Slithering Maze 30: Secrets Long Buried

Medilus 1, 1278: Temple of the Slithering Sun. Sometimes it isn’t just choosing wisely; it’s making a choice at all. Oh, and the running…

Author’s Note: Kingdom of the Slithering Maze is a serialized fiction story that is a part of a collection called the Windtracer Tales. It follows the adventures of Tela Kioni and her crew dealing with expeditions in and around the world of Awldor. There they hunt down lost, and possibly lethal, relics of the Ancient Order, a near-mythical kingdom lost to the centuries old cataclysm, the Great Collapse.

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Previously: Echoes of hoofbeats from back in the catacombs calls for a hard decision. Atha and Mikasi head back to seal the hidden door, but also confuse—and mislead—any pursuit. Meanwhile Tela, Kiyosi, and Skarri head down to the legendary Temple of the Slithering Sun. But the crossing to the door in gives time for some deeper thinking about the past, present, and possible futures. At least, until they find a way inside when it turns twisted in a way no one expected…

Medilus 1, 1278: Temple of the Slithering Sun. Sometimes it isn’t just choosing wisely; it’s making a choice at all. Oh, and the running…

It turned out the riddle of the door into Toshirom Ifoon wasn’t so much a riddle after all. Mostly, it felt like a joke at my expense.

The three of us stood side-by-side, staring at the door. It was tall and broad, strapped with a pair of long, possibly iron bands slick with an oily sheen. The planks were a dark, stained wood that I couldn’t identify. It lacked any embellishment, save for the three faces of the Sunfate Sisters and a haphazard set of chopped cuts that adorned the middle.

Those cuts said more than a hundred books. Someone had tried to get in here before—many times before.

“Another slide puzzle?” Kiyosi asked, arms folded, squinting at the door.

“Is it? The Sunfates are in the right order,” Skarri hissed, idly tapping the pommel of her saber.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, sighing. “Let’s try anyway.”

Before my hand touched the first symbol, silver threads erupted to life, spinning wild spirals around all three.

“Oh, damn it!” I yelped, yanking my hand back to make sure I still had all my fingers.

“Mind threads,” Skarri whispered.

The glimmering silver threads circled each Sunfate Sister in turn—Sunbound to Storm-shed to Hungered. Then they receded into the door, and it popped open.

Kiyosi arched an eyebrow at me, mouth pulled in a complicated line.

“That wasn’t me!” I snapped, glancing uneasily at the door. “At least, I think it wasn’t…” I added in an uneasy whisper.

The three of us swapped wary looks, then studied the open door.

“I’ve got such a bad feeling about this,” I murmured, walking through the doorway. “Death mazes aren’t supposed to welcome you inside with open doors.”

“They do if they’re hungry,” Kiyosi murmured at my shoulder.

I gave him a withering look, then kept walking.

Beyond lay a tan, slab-floored anteroom wrapped in narrow, sun-yellow knotwork banding the room in neat lines along the ceiling and floor. Murals of battles—both won and lost—filled the space between them. It wasn’t the usual clash of armies frozen in artwork. This was a struggle of day versus night. At the far end of the room, the Sunfate Sisters had turned their attention to burning beasts with way too many legs and worse.

I adjusted my shoulder bag to a more comfortable position. Skarri and Kiyosi moved up on either side of me.

“Ready?” I asked them.

They nodded.

The stone slabs quivered beneath us. Mortar dust powdered down in cloudy bursts as the door behind us swung shut with a solid, final crunch. Grit from savaged bricks and bitter, burnt bone sanded my cheeks like an ugly promise.

Toshirom Ifoon itself shrugged—the entire room moving as one.

“Let’s follow the Sisters,” I grinned, projecting confidence I didn’t quite trust. Pulling out my Sun Orb, I strode toward the other side of the room and deeper into the temple.

It was one door, one hallway, and then a block of rooms at a time—following the path of the Sunfate Sisters. Each corridor looked safe and straight until the temple moved—then they weren’t. It felt like the architectural equivalent of a liar running a long con on the gods. Dark, soot-stained stone seemed to smirk the deeper we went.

We barely made it through each doorway before the rooms behind us lifted and rotated away. Anything of interest, from braziers to chests, was bolted shut against the motion. My history-loving heart ached at the muffled rattling sounds as we ran past. But there wasn’t time to stop—I felt the beat of an invisible water clock counting down with each step.

The deeper we went, the rooms shifted from warm to hot to cool. Singed brick was everywhere—scarring sun murals and knotwork—but nothing in a regular pattern. Warped, cracked, and brittle skeletons rattled around in some rooms, trapped in the slithering maze as their last nightmare. At each doorway we braced for a pit, darts, or just gouts of flame.

Instead, it was dead silent, except for the ragged lick of stone against stone.

I stepped into yet another room lined with two closed chests and four braziers. The floor clicked. A puff of hot air slid past my legs, the breath of a long-dead trap with lethal aspirations. I closed my eyes, whispering to my heart that it was safe to beat again.

Kiyosi ran through next with Skarri on his heels. She flicked her tongue, tasting the air, then grimaced as she regretted it. The temple rumbled again, and we watched the blocks of rooms behind us lift and twist away. At the same time, our block moved up and forward like an out-of-control wagon. A trio of viprin skeletons in the corner to our right clacked as if laughing at us.

“Tela, how by the Lady’s Nine Misbegotten Children will we get out of here?” Kiyosi panted, kneeling down to inspect the skeletons.

I steadied myself against the rough gray stone doorway, studying the room. Looking back the way we came, I lifted my Sun Orb high, catching a glimpse of the temple’s inner workings.

It was an impossibly detailed collection of gears, pulleys, and dark ropes. Below that was what fueled the whole thing—waterwheels churned by the underground Bromcour River.

Another block of rooms wheeled past, walls carved with the wild-haired face of the Storm-shed Sister, eyes looking skyward. The next section bore the fanged, withered face of the Hungered Sister.

“Symmetry,” Skarri gasped, wiping rock dust off her mouth. “If any of the history I was taught is true, my people loved symmetry then, like they do now.”

I looked up as ceiling slabs rattled overhead. New dust clouds draping down over us teased that we’d come to another stop—a dull thump of stone to stone confirmed it.

“That’s it.” I dragged a hand over my face, wiping away grit and sweat. “This place honors symmetry.”

A warm breath fell out of me.

“Which is exactly how we get out.”

Skarri flicked me a glance that said she understood. Kiyosi frowned before hefting an ancient stonemason hammer, now warped by some intense heat.

“So we just… keep going?”

I gave him a tired half-smile.

“Nope. We’ve been chasing the rising sun to get in. To get out, we go the other way—chasing the setting sun.”

His mouth pulled into a tight, thin line.

“Now we just need to find where all this ends,” he sighed.

I nodded toward the next door across the room.

“That’ll be the center. If my guess is right, it won’t be moving.”

“Promise?” he replied, rubbing his eyes.

I grinned, backing toward the next door.

“Hey, come on, it’s me. Let’s go before the rooms move again.”

No one was smiling a short hallway and two rooms later. There in a long corridor, we discovered more skeletons. It wasn’t one or two—but dozens carpeting the stone floor.

I ducked under the doorframe, stepping down into the hallway as our room section thudded into place. Skarri slithered out next, slowly easing her saber free of its scabbard. Kiyosi eased out, stepping to the right, drawing from his belt the stolen centaur short sword I’d given him.

“Oh, sweet Lady Deep…” I breathed, and swallowed dread down a dry throat.

My eyes trailed over the mess, tracking down what I’d hoped I wouldn’t find—tools. Stonemason tools, lying on the stone floor next to daggers, warped spears, and more.

“… the stonemasons,” I finished, voice practically a low benediction for the dead. “They never left, even after all their planning.”

The hallway was different from the rest. It stretched at least thirty Ancient Order meters from end to end; certainly far longer than anything we’d jogged through to that point. Tan, soot-stained, curved arches ribbed the gray, chipped stone hallway like the gullet of some dead beast. Open-topped wide metal braziers engraved with knotwork punctuated the hallway at regular intervals. Charred lumps of ruined coal rested inside.

It was ominous and impressive, but it paled compared to the far end of the corridor. There sat a lone, sinister double-sized archway in the shadows of the right wall. An eerie orange glow spilled out of it, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“We’re here,” I breathed, warily surveying the gently curved walls. It looked all too close to a smooth throat for my comfort.

Skarri eased forward, saber out and ready, eyes moving between each brazier and skeleton for threats.

“Of course. No lids on the braziers,” Kiyosi observed. “This part doesn’t move.”

We eased down the hallway, expecting traps, but something in the stale, warm air promised worse. Ten paces later, Kiyosi frowned at a cluster of skeletons. A quartet who’d died together, brandishing tools and weapons that had melted in their hands. I looked away, eyes downcast, my mind conjuring the victim’s last moments against my will.

“Tela? Skarri?” Kiyosi said solemnly. “You need to see this.”

I swapped an uneasy look with Skarri, joining Kiyosi at the skeletons. He knelt in front of them, fingertips brushing the warped bones with a respectful caress. Without a word, he tapped the ancient, ruined tools and belt pouches. Some threatened to crack when disturbed; others were already split from some ancient heat.

Kiyosi sorted the bones as best he could. It was hard to tell one of the ancient dead from another. While he worked, sections of ruined clothes and armor fell away. I saw the remains of vashu’tel—viprin war-kilts, like what Skarri currently wore—half-draped over three skeletons. That was when I realized the fourth skeleton wasn’t viprin—it was human, wearing the remains of Ancient Order armor and uniform.

Kiyosi nodded at the armor, then glanced at me meaningfully. Skarri gasped as I spun around, looking horrified at the hallway with new eyes.

“Is that…?” she asked.

Kiyosi nodded. “Yes. Ancient Order. This one was just a rank soldier. Shield-bearer, I think. These other three are—were—stonemasons, judging by the tools and clothes.”

“They were… fighting?” Skarri swallowed. “The Ancient Order discovered the temple? Killed the stonemasons? I don’t understand.”

“No,” I countered. “The shield-bearer had his back to the stonemasons when he fell, like a guard would.”

My eyes swept the hallway, and the gift—not mind magic, or anything of the kind, but my talent—rose to life behind my eyes. As it did, history spilled out like water from a tipped pitcher.

Ghosts of stonemasons and soldiers rushed along the hallway. Stone grumbled and ground under the memory, as sandstone dust clouds bore witness to the moment and the following carnage.

“Look at how they fell,” I said, words barely a whisper. Raising my Sun Orb higher, I watched its warm, yellow light brush over ancient armor and skeletons, all facing the far end of the hallway. “It’s a battlefield, but they didn’t fight each other.”

I shook my head, licking my dry lips.

“The history of the Brass and Gold Crusades was wrong. We were wrong. They were trying to save each other.”

Skarri and Kiyosi didn’t move. They glanced warily at each other and then down the forgotten hallway turned battlefield.

“From what?” Kiyosi asked in a hushed voice.

“That,” I nodded at the end of the hallway.

“The Iraxi,” Skarri hissed, shuddering. “The shamans didn’t stop or kill the bearer or bearers. They buried them… alive.” She shuddered again. “My people did this. All this. Caused this…”

Then my eyes latched onto the last thing I ever expected to see. A not-so-ancient, savagely burned centaur skeleton lying on its side at the far end of the hallway. The tarnished sigil of the Arth Prayogar Trade-Wardens shone dully on the heavy armor in the dim light. Half-finished runes, as if drawn using ragged magic threads, scored the stones next to the corpse.

The others saw it a second after I did.

“Is that a Trade-Warden?” Kiyosi said, wide-eyed.

Skarri shifted the grip on her sword, knuckles turning white.

“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head rapidly.

I eased into the center of the hallway. Tearing my eyes from the dead Trade-Warden, I looked around again at the ancient, narrow battlefield. This time I studied it all again with fresh eyes, as history peeled back like a page turned in an old book. I saw them run, the work done, but they weren’t trying to escape. My eyes snapped back to the centaur.

The runes were jagged, hastily made.

No one escaped.

They couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

My breath hitched. A tear etched down my cheek; I savagely wiped it away.

“Oh…” I breathed in the sickly, warm stench around us. “They weren’t trying to leave. No one was. They were trying to stop it.” I nodded, biting my lower lip for a moment. “Also, the Trade-Wardens knew about this. They said they guard the ruins. But really, they’ve been trying to stop whatever is down there before Herd Tolvana or someone else finally comes to get it.”

The silence turned brittle as thin ice. Kiyosi broke it first.

“Tela, what do we do?”

As if in reply, the orange glow changed—moved—in the room beyond. A large, lazy motion, like a predator waking up to pay attention.

I gripped my whip tighter. It suddenly felt very small.

“What Windtracers always do—preserve history to secure the future…” I huffed out an angry breath “…and to make sure people quit dying for this damn thing.”

I started down the hallway toward the orange pulsing glow.

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Windtracer Tales is a work of pure, unashamed fiction. In fact, it considers itself rather fancy and quite proud of itself. Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.

Also! Windtracer Tales and Windtracer: Adventures in Awldor is written with much respect to Starfarertheta and their work on the other half of Awldor.