Chapter 15

Rain awoke feeling refreshed. The meal they had prepared was delicious! A stringy white meat which she had never tasted before, but which was surprisingly tender and had a taste which made her feel alive! This feeling of being so alive remained with her even after she had rested. She felt whole, in touch with the world. She had been concerned about eating raw meat, but it had been cooked. The priests were right about the rejuvenating qualities of that meat! The stone slab she had slept on was surprisingly comfortable, and she thought of replacing her mattress with something a little firmer when she got back home.
She hadn't heard that wailing sound since that first time in the great hall, which, from what she could gather from the high priest Dimit, was apparently the entrance to the inner sanctum of this temple. Splashing her face in the simple bowl of water near the foot of the bed – it wasn't holy water or something, was it? - she wished she had her regular soap with her. It really did feel like she was a world away from her real life.
Thirsty, she left the room and asked the first priest she encountered for water. He nodded, scurried off, and returned with a mug of water in moments. A little amused that they drank from clay instead of glass, she drank it down quickly.

“Will you be freeing Tera now?” The priest asked.

“Not just yet, I think,” Rain replied. “Could you tell me what it involves first? And your name?”

“I am called Pool” the priest replied. Rain realised this was actually a woman. The bald head and strange clothing were deceiving! The priestess continued, “our prophecies, which come from Tera, do not say. You will have to speak to my Lord directly.”

“Oh, I can do that?”

“Yes, Tera is here. You can't hear his screams right now because we keep the room sealed when no-one is communing with Him.”

“I guess now is as good as ever.”

“Very well, Reliever. Would you follow me?”

Rain acceded with a nod. They made their way through the corridors. This section of the temple had been hewed away and hollowed out of the stone to form concentric rings of rooms, backing onto a central chamber. Rain assumed this was where Tera was kept. The smoothness of the walls indicated that love and care had been taken in the carving. I wonder what they do with rubbish and bodily wastes. And where they get supplies from. They can't transport it all by hand. They must have a solution of some kind.

They passed another priest, and Pool paused for a second to request the high priest. They reached the main doors and waited. After a few minutes, Dimit arrived, along with a contingent of six lower priests, as marked by the red lightning bolts emblazoned on their chests, and two other high priests, marked by blue lightning bolts.

“High Priestess,” he intoned, bowing slightly.

“High Priest,” replied Pool, following with the same rigid bow.

“Reliever,” the ten bowed to Rain, “we begin.”

The doors opened slowly, the crack radiating brilliant light which shifted hues from moment to moment. With the opening of the doors came a keening wail. In the centre of the room was a gigantic person, tied in ephemeral chains. Glowing, it raged and thrashed against the chains, casting light about the room. Fat ropes of electricity moved quickly over it and reached out to the walls, giving off the garlic odour of ozone. Different parts of the writhing mass phased in and out of reality, adding to the overwhelming atmosphere of the room.

“We tried to unchain Him by removing the stone which the chains were bound to. He said it wouldn't work, that it was the chains themselves which held Him. The chains are a wound, He said, a wound which must be healed. I don't understand how chains can be a wound.”

Dimit and Pool entered the room, Rain a step behind, following their lead. She felt a scorching pressure in her mind. She blinked, trying to clear it, but couldn't. She pushed it out of her thoughts and concentrated on what was happening.

“Do it!” Dimit shouted over Tera's now staccato screaming and the hiss of the lightning.

“I don't know what to do!” Rain shouted back.

“Let Tera guide you!”

“What?”

“Stop resisting! Let him into your mind! He will show you how!”

“No! Just tell me how!”

The nail pushing into her thoughts was removed. The god must be able to hear them! The high priest shouted again. “The wound is in the chains! Reach inside and heal it over!”

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Rain reached out with the part of her mind which touched the haze. She tried to touch the chains, but there was a tunnel there. The wound was a tunnel! The chains held the tunnel open, and something – something not haze – was flowing through. She sensed that things behaved differently on the other side and that things here were affected by it. She examined the chains, how they were knotted. They were haze, but they were also part of Tera. Had he imprisoned himself? No, the chains themselves didn't wrap around anything in this place, they were held there by thousands of tiny hooks. Tiny hooks which somehow held and also repelled the energy in the chains. Were there different types of haze? She remembered Avan Nerovast saying something about signatures. Did the signature depend on the type of haze? This must have been why Tera could not free himself. She was unsure how wise it was to free this creature, but something compelled her. She began unhooking the chains, twisting each hook free. Like before, when she had been assembling the creature to dispose of Torion's body, the haze took on a will of its own. It began unhooking the chains, then, abruptly, unhooked the remaining catches all at once. She tried to release the haze, but couldn't what she had drawn through continued to flow. It's a trap! She began screaming, just as Tera had been doing for countless millennia. The tunnel was slowly closing, the rate of flow of whatever was coming through was decreasing. She heard noises outside the room, shouts and crashes. Her tiny flow of haze continued to pour out, fashioning some sort of funnel, latching onto Tera. Was she doing that? Rain didn't know, perhaps she was. The flow through the tunnel had stopped. Rain could feel the energies flowing back towards the wound, but they were caught by the funnel. Desperate, she tried to dissolve it, but couldn't. They lent strength to the haze, and Tera was pulled all the way through, the screaming stopping abruptly. He stood immobile in the convergence of the haze, this strange force's pooling point, and the wound. That force was flowing faster now, and her haze flow had sped up to match. Nothing untoward seemed to be happening so she stopped fighting the haze, let it do what it needed to. She looked around. Time had slowed down in the room; the movement outside was impossibly fast. Priests and gigantic flickering flames fought a dark-skinned warrior, and the area outside was growing both brighter and faster. The room was shrinking. The last of the force from that other realm collecting here, commingling with the haze. Tera was still immobile, and now the high priest and priestess had joined him. Rain realised that the haze was not causing her pain. The light from outside the room grew brighter until the four of them floated in a white weightless void. Pool, Tera, and Dimit, still unmoving, floated closer together, crushed and tangled into a single, spherical being. The conglomerate was in the funnel. Flecks of Shar were stripped off it, flowing down the funnel, back toward its origin. Back towards Rain. The white light followed, coming away in sheets, leaving nothingness behind. It all flowed into Rain, pooling in an unknown reservoir deep within the core of her being. Three souls; Pool, Dimit, Tera. Three forces; Shar, Haze, Lightning.

Rain floated alone in a void.