
I leaned back against the First Auhtula’s pedestal, tipping my head against the unyielding, frozen folds of her gown. Without the cloak to adorn her shoulders and the staff removed from her hand, she resembled an Italian Renaissance piece sculpted by a master. “I thought we understood each other,” I lamented to the underside of her perfectly chiseled jaw. If I had to die in a storage room, at least I would die in the most beautiful storage room in the universe. “I thought we were getting along.”
“Are you talking to the statue?” Nyc’arra asked. Though the temple had settled considerably, Nyc’arra prowled the perimeter of the room, a glowstick in each hand to light her way. Whether she was searching for potential threats or a way out, I didn’t know, but the precise way she moved reminded me painfully of another Myax I was trying not to think about.
I straightened out of my slouch, suppressing a groan as the movement agitated my ribs. I gestured to the room as a whole. “No, I’m talking to the temple.”
“Do all humans speak to inanimate objects as though they can hear them?” Nyc’arra said. She placed her hands on her hips, the harsh yellow-orange light of her glow stick flaring out around her like an illuminated skirt. “Bautista also has this habit. He also calls all objects dude. It is quite annoying.”
From the look on her face, it was clear she wasn’t as annoyed by Tyler’s behavior as her words suggested.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems like this temple can hear us, though.”
Nyc’arra shook her head and took up her patrol once more. My eyes followed her around the room, though I wasn’t truly watching her. Grief for Sav’asa crawled up my throat, threatening to pull me under. I pushed it down ruthlessly. I would be no good to Shockley and the rest of my friends if I lost it now. If this sociopathic iz’waij actually won–
“No, no,” I whispered to myself. A panic spiral threatened to tear through me like a tornado. Failing my friends was not an option. “One thought at a time.”
“Once you feel rested enough to keep up with me, we must leave this temple and immediately return to Destyr,” Nyc’arra said. She surveyed one of the wall reliefs: a depiction of the first Auhtula and her First Myax at their wedding ceremony. “We will contact Myax Jolail once in atmo, and brief her on the situation and the danger presented to the Central continent. She will deploy–”
“What about Shockley?” I asked, easing to my feet. Pain lanced from my hip to my knee. I straightened the coronet with a sweat-drenched palm and then massaged my hip. “We can’t just…abandon him.” The first time I was in this temple with Maximilian Danger Shockley I had purposely locked him in a room with minimal chance of escape. Today, the idea of leaving him behind was preposterous.
Nyc’arra turned to me, though she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Protecting you is my mission. Max knew he would be responsible for himself when he came with us. As much as we both detest it, we must leave without attempting to find him.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking for your opinion on my strategy, Gretchen.”
“And I’m not giving you one,” I spat back, my fists flexing with determination. “I don’t leave my friends behind. If you want me to leave this temple, we get Max back first.”
Nyc’arra glared at me as though I was the most infuriating creature in the universe. Normally, I would have withered beneath such a scornful gaze, but I held my ground. “You can try and force me to go without him, but I’ll make so much noise the iz’waij will be able to find us with no problem.”
Nyc’arra’s surely snarky retort was lost in the rumble of the temple. The floor beneath me rattled, like an oversized deathtrap of a clock, letting me know my time was running short.
“Alien gods damn it,” I huffed, grabbing onto the statue of the first Auhtula for stability.
“Gretch–en! –etchen, are you there?” Azo’lah’s crackling voice echoed from the walls.
“Nice try,” I cackled to the ceiling, “I’m not falling for that!”
“Fall–” Azo’lah’s voice cut out as the temple stabilized.
I smiled triumphantly at Nyc’arra. “That’s what I thought.”
“Gretchen, are you safe? Are you still in the temple?” Azo’lah’s voice came through crisp and clear as though she were standing right beside me. “We’re coming!”
“I don’t know who you are, you technopathic asshole, or what you think you’re doing trying to keep up this ruse that you’re Azo’lah, but when I get my hands on you,” I threatened, my voice shaking with rage.
“It’s us, Gretch,” Chester’s voice interceded. “The rogue iz’waij is Councillor Lija. It’s been him all along.”
“It’s the truth, Borowicz,” Ryan’s voice joined in. “Right after you left with your team, a speeder from the Royal decks was stolen.”
“The official security recordings were rendered unwatchable because, hello, technopath,” Chester continued the story, “so no one could figure out who had done it. But our genius Captain had me sneakily lay some backdoor code that Azo’lah and I wrote a few I binary cycles ago, and the asshole either didn’t notice it or didn’t care. Either way, we saw the fucker. And it’s Lija!”
“Lija? No fucking way.” My mind raced to compute what Chester was saying. That dry, boring bureaucrat was the technopath who had been alluding us for years? “That bag of dicks is the technopath?”
“Right?” Chester agreed with a sardonic chuckle.
Nyc’arra cut in, “But if it’s Lija is the iz’waij here, how are you communicating with through the temple?”
“That was all Fleetwood,” Ryan supplied. “The second we knew that ship was following you, we hopped onto the Gold Dust Wo’man, and Matt put her into overdrive–we’ll be landing in less than fifteen minutes. But Fleetwood snatched a certain artifact from your first mission to Vas Roya.”
“Gret’chen, my Gret’chen, hold tight! We have your ass!” Fleetwood’s voice boomed. Nyc’arra winced at the decibel level of my favorite Fulyiti.
“She sticky-fingered the coronet from right under the Archivists’ noses,” Chester sighed a hint of amusement in his voice. “She gave it to Azo’lah and me to fiddle with. Don’t freak out too much, Gretch, we’ve been careful–”
“We used it,” Azo’lah intoned meaningfully, “and the Ancients’ technology imbued it with to establish a comms link.”
“Give me a ground report,” Ryan seamlessly shifted into Captain mode. “Everyone safe and accounted for?”
I met Nyc’arra’s eyes, and she shook her head forcefully. She said, “Prove you are who you say you are.”
“During my Myax training, my darkness returned,” Azo’lah said. “It almost defeated me entirely. Nyc’arra helped me withstand it. She kept it all secret so I would not have to stop training.”
Nyc’arra gave a grudging nod of assent.
“That’s good enough for me,” I said. “Guys, we’ve been separated from Max. The engineers and Sav’asa…” I trailed off, unable to put words to my assistant’s terrible fate.
“Lija has terminated Sav’asa and the engineers,” Nyc’ara said perfunctorily.
“He what?” Chester choked.
Fleetwood asked, her voice distressingly low and flat in a way I had never heard before, “That assmunch has dared to kill my citizens?”
“And he has Shockley,” Nyc’arra added. “We do not know his current status. But if I know him at all, Max has found a way to be more valuable alive than dead.”
“We need to get Max back and then get out of here,” I said, leaving no room for argument in my voice. I know they were all worried for my safety, but I would not let anyone argue me out of leaving Max behind.
“No, we will get Shockley back,” Ryan corrected gently but firmly. “Chester, get me multiple potential escape routes. Azo’lah, use the coronet to locate Shockley and create a viable retrieval plan. Matt, I want every possible flight trajectory off Vas Roya prepped–we’re going to need to get the Qu’een on board the Gold Dust Wo’man in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn.”
A round of Aye, Captains reached my grateful ears, and my heart ached with relief. I had the greatest friends and crew in the universe.
Ryan said, “We’ll call you back in ten with a plan.”
“Thank you, guys,” I said.
“Of course, Gretch,” Matt said.
“Anything for you, my Gret’ch–” but Fleetwood was cut off.
The temple shivered from the top of the decimated temple down to its rubbled foundation.
Everything went eerily silent.
“Guys! Are you there?” When there was no response, I continued. “Fleetwood! Azo’lah! Chester! Guys!”
“Please, scream louder for Lija to hear you,” Nyc’arra said. “Wouldn’t want to make his search to murder you any harder.”
I held up my middle finger to her even though I knew she had a point. “What now?”
“The plan doesn’t change,” Nyc’arra said. My eyes widened incredulously. “We must be prepared for Lija to find us before your friends arrive.
I contemplated throwing the coronet at her face as I removed it from my head to swipe the sweat from my brow. “You’re my least favorite Myax,” I declared, handing it to Nyc’arra for safekeeping.
Nyc’arra held up her two middle fingers. “Honored.”
I laughed at the gesture as I tugged my ponytail holder out of my hair. I had just secured my dirty tresses into a messy bun on top of my head when a voice resonated through the room, “Ah, there you are, little human.”
“You could not sound more like an animated movie villain if you tried,” I told the ceiling.
“I do not know what you and Azo’lah Myax have done to these security protocols, but I will find you, Gretchen of Earth,” Lija hissed.
“Get fucked, Lija,” I said, my rage and exhaustion canceling out all of my fear.
Nyc’arra rushed to me and clapped her hand over my mouth. She whispered, “Stop antagonizing the iz’waij. We have remained hidden from his powers for this long–”
“Yeah, but how?” I asked, my voice muffled by her huge palm.
“Azo’lah did not put protection protocols in place?” Nyc’arra asked.
“I am so close to wrestling the temple’s secrets from it,” Lija called, his voice a dangerous melody of almost triumph. He was enjoying this little game of cat and mouse too much.
I shook my head, shoving her hand from my face. “Not that I know of. Certainly, no security protocol that would completely shield me from another iz’waij. I don’t think Azo’lah even knows how to do that.”
“Then what is keeping us–”
Lija said, “I can almost feel you. Where are you hiding?”
“Does it matter?” I asked, slightly hysterical. We just had to hold only a few more minutes, the cavalry was practically at our front door.
“Of course it does,” Nyc’arra edged closer to me, her overwhelming height even more pronounced with this proximity. “Even with incoming assistance, we need every advantage available to us.”
I truly had enough of Nyc’arra condescension to last several lifetimes. “Well, excuse me for not having years of Myax training to prepare for the moment I was being chased through a temple by an iz’waij trying to kill me!” Nyc’arra’s nostrils flared with outrage, but before she could get a word in edgewise, I continued my verbal assault. “No, really, you must be bearing the greatest weight a Myax has ever bore.” I gesticulated to a mosaic of the first Auhtula and her First Myax love. “Not like any other Myax in the history of Myax has ever had to protect someone more important from deadlier foes. No, no, certainly not.”
“Gretchen, shut up,” Nyc’arra said, her voice low. Her eyes were trained on the relief I pointed at.
I flailed my arms. “Stop telling me what to do!”
“No, truly, stop talking and look,” Nyc’arra demanded. She snatched at my arm and dragged me forward. She gestured to the image on the wall. Before us, the first Auhtula and her First Myax were binding themselves for life–it was a beautifully rendered wedding scene, both Destyrian women dressed in regalia befitting their station as the Auhtula set a coronet upon the head of the First Myax. A coronet that looked an awful lot like the one dangling so casually from my wrist.
“You don’t think…” I trailed off, my mind sprinting faster than my mouth could move. If the coronet in my possession was truly the one depicted in the relief, then it was a gift from the First Auhtula–a known iz’waij–to her most beloved. If this temple, her temple, was programmed to protect itself by her and those like her, then it was reasonable to assume that she would gift her beloved something with the same protection. The same protection that was possibly keeping me hidden from my current predator.
“A gift to protect my protector, from those who have my gifts, but not my love,” Nyc’arra paraphrased the inscription on the box the coronet had been in. She grabbed the coronet and jammed it onto my head, already drawing the same conclusion.
The temple settled around us immediately.
“Hey, Lija, you still there?” I whispered to the ceiling. Nyc’arra looked at me as though I had lost my mind.
I probably had.
“We need to leave now,” she said. “How do we get out of this room?”
I straightened the coronet across my brow. “What? What about Max?”
“We won’t leave him behind,” Nyc’arra promised. “But I need to get you out of Lija’s grasp. And with backup coming, accomplishing both will be much easier.”
I looked at the depiction of the First Auhtula and her Myax, an inexplicable understanding flooded me. “We need to trust the temple.”
Nyc’arra gaped at me. “Trust the temple?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I admitted, reaching forward and gently caressing the relief with the tips of my fingers. “But I don’t think the temple wants to hurt us. In fact, I think–AHHHH!”
The relief opened beneath my light touch, and I tumbled forward. Nyc’arra, swift as a hawk, latched onto my shoulder and fell after me. We fell through total darkness, my scream our only companion until we collapsed into an undignified heap on a stone floor.
“I hate this temple,” Nyc’arra mumbled as she hopped into a defensive position and took in the new room we found ourselves in.
I did not need to look around, the moment my vision cleared and I noted the silver iridescence that cast everything in a cool glow, I knew where we were. I sat up and greeted the sarcophagus of the first Auhtula. “Hello, again.”
Her knowing smirk glistened back at me.
“Tomb of the First Auhtula,” I informed Nyc’arra without prompting. “Fourth subfloor.” I struggled to my feet and brushed dust from my pants. I threw my thumb over my shoulder. “Doors are that way. We can take the central staircase to the top.”
Muttering darkly, Nyc’arra strode to the doors. She yanked on them hard. They did not budge. She pulled again.
And again.
She grabbed the handles and shook them with all her considerable strength. But they would not open. “We’re trapped.” She turned to me, “What was that again about trusting the temple?”