24 – i – Leslie

Leslie rubbed his thumb against a thin metal strip around his middle finger. The ring was cool to the touch, feeling the same as the wedding band he wore one finger over. At the same time, warmth emanated from it, spreading throughout his body. It felt like coming home to a steaming cup of hot chocolate after shoveling snow off the walkway.

It almost made him feel like taking his jacket off. Almost.

Snow billowed around him in curtains so thick that he could barely see more than twenty feet ahead. He kept having to swipe his hand over his goggles just to see that far. The grooves his skis carved in the snow filled in behind him, lasting barely more than the second it took to slide forward.

A light tug at his waist had Leslie looking down to what should have been a bright yellow rope. Somehow, it looked faded, as if aged years and years to the point where the color had been bleached away by sun exposure. Following the line past the just-in-case quick-release carabiner, he found Delilah stomping in a new direction. Her overlarge snowshoes barely kept her above the almost water-like sheet of snow.

“Nya says this way,” she shouted. She didn’t need to shout—there wasn’t much wind and the snow didn’t make sound as it fell. The only other noise was the crunch of compacting snow as they maneuvered over it.

The Fixer, tethered to another line, called back, “Any sign of hostiles?”

“They’re out there,” Delilah answered, sounding unhappy. “But they aren’t doing much? I don’t know. Nya says this place feels wrong, like maybe the aspect is already dead, so the Flesh Thief things aren’t acting like proper guardians, or something.”

“Or something?”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me.”

“I’m asking Nya.”

Letting one of her ski poles hang from its strap, Delilah flipped The Fixer off. Trying to grab it again almost made her fall. Pinwheeling her arms to maintain her balance, she snagged the tether, yanking Leslie off balance. He planted both his poles ahead of him, keeping himself upright.

“Careful,” Leslie said as he slid forward. “You snag that quick-release and you might just vanish into the snow.”

Delilah stiffened. Reflective goggles hid her eyes and a scarf covered her mouth, but her body language relaxed slightly as, presumably, Nya spoke to her. “I can find my way out. You guys would be the ones in trouble.”

“That’s what the line is for.” Leslie gave a light tug on the third rope attached to his harness, the one leading back the way they came. There was a slight resistance as more of it unspooled back at the source, but no sign that it had snagged on anything like twigs, branches, or even the weight of the snow.

To the best that Leslie could tell, there were no twigs or branches, just snow and gentle, rolling hills.

Leslie’s watch beeped twice. “Let’s quit dawdling. We’ve got two hours before The Warrior’s experimental rings run out of juice.”

“I’m concerned about the change in direction,” The Fixer said, though they pivoted to remain near Delilah as she crunched along in their new heading. “If this aspect is nonfunctional, why has it moved?”

“Just because something is dead doesn’t mean it’s… dead.” Delilah shot a dirty look off to the side.

Leslie thought he saw paw prints for a bare fraction of a second before the snow rushed in.

“A being like The Mummy, and its subsidiary aspects, defy logic and reason,” Delilah said, obviously quoting her companion. “Nya says that whatever Erika is doing to these things is more deadly than actual death. Or… something.”

“Always or something,” The Fixer said with a verbal glare. Just as with Leslie and Delilah, they were covered in snow gear from head to snow shoes.

“Look, I barely know what we’re talking about half the time, and Nya doesn’t want to tell you everything because you keep trying to kill us. We’re—”

“If we could fight among ourselves a little less,” Leslie said, adopting a deeper voice, the kind he used when he needed his kids to understand something. “Let’s get Nya close enough to identify the god, then get out of here. Preferably before we encounter one of those Skin Thief things.”

Despite both of them having some countermeasure to mind-reading mimics, Leslie didn’t want to run across one. They had one objective for the night: figure out why Nya couldn’t name the aspect that lived here. She didn’t recognize the land, she didn’t know who the Skin Thieves belonged to, and she couldn’t identify it even after crossing the portal boundaries.

“How far?” The Fixer asked, gazing into the distance of their new direction.

Leslie wasn’t sure if The Fixer had some strange alien magic that would let them see, but he couldn’t see shit.

“Not far. Actually, close enough that we’re practically on top of it already.”

Leslie turned his attention down to his feet, and naturally saw nothing but snow. “I did bring an entrenching tool…” He had dug out snow caves before, even camping overnight in them. Even if the rings weren’t going to wear down over the next few hours, he wasn’t looking forward to digging.

“Not literally on top of it,” Delilah said, sounding somewhat relieved herself. “Nya thinks there should be some ruins poking out above the snow.”

“How would she…” Leslie aborted his question, deciding that how alien gods knew things probably wasn’t the right question. “What kind of ruins?”

The Fixer, one hand pressed to their brow to keep the snow that much further back, slid ahead of the group. “The top of a ziggurat? Square, carved columns?”

“That’s it. Where? Oh. Right in front of me.”

Squinting as he pushed himself forward on his cross-country skis, Leslie did not see it. It took advancing another dozen yards before a vague shape finally started to solidify in the distance, and even then it was only a shape. Without Delilah and The Fixer heading straight toward it, he could have easily passed by in the snowstorm.

The top of the ziggurat grew clearer with every passing moment, eventually reaching a point where he no longer had to focus. It was just there. A little square top, no larger than an average living room, with a flat roof overhead. Four columns, one at each corner, held the roof aloft. Despite the snowstorm, the top of the ziggurat lacked any accumulation, and even the mounding snow around the base seemed to shy away. With that kind of oddity, Leslie would have expected the ziggurat to be in the bottom of a large caldera of snow, not the top of a gentle hill, but he had long since stopped questioning things like that.

Instead, he found himself staring at the columns. They were… shapely, for lack of a better word. The columns weren’t Greco-Roman, but blob-like masses carved from a dark, forest green stone. Yet when he looked away, catching them just out of the corner of his eye, they looked more like people. Two people, one seated on another’s shoulders, arms raised above their heads to support the roof. As soon as he looked back, the illusion broke and the columns became nothing more than misshapen blobs once again.

“Does Nya recognize any of this?” The Fixer asked, resting a hand on the carved stone column.

Delilah didn’t answer right away, stomping off the snow and onto the flat surface of the ziggurat. She stopped just ahead of a large rectangular hole in the ground—stairs leading into its interior. “Not yet. It’s dark in there…”

Trudging out of the snow, Leslie hit the release catches for his skis, propping them up against the green stone. Pulling a fair amount of slack from the guideline, he wrapped it around the column. He didn’t like leaving it behind, but it was one thing to drag it across open terrain; potentially twisting and turning and ascending and descending through an interior would just get it caught and stuck. Tying it off with an anchor hitch, he gave a few tugs just to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere, then pulled a flashlight from his jacket.

“You didn’t lose your light, did you?” Leslie asked.

Delilah, still staring into the dark opening, jolted at his words. With a shake of her head, she dipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out an LED pen light, small but bright. She looked down at it, disappointed, like its existence betrayed her.

“This gives me vibes of that ██████ of Maggots’ place,” Leslie said, shuddering despite himself. “And we don’t have Erika.”

“The goal is to investigate and leave,” The Fixer said. “Though if I see something I can do, I’ll do my best.”

“Doesn’t smell half as bad as that place,” Leslie said with a small chuckle. “Maybe my nose has just frozen over.”

“The Warrior’s rings should have stopped that,” The Fixer said, alarmed. “Is yours not working properly?”

“It’s fine.” Leslie waved off the concern. “Just trying to put a little levity into this. Word of caution: be careful about any downward slopes. Might lead to a giant mouth… or worse.”

“What could be…” Delilah trailed off, staring off to the side of the stone platform. “Never mind. Nya says the mimics might not be our only adver… enemy inside.”

“Does Nya have any further insight? Perhaps the nature of these adversaries?” The Fixer asked in a condescending tone. When Delilah didn’t answer, they simply nodded as if that was expected, clicked on their flashlight, and started down the stairs.

She sighed at the obvious dismissal, but, after a quick glance at Leslie, hurried after The Fixer.

Leslie unslung his carbine from his back, peeling off the electrical tape that kept the bore clear of snow, and did a quick check of his ammunition as he followed the other two down the stairs. He shoved his goggles up his forehead and undid the front zipper of his jacket, letting a little of the cooler air in now that he wasn’t out and exposed to the raw elements.

To his relief, the air remained neutral, never growing to that vile meat-rot of the maggot ziggurat. Leslie wasn’t torn between holding his breath and getting a little oxygen to his brain. Perhaps because of that, he noticed his surroundings a whole lot more than the last time. Particularly, the walls of the stone tunnel.

Long, intricate carvings of faintly wavy lines, odd circles, and repeated triangles hugged the ceiling and floor like crown molding. There was probably a term for engravings in old places like this, but Leslie didn’t know it. Between the carved crown molding of the walls, someone had engraved murals. Pictographs. The kinds of things found in an old cave, depicting aliens building pyramids.

Most of these were nonsense to Leslie. He couldn’t discern many identifiable shapes, and it wasn’t helped by his vigilance over their surroundings. Hostile territory did not make for a good archaeological expedition. However, one segment caught his eye.

He stopped abruptly, flashlight trained on the wall. Three figures engraved in the mural walked down a corridor, one shorter than the other two, with a small cat-like creature trailing behind. Two steps forward, the three figures repeated, except one of the three was now a short distance away from the other two, no longer aiming a flashlight further down the corridor.

Two steps past that, and two of the figures were even further away. The depicted corridor took on a more jagged shape, with spikes coming from the ceiling and floor, just ahead of the forward-most figure.

“Fixer!” Leslie shouted out as the sound of granite grinding against granite echoed down the hall.

Thick slats of the stone ceiling angled downward, forming large teeth that slammed into the ground with a thud.

The Fixer wasn’t there anymore, gone in a blur before the slats finished moving. They caught Delilah by the scarf, dragging her back several steps, stopping at Leslie just as the ceiling crashed down.

“Traps,” The Fixer hissed, glaring at the chunk of ceiling as it slowly returned to its place overhead. “I don’t think I stepped on any triggers. How—”

Leslie tapped the wall with his flashlight.

The next mural depicted the shortest of the three figures seated on the floor, cat curled up on her lap. The other two figures stood facing the wall.

“Oh.” The Fixer stared, eyes unblinking as they stared over the entire wall. They reached out, pressing his fingers against the figures like he was trying to rub them off the wall. “I don’t like the implications of this.”

“Someone knew we were coming? Ancient prophecy or recent carvings?”

“Hopefully magic that changes the walls as we act…” The Fixer trailed off, sweeping the light down the whole corridor. “But unlikely.”

“It’s old,” Delilah said, sounding distraught. She hadn’t even looked at it, too busy focusing on her breathing. “We can go now, right? Clearly, we’re not wanted here.”

Leslie didn’t think it mattered whether they were wanted, but at the same time, he wasn’t so sure that Delilah was right. “Why warn us of a trap if they wanted us dead?”

“It’s possible that it’s an invitation for us,” The Fixer said. “Anyone else walking around down here might not have realized there was a trap, but because we are depicted, we noticed. This does not make me any more enthused.”

“Could it be something like Erika’s theory that the Final Judge broke away from The Mummy? Another Delilah-Nya situation?”

Delilah shook her head at Leslie’s question. “Nya doesn’t think any other entity has done what she did, including the Final Judge. Even she isn’t fully detached, or she wouldn’t have been able to lead us here.”

The Fixer walked down the corridor, back toward the crusher in the ceiling. The slats had retracted, leaving it looking like any other segment. They paused at the mural nearest to the crusher, frowning at the wall. “This depicts us walking through here,” they said, angling their light further down the wall. “And getting through to the other side without incident.”

The Fixer blurred, a smear in the air trailing to the other side of the crusher. “Might have arrow traps ahead.”

“You expect us to walk underneath it?” Delilah shouted, eyes wide as she stared up at the ceiling.

Leslie held out a hand for her. “Nya won’t let you come to harm. The Fixer is The Fixer. I’m the one who should worry,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t worry though. When I can’t sleep, I sometimes put on the Indiana Jones movies.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Delilah said, taking his hand and letting him help her up.

“Rick would have laughed. Or snorted. Rolled his eyes, at the very least.”

Delilah did roll her eyes, but not for the right reasons. With a sigh, she glanced off to the side. “Nya says the pictures on the walls are probably trustworthy. Something about this place is familiar. To her. Not me.”

“She’s been here before?”

“…We don’t know.” Delilah kept a hold of Leslie’s hand, squeezing tighter as they approached the crusher.

Though hesitant himself, Leslie was counting on The Fixer being fast enough to shove them out of the way. Their eyes were fixated on the ceiling, watching for any slight change in its appearance. Planting his boot down on the far side of the crusher, just past the slight grooves in the floor, Leslie couldn’t help but let out a held breath.

“So… someone wants us in here, huh?”

“Maybe. Guess we’ll see if the dart trap mural is accurate. It shows me sprinting past everything, triggering them ahead of you two.”

Glancing at the mural himself—two people hand-in-hand while the third smeared forward—Leslie gave them a nod.

The Fixer moved, once more triggering their powers. Tiny pockets in the wall, disguised with more decorative carvings, unleashed volleys of arrows in their wake. They plinked off the opposite walls, falling to the ground. Gentle slopes in the floor made the smooth, round darts roll until they collected in some grooves perfectly sized for their width. In short order, The Fixer stood at the opposite end, and the arrows all dropped away into their slots.

“Hold,” they said before Leslie could move. Darting back and forth twice more, The Fixer triggered a single trap they missed the first time around. Their third trip went smoothly. “The mural on the other side showed me going back,” they called out. “I think it’s good now?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Leslie said.

Again, The Fixer watched like a hawk as Leslie and Delilah hurried up the corridor, but their vigilance wasn’t required. The strip of corridor remained quiet and inert.

“I don’t like this,” The Fixer said as they reached the other side, and a split in the corridor.

“I like it better than having arrows in my back.”

“A prophecy this accurate… it doesn’t make me feel good about what might be in store.”

Leslie nodded. If it were just three people depicted on the walls, dodging traps, he might have figured it was some kind of generic warning to all trespassers. The cat and The Fixer’s blur made it obvious that this was directed at them.

“Looks like we might fall into a bubbling pool if we go left,” The Fixer said, frowning at the wall ahead of them.

The wall split the path into two identical-looking staircases. The mural on it looked like it singled out Leslie himself this time.

“I think I’m shooting something. Fire to light up a torch, maybe?” Checking the next loaded shot on his carbine, Leslie found a bright red tipped bullet sitting in the chamber. “This is starting to get creepy, but as long as it’s helping us…”

“To what end?” The Fixer muttered, hand cupping their chin.

Delilah stood between them, fingers lightly touching an odd, curved bar in the mural between the two depictions of what they might face. “Nya says we should continue. She won’t say more, but this place is growing familiar. Maybe a long lost cousin.”

The Fixer nodded. “Good. As soon as she figures out the title of this aspect, we can turn around.”

“Yeah…” Delilah said, fingers lingering even as she turned, dark eyes boring down the stairs to the right. She took the first steps, making Leslie worry.

Delilah wasn’t one to charge in first.