The Larim’s Monastery

When the sun rose on the horizon next day, the world was basked in an orange-red light. Nia knew that this happened because most of the sun’s rays were now filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, but the redshift of everything gave their ascent of mount Larim an eerie feeling.

It reminds me of these apocalypse movies. Let’s hope, we’ll get all out of this alive.

She had no idea, how long the period of darkness would last, probably more than a week, if not several, but it wasn’t just a simple solar eclipse like on earth.

Living on a moon is very different. There probably aren’t big oceans or the tidal waves would be colossal.

She didn’t share her thoughts with the group. It didn’t feel like the right time to talk about the quirks of having an adventure on a moon. The rest didn’t say anything either. A grim silence hung over their group as they climbed the steep path up the mountain to the monastery. They passed several small shrines, that hadn’t been tended to for a long time, and ascended stairs that were half-broken.

The people here were highly religious, so why did no one tend to this path? Were they all too afraid to get close to their own goddess? Was it some regulation on the council’s side that normally prevented anyone from coming close to the mountain? She didn’t know. Maybe she would find out.

While they climbed, the hue of the light shifted more and more into the red spectrum, which made their surroundings seem more and more creepy.

Then they approached a phenomenon that made everything worse. There was a line in the ground. Before it was green, or now mostly black looking grass and bushes. But behind it, there was nothing. No plant. No life. Just barren stone.

They slowed and stopped right before it. Nia gulped and reached out. It was as if she put her hand onto an invisible wall. A wall that gave way to slight pressure and after she pushed a bit stronger, she stumbled through it, a tingling sensation washing all over her. It was as if she was pressure washed by a one centimeter thick wall of … energy.

She turned around. The other still hesitated, but Tom was the first to step through after her, the rest following a moment later.

“This is … weird,” Nia mumbled.

“Yes. Maybe this wall is normally more … solid?” Tina suggested.

“It certainly is.” Sonja pressed against the invisible wall from the inside. She couldn’t get back out.

“We’re trapped. No choice but to move forward.” Ralf set his jaw and continued on, walking past Nia.

“Yes. Let’s get this over with.” Nia took a deep breath and continued as well.

The state of the path got worse and worse the higher they got.

Nia felt nervous as they finally saw the entrance to the monastery roughly an hour later.

Heavy wrought iron doors made it look more like a prison and less like a place of worship. There were no special carvings on it, no reliefs, no painting. Nothing of artistic value.

One of the doors stood slightly ajar. Saesquar and her people had probably already entered the building. The big question was, if Luaria would even listen to them.

Gulping, Nia peeked through the door. And stopped. She didn’t see any color, probably because it was completely dark inside, but that wasn’t what surprised her.

The scene itself could’ve been out of her own world. In the mountain was a building made completely out of glass. The whole monastery, maybe even the whole mountain looked like just a facade to a small different world with its own building inside of it.

What looked like asphalt coated the ground and there were long poles that reminded her of traffic lights.

“What the actual fuck,” she swore.

“Come on in. I’m sure you’re confused by all of this,” the disembodied voice of Saesquar said. “I guess you’ve earned the right to know what’s happening here.”

“You guess,” Nia answered in a flat tone. “I don’t suppose your mother is here?”

“You’ll find her on the second floor.” The voice sounded dispassionate. “You can see her, if you want to.”

Nia turned to the rest of their party. She didn’t need to ask, they all frowned.

“It’s not that we can turn back. Unless you can shatter that strange barrier?” Sonja asked.

Nia shrugged and shook her head, then squeezed fully through the door.

“It’s pitch black in here.” Sonja put a hand on her shoulder. A moment later, a flame bloomed above her hand, giving their surroundings flickering colors.

“What is this place?” Tom gasped. “That doesn’t look at all as if it belongs in this world.”

“I really wonder, what all of this is about,” Nia whispered and stepped onto the asphalt-like surface. It really felt like the black stuff she knew from earth and Sonja’s light made it look exactly like it. From there she approached the building, its sliding glass doors standing half-open. Since there were no handles, she assumed that these opened and closed automatically as well in the past.

The inside looked much more like the lobby of a high class modern hotel than something that should be in a fantasy world. A highly polished marble floor, a glass elevator that didn’t seem to work, perfectly straight edges and doors to other rooms.

“Maybe this is some kind of big brother situation? Or maybe Truman-Show?” she asked no one in particular.

“We should look for the stairs,” Ralf suggested and went to one of the doors. They followed suit and Tina was the one to find it.

The stairs itself were also beautifully polished, held in black marble, the handrail made of polished metal. “What the heck?” Tom looked around.

Ralf tested the door to the first floor. It was shut and locked. “I don’t like this,” he whispered.

“Me neither.” Nia felt a shiver run down her spine. Still, there was no point in pushing the meeting off any further.

The door to the second floor stood open. There was no third floor. The room behind the door was vast and spacious. A single large bed was right in its center and judging from the bumps below the blanked, occupied by a single person.

Nia approached it carefully. She gulped when she looked into features that looked exactly like that of Saesquar, just more … peaceful. With her eyes closed, her hair falling in cascades around her body and vanishing below the blanket, she was just like a princess that waited for the kiss of her beloved prince.

“Is she … sleeping?” Sonja whispered, as if she was afraid, that the woman could wake at any moment.

“She’s in a coma.” Saesquar walked in after them. The dark goddess sounded bitter.

“Did you do this?” Tina sounded hostile and seemed ready to attack her at any moment.

“Me?” The dark lady let out a sharp laugh. “No. She did that to herself.”

“I don’t understand …” Nia looked between the two women.

“Well, I promised you answers out of a strange whim. But I am a woman of my words.” Saesquar half bowed, half curtsied, with her arms open, as if welcoming someone. “The truth is, we’ve not always lived on this moon. We all once lived on Rygara itself.” The woman began to walk to the side, as if she would be describing a large circle around the bed in the center. “Luaria allowed the people to do what they pleased, and we watched how they created one technological marvel after the other. They even managed to create a machine that was capable of using magic.”

“Let me guess, disaster struck.” Nia crossed her arms. There were enough novels out there that she could tell how the story continued.

“Not yet, no.” Saesquar stopped and shook her head. Then she turned around and walked the other way. “It was a very slow process, but it led to the planet dying.” She stopped and turned to look at the bed. “And my mother thought it was a great idea to sacrifice me, so she could restore the balance!”

“Wait, wait, wait. What? Why?” Nia just felt steamrolled. She hadn’t expected that twist in the story.

“Well, now we get to the crux of the matter. The whole reason, why you are here.” Saesquar had this unsettling grin on her face. “You see, there’s a limited amount of divine essence in every world. The basis of a gods’ or a godesses’ power. When you are a god, and have a child, then you’re automatically transfer some of your divine essence to that offspring. The result is, that you’re suddenly not a great omnipotent being anymore.” Saesquar glared at Nia, daring her to figure the rest out.

“Then Luaria had to sacrifice you, in order to restore her own power and put everything back in order?”

The dark goddess nodded.

“But what have I to do with this?”

“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll get to it.” Saesquar continued on her way. "As you realized, mother needed her divine essence back, which meant that I had to die.” She stopped and looked at Nia. “The way you’re clinging to your own life, you should be able to understand, why I rebelled.” She stopped again and sighed. “Mother shouted at me, told me that I was selfish, made me into the dark goddess that needed to be fought to prevent the death of the world.”

“That’s … awful.” Sonja whispered.

“Was there no other way?” Nia looked at the woman as if she could give her an answer.

“Spare me the fake sympathy.” Saesquar glared at them and pressed her lips together. After a short while, she walked around the bed once more.

“Anyways, the planet was dying, and our people started to die with it.” Saesquar’s fingers dug into her arms. “Do you know how they manged to make machines capable of doing magic?”

“I have no idea.” Nia shook her head.

“They captured the souls of their own loved ones in those machines. Their spark of life. A spark of divine essence, if you will.”

“Couldn’t your mother reclaim those?” Nia looked at Luaria again, as if the woman would answer all of a sudden.

“The divine spark of a human individual is minuscule. My mother would have needed to kill most of them, which she didn’t want to do. Otherwise she wouldn’t have singled me out.”

“I meant the sparks from those machines.”

Saesquar stopped and sighed. “She couldn’t. The souls implanted in those machines changed.” The goddess looked at them. “She was basically bleeding divine essence since all of this started. And I was to be the scapegoat for her failings.” The dark lady clearly gnashed her teeth.

“So, in order to survive, you had to leave the planet? Couldn’t you just destroy all those machines?”

“We tried.” Saesquar looked tired all of a sudden. “The changed essence didn’t return to where it was supposed to go. It found other inanimate objects. Like stones. Other machines. Weapons.” Saesquar shook her head. “There was no getting it back. It was lost to us.”

“So you left the planet as a last resort.”

“My mother did. She transported everyone that was still alive to Acorus, this moon. Technology was outlawed. This is a peace of our planet that my mother kept, as a reminder of what once was.”

“But why is she like this?” Nia gestured at the unmoving body.

“After the transportation of our people, she still thought, she could fix all of this by reclaiming the essence she gave me.” Saesquar gnashed her teeth. “She had the gall to tell me that I am ‘a part of her,’ and that I should be glad for the opportunity to rejoin her.” Saesquar hit the window with her fist, shattering it.

“That doesn’t explain why you summoned us and other people. Or why she’s in a coma.” Nia crossed her arms.

“Right, the big question you needed answered.” Saesquar took a deep breath and walked away from the glass shards. The bed with her mother was between them, but Nia still got goosebumps all over.

“Do you know what happens during the inauguration of a new saint? One that’s from a different world?” Saesquar’s voice sounded like the whisper of a predator.

Nia shook her head.

“They’re given divine essence from this world, so they can fulfill their duty. During that process they get their own essence to form a union with this new essence, which gives them extraordinary powers. It also allows that new essence to change the body.”

“But wouldn’t giving me essence make the situation worse?”

“Not, if I can get it back. Including the essence from your world.”

Nia felt taken aback. “Wait. So you’re doing all this to steal power from other worlds?”

“That and the power of my mother.” Saesquar straightened. And looked to the ceiling. “She’s spending so much power on maintaining the life on this moon that she couldn’t fell into a coma when the first period of darkness hit.”

“So, I … We … are just a means to an end? So you can get stronger?”

Saesquar grinned. “Indeed. I want and need to get stronger to put everything back in order. To take over from my mother and save her at the same time. And you have a very promising essence.”

“So that’s what you meant by ‘you will be mine’.”

Saesquar grinned. “The important thing is, that now, I have you exactly where I want.”