“What the fuck are you doing? Trying to get us both killed!?” the child whispers loudly. His sapphire eyes scorn unforgivingly as he looks up at me. “These people are fucking insane. If they find out what I am, they’ll kill us both.”
“You died.. I saw it with my own eyes. I.. What… are you?”
“I’m not like you. I’m.. something different. I’ve always been like this ever since I can remember. Can’t be hurt, well, not for too long anyway. Can’t die. Actually, tried to once. A long time ago, after the last of my people died. I was the only one left. Alone for months, hungry. I found some cable and picked out a good area for it. I went peacefully until I woke up a few hours later with one hell of a sore throat. Luckily, I had my knife, or I’d probably still be swinging there in that cave.”
“You have the mutation.”
“What?“
“The mutation Leon and Niko Lethe had. You’re an immortal, Athan.”
“Sounds about right.”
“How old are you?” I ask completely perplexed, fear slowly shifting to fascination.
“I don’t know.. I don’t age like normal people even if I did know. My biology is like, slower. Until today, I thought I was the only one like me. I think I was wrong.”
My stomach drops. “You think I’m like you?” I ask still trying to process the reality of what I am hearing. The gears within my brain begin turning, piecing together what I can, trying to make sense of all of this.
“No! Not you, idiot. Holy shit, are you always this stupid? Outside the temple.. there’s a guy tied to a post, looks like he’s been there for a long time.”
“Why do you think he’s like you?” I ask. “How can you be so sure?”
“I might have eavesdropped a little this morning, overheard one of the old, creepy guys mention something about the betrayer’s eternal punishment. It’s him. There’s only one dude tied a post out there. Talk about fucking coo-coo.”
“And, I thought my mouth was foul.”
The child fights to hold back a subtle grin, “Fuck you.”
“Is there any way to repair the flyer, anything left?” I ask trying to conjure an escape plan. This place isn’t safe for either of us. I’m not sure anywhere is, to be honest.
“I don’t think so. These guys are scavengers. From what I saw this morning, the entire place outside the temple is held together by old junk and stolen scrap. If there was anything left, it’s gone now; not to mention, the crash is miles from here.”
Limping to the doorway, I peer into the heart of this holy place. Expecting more of the same dirt and adobe, I’m pleasantly mistaken. Grand pillars of chiseled stone rise high from their square foundations and flank the large hallways from the inside. The room I woke up in is one of many, all aligned in a rectangular fashion with the hall of pillars separating empty doorways from an open center of which they surround. Metal pews and makeshift benches rest in perfect symmetry in the middle of the temple, stretching from the outside door to the spectacular spiral mosaic of stained glass on the back wall. Running my hands down the pews I walk down the aisle towards a single podium standing valiantly between two alters. Ceilings made of repurposed gold and silver glimmer divinely from above.
“It’s marvelous isn’t it,” proclaims the crippled elder that welcomed me earlier. A peculiar old man. Odd shaped, and not very pleasant to look at. “And to think all of this was almost lost at one time.”
“What happened?” I ask resting my broken body in the first pew. Athan wipes the hair from his face attempting to hide his rapidly healing scratch and takes a seat behind me.
“The story begins a long time ago with a stranger that came to us, much like yourselves. His name was Rome. He was nearly dead when we found him wandering alone in the sand not far from here.”
Elder Thestor uses his cane to inch towards me, grunting with each step taken under his oversized robe, he continues, “We took in Rome, gave him a place to rest, food to eat. After we nursed him back to health, he worked tirelessly to repay his debt of mercy from the gods by tending the greenery and the few livestock we acquired from Olympian traders. The gods gave him a purpose for his life and that purpose he fulfilled superbly. He planted the crops, repaired any damages to the temple, some days going above and beyond his call to duty with his inventions. He used to be quite the engineer; always tinkering, creating new innovations. Without his work on the irrigation systems, we’d still be relying on a crank well and the mercy of traders. He was truly a gift from the gods. Then, one afternoon he was different.” The old man’s gaze falls to the stone floor as a look of disgust succumbs him.
“We noticed an insidious change in him during the last weeks of it. He began asking questions. Questions that introduced blasphemy into our great community. The type that no man should ask without punishment. We prayed for him, prayed to the Giver to give him freedom from temptation and to the Taker to take the evil from his clouded mind, but we were too late. With every passing day he fell further and further into depravity until one evening he went too far. I woke that night to the smell of smoke. Following the scent through the temple, I found the source of it emitting from Rome’s chamber. He was nowhere to be found. The room was empty, except for his trinkets, one engulfed in fire. My heart broke for him. How could he commit such evil after everything the gods have done for him? I doused the
