A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter 31: Traitor in Disguise

Zhuo and Mo Fei emerged from the inventory corridor with the kids; the children pressed close. Alisa and Lovenia waited where they’d left them. Alisa leaned against a wall, Lovenia standing with her hands clasped, patient as ever.

Lovenia took a step back. "It was made for your authority?" she said quietly. "The mask has waited so long."

Hao Yu tugged Mo Fei’s sleeve. "Can they fight too?"

"Most likely," Mo Fei answered.

Alisa looked down at Hao Yu. Then she laughed warmly. "Every so often. Depends on the day, or my mood."

"Really?"

"Maybe yes."

They walked in silence. The temple’s corridors stretched endlessly, each one identical to the last one they had seen. Zhuo kept looking at the corridor, counting doors, and observing to memorize paths.

"You’ll get lost if you don’t," he said when he caught Mo Fei watching him. Mo Fei’s brows rose confused before an inaudible chuckle escaped his mouth.

"Why are you with me then?"

Zhuo grinned at his answer. He Xin Yi walked in silence, her hand never leaving Mo Fei’s sleeve. But once, she looked back and tugged his clothe. "Someone was here," she mumbled quietly and moved closer.

Mo Fei didn’t look back; he tapped his temple, and saw a thread... Dull gray that had moved further away from them already.

"..." He squinted his eyes.

Zhuo’s shoulders got heavier. "The motion... It’s unrecognizable. Did you notice that too?" Zhuo’s eyes locked on Mo Fei, who nodded in confirmation.

They stepped through the final corridor and reached the doorway.

There, they found Jian Yue and Lin at the temple’s entrance, standing in the shadow of the vast door. Lin’s arms were crossed. Jian Yue’s hand rested on his blade in his usual manner.

When they saw the group, both of them went still. Lin only stared at them mask’s shape.

"Could you stop staring like you’re about to kill me?" Mo Fei said quietly.

"I can’t sense its presence." Lin heaved a sigh and turned away.

"Oh trust me, I heard something similar before, so no wow."

She stopped to look at Alisa and Lovenia. "Okay, we’ll talk about later."

Jian Yue scanned the group to count them. Two children, Zhuo and Mo Fei.

"Xue Lan?" Zhuo asked; the silence that followed the question was suffocating.

Then Lin said, "He’s still here somewhere."

Zhuo looked at the ground. "I don’t understand. Why is he our enemy?" His voice was thick with confusion.

"Don’t be deceived," Lin snapped and looked away. "He is not trustworthy."

Mo Fei looked out at the city beyond the gates. At the people who walked and talked, but never looked back, moving like a slow river, oblivious of the rot. "I saw someone."

Jian Yue’s brows furrowed while Lin’s hand hovered indecisively over her blade’s hilt. In the temple of a Goddess? Unthinkable! A heavy silence fell on the group.

Alisa laughed it off, though the slight tremble of her fingers showed unease. "I don’t think so. Besides that, we are protected by Her, that’s ridiculous."

Lovenia rubbed her own shoulder. "Alisa..."

"Cut it out! You’re just imagining it!"

A cultist passed them. He was unremarkable, just another man in robes entering to pray. He entered the temple and offered a nod as he passed by, like any other hundred cultists.

Mo Fei stopped mid-step, his head snapping toward the cultist’s retreating figure.

"What?" Jian Yue’s hand gripped his blade. He knew Mo Fei didn’t react like this for nothing.

"His eyes," Mo Fei murmured, his voice dropping. "They had chains."

"Chains?"

Mo Fei confirmed. "Yes. They were gray. Like stone, and there was a cross... etched into the center."

The cultists’ pupils were replaced by the dull shimmer of those grey links. The eyes were hollow with no sign of a lively human. Jian Yue spun around, eyes searching the cultist, but he had already vanished into the depths of the temple. "Catch him!"

Lin bolted in the direction the cultist had gone. "His presence is here, but... it’s twisted. He is a traitor."

Lin’s boots barely touched the floor as she rushed toward the cultist. The temple didn’t slow her. Doors she hadn’t touched swung wide from one movement of her hand. Corridors stretched, then contracted, guiding her.

Behind her, Jian Yue made no sound at all.

The cultist was fast. But his movements were unnatural. His footsteps echoed twice, once when they landed and then when they shouldn’t have.

Lin rounded a corner. The corridor stretched ahead like a lonely place. Her breath caught when she heard footsteps behind her. How did it come behind?

Mo Fei, holding the kids, followed her. Hao Yu was shaking, his face pressed into Mo Fei’s shoulder.

Xin Yi was still. Her eyes fixed on the corridor where the cultist had vanished.

"Is he gone?" Mo Fei said.

Lin saw the cultist fifty paces ahead. He turned and looked at her. His eyes were completely gray now. It was like looking at mud ready to pull them inside.

Then the cultist smiled and vanished.

"Damn it." Mo Fei straightened. "He escaped." His eyes scanned the temple. He had been using his eyes briefly for a few seconds or minutes without knowing how many minutes had passed.

He opened the rope on his shoulder and put the mask on to see clearly.

The world turned into silver threads; between them a few threads passed through the corridor, entering a lower level of the temple. Mo Fei’s eyes widened... It was leading to the continent of Misfortune, but deeper in the forest.

Mo Fei lowered the mask, and his breath got heavier. "He’s heading into Misfortune but deeper than I went."

Jian Yue’s hand gripped his cloth. "We can’t follow... Those five cities of misfortune are way more dangerous than what we had faced."

"Then he gets away." Mo Fei argued back.

Lin stepped forward, her voice flat, agreeing with Jian Yue. "He’s already gone. That thing wasn’t a cultist anymore. It was wearing his face; running after it just to die is idiotic."

Zhuo took a step toward the corridor. "But we can’t just let hi–"

Jian Yue’s hand caught his shoulder. "We can’t follow him there."

"But–"

"Even if we caught him, we wouldn’t come back."

Suddenly the floor beneath them started to tremble as if beaten by a vast, invisible hammer. Both kids clung to Mo Fei’s legs.

Alisa recoiled at the sight of the walls trembling. Her hand shot out, grabbing Lovenia’s arm. Her knuckles turned white.

"I’ve never–" She stopped and swallowed. "The temple doesn’t tremble that easily." Lovenia stepped closer to Alisa and hissed.

"What is going on?"

"Only if I knew."

Someone opened the door and burst out. Yi Jyuhan. He perceived that someone had entered. "Everyone, get out of here. Someone opened the path of misfortune."

He said before quickly marching toward the bell to warn everyone.

Jian Yue put his hand on Mo Fei’s shoulder. "Hurry now."

They ran, led by Jian Yue, his blade drawn. Lin stayed at the rear, her hand moving in the air, making the corridors stretch behind them, sealing doors as they passed. The children clung to Mo Fei, their feet barely touching the ground as he carried them both.

Behind them, the temple groaned, a sound like something waking.

***

In the depth of the temple, the cultist walked; his steps echoed on the lower ground. The fluttering of moths resonated through the lower level of the temple, a soft, dry whisper against the ancient stone.

Then a moth landed on his shoulder, then another, then a dozen of them. They clung to him and didn’t fly. After a few seconds the moths took flight at once, swirling around him like a living shroud. From behind him, a voice reached his ears, the melodic voice of Xue Lan.

"My, where are you going, huh?" The cultist looked back and found Xue Lan behind him, looking at him with the usual smug and faint smirk.

The cultist stood at the edge of the opened path, his gray eyes shallowly corrupted by the chains fixed on Xue Lan, with something that might have been recognition perhaps.

"You’re not supposed to be here," the cultist muttered. His voice was wrong... Layered like two people speaking at once.

Xue Lan’s smirk didn’t waver. "And yet you were unfortunate enough." He perceived the cultist’s eyes. "I demand some good reasoning for your act."

"Three weeks," the cultist breathed. "The Curator’s work is almost complete. The son will be born. And when he wakes..." His gray eyes flickered. "Even you won’t be able to choose sides anymore."

Xue Lan’s expression didn’t falter. But his hand, hidden in his sleeve, curled into a fist.

"Ohh? Is that so? What made you think I care about your God’s bastard?"

"I think," the cultist said, taking a step back toward the wound in the world, "you care more than you let anyone see. That’s why you’re still here and haven’t killed me yet."

’Haven’t killed you? Hmph, what a confident puppet. All I need is information.’

The moths swirled faster around him. The cultist’s smile widened with an unusual curl, a horrible, disgusting act from the dead. "You can’t stop what’s coming." Xue Lan’s stare hardened. "You couldn’t save–"

He couldn’t finish the words before Xue Lan moved. With a blur, he covered the distance almost instantly, his hand around the cultist’s throat, the moths dissolving into nothing.

"What...? Not going to finish the words now?" Xue Lan said, his voice soft, and he tightened his grip on his neck. The cultist started choking; his hands trying to fight back in a desperate struggle, but nothing touched Xue Lan. "Finish the sentence, and I’ll show you what a Dreamer does to things that wear human faces."

The cultist laughed even when choking. His gray eyes bled black. "To–too late."

The cultist’s body collapsed and unfolded, limbs bending wrong, skin splitting, something dark and many-limbed pushing through his body. The sharp-edged bones tearing through the cultist’s body to chop off the Dreamer. Xue Lan stepped back, releasing his grip as the thing that had been a cultist tore open the body and escaped.

Xue Lan’s eye twitched as he stared at the ground and then at the gate of Misfortune, where the cultist had escaped.

But on the ground where the cultist had stood. He found a single object remained there. A shard of black stone, smooth as glass and pulsing like a vein.

He ignored it at first, moving toward the gate of Misfortune. His hands pushed the door; the old stone gate shrieked, grinding against the ground. And he took a few steps back after closing, reaching back to the shard.

Xue Lan knelt and picked it up; for a moment, his face was unreadable. Then he slipped the shard in his pocket and walked back toward the temple instead of chasing.

"Useful enough to find them."

The temple didn’t tremble any longer as the gate had been closed... but for how long until the true danger was born?

One traitor in disguise. How many more lurking in the city?

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