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A Forgotten God: Chapter 1

For TeryxC by Serathin

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Teryx and Sparx sat in their hotel room, the air conditioner blowing in order to try and combat the heat outside as they packed up the equipment from their last mission. The rain dragon and hyena had been in the area for two weeks now, but it wasn't to tour the city or anything that a normal tourist would do. They had gone to the tropical paradise in order to go deep diving for relics in a sunken pirate ship that had been recently discovered via satellite photography. They were paid by their client to not only be the first to the site but also to recover the cutlass of the captain that had gone down with the ship.

"I can't believe we got paid six figures and was able to deep sea dive for a week just so we can recover this," Sparx said, the hyena holding the mossy sheath that contained the metal sword. "You could probably have bought a replica of this for what, maybe a few hundred?"

"You know how it is with these people," Teryx replied with a chuckle. "They'd rather shell out millions to get the real things then be satisfied with a fake. It's not about the value, it's all about possessing something."

Sparx also got a grin out of that and put the sword in the box to send to their client. As they both talked about whether they were going to stay and take advantage of their location for a little vacation of their own or head back home the cell phone of the hyena rang. "This is Sparx," he answered, motioning for the rain dragon to come towards him so he could hear the call as well. "My partner Teryx is here too, what can we do for you?"

"I hear that you two specialize in getting items and artifacts from exotic locations with a high degree of difficulty," the voice on the other side of the line said. "I have information that pertains to a hidden temple in the middle of the glacial plains of Icelandia."

"Icelandia?" Teryx chimed in. "We've already been there to scout the location of a wreck that supposedly was host to a lost group of explorers. That area has been scanned more times than the moon, I think if there was a lost temple there we would have heard about it long before now."

The new potential client informed them that the reason this particular locale had evaded detection was because it had been carved out of the side of a small canyon that was beneath an ice shelf that had shifted and thinned. If it hadn't been for deep mining scans to try and locate resources underneath the surface it might still not have remained undiscovered. Teryx and Sparx got as much information as they could from the one on the other side of the line, which included the hefty sum for them to go in and the item in particular they were being hired to retrieve, they told the client they would think about it and get back to them. The second the line went dead Sparx opened up the back of the phone and took the battery out before sitting down on the bed.

"A seven-figure payout just to find evidence of some forgotten god?" the rain dragon stated as he pushed the scuba diving gear they had brought along to the side of the bed. "Sounds like a pretty easy payday, especially if we wing it to the canyon. It's going to be a bit of a climb down from there then."

"I didn't think we would be going to the Azores so quickly after the last time we had to trample through the snow," the hyena replied. "And a cool million five would definitely pay for one heck of a vacation." He moved over to where Teryx sat and put his hands on the other male's shoulders, the two gazing lovingly into the eyes of one another. "Maybe going to a place that isn't dictated by some rich guy."

"I would very much like that..." the rain dragon replied, the two chuckling before continuing to pack for their departure from this place and moving on to their next mission.

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A few days later the two had gotten off the plane and situated themselves in a small outpost that was created specifically for those who wanted to vertical climb some of the bigger glaciers. That wasn't what they were there for though; instead Teryx and Sparx found their client had arranged for enough cold weather gear and supplies for a few days as well as an all-terrain vehicle to trek across the frozen lands and get them to their destination. The client had also given them the coordinates and while they were flying over the frozen area and waiting to land they had mapped out the best route to take to get there. Unfortunately when they got there they had ran into a problem that prevented their first idea from taking form.

The winds howled outside their vehicle as the storm raged around their rented vehicle. Though the two had originally thought of just waiting for the weather to clear until they heard that it was going to last for nearly a month. It wouldn't be the first time that they had ventured into foul weather for a client and the fact when they called them he gave them an extra half a million to go now. Luckily for them the outpost was more than happy to provide them with more stuff to help facilitate the extra days they were going to be spending on the ice.

While they camped for the night one piece of equipment that they always took with them was a relay to a satellite that gave them access to the internet wherever they happened to be. It gave them time to research before resting up for the night, and what they found concerned them slightly. When they did a deep search for any lore or legends for this lost god that the client wanted them to prove, it turned out while the actual temple hadn't been discovered there had been others who attempted to find this god as well... with a lot of them having the words still missing somewhere in them. The actual data they found was strange as well as history logs indicated that the reason there was so little information on this deity was because a massive volcanic eruption wiped out the entire area including several tribes reported to have worshipped it.

"I don't know..." Sparx said as he closed the laptop. "The closer we get to all of this the more I get this feeling in my gut that there's something else going on here. I've never had a relic hunt that spooked me before but something about all this doesn't add up."

"Like what?" Teryx asked while continuing to cook their dinner for the night.

"It's just a lot of little things I guess," Sparx explained. "A mysterious client that we've never worked for before calling us up just as we've finished a mission to offer us a lot of money to go to a place that no one else seems to know about to find proof of a deity that others have attempted to find only to go missing. Makes me wonder if we're going to go out there and find out this is some sort of trap."

"What, you think that he's luring unsuspecting people out to his manor in the middle of a glacier to hunt them?" the rain dragon stated with a chuckle. "I think that you're just reading too much into the situation, plus if these others didn't know what they were looking for they could have ended up getting lost or stuck while trying to find this under ice canyon that we're going to. As for the client this wouldn't be the first time we chased some ghost story or other tale, which is why we have the wild goose chase clause in our contacts so we get paid no matter what."

The conversation seemed to put the hyena's mind to rest and the two ate before going to bed, hearing the noise of the storm whipping around them as they did. Though Sparx fell into a deep slumber Teryx dreamed night; his mind transporting him to some long-forgotten land covered in trees. As he looked around it appeared to be a normal tribe of anthros in a primitive village, one in particular being some sort of hunter. While the rain dragon was acutely aware that this was a dream he could only seem to watch as the tiger made his way through these woods in search of prey.

What the hunter found instead was what appeared to be some sort of pool or crater filled with a tar-like substance that shifted and bubbled. Though Teryx couldn't understand what was being said the feline was clearly curious on what it was and went up to it, stabbing it with its spear. The only thing that did was get the end of it coated in the sticky substance and when he brought it back up to his face to sniff it some of it splattered against his nose. He watched as the hunter tried to wipe it off his nose for a few seconds before his eyes widened and his entire body stiffened, then dropped his spear and began to move forward.

It wasn't long before the hunter had submerged himself completely into the pool, his eyes still staring straight ahead even as his head was engulfed by the substance. The thick liquid continued to churn and bubble and after a while it appeared the hunter had perished... until something started to come out. As the liquid dripped off the creature it was clear this was not the same feline that had walked in, its shape shifting as it moved to the shore. The two dreaming creatures could only watch as the hunter's body continued to grow and mutate, finally opening his eyes and appearing to stare directly at him with glowing green eyes...

Suddenly the two explorers awoke, for Teryx it was not only from the shock of the dream but also because they heard a loud crack like a cannon had just gone off, both bolting upright and looking at one another before they heard a similar sound echoing. Pushing the strange dream aside Teryx joined Sparx in putting on their cold weather gear and went out of the tent to notice two things; the first was the storm had passed, the clouds still swirling around them like they were in the eye of it, and the second was the ice shelf they were traveling towards had risen several feet in the air.

The two continued to stare at it slightly dumbfounded before they quickly regained their composure. "The storm must have pushed the glacier into the ice sheet," Sparx explained as he went back into their tent and checked out the electronic map. "If our readings are still correct then it’s in the same area that we're about to travel towards... which means we might not be able to reach this place at all."

"Maybe..." Teryx said, pulling out his binoculars to look at the newly upheaved area as the images of the dream still played at the back of his mind. "But I'm starting to get that feeling that you had last night..."

Despite their reservations the two decided to continue onward with their journey towards the ice flow. Not only did they have two million reasons to keep going but there had been many times that they had gone into an area that was supposedly cursed or haunted, only to come out completely unscathed. As they confided in one another the shared dream they had though this was definitely chalking up to be one of the spookiest relic retrievals they had ever undertaken before. The rain dragon joked that it would be a great story to tell others and the two left it at that while they took their gear and drove to their destination.

A few hours later they found themselves at the intersection of the ice flow and the glacier, looking down at the huge split in the ice that it had created. "So much for the drilling equipment that we brought along," Sparx said as he brought up satellite data of the area. "Looks like this intersect created a cavern that runs all the way down to the land beneath it, including the canyon."

"Of course it did..." Teryx replied uneasily, though once more they quickly dismissed it and grabbed their gear to transport into the crevice. It took a bit of climbing to get down to the land but once they did they saw that the part of the glacier that had been pushed up formed a large cave before fusing into the surrounding ice. As they moved forward they were in awe of the natural beauty of it all, the sunlight streaming down through the remarkably clear ice and giving everything an unearthly blue glow to it.

After a couple hundred feet of traveling the area began to grow dark just as they reached the second canyon they had to climb down. This one was far wider and less steep to the point where they could just walk through most of it with their supply sleds being dragged behind them. Eventually the two got to their destination and both gasped at the stunning features carved out of the solid stone to form the facade of the temple. It was better than some of the ones they had found in the desert and those came from a civilization that were famed as masons as they slowly walked inside.

"No cobwebs or bugs..." Sparx commented as they moved into the main entrance chamber. "One of the nice things about being trapped under the ice for thousands of years I guess."

The rain dragon nodded in agreement and even with there still being a slight chill in the air it was warm enough for the two to strip off their bulky cold weather gear into something more comfortable. Now that they had made it inside the temple their minds were focused on one thing, finding the relic and earning enough money that they could potentially retire from it. Not only would they get their payout from their client but the archaeological value of this place would be insane and as the first to step inside they would get all manner of discovery rights. It made any thoughts of the supernatural get pushed into the back of their minds as they quickly set up their base camp before setting off deeper into the temple.

At first they thought there might be a few rooms beyond the entrance, a main area where they would have worshipped the deity along with a few other rooms for storage and possibly even an offering area. The hyena and rain dragon quickly found themselves obsessed with the search, looking for anything they could bring back to show that this forgotten god existed. Unfortunately the combination of the cold and time had wreaked havoc with this place and any writing either on the walls or in paper format was so badly compromised it would have scarcely proved there was anyone here in the first place. After about an hour of searching they came back to what they believed to be the main worship area empty-handed.

They decided to sleep on it for the night and start fresh the next day, both of them frustrated and surprised they couldn't find a statue or anything with this deity on it. As they both settled into sleep they once more dreamed, this time however the scene before them was that of panic as the tribe they had saw in their last vision were running towards the temple they had entered in the real world. It didn't take long for them to see why as they looked up and saw the column of black coming up from the nearby mountain. Both Sparx and Teryx watched as the villagers continued to flee past them, then everyone still outside falling as the ground quaked under their feet from the mountain practically exploding. All the two could do was watch as superheated ash came rushing through the woods, forming a grey cloud of devastation...

...just as they were about to be incinerated the two woke up, both of them panting as they looked at one another. "You too? Teryx commented, explaining the dream and causing the hyena to nod as they started to get up from their bedrolls and looked around the entryway. "You don't... do you really think...?"

"It's probably just from the story that we read on the internet," Sparx replied dismissively. "Since we were talking about it our minds probably overreacted and gave us similar dreams to try and work out what happened to those guys that made this place. Either way right now we got a job to do, I think I saw some places further back we can explore that might be where they kept all the relics."

The rain dragon nodded, not telling his friend this was the second time he has had such a dream, and the two of them once more went further back into the temple to find their evidence, though now it was not only to get paid but also to leave this strange place. Though neither one wanted to admit it there was something besides the chill in the air giving them a shiver, but the promise of a payday kept them from letting it get to far into their thoughts. When they got to the back of the temple that they had stopped at the two of them continued to look for the tunnel the hyena had thought he saw earlier, the two eventually finding it behind a heavily damaged sculpture pressed against the wall.

Teryx volunteered to go first and carefully slipped through the gap between the stones, dragging his pack along after him because of the tight fit. Just as he cleared it and was about to tell Spark to go next his bag snagged on one of the sharp stones and pulled it out, causing the statue and the rock it was supporting to collapse down on top of it. The two quickly backed away from either side and waited for it to settle, and though it wasn't a big cave-in it was enough that the two could no longer see one another. After confirming that both were alive Teryx looked down the tunnel he was in and saw that it branched off in several directions, including possibly back towards the temple, and he told the hyena to look for another way out on his side while he explored them to see if he could find a way out himself.

Though the two never liked being separated on a relic hunt there was no choice at the moment, plus the rain dragon felt a small amount of excitement at seeing there was more of the temple than meets the eye. If those that constructed it feared looters or something of that nature they might have hid their relics back here and that meant possibly finding proof of the forgotten god. After one last check in with one another Teryx made his way further into the catacombs, marking his way as he went so that he knew how to get back and so that it was easier for Sparx to find him. Unlike the outer temple these pathways were roughly hewn, as though the ones building the structure were racing against the clock to get it done.

After a few twists and turns that led into dead end rooms Teryx finally found a passage that opened up into a hallway that could have fit several vehicles inside of it, the rain dragon's heart racing as he shined his flashlight around. It appeared that this area was more sheltered from the elements and as such everything was far better preserved. The beam of light was practically trembling as he saw pictographs on the wall, no doubt ancient writing of those that built this place. There was still nothing definitive in the hallway though... but as the rain dragon entered into the room that the hallway led him too he let out a shout of joy that likely echoed through the entire temple.

"There you are!" Teryx shouted as he looked at the giant stone statue of a creature with a mix of wolf and dragon features that hovered above a platform with an ornate chair on it. "I knew it! I knew you were lurking somewhere around here!"

The rain dragon rushed into the throne room and kissed the statue on the lips between the intricately carved saber teeth, hugging the object that represented millions of dollars to him. Out of all the finds that he had gotten before this one made him the happiest, so much so he had completely ignored the rest of the room until that moment. He quickly snapped a picture of the statue for archival purposes before finally taking a moment to take in the rest of the space. Aside from the statue and throne there were also a number of other statues with similar creatures as the one depicting their god, likely acting as sentinels, and on them hug onyx and amethyst jewelry that glimmered in the rain dragon's light and caused a smile to curl up on his muzzle.

"Hello retirement..." Teryx said as he sat down on the throne and found beneath the dust that it was also gilded. "So this is what it's like to sit in the seat of a deity, I think I could get used to this... hopefully Sparx finds this place so I can boss him around from... here..." the dragon's words trailed off as he looked at the floor in front of the throne and saw something that caused him to pause. "No way.... It can't be..."

Teryx quickly got off the chair and ran down to the sunken in floor he had bypassed to embrace the statue, seeing for the first time that it appeared to actually be a pool filled with an impossibly deep black substance with swirls of crystalline purple in it. His mind flashed back to the first vision that he had gotten, the one with the tar pool the hunter had walked into. This wasn't churning or moving at all though, in fact it appeared to have completely solidified to stone. But if this was here, Teryx thought to himself, did that mean the dreams that he and subsequently Sparx had might not have been dreams at all?

The rain dragon quickly shook his head and realized that this substance might be something that hasn't been particularly discovered, taking out a small chisel to collect a sample as he added scientific discovery to the list of things about this place that will make them rich. Once he was done with that he would have to look and see if there was a travel-sized version of the statue that they could take with them to show the client. While pictures were good if they had concrete proof that this god existed it would definitely secure them the millions that they were owed. He was thinking so much on how to appease their client that when the chisel slipped on the surface it caused him to drop it and clatter against the surface.

Without thinking about it Teryx reached down and grabbed the instrument, his bare hand pressing briefly against the substance. The relic hunter let out a slight cry as small arcs of electricity went from his body and spread out over the surface of the pool, quickly causing him to retract his hand. While it wasn't uncommon for the rain dragon to occasionally discharge his lightning it felt like it was almost being pulled from his body as he looked down accusingly at the material that had seemingly caused it. That look quickly turned into one of both awe and fear as what had been completely solid shifted, the purple streaks starting to move about as the blackness began to liquify like it was candle wax being melted from beneath.

As the pool began to churn once more and absorb the dust to become a pit of pure blackness a swell began to rise up from it. At first Teryx thought it might be something from the melting process that was happening but the longer he stared at it the more it not only began to rise but gain definition as well. It was just like the hunter in his dream, except in this case there was no one that went into it as a head began to form out of the ooze. As it entirely broke the surface of the goo the rain dragon could see the form more clearly, looking like the statue behind him with a mix of wolf and dragon features complete with a set of saber teeth. Teryx found himself sliding back slightly as the figure continued to rise, exposing his muscular chest and torso.

Suddenly the eyes of the creature opened, Teryx jumping slightly as those glowing green orbs stared straight at him. "I believe you dropped something..." the still rubbery creature said as he dropped the chisel in front of Teryx, which was now covered in the same substance. As the creature appeared to dry stripes formed on increasingly shiny black rubber of his arms and neck, glowing with the same green light as those eyes as he rubbed his bright purple chest.

"I..." Teryx tried to speak, though he was at a loss for words as he continued to back away as the muscular rubber creature took a step out of the pool, his draconic feet quickly forming to support him. "You... you're him..."

The rubber sabrewolf grinned slightly as he looked up at the statue of himself, then down at the dragon who had backed himself up to the steps that led to the throne. "You are correct," the creature said as he shook the last of the liquid rubber off of him, the pool completely as the last of it formed into his tail. "Now instead of asking twenty questions about what era this is and what happened here I'm just going to go ahead and absorb all that information for myself. As my thanks for revitalizing me I'll make sure they stay in your head as well."

Before Teryx could ask what that meant the strange creature pounced on him and grabbed him by the head, turning it to the side while he was pinned down by the rest of his body. Though the rain dragon's focus was momentarily stolen by the rather large black rubber cock swinging between this hybrid's legs he suddenly felt every muscle in his body tense as the muzzle of the creature pushed up against his ear before something probed inside. The relic hunter's eyes went wide as the hand on the other side of his head supported it while the rubbery appendage seemed to push its way in, stretching the hole impossibly wide before sliding directly into his skull. His entire body trembled as instead of the pain he was expecting he felt a rush of pure pleasure as images and ideas flew through his mind faster than he could recollect.

Teryx continued to remain frozen in a state of pleasure and shock as the tongue probed deeper inside of him, black rubber leaking out of his nostrils as the creature seemed to be plunging into the recesses of his mind before finally it slid back into the sabrewolf's maw. "I see..." the creature said as Teryx was left gasping, feeling more of that liquid rubber dribbling from his ears. "A lot of time has passed since the eruption of that volcano, a rather unfortunate setback."

As the rubber creature walked up and sat down on the throne Teryx was still reeling from what had just happened, trying to wipe the rubber off as best he could even as it tried on his blue fur. When he looked up it appeared the creature was in silent contemplation, possibly from his resurrection or from all the data that he had just taken from him. At this point he wasn't sure what to do; part of him wanted to question this entity to see what it was and everything else about it, the other part wanted to find Sparx and run for the hills as soon as physically possible. Before he could make up his mind about it he saw the creature get up and stretch his body once more, once more reminding him that the rubbering being was very much naked.

"I really don't mind you staring Teryx," the rubber being said as he once more stretched his toned body, though the dragon was more shocked at hearing his name. "Oh I know everything about you, something I picked up with everything else. Also where are my manners; here I know everything about you but you know nothing about me, my name is Serathin and I would like to thank you for waking me up."

"It's a pleasure," Teryx replied, shaking his head to try and get the last bits of liquid out of his ears as he cracked a number of glow sticks and tossed them around to illuminate the entire room for closer examination. "So what do you plan to do now that you're resurrected?"

"Well I can't exactly stay here and I'm too weak to go on my own like this," Serathin replied as he leaned back on the throne. "I suppose I'll take your body as my own, make your friend my first disciple and leave this place to be worshipped elsewhere."

"Seems legit," Teryx said as he looked down at his bag, only to stop and look up at the grinning creature. "Wait, WHAT?!"