A Temple

As we walked through the grey woods, I listened to Orrin happily chatter about some of his past adventures. I couldn’t keep my focus on his words, so they only came in bits and pieces.

He had climbed a waterfall, arm-wrestled a mage, ate the strangest mutated foods, and all manners of things on other worlds.

I nodded to show I was listening, even though that was not the case. The woods melted away as we approached a small clearing. Orrin broke from his stories to look around; perhaps he thought we had made it back to the camp.

I, on the other hand, became fixed on an unexpected sight. Pink blossoms shown brightly on some otherwise grey trees. My feet began to move me closer before my thoughts caught up. Before I realized it, I stood close and reached out to the pink petals.

“Orrin, they're pink!” I exclaimed. I must have sounded like a small child.

“That they are,” was the only reply I got from the unimpressed green man as his attention turned back to me.

I might have looked in his direction if another splash of color didn’t light up the grey scene.

A familiar green frog was sitting on a stone structure. It was only after I adjusted to the surprise color of the small creature that I realized the stones themselves were massive.

The best way to describe it was a temple of some kind. It was shaped like a pyramid, though it was not smooth from base to point. Instead, the structure looked like several square buildings had been stacked one on top of the other. Each individual section consisted of a columned perimeter. Inside the columns was a closed-off section that hid the rest of the building.

At the top, a sculpture had been fashioned. From the ground, it was hard to tell what it depicted, but it looked humanoid at the very least.

Like almost everything else in the strange world, the building and all its art was grey.

As if to greet me, a sound of sliding stone echoed. A slab on the bottom of the pyramid moved to reveal an entryway just past the columns.

The frog hopped away from the temple and into the woods as soon as the sound began, but I didn’t make any effort to follow where it went.

What was this structure? It was the largest thing I had seen by far.

“Well, we should get going,” Orrin said. His voice didn’t have any surprise in it, but he had to look the same way I was and see the odd temple. I didn’t move along with him as he tried to walk away. Instead, my feet drew close to the new opening; it felt as if something might have wrapped around me and pulled me in, though I felt no such sensation. “Wait, Kiko!” Orrin shouted as he chased me into the dark temple. The slab slid shut so quickly one might have found it hard to believe it was made from a heavy stone.

We were trapped in a dark room, though it didn’t stay dark for long. As if to invite us in, torches along the walls suddenly lit. The fires burst one at a time as they went down the hall, almost as if they were suggesting we should follow them. I looked around the space.

The inside of the temple was covered with paintings. I could make out forms of people and animals but had no way to know what the intention behind them was. A large group seemed to be pointing spears at a winged dragon of some kind. There wasn’t much point in dwelling too much on the art, so I turned to Orrin.

The orange of the flame dulled the green he wore slightly and added a little color to his pale complexion. His face remained casual and relaxed as he assessed the situation.

“Well, that is unfortunate,” Orrin finally said as he looked to the sealed shut doorway. “Guess we need to find another way out!” He began to walk down the hallway, following the path the torches laid out.

“Is there another doorway?” I asked as I followed after.

I looked behind me as we walked away. It felt as if something was watching for a moment, but there was nothing behind us.

“Oh, there’s more than one way out of this building….” Orrin replied.

“Do you know what this structure is?” I asked while turning back his way.

“Hard to say, but we tend to avoid it.”

“Whys that?”

“Hopefully, you won’t have to find out. Just watch out for traps.”

Orrin seemed to swerve to the left of the hallway. A click was heard under his foot, and he froze while holding a hand out to stop me.

Hundreds of arrows suddenly shot out of the wall at the green-clad man. I started in horror, but somehow, not one arrow connected with his body. Even his large, curly, green hair was left untouched.

“How…”

“Wow, what good fortune! Just stay behind me!” Orrin said with a smile.

The process continued several times. Orrin accidentally set off a trap, but the system would miss or malfunction and allow us to pass easily. It was far too often to be a coincidence, even though Orrin tried to pass it off as one.

After a while, I figured it was best to give up trying to get an explanation. He was clearly not going to give me one.

I wasn’t sure how long we had been trapped in the temple, but as time passed, I began to feel like calling it a maze was more apt. We made turn after turn, and it seemed like we were getting nowhere.

I felt a dryness in my throat. Was I thirsty or nervous? I couldn’t tell.

Perhaps due to the dryness, the sound of water flowing suddenly was in my perception. I turned to look for the source. Hopefully, this wasn’t some kind of flooding trap.

There was nothing to see but the stony hallways and torches that lit our way. Orrin had gotten several paces in front of me and continued to set off a trap or two as he walked.

We came to a fork in the hallway. One path continued straight, and the other was a sharp turn to the left. Orrin kept moving forward, but I stopped a moment to look down the second path. The sound of water clearly echoed down that hall.

I shook my head and turned back forward, but there was no longer anyone leading the way. Orrin was gone.

Not only was he gone, but the path had disappeared and now led only to a dead end. I blinked several times.

There had been no sound, nothing to indicate that another trap had been set off. The wall didn’t even look like it could move. I came close to it and pressed my hand to the cold stone.

“Orrin!” I tried shouting, but there was no telling if he could hear my voice as it echoed around the space. I sighed. I had few options of what to do, but staying in one place wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I turned to the open hallway where the sound of water came and began my walk down it.