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His cries turned frantic, echoing wildly through the vast temple. His wide eyes were filled with dread, as if Ian were some unspeakable spectre conjured to bring about calamity.
"Relax," Ian replied casually. "I'm just having a peek… The one I'm tracking might be hiding inside. And if he escapes, well, then you'll know what real catastrophe looks like."
Ian wasn't trying to mock their beliefs; he was genuinely concerned that the entity he was pursuing, who went by the name Malfoy, had taken refuge here. The notion of rousing a 'slumbering god' struck him as ludicrous.
Superstition. Ritualised fear.
Even in a world steeped in magic, some ideas stretched beyond belief.
After all, Ian had spent countless hours within the Twilight Realm, learning from ghosts of the greatest witches and wizards who ever lived. He knew far more about "deities" than any of these so-called priests.
He was raising one, after all, a skeletal remnant of a god-like being bound to his own will.
Without hesitation, Ian pulled back the veil.
At once, a stale, musty odour hit him, a scent so thick with decay it nearly made him gag. Whatever was sealed inside had not been disturbed in centuries.
A faint mouldiness hung in the air, like the walls of a damp dungeon.
At the centre of the chamber sat a grotesque, humanoid figure, slumped upon a cracked stone throne. Its skin, an unnatural greenish-grey, was blistered with long-dead boils. Its limbs were uneven, twisted together like the limbs of half a dozen corpses, grotesquely fused.
And the face… the face was something from a nightmare.
Sunken sockets stared back with hollow, black eyes. Its lips, dry, broken, cracked, peeled away to reveal a gnarled row of yellow, crooked teeth. It looked like something brewed in Knockturn Alley, not born of nature.
"Charming 'god' you lot have here," Ian muttered dryly. Yet he didn't bother covering his nose. There was no real smell of death now, no rot, no blood. The skin was so dried and shrivelled, there was barely moisture left to stink.
It was as though time itself had drained the creature of every drop of life.
Its sinew had long receded, leaving nothing but tightly drawn skin over brittle bones. In places, the flesh had collapsed entirely, leaving only deep gouges where muscle once clung. Every joint looked fragile, one nudge, and it might crumble.
Repulsed as he was, Ian adapted quickly. He drew closer, examining it with the curiosity of a scholar.
"A body untouched by corruption…?" He wondered aloud, brushing his fingers across its arm. It was dry and cold, like stone, completely lifeless.
"Ah," Ian said softly, the pieces falling into place. His interest evaporated. With a bored expression, he turned and strode out of the bronze chamber.
Upon seeing him emerge unscathed, the high priest and his entourage exhaled in collective relief. The little girl, dressed in flowing ceremonial robes, peeked out from behind the robed figures, wide-eyed and silently fascinated by Ian's calm defiance.
"You, you have blasphemed!" The high priest shouted, unable to restrain himself. "You know not the depth of your sin! Get down from there at once!"
With a furious growl, the high priest began climbing the steps to the altar himself.
None of the others followed.
"Does no one here understand alchemy?" Ian asked, baffled. "You've been worshipping that thing like it's the embodiment of magic, when it's clearly just a biological alchemical construct."
He gave an exasperated sigh, gesturing toward the chamber.
"That's not a god, it's a shattered experiment! Honestly, if I couldn't sense even the faintest trace of magical resonance in you, I'd doubt whether any of you were real wizards at all."
He didn't intend to belittle them. Not really.
But in Ian's eyes, these people weren't protectors of ancient wisdom, they were its betrayers. They had built an entire belief system around an alchemical relic, mistaking rust and bone for divinity.
And that, in truth, was the real blasphemy.
"Get down!!!"
The high priest didn't want to waste breath arguing with Ian. Though the altar's sacred aura made him hesitant to cast spells, his large, imposing frame enabled him to scramble up the steps in an attempt to seize the young wizard by force.
"No need to rush. I know the way down," Ian said calmly, watching the priest's approach. He was preparing to Disapparate when he caught the sudden shift in the man's face, from rage to pure, unfiltered terror.
"It's awake! It's actually awake this time!"
"Merlin preserve us! Is that… is that the god who slaughtered thousands?!"
"Utterly terrifying!"
…
The other priests, still on the temple floor, began to wail in panic, dropping their relics and robes as they turned to flee. The high priest, halfway up the steps, lost his footing entirely and plummeted back with a graceless thud.
"Thud~"
The sound echoed in the silent hall.
That fall had to hurt.
It was the sort of crack that usually meant a fractured rib, or three.
"Don't push! Let me go first!" The high priest bellowed, face contorted with pain. Still, adrenaline overruled agony, and he rolled and limped toward the temple doors like a man possessed.
"Eh?" Ian blinked.
Something felt… wrong.
He slowly turned around, and sure enough, the withered corpse that had sat lifeless upon the throne was now upright, looming silently behind him. Its head, sunken and shrunken, lolled unnaturally as it tilted to examine him.
The creature stood like a marionette wrenched into shape by invisible strings. Its bones jutted from gaunt limbs, skin clinging like paper to splintered wood. Its eyes were pits, dark, vacant voids, but Ian felt their chill reach into his core.
"Hello," Ian said, giving a polite nod.
His wand was already raised and a brilliant jet of magic burst from its tip.
"Bang!"
The blast struck the creature squarely. In an instant, the alchemical monster was torn apart, disintegrating into ash as Fiendfyre erupted and devoured what remained of its body.
It had no chance to resist.
Just as Ian had suspected, it was nothing more than a defunct magical construct. Perhaps powerful in its prime, but now no better than a shambling Inferius.
"It wasn't nearly as terrifying as you lot thought," Ian muttered.
When he turned around again, the temple was empty; everyone had fled. Everyone except the little girl, still kneeling motionless near the base of the platform, her wide eyes locked onto him.
Her expression held awe… and confusion.
"I think we can all be reasonable here," Ian began, his voice light. "You saw it, right? He, er, it, was the one who moved first. It was clearly an unfair ambush. Opened with hostility. Revealed its… blood bar first, so to speak."
He caught himself and corrected quickly, realising his phrase might not translate well across eras. "What I mean is, it attacked first. Not very sporting."
"It really was just a damaged alchemical construct," he added with a sigh.
Ian held her gaze, this girl they called the Dream Queen. The temple now stood hollow and still, an eerie calm settling between them. The silence hung heavily in the air.
She didn't speak. Just stared, stunned, unblinking.
The quiet was beginning to get on Ian's nerves. He was not fond of awkward pauses, and her wide-eyed look, somewhere between reverence and sheer disbelief, made him feel more out of place than usual.
(To Be Continued…)