Daydreams And Nightshade (DaN #1)

Chapter 35: Just one room

The temple was dark. It seemed like there were no windows inside so the only light came from the opened doors. Luna's shoulders sank as she breathed in the stale air. Why did she always end up in dark places when it concerned supernatural things? Fortunately she wasn't nearly as scared of the dark as Noah was, she simply preferred to be able to see when investigating things, and there was something unpleasant about the place. Even when the last time she'd had to go through the dark had concerned complete, pitch black darkness and a haunted house, the sensation she felt from the temple was already sending chills down her spine without her having so much as stepped inside.

"Anyone brought a torch?" she asked, and the group remained silent as a reply. She'd figured that would be the case, so she tried to shrug her discomfort away and walked inside.

The walls were decorated with numerous archways. It struck Luna as odd, because they were literally just decorations. They led nowhere. A few feet in and then nothing but a blank wall, and those archways were everywhere, she noticed as she kept looking further into the temple. Almost every inch of the walls were covered with differently shaped arches.

She looked up towards the ceiling. They continued upwards as well, but it did seem like there were less of them further up. She couldn't fathom why there couldn't at least have been the occasional window to brighten things up.

About halfway down the aisle, she bumped into the edge of something hard and trailed her hand against it. It felt like a circle made of stone, like a large cauldron, and reaching further into it she soon retracted her hand as cold liquid touched her fingertips. Oil, she deduced as she rubbed her fingers together and smelled it. So in all likeliness it was a lantern of sorts, and a big one at that.

She turned back towards the others.

"Alexei, I think I've found a lantern. Think you could assist me?"

"Well, I didn't bring a torch so—"

"No, no, but we could probably use any extra flint you keep for your rifle and strike it against some kind of steel."

Alexei frowned but searched through his bag. While Luna impatiently waited for results Roya walked up to the cauldron as well.

"There is a tinderbox here," she then said as she leaned over to look on the other side of the cauldron.

Luna's body tensed, and she closed her eyes in frustration before turning around to face Roya. The idea that it would be as easy as that had never struck her, but of course there'd be means to light a fire close by.

Alexei patted Luna's shoulder as an attempted comfort. She frowned at the touch but didn't shove him off. Instead she waited for Roya to light the large cauldron and let a large fire spread inside it, allowing them all to see the interior more clearly. There really was nothing more to see on the walls than what they'd already discerned however, but a large shape at the front where the altar would be drew everyone's attention.

It was a statue. A large, looming statue of something Luna had a hard time describing. It looked close to humanoid but with big horns stretching upwards with what looked like bird heads on top of them. The face had five eyes, a thin nose and an impossibly small mouth. The shape was decorated with ornaments and jewelry, and was, in a way, beautiful, but the dreadful sensation only increased as Luna looked up at it.

Finally, of all people, Gabriel broke the silence.

"Is that not... Our figurehead?" he asked as they all looked up at the enormous statue, and Zamora nodded slowly.

"I thought it was just a scary vision some strange artist must have had while carving it but... It's here as well."

"It's the figurehead of your ship? But you don't know who it is?" Luna asked, her voice only trembling slightly. She lowered her head so her neck wouldn't start hurting from looking up for too long. "It has to be what this temple is... Well, what it's all about. And if your mother was part of it she must've said something?"