The Penumbra Paradox - ONC 2023

Chapter -13, The map of Aluffrat

After almost stumbling down into the secret hatch of the sacred garden, while struggling to get Rina down there, Arya and Benji heaved heavy breaths.

The air smelled thick here, thicker than the dark alleyways and branches they had witnessed inside the valley during their previous visit.

There were multiple trickling noises due to seepage from the underground water. They walked deeper into the tunnel, which led nowhere into the darkness.

"Seriously, are you sure this is a temple?" Arya asked, shining her flash from the tab to the muddy ceiling above. "By temple, don't you mean graveyard?"

"Temple." Fiana confirmed, her voice had lost any possible liveliness.

The tunnel abruptly ended in a chamber which had an altar at the centre. Lanterns similar to the ones they had seen in cave ways were lit, all around the chamber turning its ambience into a ruddy foreboding stage for something, they didn't know would happen .

"Oh." Arya helped Fiana to lay her sister down and glanced the so called temple. "This is beautiful."

"Immensely beautiful!" Benji circled around the altar. "Where are we gonna bury Rina, now?"

The answer for his question was a wet, growling old cough coming from the other side of the altar. Benji got startled the moment his feet hit and felt something rather warm and softer on the ground.

"Oh my, What the Fuc...today is cursed. Holy mother, again?! Please don't be dead, please."

Fiana sprinted around the altar to find the Pastor lying on the ground. Like Rina, he had been shot several times on his shoulder. The pastor's breathing was painful, raspy with coughs in between. His face with greying hair was smudged in dry, matted blood.

"Father." Fiana shook him up. "Father."

Pastor coughed up some blood, spat it aside and addressed Fiana. "My child, you must leave with this place, it's been compromised."

Fiana nodded, pointing her finger at Rina's body.

"I'm sorry." The pastor suddenly started crying like a baby, turning his head away from Fiana. His eyes were shut tight to hold the tears back. "I am sorry, I am such a coward, instead of protecting them, I hid in this place just to protect this bloody useless book."

The pastor retrieved an old leatherback journal from under his shirt. "I thought I am bound to protect this, Fiana. But I've been looking back and thinking well lately, after I got stuck here -unable to move my limbs or stand up, this book is the cause for all our misery. Nothing good has ever come to us by following Joshin's teachings. Hayal the chosen one, they said. Our tribe is chosen to survive the apocalypse, they said. We are blessed, he said. But look at us. Oh look at the blessings we have received."

"What is that book?" Arya yanked the book from the pastor's hands rudely. "Is it the map?"

"What map?" Benji asked, unaware of any such mentioning, from Arya ever before.

"Burn that book, my dear. It's of no use but to bring bad luck." The pastor chuckled, "all my life I was taught to believe in Joshin and his teachings, about Sinukhi, the almighty... How he will arrive in his spherical chariot of thousand colors from heavens to save us, take us back to a better world, a whole new world, like how he took Hayal. The rebirth, they called it."

Arya flipped over pages of the old leatherback journal, the letters were worn out, erased at places. Scratched and rewritten in most pages with some pages completely torn out. "Where's the rest?"

"That is the rest." Pastor groaned and coughed up blood again. "It's from the era of the beginning of apocalypse, it's only our determination to follow Joshin' that we were able to save at least so much."