As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm

Chapter Eleven

Aaron led us back out onto the Field of Gods and then made a beeline straight for another carved statue.

“I got bored and wanted to let the men rest a little longer,” he explained. “So, I decided to start exploring myself. Made sense to start with the other temples. They’re closest and all. Well, lo and behold, the first one showed signs of activity.”

Beside me, Vir grunted in some inscrutable way. I looked over at him, but he was staring straight at the temple entrance.

“Vir?” I asked as we strode toward the statue that stood opposite himself, flanking the other side of the temple of Amunlea. “Who’s temple is this?”

“That would be my brother,” he said tautly. “Irr.”

“The Shifter God of Death,” I muttered. “Great. Just great. What the hell was Lars rooting around for in here? Pardon the pun.”

“Hell is a human construct,” Vir said. “Not shifter.”

I glared at him. “I’m half-human, Vir. I grew up in a human world, even if my tiny corner of it was populated entirely by wolves. Every bit of media I consumed was human-relevant. That includes my turn of phrases. So, please, please, don’t get all uppity-immortal on me because of the words I choose, okay?”

“Got it,” he said.

That had me frowning. Not even a minor bit of return banter? Something was up with Vir.

We entered the temple of his brother, and Aaron paused, pointing out a set of two different footsteps on the ground. One was barefoot, and the other seemed to match Aaron’s boots.

“I walked back out in my own footsteps,” he explained, noting my curious look as I tried to figure it out.

“Oh. That makes sense,” I said, feeling kind of silly.

“In here,” he beckoned, not dwelling on it.

Neither did Vir. That had me feeling all sorts of uncomfortable in the situation. When neither of them was willing to poke fun at me, I couldn’t help but worry.

We entered a central chamber, much like in both Vir and Amunlea’s temples. Again, it looked like the worship area. The walls were covered in carvings, and it was easy to see that they all depicted death in one form or another. None of them were overly eye-pleasing, thanks to the detail that had been etched onto their surfaces.

Thankfully we didn’t pause there. The footsteps lead us to the rear of the chamber where, behind a raised half-wall, a staircase descended into the depths of the temple. I followed Aaron, with Vir bringing up the rear as we walked down the spiral into a darkness so complete even my wolf vision strained to see more than a few feet in front of me.

“Some light, please?” I asked Vir.

A moment later, a soft blue glow illuminated the immediate area, giving me plenty of light to see by.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

Still didn’t get a response. Vir was very focused.

“This is so out there,” I said a few moments later.

“What is?” Aaron replied when Vir didn’t make so much as a peep.

“This place. How the hell did Lars have time to go exploring and find it? I don’t get it. Nobody is that lucky.”

This time, neither Aaron nor Vir had a response. So we just kept walking. Another thirty stairs, and we arrived at the bottom, where a room opened up in front of us.

“What is this place?” I asked, shivering at the sensation that washed over me as I stepped off the stairs.

The ceiling was low and completely smooth, as were the walls. Lumps of stone dotted the room, almost chair-shaped. They had a base and a back to them, but as I looked closer, the ergonomics were all off for sitting.

But not for kneeling.

“Prayer stations,” Vir said quietly. “This is where the high acolytes of Irr would come to commune with my brother.”

“I see,” I said, looking over the stone construct. “What’s with the palm imprint?”

Glancing at several others, I saw the same thing. Each of the stations had the outline of a palm depressed into its surface, with a line that led down to the base, where there was a depression that then led off to the ground. I followed one of the lines and realized that the entire floor was full of them, all leading toward the rear of the chamber.

“If you wanted to communicate with Irr,” Vir said quietly. “You had to speak his language. Those are blood troughs.”

“Oh.” I looked around. There were two dozen prayer stations. All with carved lines leading back to an altar at the rear of the chamber. An altar that was not for a human but a device. The flat top had two pairs of spikes jutting up from it, separated by about a foot. As I stepped closer, I could see that the individual spikes had no more than two inches separating them.

“What was this for?” I asked. “Certainly not a human.”

“I’m not sure,” Aaron said. “But the footsteps lead straight to it.”

Part of me wanted to know how Aaron had managed to find his way down here in the complete and utter dark and track the footsteps, but Vir spoke before I could, and his answer sent chills down my spine.

“The Blade of Death,” he said quietly.

I shook my head. Well versed as I was in the ancient shifter gods, not much was known about Irr. Which I now found odd, given his position at the side of Amunlea, opposite Vir.

“I take it that this is some sort of relic of your brother’s?” I asked.

“Yes,” Vir said tightly.

“What can it do?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted the answer.

“If activated,” Vir replied, looking back and forth between Aaron and me, “a single nick will send someone to the Underworld.”

“What?” I yelped. “That’s terrible!”

“Agreed,” Vir said, disgust for his brother’s rites evident. “It was for sacrifices. To make them painless.”

“How humanitarian of your brother,” I muttered, shaking my head, reviled at the idea of human sacrifices.

Aaron coughed. I looked at him. He glanced at Vir, then back at me, before pointedly eyeing the altar. I frowned. He nodded his head at Vir and then again at the table. Then, he put a finger to his lips while staring at me.

“Oh, my God,” I burst out as I realized what I’d done. “Uh, Vir, I mean, um. I didn’t mean to insult your brother. A god, you know. Um, it’s just–”

Vir waved me off while Aaron rolled his eyes and turned away.

“I never approved of Irr’s habits,” he said quietly, staring at the altar. “But we are born of Amunlea, and even she was born of shifters.”

“She was?” I asked. This was something new.

“All gods are,” Vir said with a shrug. “Your beliefs create us.”

“Oh. So, what you’re saying is…”

“Our habits are influenced by you,” Vir said quietly. “Not the other way around.”

“Yeahhhh,” I replied, thinking back on thousands of years of bloody history. “Oops.”

Vir nodded.

“Did all the gods have something like this?” I asked, remembering more of my studies.

“Yes,” Vir said quietly. “Mine is the Champion’s Spear.”

A spear. I’d seen that one before. The golden weapon he’d used to sever the Soulbond between Johnathan and me and to fight off the Invaders when we’d been trapped in the Direen. A formidable weapon. Yes, I knew all about–

I snickered.

Vir raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” I say, still sputtering.

Aaron was grinning nearby. “You got it, too, eh?”

Vir looked back and forth between the two of us. “What are you both on about?”

As one, we exploded. “Vir’s Spear!” we howled, laughing over the rhyming euphemism.

The shifter god grunted. “A thousand fucking years of being forgotten, and they pick that up in the first few days again,” he growled.

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered, though we all knew I wasn’t serious. “Vir’s spear.” More giggles.

I opened my mouth to make a joke about how long the spear was and equating that to him possibly overcompensating.

Vir arched an eyebrow at me, and I was suddenly reminded of one of the first times I’d accidentally dream-traveled to the Direen and he’d been wearing nothing but gray sweatpants. The image immediately dispelled any thoughts about a joke, and I snapped my teeth together hard enough that it was audible while my cheeks began to burn.

“Right. The Champion’s Spear,” I said, coughing purposefully. “Any others?”

“Of course,” Vir said, glad for the subject change. “Of course, there is the Idol of Amunlea. That is likely the most famous. It was a gold statue of Amunlea, herself.”

I choked, the cough suddenly becoming real. “The Idol of Amunlea. Yes.”

“You’ve heard of it?” Vir asked excitedly.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve read about it,” I said, desperately trying not to look at Aaron.

It was probably for the best that Vir didn’t know what I’d done with the statue.