The Haunting

The Temple

Trudging through an unfamiliar forest at night with only the moon and my dim Noxum eye to light the way was a terrible idea. Not to mention that, after what felt like an hour of running into trees and tripping over rocks, potholes, and roots, clouds began to roll in, blocking the moonlight and threatening a storm. Judging by the wind, I had a feeling it would be a particularly bad one.

"This sucks," I muttered under my breath as I nearly ran into another tree. "How do you know we haven't gotten off course already?" I said a little louder.

Armen paused. "I don't," he said. "It's too dark to see the map, but I think it's only a little bit more up ahead." I took the map and tried to decipher it, using my glowing eye as a light. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to read a map.

I handed it back to Armen, and we resumed our trek through the night. "Fantastic," I murmured.

After several more minutes of tripping and generally feeling miserable, Armen stopped again, this time in front of a cliff. I backpedaled, nearly running into him. "This is it!" he cried, not noticing that he'd almost been run over.

"Where?" I asked, squinting through the darkness. "I don't see a temple." He didn't answer, and instead started to brush away some leaves and fallen branches, soon revealing a small, ancient entrance to what did, in fact, look like a temple.

Armen turned toward me. In the dim light of the half-covered moon, I could see his lopsided grin as he whispered "I told ya so" before disappearing inside.

That's really weird, I thought. He's claustrophobic, but he's going into a small hole in a cliff-side. I sighed and ducked in, myself. Maybe he's changed more than I thought.

Once inside, all I could do was sense Armen moving around in front of me. Nothing else; it was pitch black; my eye didn't even provide enough light to see the ceiling that I was sure was just above my head. After several moments of stumbling around in the dark, Armen stopped again. I heard him whisper. "One sec," he said. His voice echoed strangely. I heard a click, and a blast of orange flames lit the room. I jumped back, blinking in surprise as the tongues of fire ripped through the room. It took me a moment to realize that the fire was contained to an oil-filled stone pedestal carved with strange symbols that wrapped its way around the main room.

As my eyes adjusted, I slowly began to realize how wrong I'd been about Armen's claustrophobia; the temple wasn't just a small room cut out of the terrain, it was massive! "How the hell are we gonna find three little diamonds in all of this?" I asked him, gesturing around the cavern in disbelief. "It's massive! This could take days!"

"If you'll remember correctly," Armen said, looking up from where he'd been inspecting part of a massive mural that filled the entire room, "those diamonds were fist-sized, and they glowed. It shouldn't be that hard!" He grabbed a torch off the wall and lit it on the pedestal.

"Okay, so suppose we find them. What do we do with them?"

He didn't answer, and instead starting walking down the nearest passageway

I rolled my eyes and followed. He had has no idea.

* * *

Our footsteps echoed loudly through the dark hall. I wasn't entirely sure how long we'd been walking, but it felt like forever. The torch looked like it was getting low, and now mostly only smoldered, yet still cast ominous shadows along the walls and ceiling. My apple was long gone, and my canteen was mostly empty. The air around us was dank and warm, so much so that Armen finally took off his ridiculous tunic/blanket thing; wrapping it up in a ball and shoving it inside a near-empty backpack that he'd been carrying underneath it.