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Rogan's Monsters 3: Temple, page 1

 

Rogan's Monsters 3: Temple
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Rogan's Monsters 3: Temple


  Rogan’s Monsters 3

  Temple

  Jack Porter

  Copyright © 2020 by Jack Porter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Also by Jack Porter

  1

  Zera launched herself out over the cave and into the wide-open sky with a wordless cry of pure joy. She flitted about on iridescent wings, and her every move suggested she was enjoying her newfound freedom.

  Part of me wanted to join in on her indulgent display. We had all been trapped in the caves for too long, and it felt good to finally step into the sunshine once more. Yet I knew that just because we had reached the end of the caves, it didn’t mean we were out of danger.

  This world I had found myself in didn’t take prisoners. Death seemed to lie in wait around every corner, awaiting the incautious, and I was damned if I was going to let it get catch me or my companions by surprise.

  Nor was I the only one to treat our exit with caution. Camille had her knives out, and Ash had her club at the ready. All three of us took a moment to assess our surroundings, blocking Gamma and Ecco’s way out.

  Edda had already started to chirp and gesture in irritation at the hold-up, but to me, that was a small price to pay if it meant keeping everyone safe.

  It was apparently late afternoon, and while the sun shone, it wasn’t bright enough for me to use my chi-powered AC lens. So I blinked a few times as I waited for my eyes to adjust, and for the second time since that Wraith had used its power to invoke the death of a thousand suns, I found myself looking at an alien landscape.

  When I had first woken in the body of a stranger, it was into a world of sand, in the shadow of a broken starship. It had taken days to cross the wastelands, and nothing I had seen in that time had altered my initial impression. It was like Death Valley, a dry, hostile place with only the hardiest of plants and animals calling it home.

  The landscape I was looking at now carried reminders of the Wastes, but it was different as well, more rocky, perhaps even harsher, with patches of white and yellow salts, and even a few twisted, remains of what might once have been trees. In the distance, higher up, there were also wisps of fog clinging to the rocks, and when I inhaled, I caught a faint but distinct whiff of sulfur.

  The whole area came across as volcanic, and I wondered if there wouldn’t be geysers or hot pools nearby.

  But for all that, there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger, so I followed Camille and Ash out, to the tune of Gamma uttering a loud and somewhat pointed sigh of relief as Edda’s chittering faded.

  There was one more member of our party to come, and I wasn’t entirely sure she would greet the outside world with the same enthusiasm and relief as the rest of us. I turned back to the cave and saw Ecco, a beautiful, ethereal woman who still retained the ears and tail of a fox, and who wore an uncertain expression on her face.

  She was looking around, her eyes wide and worried, and noticed me staring.

  “I’ve never been out of the caverns before,” she said, telling me something I already knew.

  I painted an expression of encouragement on my face and held out my hand. “There’s nothing to it,” I said. “Just put one foot in front of the other, just like you’ve always done before.”

  The fox girl nodded, took my hand, and drew in a deep breath for courage at the same time. Then she stepped outside onto the sandy earth, into what was left of the sunlight.

  I gave her a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked her. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think that of all of us, Ecco was the odd one out. Everyone else was committed to a quest, that of finding the Hidden Temple. Perhaps Zera and Camille had their own reasons, and hadn’t been part of the original questing party, but the end result was the same. We were all heading in the same direction.

  But Ecco was new to the world. Her only commitment had been to help us escape from the caves. Now she had done that, there was nothing binding her to the rest of us.

  She didn’t have to come with us. Didn’t have to do anything if she didn’t want to.

  I felt my face grow grim at the thought. In the short time I’d known her, I had come to like Ecco a lot, and even if she had changed since Gamma had healed the seed from which she had sprung, there was still much of her original self remaining.

  I was wondering if this was the right time to turn all these thoughts into words when I felt the first hint of a shudder beneath from beneath my feet.

  Ecco looked at me with a mixture of fear and surprise in her eyes. “The caverns!” she said. At first, I didn’t understand what she meant, but then she explained. “They need me—or the seed at least—to retain their structure! Without it, they will collapse!”

  There was a tone of horror in her voice, and I understood that she was facing a critical choice. Ecco had to decide what was more important to her. Her newly-won freedom and the uncertainty of life in the world, or the caverns, the place she had called her home for the past couple of hundred years. Because it would have to be one or the other.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “Can you just leave the seed?”

  After Gamma had used her healing potion to repair a crack in the seed’s surface, joining the two halves of Ecco back together, she had also used her shrinking potion, the one that had brought Ash down to normal human size and shrank the wagons down to the point where we could carry them in a glass tube. The wagons and the beasts that had drawn them were long gone, crushed beneath the weight of a monster in the caves, but Gamma still had the potion.

  She had shrunk the seed down to the size of a pebble, and offered it to Ecco in a small, leather pouch.

  The fox girl wore the pouch at her waist.

  She shook her head. “It defines me,” she said. “I grow stronger the closer I am to it, and weaker the further away. It is who I am.”

  As she spoke, I could hear the distress in her voice. She didn’t know what to do, and the rumbling vibration was growing stronger. Save for Zera, who was still flitting about, the others had turned back toward us, with expressions ranging from curiosity to concern.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked the fox girl.

  For a moment, she almost panicked, as if she didn’t truly know. Then she calmed herself and held my eye. “I want to go with you,” she said.

  It was all I needed to hear. I gave her a nod, conscious that the ground I stood on had become unstable. I still held Ecco’s hand, and used that grip to pull her into motion. “Then let’s go,” I said. I turned to the others. “Hurry,” I said. “If the whole cave system is collapsing beneath us, there may be sinkholes and worse. And I don’t want to face anything that might be able to survive such a collapse if it chooses to crawl to the surface.”

  We hurried away from the cave, with Zera flitting along overhead, largely oblivious to what was going on at ground level, at least to begin with.

  But that obliviousness couldn’t last. The rumbling and hidden collapse of the cave system quickly grew to the point where the ground started to shake violently, with increasingly loud sounds of rocks grinding and distant rumbles, and clouds of dust starting to develop even at the surface.

  The butterfly girl drew closer even as the rest of us increased our pace, trying to outrun the collapse that seemed to spread out beneath our very feet.

  “Just how big was this cave system?” I grated under my breath as a chunk of earth as big as a small car disappeared beneath my feet, making me stumble.

  “Stay there,” I called to Zera. “You’re safer in the air.”

  “It is extensive,” Ecco said, an apology in her voice. “We have yet to reach the edge. Let me try…” she said, but trailed off instead of finishing. I couldn’t spare the time to look at her, but didn’t need to. I was still holding her hand and could sense her exercise her chi. In moments, the earth around us all seemed to grow calmer, even as the subterranean earthquake continued. I knew Ecco was doing her best to hold the jagged and broken hills together so that we could make it out of the danger zone. And I knew that if we had far to go, the amount of chi energy she would expend doing so would be enormous.

  Yet what else could we do?

  “Fuck,” I muttered again. Then, “Hurry!” Ash and Camille both responded to my command, and even Gamma, who was not built for such physical rigors, did her best. As for me, I lightened my feet and made use of the Divine Steps.

  There were no foe
s to battle. No revenants, no monsters, no Wraiths or anything else. My oversized sword, still in my favored configuration, remained sheathed over my shoulders. But that didn’t mean the training the Rogan of this time had undergone was useless.

  The Steps allowed me to move with greater certainty than I could possibly have managed before. With Ecco dampening the worst of the effects of the collapse, I glided from boulder to boulder, touching the earth for only the briefest of moments before launching myself away to the next safe spot, often an impossible distance or angle away.

  If it had just been me, I could have escaped from the zone of collapse within moments, speeding beyond the growing circumference of danger. But I could not leave my companions behind, could not risk losing them to something as mundane as a cavern collapse, especially not after all the things we had been through.

  Camille was sure on her feet, able to scamper about like a wild thing, keeping low and using her hands for balance. Even Ash was managing well enough, using her club as a walking staff, keeping three points of contact with the ground at all times. But Ecco and Gamma were different. Neither of them possessed the physicality of the other two. So I did what I could, picking Ecco up, whisking her along before setting her down and returning for Gamma, using the Steps to the best of my ability to carry them both along.

  If I could have picked them both up and slung them over my shoulders, I would have. But Gamma would have protested the treatment, complaining about the insult to her dignity. So I did it the hard way, moving back and forth between them, lifting each gently as gently and respectfully as I could.

  Even then, I half expected Gamma to say something, but to my surprise, she accepted my ministrations without a word.

  Edda, however, was not so restrained. The six-legged monkey symbiote-thing that was part of Gamma herself scampered along after me, hurling a never-ending stream of chittering insults my way.

  I knew that the creature’s behavior was a reflection of Gamma’s emotional state, and couldn’t help but wish that the princess could just accept my aid in the spirit with which it was offered.

  But I didn’t respond. Didn’t curse the creature out, or even acknowledge its stream of wordless bile. I had a job to do, and I intended to do it. I would keep Gamma and Ecco both safe, regardless of what Gamma’s other self thought.

  And anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure Gamma could help it. Perhaps it was a reflection of her more primitive self, a slave to her unreasoning monkey brain. Perhaps Edda could only respond to fear, to anger, to hunger, and to the most basic needs and desires. For all I knew, she lacked the capacity to control her reactions the way Lady Gamma herself and everyone else did.

  As I continued to dance over the rocks, my robes billowing out behind me as I spun about, I felt the beginnings of a grin. If I thought of Edda as Gamma’s id, bereft of her ego and superego, perhaps that would make the creature easier to bear.

  For the moment, it was enough that the creature was surefooted, and that I didn’t have to help her in any way beyond making sure I didn’t inadvertently step on her tail.

  Finally, Ecco was able to ease up in her efforts. We had passed beyond the expanding zone of collapse. Yet we didn’t pause, instead continuing up the broken, jagged hills for some time, putting the destruction behind us.

  Eventually, we came to a plateau, an almost supernaturally flat area where the sand seemed to be made up of pinks and greens to go with the more usual yellow and tan. By unspoken agreement, we all stopped to rest, with Zera finally gliding down to land.

  Ecco stood at the edge of the plateau, looking back at the way we had come. What she was thinking, I couldn’t say. But I stood next to her for a while, grimly aware that I could still hear the grinding of rock against rock, and could still feel the echo of a vibration through my feet as the cave system continued to collapse. The sky was starting to darken, the multi-colored aurora that had been our constant companion through the Wastes starting to brighten. Yet I could still clearly make out the depression, the new, bowl-shaped valley that had appeared with the cavern’s collapse.

  Part of that depression was hidden behind layers of dust that seemed to hang in the air. But other parts were clear, and I could make out the edge of the collapse with ease.

  “There is no going back,” Ecco said.

  “No. But would you want to?” I asked her.

  She frowned, as if unsure how to answer. “Things are different now,” she said. She looked at her hands in that peculiar gesture she had, as if reassuring herself that she was indeed real. “For the longest time, I was the caverns. Or at least, I shared them with my sister. It was like we were opposites struggling against each other all the time, but always within the confines of the caverns. They were my—our—entire existence. But then you came along, and I was able to take a real form. All of a sudden, I became… me. And the world—I knew there was more to it. Knew there had to be.”

  Ecco turned around, taking in the broken sky, the rocks, the few twisted remains of the trees, everything. She broke out into a grin. “I was safe in the caverns. Everything there was under my control, or that of my sister. I don’t know what dangers there may be out here. I don’t know much of anything. But I would like to find out.”

  I nodded. There wasn’t much I had to say.

  “And besides, if I need to, I can always build more caverns. And I can hide within the seed if it comes to that.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by hiding in the seed, but before I could ask, Camille had joined us. “I am going to hunt,” the fierce lizard woman announced. “Although I doubt I will find much, given the way the world continues to shake. And I will seek a source of fresh water as well. Now that we are out of the caves, we will need to conserve what we have, and seek springs where we can.”

  I knew that Camille was right. My water skin was full from the caverns, but it wouldn’t last for many days out under the broken sky. And we didn’t have Gamma’s supply wagons anymore.

  “Do you want to come with me?” the lizard woman asked.

  I knew she could be asking for more than a hunting companion, and in fact, she probably was. We both knew that of the two of us, her skills in that area far surpassed mine. But out there, on that plateau, Gamma, Zera, and Ecco were exposed. I shook my head.

  “I will stay here and keep an eye on things. Perhaps take Ash with you instead?” I asked.

  Camille didn’t argue. She simply accepted my decision and turned away. “Try to get a fire started while I am away,” she said. “On the off chance that I do manage to find something.”

  2

  I did as the lizard woman suggested, using the dead wood that still stood here and there, lighting them with a burst of my chi. By the time Ash and Camille returned, with a single fat lizard-thing between them, the others were gathered close to a decent, smokeless fire. The dried wood remnants burned surprisingly well, not too swiftly, which had been my main concern. And within a very short time, Camille’s lizard creature was cooking over a spit.

  As the aroma of cooking meat got my taste buds going, Gamma began pulling out different vials from within her robes, muttering as she did. As usual, Edda’s reaction was more vocal. The monkey creature jumped up and down on the spot and let out a series of chittering screeches that to me indicated a mix of uncertainty and fear.

  “What’s the matter?” Zera asked the princess.

  Gamma bit her lip and cast a glance at the butterfly girl. To begin with, it seemed as if she might choose not to answer, but when she saw that the rest of us were watching her as well, she did.

  “I have so little remaining,” she said. She gestured at the potions laid out before her, of which there were only four. “There is only a small amount of the healing potion left,” she said.

 
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