Night after night, Max felt as though he was not the enemy of these people as he would have guessed before he learned more about them. He fought a huge internal struggle within himself. ‘If Daefindel can read me like I can read others, by just the slightest chance? No.’ Max shook his head and dismissed even thinking about the conflict that boiled within him. He needed to maintain a strong front as the ally to this cult. He needed to become one of them. He thoughts drifted back to Pelos, in all his quirks and wisdom, he hadn’t known Max for a great amount of time. He certainly can’t share all his secrets. No, Max couldn’t show sympathy. He needed to control his emotions. He needed to be strong and to appear as though he forged his own path here.
He was not one of them. Seeing the way that they moved around now with purpose, almost emotionless, like drones made him glad that he was who he was.
He took his freedom amongst the cultists to wonder the ancient ziggurats and their winding hallways. He took time to stand next to many of the followers here to observe them. He even had the freedom and time to look into and investigate all of the consoles in the command chamber and throughout the openly accessible parts of the temple.
Without the knowledge that he gained from Enchoron, looking at these consoles would have been like looking at a painting or an old text of a foreign language. Instead, he sat and studied for minutes, whenever he could. He memorized what he could and continued his researches later, careful never to give away just what detail he poured over the contents of everything that he looked at.
He started reaching out with his empathy towards them to try to understand what they were feeling. It was strange. He never tried to read this many different people in such rapid succession, so he was not sure if this was truly an anomaly. They all read identically with their emotions. The same feelings and the same intensity of feeling. If only he knew more about his gift. As it was, he knew what he was seeing and reading, but he did not know what it actually meant.
Maybe Max was needed to combat this drone nature that the cultists gained? There were certainly lots of ways he could see a talent of empathy would be useful in a large, organized group like this. He could root out spies. He could connect them to communicate on a wholly different level, he believed. With those thoughts, he would drift into sleep.
They were awoken quite early on the fourth day of travels, long before rays of light showed their way. After they started traveling, the curious thing was that there was a source of light. It did not light everything equally, it was almost like a path across the ground. They were heading down the side of a ridge now. Things here seemed more artificial. The ridge itself felt manmade. Vines covered the ground, but the light that shown through to light the path must be embedded in the ground here. They were close.
As the rays of the sun started to give them light, the lights on the path dimmed and went out. The cultists must have needed to follow this light on the path to find the rest of the way. That must be why they were forced up so early.
Max then heard a familiar Whoosh! Sound nearby. Just then, disappearing from immediate sight was something very much like the device that protected his hamlet and the crops. Something like the beast of the goddess. The area ahead was completely clear of vegetation. There was a fairly defined line of where all the vegetation started and where it stopped. Beyond that line, there were piles of dead vegetation in various stages of rot.
Max made his way to near the front of the caravan where Daefindel rode on horseback and Pelos was riding along, chained in a cage that was pulled by two beasts of burden. There was also another large riding animal that Max did not recognize. On its back was a shaded canopy that was closed on all sides. He could just barely see that there was a figure inside.
The facility was directly ahead now. It looked like something out of another time and place. It was sleek and shiny, probably made of the same materials as armor and weapons was, some kind of metal. The first of the cultists approached the door and it opened as he walked up to it without even being touched.
The cultists spread out as soon as they entered the place. It was like everyone except for Max knew the exact layout of this giant structure. It was larger than anything that Max had ever been in, except for the Spire. The place was well lit, with small glowing dots all along the ceiling and floor corners. Everything on the inside was stark white. There was no way to hide in a place like this. The halls were an eight sided shape. They came across more of the doors that automatically opened as someone approached the door itself. Walking past a door in the hallways somehow did not trigger the doors to open.
Now that Max got a cursory look inside, he waited just inside the main door. After a few minutes, Daefindel, two guards, and chained Pelos came in and turned to the right. Sirodin followed them and he motioned for Max to follow that group. He quickly caught up to Sirodin and walked side by side with him, trailing the group. Max did not want to be within eyesight of Pelos. He shot daggers at Max a couple of times; it was an unsettling feeling, Pelos being a Scion and former friend after all.
They all moved into a set of double sliding doors. As the doors closed, suddenly Max felt uncomfortable as the room was moving. His breakfast almost made a fast exit, but he regained control. The room abruptly stopped moving again and the doors opened. He was the first one out the doors and onto the unmoving floor followed by a deep breath.
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“Here we are! Guards, set the Scion down over at those controls. Don’t leave his side for anything. Sirodin, keep an eye on things from the consoles here.” He walked over and motioned with a grandiose gesture where there were a few swiveling seats and windows that seemed to be looking at many different places around the area at once. It was like they were looking through different dimensions. “Max, make yourself comfortable. Enjoy the victory that you have brought us.”
Max watched as, at first as Pelos even refused to put his hands on the controls in front of him. Daefindel leaned over the chained man and was holding a conversation with him at very low volume. Max observed and attempted to glean something of the conversation. He concentrated on viewing their emotional energies. They almost looked as though they were doing battle in that emotional realm, their energies were mixing back and forth. Pelos was stubborn and Daefindel was insistent and intense. As the emotional levels of both of them increased, Max could see this was not going to end well.
Daefindel stood back up straight and took a step back. He nodded to one of the guards. Just then, everyone in the control room was jolted up to attention and looked over as a large resounding thump came from the guard smashing Pelos’s head into the front part of the control console.
His head came up quickly and turned to look at the cult leader, “That was totally unnecessary. You don’t know what you are doing? You will regret this. If I am what you say then you have to know just how big a hole you are burying for...” the guard smacked him to shut him up after another slight head nod.
Max got up out of his seat and looked like he wanted to get into the middle of this. He did in fact, seeing a man beaten and abused like this was painful to him. The cult leader motioned with a hand for him to hold back and then leaned back in to Pelos and whispered a few more phrases.
Pelos looked over his shoulder towards Max. His head was covered in blood from a gash on his forehead by his hairline. “You do know what they intend to do don’t you? Do you think such a catastrophic change to the cosmos is going to be smooth and easy in transition? Max, they are going to kill thousands and thousands of people. Thousands to what? Bring back some long dead god? Those damned gods are just old beings, very old and powerful indeed, but is one of their lives worth all that?”
Max glared at Daefindel, who shrugged and back at the helpful Scion. He could not bear to watch this any longer. He walked out of the room, but just before leaving, spoke over his shoulder, “Pelos, why should I even trust you? You are desperately reaching out to me when you have no other hope.”
Max noticed that a guard followed him from the control room. The guard kept his distance and did not bother him. He was not fully trusted yet. He would prove them wrong. He wondered this place, trying to lose his thoughts in the adventure of exploring a new and unique place. It worked a few times as he peered into rooms that were filled with unique items that he could not even attempt to give names or functions to. This was such a “magical” place that surely common people would have no way to grasp their surroundings in their mind. They might even go mad from the confusion or just destroy the place out of fear of the unknown.
Suddenly, Max got a surge of claustrophobia. He felt trapped in a maze of a place that felt alien to him. His mind was trapped with conflicted feelings about many of the people that he befriended and lost over his journeys since the time when life was so normal back home. He glanced briefly over his shoulder at the guard. If we were to truly get out of this feeling, he would need to be alone for a bit and get a chance to relax and think. During his continued explorations, he formulated a plan. He started investigating the automatic doors. He found ways to manipulate their functions and then he found a few doors on his next circuit of the lowest floors of the facility that were connected.
Just after rounding a corner so that he was out of sight of the guard, he walked into the nearest room. The door was equipped with a small window in which he watched the guard walk back at a brisk pace and glance around the next hallway. Before the guard could fully react, he walked back through the door and back around the corner that they both came from. The next door was his target which he made with little effort. He heard rapid footsteps from inside the door. He pressed a button on the wall next to the door and saw a green light go red. He looked across the room to another door. He made his way across rapidly and just before going through that door, he could hear banging on the door which he now knew was locked. Deduction is such a great skill, he thought to himself. As soon as his door was open, he cleared it at great speed and headed for a secondary exit from the building.
He burst through the freely opening door and took in a vast breath. The air outside was just so fresh and inside it seemed so stale. He immediately looked around for somewhere that he could hide from the sight of the view screens he remembered in the control room. Ah! Up the side of the ridge opposite of the path they came in on were some great rocks. He followed the rocks with his eyes and saw that they led to the heavy foliage that was starting to encroach across the dead zone he saw on the way in. There were a number of cultists on guard out here, most of them watched the path in rather than the other side of the valley.
He moved with haste, but with footsteps as quiet as he could make them, almost hopping gingerly rather than jogging. He made the rocks and leaned back behind a large one to calm the fast beating of his heart.
It is at that moment that Max’s heart skipped a beat and nearly jumped out of his skin. As he opened his eyes while his head lay against the side of the huge rock, he saw another figure standing behind the next nearest rock in the direction of the foliage. He nearly blew his cover then from the shock. The figure moved with slender grace and speed to cover the distance between their rocks. He got only a split second view of the figure in the light between the rocks and saw long hair flowing several feet long and the figure it belonged to moved to encompass Max. He should have known the Cult of Daefindel would not leave these rocks unguarded. This must be their assassin.
The figure grabbed hold of Max, especially his mouth was covered with a slender, pleasant smelling hand. Then a familiar voice spoke in a quiet, soft tone, “It’s alright Max. We’re here to help.” The hand went to relax off his mouth for a moment and then tensed, “you are calmed down now aren’t you?” He nodded his head with just the slightest of tilts.
