Bodies had been skewered, decapitated, limbs hacked off, disemboweled, burnt beyond recognition—yeah, this had been a hell of a fight. Death saturated the air. The least I could do was feast on it, draw in the energy. If needed, I could raise all of these corpses in the blink of an eye and have a zombie army at my disposal, but they were as good as useless to me out here. The Temple of Blood had to be at least a full night’s gallop away, and an army of marching zombies would take up to four times longer. Besides, I needed to conserve all of my power for the upcoming fight against my uncle and his minions, and for the speedy search for Lucielle’s mystery object.
“Where’s the crypt?” Friya asked. “We cannot waste any time wandering among the dead. We must find the item Lucielle spoke of.”
“Well,” I said, “usually in a castle, the crypt is located—”
“It’s this way,” Elyse said, interrupting me and striding confidently to the right.
“How the hell do you know it’s that way?” I yelled after her. “Have you been here before?”
“It’s an artifact of Light,” she shouted back. “I can sense its presence. Trust me on this. Follow me, quickly!”
Chapter Thirty
I figured we’d better go along with Elyse. After all, she was connected to the Lord of Light through her Fate Thread, so it stood to reason that she could sense artifacts of Light nearby, particularly if they happened to possess very strong powers, which I assumed this item did if it could destroy the Temple of Blood.
Elyse led us into a large chamber that was mostly demolished, and we followed her as she picked her way through the rubble, tracing the source of the Light magic.
“It’s this way,” she murmured, talking mostly to herself. “No, this way… Yes, here, the magic is stronger in this direction. Ah, yes, and from this way, I’m really feeling the pull.” She turned and looked at me. “I think the entrance is under the rubble here, Vance. I need some strong hands.”
Drok and I set to hauling and tossing rocks around. Drok was in his element.
“Drok like throw rocks!” he yelled, grinning like a madman.
“You keep throwing those boulders,” I grunted, tossing aside one the size of a large hog. “Throw them fast and throw them far! We need to locate the entrance to the crypt! Hurry!”
We soon uncovered a doorway. The hinges of the door had buckled under the weight of the rubble, and it was pretty much jammed shut, but with my strength and Drok’s combined, we were able to rip it out of its hinges and expose the entrance to the passage. It was pitch dark down there, but before I could call for torches, Elyse pulled out her mace, the flanged head glowing with a bright white light.
“We are in the presence of a tremendously powerful artifact of Light, Vance,” she said, a smile on her face and a gleam of liquid power radiating from her eyes. “I can harness and channel its magic. We do not need fire for light, not with this object so close to me.”
We followed Elyse down into the crypt as she held her glowing mace out before her, illuminating the dark space and banishing shadows. I had no fear of traps down here; Lucielle wouldn’t have sent us here if there had been anything that could harm us.
“The Charm Goddess said the item we’re looking for would be ‘buried under beauty,’” I said. “Whatever that means.”
We headed down two flights of stairs, right into the bowels of the crypt, Elyse drawn onward by the pulsing power of the mystery artifact. I couldn’t sense anything, and a sidelong glance at my fellow deity Rami-Xayon—who responded to this questioning look with a shrug and a subtle shake of her head—indicated that she couldn’t sense anything magical down here either. I figured that only followers of the Lord of Light would be able to detect whatever this thing was.
We reached the deepest part of the crypt, a huge chamber that looked like it had been an ancient temple of some sort, on top of which this whole castle had been built. There were statues of many old gods and goddesses between huge stylized pillars that supported the weight of the stone ceiling and the floors above it. Rami-Xayon rushed over to one of the statues, a young woman with a huge mass of curly hair. She gasped, staring with wide eyes at the lifelike sculpture.
“It’s… me,” she murmured, her eyes locked on the stone face in front of hers. “How I used to be.”
I walked over to the statue and stared at it for a while. So this was what Xayon had looked like. She was somewhat bland-looking and dumpy, to be honest, and her nose especially had a weird shape. Her new face and body were a huge improvement,but I figured I’d better not say as much. I saw that Isu had also found a statue of herself, a remarkably accurate replica of her in marble. She was studying it with a contemplative expression. I looked at the statue’s hands and saw it was holding a stone replica of Grave Oath. A shudder ran through me, but it passed as quickly as it had arrived. Isu had told me she had become tired of being a goddess and that I was already a far better God of Death than she had ever been.
Elyse, however, was looking confused. I walked over to her and asked her what was wrong.
“It’s too strong down here,” she murmured, shaking her head and looking crestfallen. “The power of the object is filling this whole chamber with its presence. I’m overwhelmed. There’s
