“Something is troubling you, Vance, even though this mission has been successful,” Yumo-Rezu said when we were out of earshot of the rest of my party. “I noticed it, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others.”
“It’s nothing major,” I said. “The whole thing with the Hooded Man has just been bugging me, gnawing like a fucking rat at the inside of my skull. I know his voice, but I still haven’t been able to work out where I know it from. And he’s maimed and trapped after I kicked his ass and destroyed his portal system, but where is he? There are dozens of those portals all over Prand, and he could be around any one of them.”
“You destroyed all of the portals, correct?” Yumo-Rezu asked.
“I’m sure of it. I detonated a corpse explosion in the portal just after that Hooded prick scrambled through it, and I saw a sequence of portals being destroyed. I wrecked the entire system.”
“I know a lot about those portals, Vance,” Yumo-Rezu said, “because I helped to build them.”
I turned to stare at her, grinning from ear to ear. “Insider info is exactly what I need right now, especially when it comes to something like that.”
“I’m quite sure I know exactly where the Hooded Man is,” Yumo-Rezu said. “If all the portals were destroyed, he would have been ejected from the first portal, just prior to the collapse of the entire system.”
“All right, so where’s the first portal?”
A dark, humorless smile came across Yumo-Rezu’s beautiful face. “The heart of the Blood God’s empire. The Pyramid of Blood.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, narrowing my eyes as I stared at her. “You said that you helped build the portals, and now you tell me that the first portal is in the Pyramid of Blood, whatever the hell that is. Am I missing something, or did you work with the Blood God?”
Yumo-Rezu was quick to answer, and emphatic in her denial.
“No, of course not! I would never work with that monster! We built the portal system before the Pyramid of Blood was constructed.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean…”
“Me and a few other ancient deities, who were all later slaughtered by the Blood God. He stole the portal system from us, cursing it with his magic so that anyone but a Blood-tainted entity who tried to use it would be killed instantly. For his own convenience, he built his Pyramid of Blood on top of the primary portal.”
“And what did the asshole do in this Pyramid of Blood? I mean, beyond the obvious blood sacrifices, vats of blood, and all that,” I asked.
“It was a center of great evil. Blood Priests would sacrifice masses of people in the temple at the top of the pyramid. This was when the Blood God had a huge army at his disposal. His forces spread terror and suffering all across Prand, and his army raided all across the land, capturing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people to sacrifice. In the worst days of the Blood God’s reign of terror, his priests would sacrifice thousands of people in a day, so that all four sides of the pyramid were drenched with blood. The pyramid was designed in a way that blood from the sacrifices at the top would run down the sides, staining the entire structure and turning it red.”
“Damn, that’s brutal, but not surprising considering what I’ve learned about the Blood God,” I said. “But where is this pyramid? It sounds like it had to have been a gigantic structure, but I don’t know of any pyramids in Prand.”
Yumo-Rezu frowned, looking confused, and shook her head. “It was enormous, yes, and it can’t simply have vanished. You’re sure there are no ruined pyramids in Prand?”
“I’ve been across the length and breadth of the continent, Yumo-Rezu. Trust me when I say that there are no pyramids, ruined or otherwise, in Prand.”
“It was a thousand years ago, when Uger and Kemji defeated the Blood God and his Demogorgon, that the Blood Pyramid would have fallen into ruin,” Yumo-Rezu said. “Hmm … the abandoned pyramid could well have become covered with dirt, plants and trees during that time, and perhaps now merely looks like a hill. A very symmetrical, geometrically shaped hill. Does that ring a bell at all?”
I thought about this for a few seconds, and when everything clicked, it hit me like a Frost Giant’s war-hammer.
“Dunk me in a vat of troll shit and call me a bishop, I know where the Blood Pyramid is!” I yelled.
Yumo-Rezu laughed, and delight sparkled in her eyes. It was good to see a smile brightening her gorgeous features.
“You sound rather confident in that assertion, Vance.”
“It has to be the spot, and what’s more, I’m utterly fucking certain that I know who the Hooded Man is as well. It’s all coming together, it all makes sense now, how I knew his voice but just couldn’t place it, why the Church of Light hates me so much, how Bishop Nabu could sacrifice girls and serve the Blood God in a Church of Light cathedral and get away with it, how my uncle Rodrick was able to move around and pull all his bullshit with such impunity in Prand. Yes, yes, everything totally makes sense!”
“So where is it, and who is the Hooded Man?”
“The Hooded Man is Elandriel, Seraphim of the Church of Light,” I said. “It’s gotta be him; that’s where I knew his voice from. That motherfucker once prophesied that I’d end up a beggar on the streets of Luminescent Spires, but as it turns out, he couldn’t have been more wrong. And
