Dario paused, so agonizingly close to his cock that Culebra could feel every breath. "You are going to rest, especially if you want to climb up the mountain instead of leaving like a sensible god."
Culebra started to say more, but the combination of Midori's hungry mouth and suddenly bold hands with Dario's mouth dropping over his cock snatched away any ability Culebra had to think. "I can't—"
"Don't," Midori murmured in his ear. "Don't do anything, but feel, prince." He turned Culebra's head enough to steal a quick kiss, fingers sliding along his sides and torso. Midori teased his already abused nipples, raked his nails across Culebra's abdomen, and dipped lower still to slide over his cock, brushing against Dario's mouth. Culebra could not endure the overload of sensations, and his shout echoed through the woods as he came in Dario's mouth.
He reached out, reached back, desperate to touch and please in his turn, but all they did was finish stripping off his clothes and gently pulling him into new ones. Then they each took a kiss and settled him down on a bedroll. Culebra fought to stay awake, to speak, but the words were nonsensical mutters as sleep carried him ruthlessly away.
The growling of his stomach was what finally woke him, and Culebra groaned as his stiff body at first refused to move. The world was on the verge of ending, and all he wanted was a decent bed. Throwing back what felt like a cloak, he struggled to sit up. An arm slid around his shoulders, and Culebra could not muster the energy to be more than vaguely annoyed with himself for needing the assistance.
"Here, eat your soup, and by the time you're done we'll be ready to go," Dario said.
"I cannot believe I fell asleep," Culebra groused. "Cortez—"
Midori cut him off. "She will not be served by your passing out from exhaustion halfway up the mountain. The less you talk, the faster you eat, the sooner we are on our way."
Culebra obediently wolfed down the hot soup as quickly as he could. If they ever returned to civilization, he wanted to sleep in a real bed for a week, and then make himself sick eating real food. How did people travel for a living?"
When he was done, Dario took his bowl, and minutes later they were on their way. Culebra held fast to Midori's belt, following his steps as best he could and heeding the warnings Midori called out as they walked.
But even at his best, he still stumbled and tripped and fell, making the hard climb even more arduous.
"Do you want to stop?" Dario asked. "I think—"
"No," Culebra said. "We're running out of time, I can feel it. We have to hurry. Please."
Silence met his words, and then Midori said quietly, "Then we need to take turns carrying you, High—Culebra."
Culebra flinched, but nodded. "I'm sorry. I know I'm the one slowing us down. Do whatever is necessary, just get us to—" He broke off as pain ripped through his head and a wave of cold swept through his body. Culebra dropped to his knees, screaming and clutching at his head. Around them, the world began to shake—not the easy trembling of before, but shaking so bad that it was impossible to stay upright. The earth jerked and tugged, back and forth, up and down.
"What's wrong? Culebra! Culebra!"
"We're too late," Culebra said, barely getting the words out between sobs. "Blood has spilled on the Stone Rose, and all that it lacks is the blood of the last piece."
Grim silence met his words, and then Midori said, "We have to get you out of here."
"No," Culebra said, ground trembling with his words, thunder rolling through the unseen skies above them. "Take me to the temple. It's long past time I put an end to this. I stopped Licht once, and I will stop him again."
"Culebra—"
"Take me to the Temple of Solace."
"As you wish," Dario replied and after helping Culebra onto Midori's back, they all set off once more, following Ruisenor's lead.
Cortez didn't feel right. Culebra and Jürgen had been all too right about her feeling the Temple of Solace: the closer she got, the more aware of it she became. Images flitted through her mind, as if she was watching a figure on the other side of a translucent screen—something that had been popular in some of the brothels.
Except, instead of watching two people fuck, she was watching them argue. Well, it had started out fucking, she thought, but it had quickly changed in tone. She could almost hear what they were saying, but the voices were just too far away for her to catch. Whoever they were, their fight was ugly and the end uglier.
The oppressive feeling grew right alongside the call of the Temple of Solace. Maybe that was why she didn't feel right. Suddenly that seemed obvious. Cortez realized abruptly that something was way more wrong than she'd initially realized.
She tripped over a tree root and went tumbling face down in the ground, trying to catch herself but succeeding only in scraping her hands and, when her arms abruptly gave out, nearly breaking her nose.
Rough hands grabbed her and yanked her to her feet. "Which way?"
"L-left," Cortez said just before she threw up all over his boots, grunting in pain when he shoved her aside. She hit a tree, tumbled to the ground, and slammed her legs and an arm on the tree roots.
"Be careful," Jürgen snarled. "We've already lost Culebra, and there is no telling how long it will take us to find him. If you kill her now, then our mission will fail. I'll slit your throat before I let her come to true harm."
Cortez looked up at him, wiped vomit from her mouth with her sleeve, and sneered. "My hero."
Jürgen yanked her to her feet and shook her so hard her teeth rattled. "My stomach isn't quite empty yet," Cortez bit out. "I can use your boots to deposit the rest."
"Get walking," Jürgen said and hauled her back onto the path, then shoved her into place between him and the guard on point. "No more of your stalling tactics."
Cortez laughed unsteadily. "Stalling tactics? I'm not stalling. I don't even know what's going on. I feel like I've been drugged."
"You cannot handle the power," Jürgen said. "You are one small piece of a god, and such a small piece does not do well alone. The mountains, the Temple, are treating you like an adult when you're only a child."
Cortez rolled her eyes at that, but did not bother to point out that she was not the child in the group. But the explanation, while not quite right, fit. Culebra was the greater portion of the Basilisk—so much a greater portion that no one, apparently, had ever realized he was not the entirety. She was only a sliver. Eyes, she still could not think 'I'm a piece of a god' and take herself seriously.
Culebra, on the other hand, had adjusted with stunning ease. She bet if he saw the same images as she, they appeared as more than just shadows behind a screen.
Another tree root attacked her feet, and Cortez went tumbling, tears of surprised pain pricking her eyes as she landed awkwardly in a thorny bush.
Fidel would come. Culebra would come. That or she would finally find an opportunity to get away. If only the bastards would drop their guard long enough for her to get a dagger away. Talented thought she was, however, she was no match against four well-armed men while she was bound and unarmed.
She just had to endure until she found her chance, or Fidel and Culebra finally reached her. The thought was not as reassuring as it should have been, and Cortez preferred not to dwell on why.
Jürgen yanked her out of the bush and shoved her back onto the path, and Cortez ignored the jeers of the guards. She was tired, sore, dizzy, covered with scratches and blood, and sick to her stomach. At some point, it all had to end—one way or another.
What would Yago say, she wondered, if he knew that she was a piece of the god he had always hated? He had never entirely forgiven her for never absorbing the dogma, though she had tried to make up for it by being his Black Princesa. How quickly would he turn when he realized killing her was killing a part of the Basilisk?
And what of the Order? Where were they when the Basilisk most needed their protection? Though it had been a long time since the Order of the White Rose had offered protection. They sought to restore the power, but they preferred to do it by risking their necks as little as possible.
She tripped again, landing painfully on the hard ground. Exhaustion washed over her, and suddenly Cortez could no longer bear to take one more step. She tried to stand, but dizziness knocked her right back down to her knees. Her stomach gave a lurch, and she threw up on the path. The heaving did not stop until her body ached from the effort and her throat was scraped raw by all the stomach fluids. Sweat slicked her body, and she was unbearably hot. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and never move again.
"I'm sick," she said hoarsely, meeting Jürgen's cold, violet gaze and unsurprised he did not seem to care a whit. "I don't know why or how, but I'm sick. I would think you poisoned me, but ... "
How could you! What have you done?
Cortez choked on a bitter laugh, groaning as it hurt to do even that. "Poison. I have been poisoned. It's in the forest. In my past. This entire place is poisoned, and it's seeping back into me. The longer I'm here, the worse it will get. I'm not powerful enough a piece to resist ...
The world went gray, then black.
When she regained consciousness, it was to jostling, and she realized after a moment that she had been thrown over Jürgen's shoulder. He jarred her again as they went over a particularly uneven section of the path. How did they know where to go when she was not awake to point? But then again, she could feel they were close. The growing presence of the Temple of Solace made her heart pound, made her ache with an old, deep longing she did not entirely understand.
"What have you done to me?" she croaked, feeling as though she was fourteen and had the plague that had gone around back then all over again. The house 'mother' had been furious to see so many of her whores felled by sickness.
"Me? Nothing," Jürgen replied. "I am only here to do as my Lord Teufel bids, as the Seer foretold. The poison you feel is as you say: in the forest, seeping in to you. It's a poison meant to slay a god, and it is the reason the Azul forest is so black."
Cortez closed her eyes again, feeling old pain, tears slipping down her cheeks. Betrayal. That was the memory stirred by his words. Someone had betrayed her. Him. Them. Whatever. She did not know any more if she was one person or two. But someone long ago had betrayed the Basilisk. Poisoned him, killed him—but in vain, because the Basilisk had kept his power from the betrayer who sought it.
She started to pass out again when suddenly hot and cold snapped through her, like simultaneously being thrown naked into a freezing river and dumped into boiling water. Cortez drew breath to scream and suddenly the horrible sensation was gone. It was replaced by a renewed wave of agony as the poison sank its claws in once more, twisting and cramping her body so badly she began to sob.
Then the crippling pain faded as well, replaced by a soothing calm like settling into a warm bath. Jürgen and the guards stopped, and Cortez was set roughly on her feet. There was honest reverence in Jürgen's tone as he spun her around and said, "Behold: the Temple of Solace, final resting place of the Basilisk, god of Death and Destruction."
Cortez wiped tears from her eyes and cheeks. She had not known what to expect when she finally saw the Temple of Solace. The Brotherhood of the Black Rose had tried to find it as often as the Order, to destroy rather than resurrect, but not a one of their fiercely guarded documents had included a description.
None of her new, shadowy memories had given her an idea, either.
She had expected something dark, dreary, and ominous; something in keeping with the dark tales of the Brotherhood and their staunch belief that the Basilisk should be destroyed forever.
Instead, seeing the temple made her feel as if she was finally home. It was truly a temple of solace, a place of peace and respite. The temple was beautiful, carved into the mountain and made entirely of pale gray stone shot through with delicate threads of silver; it looked almost as though someone had carved open the mountain and revealed the moon.
The entire front portion had been carved away, save for eight enormous columns. Each column had been carved with the image of a god: on the left, the Dragons of the Three Storms and Zhar Ptitsa; on the left, the Faerie Queen with her Guardians and Holy Licht.
Set several paces back, right in the middle of the columns, was an enormous door. Across the wall was carved the Basilisk himself, a ponderous serpent that could kill with a glance and set the world to shaking with a thought.
Stretching out from the temple, stopping just a few paces beyond the columns, was a pavilion made of more of that silvery stone and carved with images that also kept the smooth stone from being dangerously slick. "It's beautiful," Cortez breathed, wiping away more tears. "I cannot believe no one has ever been able to find this. If they saw it ... I think even the Brotherhood and the Order would stop short. It seems too sad this has been missing for so long."
Nobody replied, but she hadn't expected anyone to. From the looks on their faces, they agreed with her. It was depressing to think that people like Father Yago wanted to destroy it. That she had once counted herself among them, however half-hearted her faith. When she reached the doorway, she hesitated a moment—but then drew herself up, raised her chin, took a deep breath, and walked into the Temple of Solace.
It was cool and dark inside, but surprisingly dry. The few times she'd been in caves, or walked through the tunnel roads between Verde and Piedre, it had always been damp.
She jumped and barely bit back a started cry when lights suddenly burst into life. Orb after orb of white light flared in little nooks on either side of her, revealing a long, wide hallway and another archway at the end. Over the top, carved into the stone, was one of Piedre's oldest, dearest prayers:
Slumber is the pause between days. Death is the pause between lives.