CHAPTER VI: For The Sun God

This chapter is narrated by Luhoul, a Ssrathi Snakepriest.

In Kapaxotl, the streets were paved with blood.

There were rocks under the blood, volcanic cobblestones that my ancestors laid for the glory of the Sun God, oh so long ago, but so much blood has been shed in this city for this city and its rulers, that the blood will never wash off. It will always be there, a maroon veneer of brutality coating the greatness of our past.

Our past was a time of heroes, of kings and explorers who bent the jungle itself to their will, and communed with the Sun God, seeking his counsel, seeking his wisdom. My own ancestor, a Luhoul of thousands of years ago, was among the founding priests of our beautiful religion. He sought to bring His light and His warmth to all, to the dinosaurs and the chameleons as well as the Ssrathi. To all of Keshan.

But those times are all past now, and the lineage of the Luhoul Snakepriests has faded into a dim and indistinct shadow of what it was then. We built cities together, the ancient Ssrathi. Cities to glorify the Sun God, and ourselves; now, we cannot build so much as a hut without coming to blows over it.

When the Empire came to our shores, we saw it as a new beginning. We rejoiced, we celebrated. War broke out, and still we rejoiced. The weak were being weeded out, the dissenters, the heretics. We, the Snakepriests, we believed in change, in adapting to our surroundings. How else does one become stronger, yes?

So we let the Emperor kill the weaklings as he hacked and slashed his way through Keshan to Kalpaxotl, and when he finally arrived at the door of the Seers, they wisely capitulated. Their surrender would once have brought an end to the war, but things have changed. Rebel holdouts remain everywhere, and they must be cleansed.

It is something I believe; it is something I long for. Unity through war. Peace through death. The future comes on wings of slaughter and sacrifice. The disloyal elements need to be purged, but still. I feel unease, sometimes. I feel a lack of clarity, and an occasional, desperate longing for the war to end. The rebels do not all get along, and sometimes they fight each other; it seems Ssrathi simply cannot go without killing other Ssrathi.

My Serpent Lord and I ride through the blood-stained streets on the backs of lizards, and the populace watches us with awe. He is a fearsome sight, Grendel, Knight of the White Wyrm. Through murder, he brings unity to our people. They are right to fear us. Ostensibly, we are here simply to gather supplies and manpower for Grendel’s excursion to the West, but in reality, we are here to remind our people who they fight for, and who they must answer to if they will not fight.

The Nagai are also with us: Grendel’s guardian, Jexdar, and his whore, Yinfur. That they dared violate the sanctity of the scrying pool in New Selentia that night vexed me terribly, but he is my Serpent Lord. He may scorn every tradition I believe in, but he is still our savior, our best hope. Perhaps the fact that things have sunk so low that this heretic, this mercenary is the best hope of the Ssrathi is some sort of terrible omen, but I don’t really believe in omens.

***

That night I slept in the simple abode provided to me by the Religious Sect. There was little in it save for a small altar for praying and a freshly laid nest to curl up in.

I had never carried a timepiece, but from the position of the moon above the roofless structure, I surmised it was a full hour or more before sunrise when I was awakened by a skittish rapping on my door. I called upon the Sun God to infuse my body with warmth, and sat up as fast as my still-cool blood would allow me.

“What is it?” I called from the nest.

“Massster! It isss a matter of grave urgency! May I enter?” said a curiously high-pitched voice.

“No,” I responded. “Who are you?”

“I am but a lowly worker… I tressspass on the sssacred sssoil of your sssect only to better ssserve you, I ssswear it!”

“You are a Chameleon,” I said, malice creeping into my voice. “You are aware that by your trespass, you forfeit your right to live?”

“Yesss, massster,” squeaked the Chameleon.

I waited for an elaboration, but got nothing. A fearless one, this one. For a member of the Worker Sect, that is. I arose with a sigh, and walked over to the door, unbolting it. The Chameleon cowered by the wall opposite the door, his fear causing his hide to ripple with dark color. I was half-afraid he would shed his tail and run away.

“Control your impulses, worker. You need not fear me,” I said evenly.

“I’m… sssorry, massster. I can’t help it,” he stammered, but after a moment, his scales resumed their more uniform dark green hue.

“Now, are you going to tell me what is so important it couldn’t wait until sunrise?”

“We, ah, my nessst-brother and I were excavating in Lord Grendel’s Sssun Temple, trying to clear away the rubble under the eassst balconiesss, and we found… sssomething.”

“I see. Why did you not bring this to Lord Grendel? If you are brave enough to come to me, certainly it occurred to you to find him somewhere within his own temple.”

“I tried, massster, but he wasss… indisssposssed. Enclosssed with hisss Naga.”

Or Nagai, I thought to myself. So, while he was busy fornicating, I had to attend to the worries of his workers.

“Could you be more specific about what it is you found?” I queried the Chameleon.

“Here?” he said, looking around furtively. I inclined my head, regarding the worker curiously.

“I suppose if you think it warrants barging into a Religious Sect in the middle of the night, we’d best wait until we were under a roof,” I admitted, glancing up at the moon. The Chameleon gestured towards the sect’s entrance, and I followed him out. “For the Sun God,” I mumbled to myself, retrieving my sunstaff.

***

The Chameleon led me to Grendel’s ziggurat-like Sun Temple, located only a few huts from the Religious Sect. The Grendel bloodline’s Sun Temple was in an older but less prestigious part of Kalpaxotl, and his troops had encountered little difficulty in securing places to stay in the surrounding huts. The first tint of dawn crept into the sky as we walked.

Couatl’s Warmth radiated from the temple in waves of near-narcotic intensity, and I let them invigorate me. The entrance was guarded by a pair of Snakemen who barred our way with their double-bladed axes. I bared my throat while the Chameleon cowered behind me. The Snakemen’s tongues flicked out, smelling us.

“Who ssseeks to enter?” one of the Snakemen demanded.

“I am Luhoul, of the Religious Sect, emissary of the Seers and counsel to the Serpent Lord. You will admit me.”

“You ssserve Grendel?” he asked, skeptical.

“I serve no one but the Sun God, but I assist Lord Grendel in all matters concerning his… zeal and spirituality.” The Snakemen looked at each other before turning back to me.

“The Serpent Lord isss… busssy, and hisss current activitiesss do not require… religious counsssel,” the guard said, and the two warriors both sissed with laughter before lead guard continued. “We already told thisss one that,” he said, indicating the Chameleon.

“I do not seek an audience with Lord Grendel, warrior. It seems the Chameleons working to repair the damage done to the east balconies are refusing to work, having fallen prey to a bad omen. I am here to bless them and motivate them,” I explained calmly, absently toying with my staff as I spoke.

“Sssuch sssuperssstitious creaturesss,” the Snakeman chided. “You mussst make them work fassster, priessst. If Grendel learnsss of thisss delay, he will be furiousss.”

“Quite,” I said. “Permit me to enter, and I will do just that.” The Snakeman considered this for a moment, before relenting and stepping aside. His fellow warrior did likewise.

“I appreciate your dissscretion, massster. I think you will sssee that thisss matter isss more than sssensssitive enough to warrant sssuch measures,” the Chameleon wheedled as soon as we were out of earshot and walking through the torch-lit halls of the Sun Temple.

“You can appreciate me all you like when I have gone back to sleep,” I bit back at the worker. “Just show me what you found, and I’ll be the judge of the rest.” In response, the Chameleon averted his gaze and scampered down the hall slightly faster.

He led me through a stone archway into a vestibule that must at one point have allowed access to the eastern hall of the temple, but had crumbled in some long-forgotten war. Now that Grendel’s family name was in resurgence, there was finally motivation and manpower to fully restore his temple, and Chameleons had been working on the repairs day and night since we arrived.

A support had been erected to brace the doorway out of the vestibule, which led to a wide, low corridor. The corridor was more or less half-collapsed, with rubble strewn everywhere. The outer wall was completely obscured by huge blocks of volcanic rock. The Chameleon and I picked our way through the rubble, and I noticed several tools lying about on the floor among the rocks, seemingly abandoned in a hurry.

At the end of the corridor was a stairwell that led down. I stared at it a moment, blinking. We were still on ground level, of that much I was certain. Like most Ssrathi, I had a healthy and primal fear of the underground, and it was unusual, though certainly not unheard of, for Ssrathi structures to extend below the ground.

“Come, thisss way!” the Chameleon jabbered excitedly and grabbed a torch off a wall fixture. I drew myself up to my full height, and followed him to the stairwell.

The stairwell was mostly collapsed, and the Chameleon and I were forced to jump between sections of the stone stairs. They were of an unusually ornate and presumably ancient style of construction, essentially square pillars that jutted out from the walls in descending spiral order. As we descended what must have been at least three stories down, I noticed an odd, musty odor, and fast, chittering voices echoing up from below.

At the bottom of the stairwell was a hastily constructed mining lift for ferrying rubble up, and a makeshift camp for the Chameleon workers, with tools, dried meat and impromptu nests arranged around a weakly glowing fire.

My Chameleon guide led me through another low, square archway and into a foyer adjacent to the last landing of the stairwell. There were about seven or eight Chameleons jabbering to each other in the high-pitched chirping croaks of their language. I cleared my throat and spoke.

“Avert your eyes and be fearful; your better is amongst you.” The Chameleons immediately fell silent and bowed their heads. “I presume the find is this way?” I asked my guide, indicating a doorway to my right. There was another to my left, but it was completely blocked by rubble.

“Yesss, yesss, come quickly, massster,” the guide chirped.

“I will go in first, thank you,” I said. The Chameleon obediently passed me his torch, and I stepped through the doorway.

A huge collapse of rubble had rendered a good two-thirds of the large room impassable. The room was surprisingly bright, and the light was certainly not coming from my torch. It seemed that the rubble had fallen from a hole in the roof of the room, which, amazingly, was letting sunlight in. A sharply defined beam of dull, cold light shone directly down on the peak of the rubble mound, illuminating lazily drifting dust and casting a diffuse glow throughout the room.

“There ssseemsss to have been an air duct leading to the sssurface, massster,” the Chameleon explained as I climbed the rubble mound. “But what kind of army could have causssed this kind of damage, I could not sssay.”

“Dragons, I’ll wager, or maybe catapults,” I said, reaching the sunbeam and closing my eyes as I basked in the dawn light. Not exactly direct sunlight, but pleasant nonetheless. “Don’t tell me you brought me all the way down here to show me this?” I asked and opened my eyes.

“No, no, massster, thisss! Come, quick!” the Chameleon squealed, as if suddenly reminded of why we were here. He scampered around the rubble to the opposite side of the room, and I strode down the mound to where he was heading.

“Here!” the Chameleon said, pointing, but the far wall was not well enough lit by the sunlight or my torch. I picked my way down through the rocks, until finally, the torch pushed the darkness away.

The remains of a stone altar were built into the wall, complete with a miniature scrying pool and gargoyle-like statue of Couatl leering out of an alcove above. On either side of the alcove were archless doorways leading to narrow, tunnel-like corridors that led into pitch darkness.

But it was what lay in front of the altar that completely arrested my attention.

Two collections of bones that were unquestionably near-complete Ssrathi skeletons lay on the floor, one slumped partway over the altar, and the other splayed across the floor, less than a foot from the altar’s base. Both of them had various pieces of incredibly ornate jewelry arrayed around them, including rings still on finger bones and bracelets and anklets still on forearms and around shinbones. Both had large, vicious-looking swords still in their hand, or, in the case of the one on the altar, the sword and all the bones of the hand lay in a neat pile where they had no doubt fallen when the flesh and ligaments holding the hand together had finally disintegrated.

The other skeleton, which was closer to me and further from the wall, had something on its head, a crown of some sort. I brought my torch closer, the flickering flame giving the grim death’s head the momentary appearance of life. I recognized the crown instantly.

“In Couatl’s holy name,” I muttered. There was a chitter behind me, and it took me a moment to realize that the Chameleon was talking to me.

“What was that?” I asked, eyes still fixed on the crown. Could it be…?

“Pretty amazing, yesss massster?” The Chameleon said.

“Yes… yes, absolutely,” I said distractedly, mind racing.

“Want to sssee sssomething even more incredible?”

I turned around and gave him what I surmise must have been a look of supreme disbelief.

“More incredible?”

“Oh, yesss, yesss, come, quick,” he said, and scurried into one of the two doorways on either side of the altar. I walked behind him into the tunnel, taking care not to step on the second skeleton. I suddenly wondered if it was wise to leave the crown there in plain sight, but decided it was safe, if only for a few moments.

The tunnel curved gently, and its shape suggested the inside of a snake. It was short, and after only a few seconds, we emerged into spectacular splendor.

It was incredible. The gold was piled so high that the tall room seemed to go on forever. The torch reflected the surface of what must have been dozens of statues, swords, amulets, pendants and orbs, and coins that must have numbered in the thousands.

There were long, sweeping mounds of treasure stretching from wall to stone wall, and massive, monolithic statues of Snakemen adorned the walls, ferocious-looking idols with stone fangs bared. There were goblets, rubies, amethysts, jades, ceremonial swords and ornamental axes, all of them amazingly of Ssrathi origin; there was not a single piece of foreign treasure visible anywhere.

“Amazing, yesss?” the Chameleon said from behind me.

“Yes, quite… quite.”

My mind raced furiously. There must be a sign here somewhere, a symbol…

…yes. There. Carved into a pendant draped over a fabulously ornate throne. A vicious, hellish glyph of contradicting curves and lines; simple, yet unmistakable. Incredible. After all these years…

I froze. The crown on the Ssrathi’s head…

I ran back into the room with the skeletons and the altar, which I now realized was a tomb. The skeleton with the crown, it must be him…

No. That’s impossible.

And yet, there they were: the unmistakable rudimentary frill horns, just above and behind the cheekbones. Only one bloodline in Keshan had those horns.

And he wears the crown.

There was but one thing to do. For the good of all Ssrathi. For the Sun God.

I experimentally tried the doorway to the right of the altar, the one we hadn’t gone through earlier; as I surmised, it, too, led to the treasure vault. I turned to face the Chameleon, who had been at my heels the whole time.

“Worker,” I said, trying to affect an air of elation. “You and your nest-brothers have stumbled upon an amazing find, one sure to be written into all books of Ssrathi history. You have done your people a great service today, and to reward you all, I want you to bring all your brothers in here, and you may take as much gold as you can carry.”

“To keep?” the stunned Chameleon squealed, unable to believe his eardrums.

“To keep,” I said, nodding.

The Chameleon bounded out of the room, jibbering and chittering. I stayed in the vault, and began chanting quietly, preparing to summon.

Sure enough, he returned moments later with the other eight Chameleons, who greedily assaulted the treasure with hide sacks, throwing what they could into them.

I finished the incantation.

I opened my mouth, and Couatl’s anger spewed forth from it in the form of a venomous cloud, green and noxious as death itself.

The two Chameleons nearest to me were instantly affected, the poison burning through the scales on the backs of their heads, peeling and shriveling their flesh into desiccated strips. They clawed at their eye sockets as their contents melted.

Three more Chameleons were within five feet of me. They had time to turn in the direction of their brothers, but one breath of the poison cloud induced sharp, violent coughs that brought up wet gobs of bloody mucus. One of them lived long enough to cough most of his lungs into his hands.

I raised my staff and ignited a ball of fire from its end with a thought. The fireball lanced out at one of the four remaining Chameleons and caught him full on in the face. His head was reduced to a blackened, smoking ruin, the skull itself melting and refusing into a warped nightmare version of itself.

Three remained. One came at me from the right with one of the swords in the tomb; a brave one. I deflected his simple blow with my staff, and caught him with a backhand lash of a talon. He went flying into a heap of treasure.

I turned to my left just in time to catch one of the other two trying to flee through a doorway. I brought up my staff, and as he ran past me, jabbed it into the side of his head, hard, and was rewarded with a sharp crack of vertebrae snapping. He crumpled, head twisted at an angle that was not survivable.

The last one fought back, his claws gaining purchase on the staff and pushing, but I was much too strong. He backpedaled, tripping over a goblet and onto the treasure. I swung the staff, but he lashed out, knocking it from my grip.

There was a mad scramble as we scuffled. Finally, I got a firm grip on his head, pulling it toward me as he screamed, and then smashing it back against the hard pile of gold he lay on. His limbs flew out desperately; I smashed his head against the gold again, again and again, until finally, he lay still.

The room was silent again.

***

I hastily covered the skeletons by the altar with rocks from the rubble, and ascended the stairwell in darkness. Once I reached the top, it was simply a question of precision: I aimed my staff at a specific place in the still-weak roof over the stairwell, and fired.

The fireball had the desired effect; the roof collapsed completely, its pieces obliterating most of what little there was left of the steps. The rocks cracked against each other with deafening force, shaking the ground under my feet.

When the collapse had subsided, I peeked over the edge of the ruined stairwell. At the bottom lay not only the roof, but almost every single one of the ornate, rectangular steps, their awkward size and angle contributing heavily to the blockage, which I assumed was complete.

Predictably, the guards came running.

“What wasss that noissse, Sssnakepriessst?” one of them called from the other end of the long, low corridor.

“There has been… a terrible accident! A cave-in! It seems all the Chameleons were killed!” I exclaimed breathily.

“A cave-in?” the guard said as they approached me cautiously. “And they are all dead?”

“So it would seem,” I replied. The guards reached the edge of the stairwell and looked down.

“You are unhurt, priessst?” the guard said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then what isss the harm? They were only Chameleonsss, after all. Ssservesss them right for ssslacking off,” the guard said, and turned around. His fellow warrior accompanied him as they marched back toward the entrance of the Sun Temple.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

***

There was no investigation. I made my report to the Seers that same day, leaving nothing out, and they congratulated me: my actions were unassailable, given what was at stake. They assured me that a cadre of select, trusted Snakepriests would personally enter the tomb via the air vent I had seen, remove the gold and destroy the skeletons.

The next day, Grendel, Jexdar, Yinfur and I rode to Sekaxetl on the western shore, and sailed across the ruby with a small army of Snakemen and Dinosaurs, tracking the Barbarian weapon we’d found in New Selentia.

A day’s bartering and negotiating with the Daros tribesmen told us that the weapon had been given to the rebel Zandorn by a pair of Wood Elves, Tirana and Telless, and they had since sailed to the Isle Of Dawn, by way of the Dragon’s Maze.

Reasoning that the wood elves would not have bothered with the treacherous maze unless they were in a hurry, we set sail immediately for the Isle of Dawn, assuming time was of the essence. Dawnside was, for the most part, pastoral rolling hills covered by verdant grasses, with majestic purple mountains always visible in one direction or another; I hated it, and longed for the jungle.

We were well received by the Knights of Guardia upon our arrival at the island, staunch allies of the Emperor that they were. They led us to Draxtrul, one of Lord Antharg’s priests who had smuggled himself onto the island along with a small contingent of Plague creatures and weaponsmiths. He had made the weapon.

As worrying as it was to find that the enemies of the Emperor were unifying in their desperation, the immediate problem seemed easily solved: locally recruited Minotaur trackers informed us that Draxtrul, Tirana and Telless had erected a small village just northeast of the Gap of Palmyr. We took four Knights with us.

***

The battle was pure chaos.

We happened upon a Wood Elf patrol just north of the Gap; Woodriders and Elven Hunters, for the most part. There was a flurry of screamed challenges, followed by the inevitable arrows. The Knights chased the Elves back to what I assumed were the outskirts of the Plaguelord/Wood Elf camp, judging by the quaint, ornate towers that were suddenly pummeling us with arrows and bolts of magic.

We fell back to the foothills of a mountain, and had the peasants we’d taken with us get to work on some defensive fixtures; we’d barely erected them in time when the plague beasts descended upon us.

Huge Hydras, every head tearing into a different one of our Swordsmen, and those horrible floating eyes, hovering over the battlefield spewing magic from their pupils, entrail-like tentacles dripping green plague on us from above. Horrible, mindless Ghouls came at us in droves, swinging primitive clubs and heaving disease onto everything in sight. I found some high ground on a slope leading to the local gold mine and begun blasting the creatures with fire.

Grendel was magnificent. He plowed fearlessly through the lot of them, his sword decapitating a Ghoul with every swing, it seemed. A Pyrohydra reared one of its heads, ready to immolate us all with a single breath, but Grendel bounded up, over one of the Knights and directly at the creature’s neck. A single blow severed that particular head, and a single deep thrust between its ribs left it chortling, dying.

The Knights led the countercharge once the Hydras were dead, with Grendel and the Nagai bringing up the rear. I was to stay behind and guard the camp, as was customary. I watched as the others rode off, leaving dead Ghouls and carnage in their wake.

And I turned to find the most surprising, yet most familiar face before me.

“What are you doing here?” I balked.

“The Ssrathi are a despicable growth on the surface of Etheria, and their time is coming soon. They must all die, so my people can be free. Justice is coming, and your death will be the first of millions.”

The pain came from below, the side of my gut. My hide was sliced open from the hip to the lowest rib on my left side. My knees buckled from the pain, and I instinctively reached for the wound, only to find my innards were spilling out from the deep, wide wound.

I looked up, seeking something from my killer.

Then came the blow to my neck, and I could seek no more from anything.