FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Flame's Kiss

By Dark Violet

Part One

He'd done it. The pale walls so close to him, the cooler air swirling around his legs as he descended ever deeper—it was incredible! After all these months of planning, after weeks upon weeks of waiting for the right moment—he was here.

He'd be shouting in joy if he didn't have to be so quiet.

So he just giggled to himself, the darkness slipping around him as he followed Lyra down the shadowed, ancient steps. The orange glow of the torch showed the sandy hinds of the Lycanroc waving back and forth as she acted as the vanguard, her paws tapping rhythmically against the stone. Jason raised his hand, shining the torch past her—could he see the gallery yet?

Beyond the fading edge of the light, pure, utter blackness awaited them. Not yet...

That torchlight danced back and forth across the rock with a strange quickness; was it discontinuities in the rock? No—it was his hand. He furrowed his brow and forced himself to grip the torch tighter. He had a job to do. Shifting his pack around his shoulder to a more comfortable position, he lifted the small tape recorder to his lips.

“Day one." he started, quietly. “I've made it past the entrance, and I'm on the stairway now, heading downwards…"

He paused, and then thumbed the tape off. Was that all he could think to say?

Jason sighed, and for a moment, he watched Lyra as she trotted along, seemingly unphased by the black void they were disappearing into. But then, this was the same Lycanroc that had distracted the guards, given them the runaround, and even kicked up a sandstorm to get past them. Those same guards had guns—hell, they had trained Pokémon, and she risked them both. Compared to that, a little bit of blackness was a spa day. Hah—a spa day is something he'd probably have to treat her to when this was all over, if they managed to get past the guards again—and he could find a place that catered to rock types.

He flicked the recorder on again. “My name is Jason Dubois. I'm an archaeologist and ex-student of the University of Lumiose, Department of Geology and Archaeology—and as far as I know, the first person to enter the Temple of Life since it was re-discovered ten years ago."

Lyra flicked a glance back at him, one green eye gleaming in the torchlight.

He coughed. Yes—onto business.

“The stairway is… as it was described. It's fairly wide, you can walk down two abreast comfortably but with a somewhat low ceiling—I'm almost having to stoop to go down it. The slope is shallow—perhaps one pace down for every three across." He reached out to one of the walls, curiosity egging him on—before he realised what he was doing, and pulled his hand back before he touched it. “Ahem… the walls here are bare—no glyphs or cuneiform, but... there are signs of axe marks. There are no seams anywhere—it looks like the original expeditions were right… this entire area seems to be carved out of the bedrock. I must be almost a hundred metres underground by this point…."

He breathed out, flicking off the tape recorder for a moment to gather his thoughts before continuing.

“It begs to question as to how they did it. The rest of Relic Castle is over three thousand years old—even if this comes from the same time, how did they manage to dig so deep with the tools of that era? I would have thought-"

Something caught his torchlight. He stopped; Lyra paused in mid-step, one paw hanging in the air.

“I think I'm near the end…" he breathed. His hand was shaking again. In his chest, a thick lump was forming.

Slowly, Jason continued forwards. The flickering light gradually illuminated a floor, just past a blocky threshold. Lyra raised her head as she reached the last few steps—Jason followed, lifting the torch as he stepped off the stairway, and slipped through the threshold.

“By the gods…"

The room they were in was hemispherical, and they were at the very top of the the curved section. Around them, the roughly-cut rock gave way to pillars, as if they were emerging from the chaos, getting more detailed and intricate as they led away from the staircase. About twenty paces away, they stopped at two other doors, one on either side. Above them, the rock became a great dome, striated and lined with half-finished busts, so high as to almost be faded with distance. And opposite them, on the far wall from where they entered...

Jason's grasp on the tape recorder tightened to stop it from falling from his hand. “It's the Temple of Life. It's… amazing!"

He lifted one leg—then stopped, casting his eyes to the ground. Sand, mostly, maybe a few peaks of rock here and there. He'd have to be careful regardless though—there was no telling what trinkets might remain under an innocuous pile of sand.

Not that the previous expedition seemed to have cared much—bootprints tracking this way and that, preserved for all these years. Idiots...

Still, he moved slowly, scouting each step to make sure that he wasn't disturbing anything, while Lyra stepped to the side to watch him go. Eventually, he felt safe enough to pause and look up again.

“The far wall… it's covered in such… intricacy. The glyphs, late-era-cuneiform… the last expedition was right. This gallery, it was built over four millennia ago…"

His gaze slid across the wall.

“The top few lines are legible, but a lot of the text has been damaged in some way. Age, their reports said. I don't know though. The centre doesn't seem to have the same damage, nor the upper sections.…"

The centre. Like some great plaque, the engravings, the half-statue that stood proud in the middle of the wall glowered down at him.

“It's a relief. The figure in the middle of it—it looks like it's supposed to be one of the gods, but it's wrong. It's not like any of the ones we know; it's.... deformed. There are words across it, symbols—but the expeditions were wrong, they weren't chiselled, they're scoured into its surface. Almost in… desperation? Hatred? Passion?"

He stepped closer, tracing them with his eyes, head turned to one side. The translation that the previous Expedition had made surfaced in his mind.

“I love the fire."

What could it mean…?

He glanced across at Lyra for a moment—and found he had to look back at her. She'd retreated? No—he'd stepped closer. He turned back to the wall.

“This wall… there's something about it. I can't place it—it's almost like it's beautiful, but not…"

He let his hand fall to his side. For a while, he just let his eyes trace the edges of the carvings, the jagged points of the ancient words sliced into the surface. There was a power here—that was certain. But what power?

He stood there, staring… and then blinked, shaking his head. He stepped away from the wall, and for a moment he wavered, almost failing to stay standing. Heh—he was tired; a day of waiting for the right moment, the adrenaline of running past those guards—the reality of being here? Of course he was tired! He was headed for an adrenaline crash at any moment.

He lifted the tape recorder again as he walked. “I'm headed to the room on the eastern side of the gallery. The expeditions reported it empty, and…"

He swept across it with his torch. The flame danced in the breeze of millenia-old air.

“Well, they were right about that. It's about four metres on a side. Floor is completely bare, even of sand. I just need a nap—it'll do as a place to sleep for a night or two."

He unclipped his pack and shrugged his shoulders, dislodging it and letting it slide to the ground. Putting his torch between his teeth, he pulled off the sleeping mat, spreading it out across the rocky floor.

He glanced around. Something was missing. By now, Lyra was usually be milling around his legs, wanting to find a prime place to sleep—which typically meant the most inconvenient place for him, naturally. But her questing nose was nowhere to be felt. Jason shuffled across the floor, shining the torch back into the main chamber. “Lyra?"

Light sparkled off the dark stones of Lyra's ruff, her form bright against the dull, distant walls on the other side of the chamber. She was standing still, front paws together, barely a hair moving in her mane as she stared up at the strange relief at the chamber's centre.

“Lyra?"

No response—at least for a moment. Then, she blinked, turning to face him with bleary, mildly puzzled eyes.

“Here girl. Come on. Time to sleep."

Jason settled back down against the mat as Lyra joined him. He reached into his pack, grabbing a handful of damp cloth. While Lyra weaved around his legs, he smothered the torch and lay back against the ground.

He stared into blackness that was already becoming familiar, in silence broken only by Lyra's soft breathing and his beating heart. It was odd—as a child, he'd feared the dark, and even as an adult he found himself wary of it. But not now.

Of course, he thought, shuffling against the thin mat, letting his legs rest against that coarse, warm fur. This was not a darkness that held monsters. This was a darkness that held possibilities, mysteries, hidden treasures and long-forgotten secrets. Knowledge lay in those ancient words, just waiting to be understood once more.

And understand it he would.

Excitement clawing at his thoughts, swirling them in a whirlpool of anticipation, Jason began to dream.