Chapter 119: Temple
DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.
Temple
In the process of putting it back together, I'd already memorized all the symbols on the pyramid, but on the way up the stairs I took the chance to get a second look at the ones I deemed most important. Though it was unlikely, there was always the chance I'd missed something in the midst of putting an entire building back together or that I'd gotten a misleading impression from what I'd felt. For something of this magnitude, it was best to be cautious and double check.
The pyramid was ornate, with the surface of each and every block carved. Here and there, chunks were missing, simply because not all of the pieces had been present, but the vast majority had been reassembled into a whole and fused back into one piece by Ereb and Crocea Mors. As it was, the designs on the stones flowed smoothly as if they'd never been broken, with the majority simply being a complex array of lines. Curves and angles crossed stones and steps alike in a complex and beautiful array centered on the temple at the pyramid's summit. Though I couldn't tell what, if any, meaning the design held, I could filter out everything else to feel the sheer magnitude of it alland knew that if it were seen from above, it would have looked like a beautifully constructed mandala.
So beautiful that I had to wonder what it was doing on a temple with bloodstainedor, at least, once bloodstainedsteps. Was it ironic that a place of so much death had been designed to be beautiful? And if so, was it intentionally ironic? Had the temple been adapted from some other purpose or was it a cultural thing?
Looking around, I couldn't be sure. Around and through the greater carvings were what I could only assume were words in languages I didn't recognizeplural. Even if I couldn't read any of them, it was easy to tell them apart because most were so vastly different. On one side of the temple were rows of hieroglyphics while another was lined in what seemed to be some kind of cuneiform. A third was covered in markings that I would have thought had been the result of brush strokes were they not set into stone, while the last of the pyramid's faces were covered in some kind of runes.
Each language occupied one and only one side of the pyramid. Given that, they might have said the same thing in four different languages, though it was impossible to say for sure as each seemed to be arranged differently. Each of the sides left the upper and bottom most layers bare, but the remainder was variable in how it was covered. From the positioning of the symbols and characters, I was pretty sure at least one of the languages was read vertically, for instance, and the hieroglyphs and runes covered very different amounts of space.New novel chapters are published on
At seemingly random points, either a row or a column of blocks were left clear of any wordspresumably based on which direction the language was readand then the markings continued in the same language butbut differently. If the previous parts had been written in sentences, then those that followed were fragments at best; they might have been names or a list of things or who knows what else. Even though my vision was almost impossibly sharp, there was only so much I could discern from the words, though I could tell that they hadn't all been carved at the same time, except for certain parts like the 'sentences.' Beyond that, pretty much all my eyes did was let me clearly see that I had no idea what any of these words meant.
Even so, it was an archeologists wet dream. Someone who knew even one of these languages might be able to crack the code of the other three, given enough time. Granted, I didn't have the slightest clue what any of these languages were so it wasn't the type of possibility that helped me right this moment, but if I could figure it out and begin translating it, who knows what I might find? Even if it wasn't anything useful, merely doing so might be enough to let me develop some type of skill for languages that could assist me with Babel someday. If I could do that
But it would have to wait. I'd memorized all the languages so it thankfully could and the libraries of Mistral might help me the rest of the way, but I had bigger things to worry about right nownamely, what was at the top of the pyramid.
Raven and I climbed the stairs in silence until we stood before the altar. It had a square roof but no walls, so each direction led to facing a different set of stairs, and furrows in the floor had ensured that blood had flowed down each. Even though time had brushed them away, they were as clear to my eyes as if they'd been freshly spilt and it was a grim reminder of the amount of death that had occurred here. And for what?
The closest thing I had to an answer was on the temple's stone roof. A spiral was set into the square, the carving detailed and intricate. At the very center was a small figure that could have been a boy or a man, laying as if on the altar. The next image showed what was presumably the same man, surrounded in an aura of poweror perhaps an Aura of power. The next showed him with a sword, standing amidst slain enemies, monstrous and human alike. The next few simply built upon that theme, with more men and stronger Grimm and different weapons, until the shape of the man began to change. In the next image, he had armor that covered the whole of his body which swords and spears seemed to break upon, and it was followed by a number of arms that each wielded a different weapon, and then strange markings that seemed to hover over fields of corpses as if he'd cursed them to death. With each image, the man's presence seemed to grow, as did the extent of his victory, until all his enemies were gone and an army cheered behind him.
Just a step behind me, I could feel Raven following my gaze and hear the muscles in her face shift as she frowned. I gave her a moment to look over the images, dropping my gaze back to the altar's surface. There were stains in it, of course, but other things, too. Sweat, perhaps, and maybe the remains of oils; signs that it had been laid upon. The sacrifices had gone here, but perhaps
"What does it mean?" Raven asked at last.
"I can't be certain just from these images," I answered honestly, remaining focused on the altar. "Howeverthe spiral is obviously a progression of some kind."
"Time is a river and all that rot," Raven mused, tilting her head at the image. "I figured that much out myself, butI'm not sure I understand this progression and how it's connected."
I pursed my lips for a moment and glanced back up at the diagram before shaking my head.
"I think I do," I whispered. "I might be wrong, but I think I understand the purpose of this place. Do you see that second image?"
"Yes," She replied. "It would appear his Aura was awakened. For a moment, I thought this place might have been used as a primitive way to do such a thing, but the rest of the images tell a rather different story."
"Do they?" I asked, nodding at the first image. "Ignore the images later on and focus on the beginning. First, we have a man whose Aura is awakened. He gains martial prowess and slays his enemies, growing stronger and stronger with each image."
Raven's frown deepened for a moment before vanishing as she shrugged.
"I suppose you would know better than I," She replied. "You think this place was used to awaken Auras then?"
"No," I shook my head, confidence growing as I continued to look around. "Not just that, at least. This place was used to create Hunters."
"What?" Raven asked, blinking once. "What do you mean?"
"The images don't stop with the man awakening his Aura, do they? We see him go on to become a fierce warrior, too, winning battle after battle."
"I suppose," She acknowledged. "They trained them here, then? Or did they"
I looked at her for a moment, hearing the tone of her voice. She said it like she could see it happeningwhich I supposed was fair, because I could to. Not willy-nilly, perhaps, but in the right situation, when things got bad enoughI could see it.
But no. Thisthis went beyond that.
The Riders went beyond that.
"Think bigger," I told her, feeling more certain by the second. "Imagine what might have happened. Someoneperhaps a god, to all appearances, or perhaps someone claiming to be a servant of onetells people of this place and the power it holds. He tells them of how he could give them warriors to protect them from their enemies and slay the monsters at their door, give knowledge and wisdom that has been lost for ages, and save them from the darkness. But in return, he requires something from them. He could dress it up, say that it's some sign of faith or a necessary evil to keep their god strong or whatever else, but in the end, the truth is he needs something and something big. Let's say the lives of a hundred normal men to give strength to one Hunter."
"I've known people who'd take that deal." Raven noted.
"I know," I nodded, smiling at her. "But it's not a single person involved here, is it? And a hundred lives might seem a bit more costly when one of them might be your own. Imagine some government official coming down and telling the entirety of Vale that the cost of Hunters would be paid in blood from now on. How do you think they would react?"
"The words 'Oh shit' come to mind. So do outrage, objections, and panic."
I had to chuckle a little bit at that, but nodded again.
"Indeed," I agreed. "And I'm sure a great many people thought something along the lines of 'Oh shit' when they heard it would cost a hundred or a thousand or however many lives to do something like this. But after a while, with the Grimm attacking and so much on the linethe lives of an entire nation at stakeI imagine someone would eventually stop for a moment and think to themselves 'You know, he didn't say it had to be our men.'"
Raven looked at me for a moment, blinking quickly beneath her mask.
"You're talking about war," She said. "That this message would make a nation go to war to capture sacrifices."
"It's not a message," I shook my head, gesturing to each side of the pyramid in turn. "It's four messages. There's a language on each side of this pyramid, each completely different from the other. Four languages and, presumably, four different kingdoms to speak them. And each was told the same thingwhat it would cost them to keep their people safe."
"And they turned upon each other to pay that cost," Raven whispered as she puzzled it out. "Even though they'd have had the same enemy, they'd have been at each other's throats, weakening each other every time they fought. But every time they captured enough of the enemy, they could sacrifice them here, kill them by the hundreds, and new warriors would be born."
"And each time that happened, it improved the position of whoever did it," I said. "It made them stronger, safer, and better able to win more battles. The only response, then, would have been to get more Hunters of your own. They'd have fought each other and amongst themselves and worse over power like this, bleeding each other dry as the entire region was destabilized by the fighting."
"Divide and conquer," She closed her eyes and shook her head.
"It's a classic strategy for a reason," I told her with a shrug.
"And when it was over?" She asked. "When they finished fighting?"
"In a war where the enemy can profit so much from death?" I lifted an eyebrow. "By the time they'd finished, only one kingdom would have remainedand from the blood of their enemies, they'd have empowered thousands of Hunters, maybe even tens of thousands. An army like that would be terrifying in any era, and coming off such a vicious war"
I shook my head again.
"Maybe they simply continued," I said. "Turned on other nations to further the growth of their power or to satisfy their god or whatever. Or maybe, once they'd killed the other three kingdoms, they felt safe and content. In the former, they'd continue, tearing apart everything that got in their way, but in the latterwhen they stopped, they'd have had one of the strongest armies in history. And every single member of it would have been a pawn of the Red Rider."
I held out a hand and set it on the altar, closing my eyes for a moment. Thick as the bloodstains seemed to my eyes, they were long since faded and there was nothing for me to gather with Psycometrybut I didn't need any skills to image how many people must have died screaming on this altar. I wondered how many of them had been surprised by who put them there.
"You wondered why the infected would kill Grimm, Raven," I continued without lifting my eyes. "But it doesn't really matter how many Grimm die, does it? We know that, in the grand scheme of things, a few hundred or thousand or ten thousand Grimm wouldn't make so much as a dent in their population, and though they're careful and cautious, the Grimm do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves when needed. And for this? The deaths of entire nations? They'd die gladly by the thousands, throw themselves on as many swords as they needed to convince the people they were safe. These kingdoms could have stood as one, united as fellow men to stand before the threat of the Grimm, but they didn't. All because of this decorated pile of stone and a Grimm that probably thought it was funny to watch."
Raven looked down at my hand and the altar beneath it.
"Perhaps," She whispered. "It's a good theory, but there's no way to know for sure and so we can't simply assume its fact. And even if it is true, doesn't explain what happened to Summer or Ruby."
I looked at her for a moment.
And then I pushed the altar to the side, revealing what lay beneath.