Forgotten; Worshipped (Imported from Ao3)

30

Aaron and Hercules finally came upon their destination. It was indeed a volcano, and it was huge. Aaron stared up in awe, while Hercules had apparently seen it often enough for this sight not to impress him. Hercules looked around.

"What now?" he asked, "I've never seen a temple here."

Aaron gave a sharp look around and approached the foot of the volcano. He found a number of rocks placed oddly. They were placed to make a perfect circle and Aaron figured it couldn't have been made by nature. He tried picking up one of the rocks, only to find that they were stuck in their place. Hercules looked on, intrigued and confused, his head slowly connecting the dots, like Aaron's. Aaron was a step ahead of him it seemed and he performed the spell of Moving Mountains directly in the middle of the circle. His hands glowed, as did the circle, and the stone wall within the circle was blown into the volcano, revealing an entrance underneath. Aaron squealed in delight and jumped into it, followed closely by Hercules who was once again impressed by Aaron's cleverness and ability to easily put two and two together.

An extremely thin line of lava (or magma?) ran along one side of the room they found themselves in, but it was already extremely hot and Aaron found himself sweating profusely, his cheeks glowing an awful red. Hercules wasn't as affected by the heat. Aaron grew dizzy for a second. He shook his head and pushed onwards, finding a door on the other side of the room that led to another room. His cloak began glowing blue, cooling him down somewhat. He - and Hercules with a start - realised that this meant he would have died in here were he only on his own. This realisation forced Hercules closer to Aaron, ready to carry him out of here if need be.

"With this heat... How did the priests survive in here? Nae has to protect me from the heat of the lava, so how did they survive it?" Aaron wondered out loud and Hercules nodded as he wondered the same thing.

They pushed onwards to the door on the other side of the room, stepping through it and finding a dimly lit chamber. There was a pedestal in the middle of the room with a book placed on it made of stone. Lava fell from the ceiling on the other side of the room, making this chamber even hotter than the one before and the blue from his cloak was glowing brighter, indicating that Nae had to work more to keep the heat from harming and perhaps killing Aaron. Aaron approached the stone book and read over it, mumbling to himself as the glow of his cloak grew ever brighter. As Aaron read over the text he looked up a few times to the lavafall, his eyes narrowing into a suspicious glare. He had read and understood the text, and walked over to the lavafall. Hercules looked over the text once as well, finding an odd symbol sticking out from the rest of the text. The symbol was two curve lines, like brackets on the left and two mirrored lines on the right, with a straight line in the middle. He tilted his head and looked up to the lavafall, yelping as he saw Aaron standing too close in front of it. He was sure that Nae, a siren of the ocean, wouldn't be able to protect him from such temperatures. Aaron lifted his right hand, palm up, fingers spread. Then, he lifted his left hand, fingers touching each other and placed his fingertips directly in the middle of his palm of his right hand. With narrowed and suspicious eyes he then spread the finger of his left hand and lifted it slightly from his right palm. His hands glowed briefly, sparks came from his fingertips and turned into smoke that slowly engulfed his right and then his left hand and slowly worked its way up his arms. Aaron looked at his arms and the still travelling smoke surprised and amazed, Hercules looked on terrified.

Suddenly, Aaron looked at the lavafall and stuck his arms into it. Hercules yelped, running to Aaron, but Aaron didn't scream, didn't even flinch. Hercules looked on confused, Aaron's cloak had completely stopped glowing as the smoke slowly engulfed all of Aaron, and he stepped through the lavafall. Hercules was wide-eyed and left in the chambers dumbfounded.