Riverside Temple
"You must be pretty special to get a door like that," Cassidy says. She was only familiar with magnetic locks and the like. "So, I do believe we had one more part of your tour?"
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Riverside Temple
"You must be pretty special to get a door like that," Cassidy says. She was only familiar with magnetic locks and the like. "So, I do believe we had one more part of your tour?"
Riverside Temple
"No, not necessarily special. Just lucky, very lucky. And yes, there's another part to the tour; we need to go downstairs again. It's the basement and escape tunnel; we dug them ourselves. Or rather, we asked giant worms to dig them for us and then smoothed everything and made it all square and flat and things. Please, follow me." Defelent will turn and start walking back to the ladder and he won't stop until he's back at the Altar Room.
Riverside Temple
Cass nods and follows Defelent downwards. She'd definitely like to see the escape tunnel and where it goes.
Riverside Temple
"Basement first. It's through here- press this button disguised as a two-tailed scorpion. See?" He presses the button and another door opens up, beyond which is a set of stairs heading down. It's rather gloomy and it isn't very pleasant. The lighting is still magical candles glowing, but they aren't as bright as the others. The basement is quite large, and there's three visible doors. "That door is the armoury; it's heavily reinforced, and most of the weapons beyond are enchanted. You'll get your pick when you're a Novice. Or, perhaps more accurately, a weapon will choose you." They're slightly sentient; they're very old, and the magic has granted them a rudimentary intelligence. Not enough to talk, but enough to choose a wielder. "That door leads to the toilets. I'm afraid there's no separate male and female areas, but there's not very many people here so it should be OK. And that door is the escape tunnel. Only use it in emergencies; Dalachrech's Glory tends to attract invertebrates that like the dark. When you're a full cleric, they won't attack you, but until then they might see you as prey. Except for the giant snails, anyway. They're quite friendly."
Riverside Temple
Cassidy initially likeshearing about an armory, but she figures there probably won't be any guns. She doesn't much mind the gloominess of the place, it was better than the sewer she had to sleep in once. "So I'll basically be here to use the toilet until I become a Novice?"
Riverside Temple
Who needs guns when the weapons wielded by the clergy include: A club that, whilst slower than normal, has the momentum of a train, a sickle that speeds its wielder up whenever it sheds blood, and a mace that causes far more pain than it should with its blows?
"That's everyone's toilet." And he pointed at a different door each time, so there's no man-eating centipedes in it. "It's also a bathroom, with a shower, and all that." And there's a kitchen down here too, making that four doors. I forgot about that one.
Riverside Temple
Cass would probably like a gun more, but she might carry a super magic weapon for backup.
"I definitely like showers." Back home, her water was rationed, so she couldn't take showers very often. There's at least one good thing about this place.
Riverside Temple
"Omid, the other cleric that works here, doesn't enjoy showers very much. He's a Janni, a type of genie comprised of all four elements. He usually complains about how hard it is to find any decent fire to balance him out. A little known fact about our world is that whilst it is created from the four elements, Fire is the least common." Or at least it's the one that is the hardest to encounter in a modern city.
Riverside Temple
"Sounds like Elemental Spirits back home." Cass keeps thinking about Seattle. She really missed her hometown, hellhole that it was.
Riverside Temple
"He's a physical embodiment of all four elements, yes. However, those four elements make up the entire world, and that includes us. He seems human, despite his origins." Most genies do; it's what separates them from the true elementals.
Riverside Temple
"Not quite like Spirits, then." Those definitely don't seem human at all. "Anything else?"
Riverside Temple
"There's this room. In here, clerics perform some rituals and ceremonies to relax, meditate and clear the mind." Defelent opens a slightly secret door and reveals a well-lit chamber with several sensory deprivation pods lying in it, a bank of lockers and a changing room. The floor has several mats on it, and there's a two-tailed scorpion painted onto the ceiling near one of the walls. "The two-tailed scorpion on the ceiling marks where the altar stands. It's roughly right; the spacial distortion makes it hard to be entirely certain."
Riverside Temple
"I'm guessing I'll be here pretty often, then?" Cassidy asks. At least every morning, from what she can guess.
Riverside Temple
"You can come here whenever you like. As a student, you don't have any religious duties- that includes compulsory ceremonies. However, I will teach you how to meditate and open your mind to Dalachrech; that's something which I prefer to do in here. Just in case; the room is warded against most extraplanar visitors to prevent you leaving your body and having a wander around only to discover something has inhabited your brain and walked your body off. Don't worry; it's not a large risk, especially not in here, but it is still a risk when you're learning." As this is fantasy meditation not real meditation.
Riverside Temple
"Good to know you've got my safety in mind," Cassidy says before grinning. Seems she can joke when she feels like it.
Riverside Temple
"Only because convincing a mind-parasite to leave the mind of a student is very frustrating and difficult. I'm saving me the trouble." It's hard to tell how serious he is, though he is grinning as he says it.
Riverside Temple
"Aw, and I thought you liked me." Cassidy says while faking a disappointed look.
Riverside Temple
"Oh, I do, Twig, I do. So, shall we go up and choose a bedroom for you?" They're all very similar- large, with a four-poster double bed, an expansive wardrobe currently empty, a bedside cabinet with a glowing candle and a black box to put over it (as they can't be extinguished) and a large chest at the foot of the bed for other personal belongings. Some also have a bookshelf, and others have boxes under the bed.
Riverside Temple
"Yeah, sure." Cassidy doesn't take much time to pick a room, she's not particularly picky about that. She picks a room close to one of the stair cases that also has a bookshelf.
Riverside Temple
"Now that that's all sorted, you can have this. The rest of the day's your own, I don't expect you to read it as I don't think I've taught you the language it's in yet, and the first lesson is in the Meditation Chamber at 10AM, OK?" Defelent hands Cassidy a leather-bound book with a two-tailed scorpion burnt into the cover. It's the Dalachrechian holy book, and it's written in Abyssal.
[Riverside Temple]
"Thank you very much, Defelent," Cassidy says. "For this opportunity, and for showing me around. If you'll excuse me, I'd like to lie down."
Riverside Temple
"Don't worry about it, Twig. I'll see you later. If you need me, I'll probably be in my office. The catgirls will know for certain; feel free to ask one of them." Defelent will smile and leave, unless Cassidy tries to stop him anyway.
Riverside Temple
Cassidy smiles back and lets Defelent leave before removing her trench coat and laying on her bed. She kinda wishes she had a commlink so she could listen to some music. In any case, she won't move much. She flops through the book a couple of times, but doesn't bother trying to read it.
Riverside Temple
There's a plug she could connect a music player to, and a variety of adapters in the bedside cabinet. There's little uniformity in the Nexus; I'd imagine the plug to be a three-hole British one, with a long metal earth prong and two shorter live prongs below it.
Anyway, the book's written in Abyssal, and it doesn't use the alphabet that you are reading. Its letters are long, flowing, and contain many spiky projections. It was designed to be written using knives on living flesh and to cause as much pain as possible in the process, and that might come out in the letters.
Riverside Temple
Cass doesn't have any music players on her, that was pretty much all her commlink was for.
She puts the book down. Didn't look very inviting. She didn't have much to do, but she also didn't sleep easily. So she just lays on the bed and recounts the runs she's taken in the past.
Riverside Temple
Nothing further will happen whilst Cassidy is awake. I'm as yet undecided for her sleep, however.
Riverside Temple
Cass eventually goes to sleep. She usually only sleeps for four-to-six hours a night, so it won't be long before she wakes again.
Riverside Temple
Cassidy might have a dream. In the dream, she's standing on a spire of rock to which somebody she recognises as an enemy or whom she otherwise dislikes has been chained. They aren't wearing any clothing, and screaming in pain and terror as the surrounding sea of flesh-eating beetles slowly crawls up their lower legs, devouring the flesh as they eat. This will continue until the person has been totally devoured, despite the fact that when it's just their head left they cannot continue screaming as their lungs have been devoured. At this point, the beetles slowly retreat, revealing a skeleton which quickly regenerates its lost flesh; when that's complete, the process starts again with the beetles nibbling on the soles of the feet as the person starts screaming again. When you are a cleric, your enemies are My enemies, and this is the fate for My enemies. At that point, the dream should end.
Riverside Temple
Oddly enough, Cassidy doesn't have many explicit enemies. There have been rival gangs and other runners, but that's all a part of Seattle. That said, she cant's say she doesn't enjoy the sight of the Lone Star badge who chased her for weeks on end having his flesh eaten by beetles.
When she wakes up, she sits up so her black's against the wall and thinks about the dream for a bit. If there's a window, she'll watch the sun come up.
Riverside Temple
There is indeed a window. Due to the spatial distortions used by the Temple, the view's slightly distorted- everything looks slightly further away than it should be at the edges of the window whilst simultaneously seeming nearer in the middle. It's fine, so long as she doesn't look at a straight line- they stay straight, despite the distortion making them look decidedly headachy.