“Why are you so curious about what killed these people?” Rami asked.
“I am curious, that’s true,” I replied as I stood bent over, my hands on my knees. “But we’re going deeper into the temple, and maybe whatever destroyed Kroth is still around.”
I did my best to stabilize myself and get my head straight. The feeling of disorientation eventually passed, and I felt well again. I walked to the skeletons of the warriors near the entrance and squatted down next to the one that was closest to the door.
“All right, buddy,” I muttered. “Show me what you’ve got.”
I put my hands on the warrior’s skull. Once again, a nightmarish, hyperrealistic vision was blasted into my head. Again, I was drenched with fear, and my ears rang with hundreds of screams of terror. I found myself staring up at the doors, now only a few yards away. The huge thing on the other side smashed into them with such a potent force that I—or, rather, the soldier —stumbled back, along with my comrades in the shield wall. Screams and shrieks resounded through the temple hall behind me.
Then, whatever was on the other side smashed through the doors, just how I’d seen in the previous vision. This time, though, I saw a glimpse at what it was. A huge fist, almost the size of a man, red and scaled with reptilian skin, and a huge black boot. The fingers of the fist were curled around… what was that, a sword hilt? A gigantic sword? On the creature’s forearm was a gleaming steel wrist bracer with a sigil etched into it. The sigil was seared into my mind before a blinding flash of light put an end to the vision.
I stumbled from the skeleton and fell flat on my back. I lay there, groaning for a while, sick and dizzy.
“Vance!” Rami cried. She and Elyse hurried over to me, both of their beautiful faces wearing frowns of concern. “Are you all right?”
“A. . . a moment, please,” I said through gasps.
I lay there with Elyse holding my right hand and Rami my left until the nausea passed. I heaved myself up and dusted myself off, then took out Grave Oath. I went to a fallen rock and used the dagger to scratch the design of the sigil I had seen on the creature’s wrist bracer onto it.
“Anyone familiar with the sigils belonging to the gods?” Each god had a different sigil that represented them, and I knew a few of them but not this one.
“They are all on my map,” Rollar answered. “If the god exists, then his or her marker is somewhere there.”
“Do you have your map with you?” I asked.
“There’s no need to take it out,” he said with a smile and tapped his head. “I have them all committed to memory.”
“Whose sigil is this?” I asked as I gestured at the insignia I had carved into the rock.
As soon as he saw it, his face went pale.
“That’s what you saw in the vision?” he asked. “That sigil?”
“It was on the armor of the… whatever it was that destroyed this place. Some huge red monster. I only saw part of it.”
“That’s the Blood God’s sigil.”
I nodded. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that particular asshole had been involved in this atrocity. But why? Why here? What had the people of Kroth done to anger him? Or was it something else? Was there something he’d sent his monster to find? Or was the monster the Blood God himself, taken physical form?
These visions, while they had shown me what had happened here, had ultimately raised more questions than they had given answers to. And now, the one person who was likely to have known the answers to at least some of these questions was nowhere to be found.
“Dammit, Isu,” I muttered under my breath, “where are you when I need your help?”
“Did you say something, Vance?” Elyse asked.
I shook my head and forced a smile at her. “I’ll have a good think about everything I saw later. For now, I want to see if I can find the entrance to the labyrinth that’s supposed to be under this temple. I can sense that there’s an object of power somewhere in here, and I want to find it before we leave Kroth.”
“Do you think the monster is still here?” Elyse asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe. If we find it, I’m definitely going to try to make it into a zombie.” I grinned.
“Good luck finding anything among this rubble.” Rollar sighed. “Even if you do manage to determine the location of the labyrinth, I suspect that most of it has collapsed, like the rest of this place.” He motioned around the ruined hall.
“It’s still worth having a look,” I said. “Rollar, you search that section.” I gestured to a small alcove that looked like it led to a passageway. “Elyse, you have a look behind the altar. Rami, you scour that area that looks like it might have been an indoor garden once. I’ll search around the entrance to the belltower.”
We spread out and began searching among the skeletons and rubble. I had to grudgingly admit that Rollar might be right. Perhaps the entrance to the labyrinth had been lost among the rubble. Even so, there was something that contained the power of the Tree God buried under all of this, and I had to find it.
“I can’t find anything,” Elyse yelled from behind the altar. “There’s nothing but skeletons and rubble. No signs of any doors, trapdoors, hidden levers, nothing.”
“I can’t find anything either,” Rami called out from in front of the shattered remains of plant pots.
“Nothing in the alcove,” Rollar said as he marched back toward me.
Then, a thought struck me. The labyrinth was something the temple priests would have wanted to protect when the monster attacked. Therefore, the location of their corpses might reveal something about the labyrinth’s location. Dammit, a circumstance like
