“Why the blazes doesn’t it work? Pig shit!” Semthak swore, kicking the stone table. “Are you sure that’s where the stone was suppose to go?”
“I think so.” Koruk replied. The Heart of Stone sat inside the table once more, suspended in a cradle of fibrous mesh that reminded him of some obscene spider web. Liquid had ceased dripping from the table, and begun to congeal into jelly.
“You think so? That isn’t good enough. There must be some way to… to fire it up again.” The old shaman snapped.
“You’re the soot shaman here not me! You’re suppose to know all about rocks and magic and stuff!”
“It’s not magic it’s…” Semthak began, but paused, a contemplative look quickly passing his face. “In any case, I’ve never seen a stone like that before and I doubt anyone else has either.”
“What was that?” Moktark asked.
“What was what?” Semthak replied. Then he felt it too. A low rumble in his feet, as though the whole temple was vibrating.
“Well that can’t be good.” Moktark said.
Oben’s heart jumped as the temple shook, and light pulsed through the crystalline machine in front of him. He gently replaced the crystal rod back into the lattice he had pulled it out of. Cautiously he tried another crystal, and another, watching the machine react to them.
He scratched his head in frustration. This definitely wasn’t intuitive. He found himself regretting not paying more attention in engineering class. Still, he seemed to be getting somewhere. From what he could tell, the crystals somehow modulated the energy flow through the temple, and the pattern in which they were inserted in the matrix seemed to determine how that energy manifested.
Maybe he could somehow reconfigure the temple to send a radio burst with the code? He was sure it was possible, but he hadn’t the slightest clue how he’d do that.
No, no I’m overthinking this, he thought. He pulled out a cluster of crystals in a group. A large burst of energy seemed to light up the room, and the floor shook slightly. This building is a weapon of some kind right? It shot down my ship. If I can cause it to fire, or overload it, I bet I can send the sort of signal that nobody would be able to ignore.
He started pulling crystals out at random. A humming started to intensify, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up as static electricity crackled.
“Yeah, this could work…"
The temple didn’t just rumble this time. It shook. All at once the room lit up as every crystal and pipe began to glow.
“I definitely felt it that time.” Moktark said. “Forget the table, lets get out of here! This place is going to come down on our heads.”
“No! It has to work…” Semthak said, his arm buried in the depths of the table.
“It’s not worth it old man!” Moktark yelled. He looked at Koruk, pleadingly.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Moktark nodded. “It’s your quest little brother. Come on old man. We’re not leaving you behind!”
“What about Oben? We should look for him!” Koruk said. Moktark nodded.
“Go find him then! I’m sure I can fix this, come back when you find him.” Semthak said.
“But…”
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“Go.” Semthak said. The old orc looked Koruk in the eyes. “I need this. I need to know what it was all for.”
Koruk and Moktark stuck together as they ran through the halls of the temple as fast as Moktark’s injured leg would let them, stumbling occasionally when the floor shook with an especially violent tremor. They called out Oben’s name and beseeched him to return, but got no response.
The temple seemed different as they traversed it this time around. More linear. Maybe even smaller. Certainly better lit. Blue fire had begun to glow from within the very walls, coursing through the complex maze of engravings carved into them. When the oracle had disappeared the temple had felt so empty. So dead. Now it was alive again, but in a terrifying way.
The ache in the back of Koruk’s head intensified suddenly. He wiped his nose and saw his hand stained red with blood.
“Where the hell is he?” Koruk asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t like the look of this little brother.” Moktark said, staring uneasily at the walls. “I don’t think fire is suppose to be blue.”
Koruk gave his friend a long look. He made a decision.
“Let’s get Semthak and get out of here.”
“What about the quest? Your visions?”
“… The quest is finished.”
Moktark nodded, and the pair ran back the way they had come.
Around a couple more bends, in a small room surrounded by alien machines, a human sat on the floor. He sat amongst hundreds of rods of crystal which had been torn out of alien machines, and they danced and jittered on the floor as the structure reverberated with energies it was not meant to withstand.
There was no way the fleet’s sensors wouldn’t pick this up.
His nose and ears began to trickle blood. Was this the end then? Maybe it was. He felt okay about that. Somehow, it felt like release.
He had done his duty.
“Aliyse, we're coming home.”
Semthak sat leaned up against the table, his arms covered in goo and a defeated look upon his brow. The Heart of Stone was clutched in his hand.
Koruk roughly lifted him to his feet.
“Come on! We gotta go.”
“It doesn’t work.” The old man murmured. “Now I’ll never know.”
The trio rushed through the temple, Koruk supporting his friend, and Semthak close behind. As they climbed up towards the summit of the pyramid, the reverberations became stronger, and the walls pulsed erratically. Motes of light, tiny wisps like those that had made up the body of the being of light flittered though the air. They seemed to have the same idea as the orcs, and were generally headed towards the exit.
It didn’t take them as long as they expected to reach the hall they had descended from. The geometry of the temple seemed to have changed to facilitate their passage, and they found the route straight and easy to navigate. As they burst into the entry hall, they found it awash with blue light. The entire room thrummed with power, and all three of them held their temples as a wave of nausea washed through them.
“Come on! There’s only one way out of here!” Koruk said. He trudged forward in spite of the pain, and the others followed him to the shaft that led to the surface.
Koruk glanced up the hole. He could see stars overhead.
“How do we get up? The rope was knocked down.”
“We climb.” Moktark said. “You climb. I can’t do it with my ankle and the old man sure as shit isn’t in shape for it. Come on, I’ll give you a step up. When you get to the top throw the rope down for us.”
Koruk nodded, and stepped on Moktark’s outstretched hands. The big orc gave him a boost up into the shaft, and Koruk managed to wedge himself into it by putting his back to one wall and bracing himself against the opposite with his legs.
Gradually, Koruk began to shimmy up the smooth shaft, pushing himself up with his hands. The air had begun to stink of something he couldn’t identify. The thrumming of the temple had grown louder, and he could feel it all the way down in his bones. Occasionally he slipped and fell back a few inches before he caught himself, and he cursed himself. His hair started to lift up off his scalp and stand on end. The coiled rope dangled from his mouth where he held it in his teeth.
“I’m not going to make it. I’m going too slow.” He told himself, again and again, but he kept pushing up and up. And then he made it. He felt his hands grip the top of the pyramid, and he hoisted himself up and rolled himself over, panting heavily.
Wasting no time to rest, he lowered the rope for his companions, and one by one they clambered up onto the summit of the pyramid. With Semthak supporting Moktark’s weight, they began to run down the stairs toward the desert floor.
Before they had reached the foot of the pyramid there was a flash of light at their backs that left halos in their vision, and a column of blue light lanced up into the sky with a sound like a thunderclap.
The beam was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving nothing but a rain of black pebbles that gently clattered across the stones.
