Chapter 46: The Temple Of Titans And Gods

Suddenly, Finn found that he could feel his body again. He could will his body to move of his own accord. And immediately he felt that control return to him, his head snapped backwards to know the fate of the others.

But they were nowhere to be seen.

Finn’s heart skipped a beat in a tense, existential terror, and he stilled, taking in his surroundings very carefully without moving.

All around him, there was not a single sound that could be heard at all. It was a perfect, unbroken silence, as if he had entered into a void. But his eyes told him a different thing.

A grand, mighty temple — grander than any building he had ever seen in both his lives, stood imposingly in the far distance, towering into the low-hanging hazy sky above that pressed down oppressingly.

Finn dropped his gaze immediately, feeling suffocated by the oppression the sky brought him. He instead diverted his gaze to the rest of the surroundings, and in particular, the temple itself.

If the original exotic plane had looked like a bleak, grey world, this space that had superimposed itself onto it looked totally different. It looked and felt like he had stepped into an antique film from a bygone age, with a sepia-toned filter on. Everything felt ancient and mottled, with dust that looked as though they hadn’t been touched for ages caking everything he could see.

Finn raised a leg and took a light step forward as carefully as he could, afraid that he was intruding on somewhere he wasn’t supposed to.

But when he moved and nothing happened, he took another short, shaky step. And then another, and another…

Before he knew it, he was in front of the Grand Temple, standing on large steps that looked as if they were built for giants. He gazed up at the massive doorway they led up to. And despite the fact he had no fear of massive objects, he still couldn’t help but feel small, and also feel a tinge of intimidation. All while trying not to think about the fact that he was all alone in somewhere utterly alien, foreign, and unknown.

He had even shoved the thought of what had previously happened to his body deep down somewhere in his mind, unwilling to think about it. Being exposed to inexplicable occurrences repeatedly had numbed him, to an extent, of the level of terror, of questioning, and of existential dread that should naturally follow such a strange situation. Hence, the ability to simply push on and close his mind to thoughts that would serve him no purpose besides just fear.

He gritted his teeth, taking the first step onto the giant steps. It felt more like he was climbing the steps, rather than walking up them. They were massively built, stretching nearly as wide as a four-lane expressway, with each step almost the height of his waist.

As Finn ascended the steps, he began to hear the mutterings and whispers from before: Rapid, unintelligible whispers as if the wind itself was speaking. Save for the few words of a Lost Age and Transcendents that Finn picked up, nothing else was as decipherable from it.

The more he climbed, the more the unintelligible words grew louder, rising from mere whispers to full on murmurs. And by the time Finn reached the top, they had turned to fully fledged chants.

At the top, Finn could tell the source of the chants came from inside the temple, beyond the large doorway. Finn peered inside, but could see nothing besides an utter, pitch blackness that felt like he was staring into an abyss.

He deliberated not going in at all, but something within him spurred him forward. An urge telling him the answer to everything that had happened lay within the confines of the temple.

And so, despite the unease and natural fear he felt, Finn stepped in.

“…Sin-ala, laost mir-a-thar. Vala nel-ar-ven, tr’nscen-dent. Fougautten age elen tel’armarlius.”

The words echoed through the darkness that pressed and hugged Finn from every side as he steadily walked forward. He kept his focus on it, latching into the words despite not knowing what they actually meant. It simply served as his beacon through the darkness, grounding his mind and preventing dread from creeping him… because it really did threaten to creep in.

Finn waded his way forward, trudging with only the syllables of the chant in his mind. And without knowing when, even he began to chant alongside the voice that spoke. Starting first with a whisper, then a mumble, and then finally, a full on chant.

The voice also rose in amplitude, as if acknowledging the presence of Finn. As if recognizing the presence of a living, sentient creature stepping into the floors of the Grand temple for the first time in ages.

The voice droned louder and louder with each step Finn took, guiding him forward through the darkness.

And with a final step, he suddenly broke through the dark.

Light flooded his vision, and he winced slightly from the abruptness, pausing the chants he repeated mid-sentence as he raised a hand up to shield his eyes.

When they finally adjusted to the light, he blinked, taking in the view of the temple. And immediately, a bout of vertigo and a sense of small scale filled him wholly.

He was right in the middle of a vast open floor the size of a football field. And surrounding him, by the walls, were colossal, petrified statues so colossal and mighty, Finn could only see slightly past their knees, as the rest of them towered so high into the ceiling, they faded into the darkness hundreds of feet above.

The massive scale of them made him feel like he was right at the center of a hall built for titans and gods, a place where no human was ever supposed to set foot in.

But all that wasn’t even the most terrifying of all.

Finn slowly turned his head, looking up at a podium, or maybe a sort of throne that was the only structure within the temple.

Steps led up to it from every side like a pyramid, and at the top, sat an extremely life-like, perfectly sculpted young boy, with moonlight jade for his skin, and precious emeralds for his eyes. His pointed ears stood out prominently, decorated by jewels and precious stones. His hair shone a pristine white, crafted from some exquisite material Finn couldn’t even decipher.

Finn couldn’t take his eye off the figure.

They were the source of the whispers and chants that had led him here. The figure continued to chant nonstop, all without ever moving their lips, giving Finn a feeling that the figure before him was not of this world.

Very slowly, the voice of the figure started to rise again, bringing Finn’s attention back to the present. It rose in the same way it had when he was being guided through the darkness earlier. But right now, Finn wasn’t chanting…

So what was going on? Did it expect him to chant also? Finn panicked for a moment, about to start, but the same inexplicable intuition that guided him to chant while he was in the darkness made him stop immediately.

This chant is not for me, he realized, slowly turning to face the darkness behind him.

Someone was coming…

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