Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Continued from here

There was no visible lock on the temples double doors, nor knockers. The doorknobs, the placement of the central strip, and the fact that the hinges were not visible all suggested that the doors swung inward, so Oram grasped one of the handles and pushed. The door was fairly massive, and swung heavily, yet smoothly, into the gloomy interior on its unseen hinges. The door creaked. Although the sound was not loud, the hunter heard it reverberate through the as-yet obscure space within. Wishing to admit more light and air, Oram pushed the other door as well, with similar results.

It was only after Oram had gone through the doorway and spent several trills getting used to the dimness that he was able to discern the size of the room he found himself in. In addition to the light flooding in from the open double doors, there seemed to be some light admitted from somewhere under the eaves. Compared to that from the doorway, this light was diffuse and faint, but had the effect of softening the shadows somewhat. The hunter preferred not to trust to this natural light alone and opened the hood of his lamp to reveal the lightstone. Armed now with better illumination, Oram looked around.

It seemed to be a foyer or vestibule, significantly wider than it was deep. A simple, unmarked wooden door stood directly opposite, maybe about twelve feet away. Stone walls flanked, standing some twenty-five to thirty feet to either side, one in blue stone, the other in red. Everything else, including the bare flagstones was black and white. There was no furniture in the room, nor flooring, nor wall hangings, nor windows. There were, interestingly, some stone ledges and shelves, built along the long lateral walls to either side of the doors, as well as some sconces.

Most curiously, there stood in one corner a pair of pillars -one red, one blue flanking a metallic basin, connected from beneath to a tangled series of pipes. It seemed of all things to be a wash basin, with a spigot. Curious, Oram turned the spigot, and was startled when water immediately began to spatter loudly into the basin. The water looked surprisingly clear, though the traveler could not be sure in the tricky light, so he quickly turned the spigot back off and left the device for now.

Something else about the water contraption bothered Oram, tugged at the edge of his recognition, somehow familiar. Standing back and looking at the fixture more closely, he eventually realized what it was: the sink, with its two pillars and unusually convoluted piping, was shaped to resemble the very Ascension that had killed Belaera. Oram gaped. Had some hostile force fashioned this to mock the destroyed Immortal? Or had Belaera’s own dying essence, in one final spasm of perversity, decided to commemorate their own demise with this macabre thing? Regardless of what the answer might be, Oram decided he didn’t like the contraption, which only cemented his decision to forgo for now any water it dispensed.

The shelves in the room were similarly bare except for one item: a loosely-folded bundle of cloth which Oram similarly decided to leave alone. He would come back for it, he decided, after he had explored the rest of the building. Finished for now with the mostly-vacant room, crossed it and opened the interior door.

The inner door opened onto a space darker than the atrium Oram had just left. Somewhere straight ahead, surrounded by a sea of relative darkness, something stood bathed in an island of light. While he waited for his eyes to adjust once more to the change in lighting, Oram noted that that light came from a skylight somewhere overhead, which beamed a shaft of ruddy, dust-filled light onto a raised platform supporting an enormous brazen bowl.

Turning aside from that bright spot for a moment, Oram looked to either side of him. Light still came from the doorway behind him, and the suffuse glow that had limned the atrium ceiling was here as well; both, however, were significantly dimmer here. It took the hunter a while to be able to make out that “here” was an arcaded gallery, which extended along the inner perimeter for as far one could see -which admittedly, was not very far until at last Oram relented and opened the hood of his lamp to unleash the garish yellow glow of his lightstone.

The gallery followed the same pentagonal course as the outer wall. Centered in each of the five outer faces was a door just like the one Oram had just transited to leave the atrium; thus, he surmised that each of the other doors, which unlike his were now closed, opened to a similar atrium. For now, the traveler resisted the urge to open any of those other doors. The inner wall of the gallery was an open arcade ringing the central chamber, each arch flanked by columns shaped into frightening statues of various appearance, but all in attitudes of fierce belligerence and combat.

The pair closest to where he stood were quite human-looking. One showed a handsome young man with a scimitar and festooned with stars, including in his eyes. Was that Xiur? Oram wondered. Why would a temple dedicated to Belaera, even only formerly, have caryatids with images of Xiur? The neighboring column was a bearded, shouting man brandishing a spear with a flaming head. Farther on was a ravening wolf-man armed with a bow. With a start, Oram realized that these caryatids represented himself and the other heroes who had fought against Kata and her allies at the Ascension.

Curious, Oram paced up and down the gallery to examine the other statues. Some were unmistakably Varlum and Cail. All the columns he saw represented one of the five. Gratified, Oram noted that Cad Revel did not have any portrayals here.

Not wishing to gaze at the statues any longer, Oram looked up. The ceiling along the arcaded gallery vaulted, whereas the atrium’s had been flat. The hunter judged this ceiling to be about the same height at the sides, though of course somewhat higher at the peak.

Apart from the statues, and the occasional sconce left for the convenience of anyone who might wish to improve on the meager lighting, the gallery was devoid of furniture or ornament. Thus, Oram decided at last to turn inward to approach the central altar with its enormous bowl.

Oram was certain that there were larger metal bowls in existence than the one before him, yet he could not recall having seen one. He could have lain in it, although his head and feet would have overhung the edges. It was shallow, like a wok, but was more massive. Its bottom was slightly recessed into the top of the dais. It appeared to be bronze or brass, quite smooth and shiny inside, glistening brightly from the light reflected from the skylight overhead, but duller-finished and more textured on the outside. Oram wondered how it could be so well-polished, when there appeared to be no one around.

The floor leading up to the central dais sloped upward slightly, adding to its command of the room, which was perhaps fifteen feet from the arcade to the foot of the altar. The altar itself was perhaps waist-high on the hunter, and upon mounting the small steps at the dais’ foot, Oram found the lip of the bowl about waist high on him as well.

It was an offering bowl, Oram realized. Perhaps to burn offerings, or to gather sacrificial blood, he was not sure. This was the Domain of Sacrifice, after all. Thinking of the bones littering the floor of the pen below, the hunter shuddered and then turned away from the bowl to look around the rest of the central room. There was little enough to it. Fanning out between the black and white flags of the five walkways that converged on the altar were wedges of blue and red marble, in the center of which was a simple stone bench, as austere, pristine, and cheerless as everything else here. Would the heroes be able to make this place more welcoming over time, more reflective of their own personalities and preferences than that of the Immortal from whom they had inherited it? Oram could not be sure. But he would not be able to do such a thing by himself on this trial. He walked away from the enormous sacrificial bowl without turning to look at it again, and returned to the vestibule through which he had first entered the structure.

It was time to revisit the folded piece of cloth he had seen earlier. This turned out to be a bag, its fabric about the texture and weight of sturdy jute burlap. Although the bag had been folded flat, Oram found, upon opening it, that it contained several items, items that, although small should have caused the bag to bulge slightly as it lay on the shelf, yet he was sure that it had lain folded flat. The bulkiest item therein was a strange pair of shoes, shaped like slippers and covered in red sequins. The second item was a small, hard, oblong object that Oram determined to be a paint brush, its handle covered in red and blue enamel. The third and last item inside the bag was a smoky piece of crystal mounted in a monocle. This one Oram was able to get some prompt insight into the function of, as when he held it to his eye he found that he could see clearly into the darkest recesses of the room.

He put the items back into the bag, noticing as he did that their bulk and weight seemed to disappear. He would inquire further into their natures later. Right now, he wished only to leave this forbidding place and go home. Something in his head whispered …but this *is* your home, but Oram chose not to listen as he re-emerged from the gloomy temple onto the commanding platform atop the pyramid, thence to make the long descent to the sacrificial field where his portal back to Idalos awaited.