The Temple of Nightmares

Chapter 3 - A Temple?

*

35 minutes before the departure of our quest group.

Two pairs of footsteps were walking towards the guild hall, both people in a comfortable silence, well, Ritchie thought it was peaceful.

"You can't keep postponing this,"

Ritchie knows he can't, but he cannot do it now, he just needs a bit more time. Just a bit more time, so he can deal with it.

"Ritchie."

He stopped now, noticing that the other pair of footsteps that were walking with him had stopped as well. Ritchie turns back around to face Brandon, his brother, who told him that everything will be okay because now they are together. But you just keep messing everything up, don't you?

"I know, Brandon," Ritchie winced, as he heard the voice in his head going at it again.

"When are you going to talk to her?"

Ritchie sighed, his twin has been trying to urge him to have more of an in-depth conversation with Kit about what happened, which he has been postponing for various reasons. Which are all fair points, Thank you very much.

"Eventually, I will, just not now." He turned his back to his brother to continue walking to the guild hall, "Can we just talk about this later?"

That's what you always say... Brandon watched Ritchie for a second before he jogged to catch up with him, deciding to try and bring this up on a later date. Both enter the guild hall to return to their office and continue the mountains of paperwork that has piled up for the guild leaders. Richie doesn't acknowledge Kit, and neither does she acknowledge him as the twins pass by.

*

Present time.

Kit blankly stared at the wall across from her as she drank from her cup, not having anything to do. Inmo hasn't returned, and she is absolutely not going up to speak to Brandon when he's up there, yeah, no way.

"Plant!"

She looks to her left to find Plant staring up at her with a smile as they waved at her. Kit smiled as she put her cup down and leaned, so she could address the little plant.

"Hello, Plant, what are you doing here on your own?" She questioned, which prompted the child to turn and point to the entrance. A few seconds later a panting water god slayer ran in looking around frantically before spotting Plant.

"Oh, that's why," Kit leaned back in her chair as Lucas approached.

"Plant, you can't just run off like that, especially when I can't keep up with you." He scolded the energetic kid, who ran up to said mage to give him a hug in a form of apology.

"Hello Kit," He looked up at her as he reciprocated his son's hug as best as he could.

She hummed as she picked up her cup again, "I can see that you were involved in a wild goose chase," Kit giggled as all Lucas did was nod while he made his way over to the chair opposite of her and sitting down, picking up Plant, so they could sit in his lap.

"Well, I won't say no to a good exercise but preferably without the worry of losing my son,"

Kit laughed at his remark as they began to talk about whatever. They were talking for a while, even Devin joined at some time in between, Kit doesn't know how much had passed, she hasn't been keeping track of the hours. It was fun talking to them, both had such a calm demeanour to them, well minus Eden's input in certain topics.

Multiple hours must have passed since it seemed to have turned into afternoon when their conversations were interrupted by Ritchie and Brandon as they made their ways into the guild hall from their office.

"Hello you three," "Plant!" Plant piped in as they raised their head enough to see it over the table, "Hello you four, apologies Plant," Brandon smiled as he corrected himself, Plant nodded in satisfaction as they returned to whatever they were doing under the table.

"Hello, long day in the office, I presume," Lucas said to the two as they approached.

"Eh, nothing new," Ritchie replied to them this time as he waved at the group in greeting. Devin of course waved back while Lucas raised his hand, but Kit just continued to twirl her drink in her hand.

Ritchie was going to ask what they were talking about before they heard a loud explosion nearby, which made everyone stare at the entrance as everyone in the room tensed up. Minutes went by in silence as everyone waited before they heard pounding footsteps heading towards them from outside.

...

The next second a certain purple haired half devil rushes in panic written all over his face.

"Mister Ritchie! Mister Brandon!" He shouted in relief as he spotted the two guild leaders.

"Inmo what's wrong?!" Richie rushed forward, approaching the shaken explosion mage with alarms going off in his brain. He wanted to ask questions, but he noticed how Inmo seemed to be still too panicked to even answer any of them. So, he put his hands on Inmo's shoulder in hopes of calming down the mage.

That seemed to have been the right decision as Inmo showed signs of coming to his senses more, but still that panic stayed in his eyes.

...

"Inmo what happened?" Brandon asked as he approached the two. Everyone's attention was on the explosion mage as he took a deep breath to get himself together, so he could explain.

"We went to the island as the guest said, and at first nothing was wrong. It looked like a normal island, then we found this temple that looked really old, and kind of creepy."

"A temple?" Lucas prompted Inmo to continue.

"Yeah, we found it with the doors wide open, so we were going to go in to check it out just as the quest suggested we should do if we find anything suspicious, but as David and Blake entered the doors just shut, leaving me and Mario outside." Inmo started fidgeting as he continued on with the events.

"We could still hear them thankfully but when Mario tried to open the entrance with his magic, since it was made out of stone, nothing happened. Even I couldn't do anything when I tried to destroy the entrance, it was invincible. It just wouldn't open, not even David could destroy it from the inside. We were going to head back here to get some assistance, but when we told them what we were going to do..." Inmo looked up and made eye contact with Ritchie as he said the last sentence, which made everyone's heart drop.

"But they didn't respond, no matter what, it went completely silent on their side of the door."

...

(1102 words)