The droning hum of the night air hovered across the naked sky, excelling in its auditory apathy as the old day drew to a close. For reasons which belonged solely to her, the ill-humored wind and the off-kiltered sway of the trees brought Fracaso great comfort by the time she ushered her men to set up camp, having gained a far enough distance away from the undesirables. Their trodden paths had been carefully covered and led off into false detours. All that was left was to wait for the beastmaster with his carts of creatures to arrive upon the designated hour.
Fracaso seated herself on a slab of rock barely elevated above the rest of its ilk. She had forgotten the last instance she shared time with herself. It was, after all, a biological urge, an intrusive phenomenon among her followers and certainly a suboptimal impulse for her to ever indulge in at the present moment. And yet she couldn’t help but dwell within her once-busy mind. She felt a kinship to this off-colored presence that had long conquered these woods. This uncanniness had always made itself known to her for as long as she could remember. She could recall it as far back as when she was but a budding young disciple within the Temple of Gl-Rau. It was undoubtedly a pleasant institute for like-minded souls to learn and expand their understanding of the universe as part of their expressed purpose to master it, to pool together all of their beings in service to something greater. She recalled the days in which Master spoke of when Gl-Rau, the Great Visitor, shall appear and be led to its accommodation the Temple had lovingly prepared. Subsequently, the Visitor, satisfied with its treatment, would then reign destruction on the world, leaving behind nothing but the Temple that had treated it with courtesy. Fracaso had always liked his sermons.
Once in a while, if a sermon had gone particularly well, a transparent writhing mass of appendages could even be gleamed in the sky behind the dressing of the clouds, as if to unveil its ephemeral self to its future caretakers in the hopes that they would recognize it on the fateful day it chooses to visit. Unrelenting excitement embedded itself in her heart and the hearts of her peers. An extremity of emotions only matched by the passion of her parents, devotees in their own rights who, on one peculiar day, both summoned her to their table for a brief talk.
It was still vivid in her mind. Father extended his hand and atop his palm twinkled a fascinating little trinket: a transparent bulbous lens, its size befitting an eye. It belonged to Master, he openly explained, his tone quivering. Some further words were shared but she didn’t bother to retain them. Instead she watched as he crammed the treasure into his old watery right eye and with a wave of his index finger, a projection was conjured a fair distance above the table. Mother clasped her head, clumps of hair flooding the webbings of her fingers. Indeed, Gl-Rau, the Great Visitor, or a miniature version at least, hovered above the table. Father showed her how with a look and a wink, this enchanted lens could capture any object in their room and summoned it as a projection through his eye, its details indistinguishable from the real thing. It could even project his voice to be as loud as a roaring waterfall. He conjured a miniature chair, an urn, his own hand, her hand and Mother’s hand. With certain gestures, he was able to manipulate these projections, moving the three hands closer together until they merged into an alien mesh of overlapping fingers, its human origin barely recognizable. He then rolled his fingers outward and the projection began to grow in size. Once his palm was flat, his arms moved slowly in tandem outwards. The projection continued to expand and if he had continued, it would be large enough to cover the whole sky right above the Temple, enough for everyone to see and break out in celebration. He drew his arms inward. The projection lessened. He clenched his hand into a fist. The projection shrunk into nothingness. His hand remained clenched. Mother spoke of “lies” and being made a “fool.” Both of them exchanged tearful accusations of betrayal and deception, hurtling words like “deceiver,” “fraud” and “swindler” against Master. Fracaso was frozen in her seat. Her eyes sparkled at what she saw.
Fracaso was always the most loyal companion anyone could ask for. Many could attest to that. Her parents could attest to that when she promised to keep their knowledge a secret from Master. Master could attest to that when she came forward to hand him back the trinket with news that her parents were planning a rebellion. Her peers could attest to that when she remembered to make them her lesser priests. Her guards could attest to that when she made her payment in gold to them on time after they had aided her in securing one of the Temple’s fringe outposts. Her followers could attest to that when she spoke of how Gl-Rau had betrayed them but she alone would still be here for them. “A bold new Visitor was coming,” she declared as she led them away into the world beyond the Temple. The trinket was back in her hand. Perhaps some day, even Gl-Rau itself could attest to that in how she never let its wonderful image floating on that table leave her mind. Never for a moment.
“The priest! Bring me the priest!” Words reverberated from behind her.
Fracaso left her seat on the rock. She walked back to the camp to find Zooard leaping from his carriage, his long row of caged monsters in tow.
“What the hell did you do?” Zooard’s hoarse words left no impression on Fracaso as she ordered her men to bring some of their large multi-eyed hounds out of their wheeled cages so they could be arranged to guard the newly-established parameters of their makeshift camp. The esteemed former-veterinarian-turned-former-warden seemed to have run haggard his own mind and body, his pitiful shriveling heart kicking his partially-shredded cloak.
“The tripede,” Fracaso asked, “have you brought it?”
“Answer me!”
“At peace sir,” Fracaso responded, “The situation will be remedied in due time. Right now, we shall focus on finding the best course traveling east.”
“You are leaving my sanctum behind?!”
“For the time being. We will establish a temporary base whilst we survey the situation. Once I deemed it opportune, we shall conduct our return trek in good time.”
“No! We will take my sanctum back right this instant! Perhaps I have not made it clear to you. You do not make decisions concerning all that is mine. That sanctum is mine. These mutts are mine. And I will do with them as I please.”
“Now, now. I see that this situation has caused your judgement to be impaired. It would be best for us to be rational. Was it not you who once spoke of a new age of rational men and their rational decisions? What became of that?”
“It became a breeding ground for parasites like you! You pillaged my mind of its reasoning and replaced it w-with…with…wi-wi-with…”
“Dear sir, you must relax yourself. Need I remind you that if not for your reasoning, our family would not be of the caliber it is now? This is but a minor setback. With your arsenal, we will surely take back your home faster than we can ever anticipate.”
“Who were those bastards anyway? Are they here because of you?”
“Those heretics? Merely our shadows. Ruffians that fancy themselves connected to our Visitor, puppeting a false idol to draw the weak away from our true family. Rest assured that all of them will be dealt with. The Good Visitor shall make sure of that.”
The alarm on Zooard’s face seemingly subsided. Sensing that he had been pacified, Fracaso moved past him.
“Explain this, then.”
Fracaso turned back to find a miniature floating eye suspended in mid-air. Green pupil. Zooard held his own eye wide open. The unique twinkling in his left eye was unmistakable.
“This conjuring is yours, is it not?” he asked, “I had my birds snatch this from your men. A whole lot of them were enroute to you. They were going to deliver this to you before I can even set foot here, correct?”
Birds, if Zooard’s inventive experimentation still permitted nature to deem them such, landed their tendriled talons on the surrounding bark. The armed men had taken notice. The dogs which were recently let out of their captivity had already solidified into packs, forming a wall with its circular chorus of fangs. Fracaso was silent.
“This is what you will do,” Zooard said, “With your men, you will accompany me back to the sanctum. There, we will do away with every single enemy that had so much as glanced into the entrance, sparing only a handful of them. You will get them to tell me everything that there is to know about them and whatever it is that they have. I will be duly compensated.”
“Priest! Priest!” A floundering voice came from beyond their circle of conflict. A straggling mercenary appeared to be fleeing from something.
“The three-legged one! The Doorman has set it loose!”
It was an hour past midnight. The wrangler had done as he was told and gave Goor the key to the tripede’s cage, as it was prophesied. The Doorman rewarded him with a concussive knock to the cranium while his mount lunged onto the fields. The strange steed was swift in its rampage, alerting the dogs along its paths as it ran to menace the priest’s guards. Zooard’s raging animals, confused but aggravated by this disturbance, had taken it upon themselves to attack anything not identified as their master. Fracaso’s henchmen responded likewise, aiming to suppress both the beasts and the tripede. Zooard had only managed to temper a portion of his pets’ madness with the rest staying unchecked in their subsequent devouring of the men’s torsos and arms. Raving mad howls and screams drowned out the footsteps encroaching from behind him. A brutal blow was dealt to the back of his head. Zooard tumbled to the ground. Goor’s hand loomed over him. A sickening squelch brought forth a shrill scream, followed by an emergent darkness which enveloped half of Zooard’s vision.
—
The sanctum was largely unchanged, safe for an abundance of armored soldiers that had occupied its walkways. Goor observed the stiltedness of the soldiers’ steps as they escorted him to the altar room, operating under its new administration. There was a smattering of crowds consisting of the good priest’s former devotees, having rejected their last eternal purpose for a fresher, more long-lasting eternal purpose. The leader of the soldiers, Tygrast the Observant, indicated by a few extra red stripes around his armored joints, beckoned Goor forward. He then instructed Goor to open his hand. Lying on his palm was an eyeball.
“And what of the other eye?” he inquired, “Her fingers?”
“I could only pluck one before I was driven off by her forces.”
“Pity.”
He took the eye.
“Will she and her men be joining us soon?”
Goor weighed his response carefully.
“…Yes.”
“That is good.”
Tygrast appraised the eye briefly. While not remarkably pleased, he found the object worthwhile enough to signal the blades away from Goor’s throat before inviting him for a walk.
“The Visitor shall be disappointed,” he said, “but merciful.”
He would go on to plainly ask Goor of his interest in joining them as an honorary enforcer. No more would he have to be locked away or forced to stand by a door. Instead, he would be among them and be compensated for his service.
Of course, such cooled negotiations were soon disrupted by a faint rattle of the under-earth, faint yet audacious enough to jostle the pebbles off the ground and have them land belly-up to the view of Tygrast’s alarmed expression. Another rattle, more rambunctious than the last, shook the corridor where the duo stood. Amidst the jittering foundation, a dispatch of soldiers made their way in, warning their leader of sudden cave-ins, its true extent untold, scattering their once-innumerable forces into splintered portions of a temple undergoing suffocation.
“Fracaso,” Tygrast muttered, “she is here. I must admit that I expected her to try reclaiming this place, not destroy it. Truly, I underestimate her propensity for pettiness.”
Tygrast ordered his available men to exterminate the disrupters as soon as they were within sight and reach. Otherwise, they were to vacate the unstable sanctum as soon as they were able. As he was about to lead them away, however, Goor was frank in telling them that, at this current rate, none of them would be able to outrun the collapse as he had walked these corridors countless times and concluded that they were already well-drowned in the distance needed to grasp the desired exit.
“What is your suggestion?” Tygrast asked.
“The room beyond the dokkra door. Only I can open it. It is much closer and I can guide you and your men there. It has been a well-kept secret from the priest that I hid for myself a secret exit inside that room.”
Goor motioned for them to follow him. They did so quickly after another rumbling bout of the earth.
–
Soldiers were propelled to investigate. Gaggles of panicked followers were seen evacuating, screaming of cave-ins occurring in the deeper parts of the sanctum. It was not long until the soldiers discovered the mounds of rubble that blocked the key passage to the altar room. Immediately, their prerogative was to reach Tygrast and escort him outside. Some swiftly moved to the alternative pathway to the altar room to find their superior while others moved toward the nearest exit, so pressed for time that they did not even bother to study the mound up close. There was but one soldier, particularly stubborn and stalwart in his conviction of removing the rubble with his own hands, who stepped up to make contact with the blockade. It came as a surprise when his hand effortlessly phased through the rocks, even more so when he walked through the entire pileup like he would through an empty room. On the other side of the illusory barrier, just as the soldier was about to turn back to warn his comrades of a ruse, the balled fist of the tripede had closed in on his skull before his heel could even shift. With his limp body placed out of sight, the creature delivered another reverberating kick to the cavernous systems, calibrating just the right amount of force to not bring any sizable debris downward. It made sure to adjust the lens in its eye so that it remained intact for the next essential step.
–
The Door of Visitation was left untouched, incomplete but solidified enough to have its enchantment instilled. The sky above its non-existent arch leered on with morbid interest.
Goor’s relatively miniscule palm flattened itself against it, for no matter how insurmountable its size, it responded almost instantly, avalanches of dust and dirt careening from its slothful hinges, a widening plank of outside light jutting into the darkness beyond. The soldiers marched inside, their fears relatively well-masked with professional strides in their steps. It was a spacious room. The walls of hollowed rock were neat and sensible, as the soldiers’ searching hands could testify. Eventually, the light from outside drew all attention to a tunnel nudged between patterned stones, its circular entrance giving way to even further darkness, somehow more stark than the existing one in the room. It was just big enough to fit an entire body if they could somehow wriggle themselves through one at a time. Goor looked behind him before swiveling his head back to motion Tygrast inside. More soldiers were pouring in from all other walkways.
“The quakes have stopped,” Tygrast noted.
“They could very well return if we do not hurry,” Goor said.
“You there,” Tygrast pointed to one migrating soldier, “Did you arrive from the northward tunnel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was told that there was a cave-in there. How did you manage past that?”
“No, sir. I did not witness a cave-in there. I have been told that there is one in the southward tunnel.”
“Carry on,” Tygrast muttered.
“We need to move quickly!” Goor affirmed.
“Doorman. Do you know why I requested the priest’ eyes in particular?”
“No.”
“I have been tasked with finding a particularly important artifact embedded in eyes such as these, for it has been wrongfully stolen from us a long time ago,” he said as he twirled the eye between his fingers. “You would not have happened to take the lens out before handing me this useless ball of veins, would you? And I take it that you did not hand the lens to any one of your co-conspirators behind this little masquerade.”
“An insipid assumption!” Goor shouted, “One in which I do not even know half the things you are talking about.”
Tygrast plucked out the lens from the eye. Goor fell silent.
“It is still here after all. I suppose you are foolish enough not to take advantage of it.”
“What?!” Goor’s alarm was involuntary. He could vividly recall picking out the lens himself and handing it to his tripede moments before entering the sanctum. In his rampant confusion at this new development, he had already tried to seize the thing from Tygrast’s clutches only to immediately marvel at his own stupidity. There had never been anything in his hands. The “lens” had fizzled out of existence, courtesy of Tygrast’s very own lens he had equipped in his right eye.
“Foolish indeed,” Tygrast remarked.
Just as he was about to strike Goor who left himself woefully open at the moment, the tripede descended from its vantage point and kicked the assailant as hard as it could, so much so that the lens (along with a handful of teeth) dislodged from its socket, sending him flying into the darkened room.
“The hole is gone!” a soldier uttered, followed by a confused scattershot of other urgent shouts.
The hovel had disappeared. Their exit out of this madness had seemingly melted into the stones, leaving them groping and clawing at a passage that was never there.
“You idiots. There was never a hole!” Tygrast steadied himself on the bodies of men he rolled into. His judging finger pierced the gap between the giant doors.
“Kill them! Bring me the lenses!”
The waves of soldiers could barely reach the outside before the Great Door was welded shut by Goor’s rune, trapping all things behind them, some persistent dismembered fingers notwithstanding.
–
Scrambling soldiers flooded out of the sanctum, followed by wave after wave of meek devotees whose bloodied feet had painted these grounds for the entirety of the day, trailing back and forth in relentless crimson prints. It was understandable for some of these loyalists to find their loyalty outweighed by other such priorities like stable shelters and good sleep. These weak links, as Fracaso termed them, scattered off into the night, in search of far-flung callings that could take them anywhere but here. Thus, with their group weaning off frivolous membership, all that was left was a concentrated bundle of the most devoted of the devotees, the most enduring of believers, the ones still willing to run back into that very same sanctum if a recipient of their unbreakable reverence was to command them to.
Fracaso’s caravan was then her makeshift platform and the dead soldiers, disadvantaged from their lack of guidance from their lost leader, her appeasing gifts to the remaining sons and daughters who were more than willing to return to her side. Their longing eyes marked not the ones who eagerly await to serve some dubious floating projection in the sky but those who wished to serve her and only her, the one with coordinated soldiers and an army of beasts that made sport of any unfortunate enemy that came their way. A brief and bluntly-worded sermon was thus delivered: storm the sanctum and kill the Doorman.
She spoke of the Doorman’s wily and wicked tricks, how he could make hallucinations and conjure false realities to lure the hapless into his grasp. One such falsehood, she highlighted, would be the purported collapses within the caverns. Zooard’s rising indignation burned and cleansed the contours of his gaping eye socket. His animosity toward the priest could wait for now. Their mutual aggression against the Doorman must first be satiated before their own differences could be reconciled. They made their way inside.
Without a doubt, there was not a single trace of a cave-in or an obstruction of any kind to be found. The passages were as barren as they had left them. Any isolated enemy soldiers were to be killed while those that ran in groups were to be avoided. Their sensible warpath brought them to the altar room.
A similar sight greeted them. The great eye was suspended above them, gazing off into the nondescript distance. The accompanying voice, as garbled and modulated as it was, carried with it a distinctive gruffness that was not at all evident in the once serene and wispy vocals found in its previous manifestations. The eye announced thusly that it was not real. It was never real, merely a projection puppeteered by the same person who was then reassuring her followers that what they were seeing was indubitably not real, merely an imposter of the true Visitor, sent to dissuade them from their iron-clad convictions. The eye would then accuse the priest, who was rather uncreative in selecting what should be worshipped, of choosing her own green eye to be the object that was to be projected. Goor’s voice became more recognizable with each booming word.
“Check her eyes if you do not believe me,” he said.
“The Doorman is hidden here in this room,” she said, “Find him and bring him to me.”
Zooard’s dogs scatter along the dried blood lining the altars. The rest of Fracaso’s minions shuffled about the room, overturning urns and rocks while her mercenaries loomed over their shoulders. Not one of them dared approach the priest to have a better look at her eyes. Some of them may have remembered her eye colour being green in the past but nothing bolstered them to reaffirm this fact at any point.
Goor, in his feckless attempts to stop her, continued with his same slanderous screeds and it was only after barrages upon barrages of them that the more sensitive ears among Zooard’s pets had perked and were tuned toward elsewhere. They steered off into the outside path. It was then that Fracaso made her key observation: the voice was being broadcast separately from the projection. For her, it was vital to pair a visual projection with an auditory one, using the same single lens. This may not be true for someone in possession of multiple lenses.
“By the way,” Goor added, “the main bulk of the soldiers that have been hounding you – they are just behind the Door of Visitation. I can let them out now if it comes to that.”
The Door. She forgot about the Door. In an instinctual drive to remedy this shameful lapse in her judgment, she sent Zooard and his beasts immediately to the dokkra structure. That must be where their mutual enemy’s voice was coming from. For an added measure, a substantial number of her minions was dispatched to follow them.
Initially, the armed men and Zooard’s mongrels proceeded along the same unified path, with the latter leading the charge well ahead of the former to the point they disappeared from view. Under the impression that the two parties would reconvene at the Door, the men continued to their destination in accordance with Fracaso’s decree. Once they arrived at the Great Door, though the enemy’s voice continued to echo, it was exceedingly clear that its source was never here. Instead, there was a squadron of Tygrast’s unruly soldiers that remained behind, hacking away at the dokkra door in a vain attempt to free their leader ensnared within. Compared to Fracaso’s hired hands, these soldiers were superior in numbers and weapons. And so, with a loud sway of metal as Fracaso’s men turned to leave, the very sound was enough to warrant a response from Tygrast’s own, briefly stopping their foolhardy labor to find the priest’s men retreating among the stalagmites. Their newfound labor, as short-lived as it was, was at the very least fruitful in this instance.
Unbeknownst to them, Zooard’s party had long since splintered off from the path to the Door, tracking the sound to its true source in the lower depths, the Corridor of Disciplinary Accommodation. Emaciated prisoners, freed from their cells, were found limping and scampering outward, over the bodies of slaughtered guards. Zooard moved past them wordlessly. Piercing clearly through all of their jeerings, hollerings, cursings and weepings was Goor’s voice, growing louder and crisper in volume. The beastmaster’s optical chasm tingled with fiery vindication.
Within the corridors, darkness still pervaded. The beasts’ many eyes glowed past the empty cells and crevices. The enclosed passageway was akin to a massive horn as the voice reverberated across its surfaces. Zooard would find his ardent search to be over. There was Goor, his once ever-so-affable client, and the putrid creature he called his tripede. They were visibly huddled downstairs in the bottom floor, behind the pillar near his old holding cell. Goor specifically looked to be striking the pillar with his fist, gripping the lens in his other hand while the tripede dug a hole into the rocky wall. They planned to bring down the support of the entire cave system, one pillar at a time, making their exit before the whole temple could rain its wrath on their heads. Even here, he was still speaking nonsense through the lens, held close to his mouth, hoping to keep the aggressors occupied in the altar room above them. His projected voice quelled as soon as his eyes met those of his former veterinarian.
“Kill,” ordered Zooard.
No other nuances felt necessary to him, only the intended target willed by his index finger. Therefore, the word shall be all that was needed for the animals to obey. They surged down to the duo, overloading the spiral staircase with so much weight that it collapsed. Curtains of ash engulfed the area, as well as a hailstorm of deconstructed material. The surrounding walls too felt this rush of sudden destruction as the monstrous mob swirled about to surround their acquired victims. The underground facility started to quake with monumental fervor. Goor hopped onto the tripede. It leapt a great distance in the air to grasp the ruined wall, causing the lens to fall out of its rider’s hand. The strange steed flew into the hole it had dug in the earth. The mass of animals followed.
All the while, in the altar room, Fracaso had finally found it. It was the middle altar on the platform. The compartment had been torn open, the lens put inside, bound to the hidden blade within where it could project its static image without needing an operator. The torn flaps were then haphazardly closed back onto the altar like buttoning a waistcoat. Fracaso had the entire contraption disassembled under a very persuasive choice that one either works quickly or risks having the others feed them to the blade that hid hungrily under the altar’s surface. Eventually, its inner workings were opened and the lens untied. Fracaso snatched the fabled object and held it aloft to her jubilant face. The eye dissolved then in the air. Her fanatics looked on in contemplative silence as their leader had seemingly discarded all that was around her in favor of that which possessed her full attention.
Great destruction ate away at the foundation of the sanctum. The grounds of the upper floors trembled. The soldiers, the mercenaries, the prisoners from the Door and the Corridor alike, all those who remained behind could feel tremors beneath them. Unlike last time, these did not occur in spontaneous bursts but rather a continuous rhythm, signifying the inevitable. Their squabbles and conflicts were summarily overruled by gravity. The grounds gave way to the blankness beneath and all the relevant earth was swallowed, stone by stone, room by room, tunnel by tunnel, path by path. Zooard’s everlasting rage choked the sanctum’s body until limpness overcame his legs. The beasts were unstoppable. They could not stop even if they wanted to, for the greater pull of their collective mass would continue to propel them forward, regardless of any individual obstruction, with no end in sight. With a mad cry and a vow of vengeance, Zooard was crushed in the ensuing stampede.
The collapse only became noticeable to Fracaso when the vibrations made her lose her footing and she found herself suddenly staring up at the sky. The blade from the broken altar that had punctured her heart was in her periphery but she felt no need to look down. It did not matter. She gently placed the lens into her right eye. Panicked shouts from the room’s occupants had faded. She gazed onward. Among the serene clouds was Gl-Rau. Summoning the last vestige of her strength, she lifted her hand and watched as the creature grew and shrank at her command. The platform crumbled beneath her. Her eyes sparkled.
–
Tales of the fallen temple persisted through a good chunk of the hemisphere, a fascinating contagion that roughly began when certain groups of interest, moneymen with stakes in the priest’s then-ongoing enterprise, sent their representatives to find nothing but a great big mess of stone in a field of coagulated blood. No physical traces of the priest were found. Fresh testimonies of the incident relayed a far-off sight of a stout-looking horseman galloping away on a strange-looking horse on the distant plains until they disappeared among the steep winding valleys. But that was all. The entrance was already sealed and the powers that be saw no reason to reckon with that fact. Their efforts to find anything worth salvaging would be greatly hampered by the possibility of there being nothing beyond corpses that neither beg, buy nor sell. Regardless, tall tales and legends of this wondrous ruin began to spread and sooner than even they had anticipated, they had cleared and furnished the former sanctum to welcome curious parties of all economic persuasions. Guiding curators would usher groups around the reconstructed wooden beams overseeing a sunken arch that was broken in two. Shattered marble rooms were remade into eateries. Spirited debates were held on whether the overall shape of the location resembled a goat’s horn or a trout. But all these features and attractions paled in comparison to the ultimate crown jewel of this thriving enterprise. Every once in a while, when no one seemed to expect it, as if beholden to some unknown showman’s schedule, but with the same explosive zeal, a massive face would be seen in the sky. Its source, no matter how many parties were sent to uncover it, was unknown. All that was known was the faint visual of a face that housed a smile most joyful and benign, captivating the guests below.
So infectious was this face’s presence that the guests had no choice but to feel uplifted themselves as they went home and told others of the ‘Smiling Visitor.’
–