Consecrated Murder
Dryden led Amarilla through a series of passageways within the inner sanctum of the templus. On the walls, finely etched carvings depicted the worship that occurred there. Supplicants conversing, touching, guiding. Most of the drawings came in threes, as three was the number of the universe, and always gave off an impression of progression, of forward movement, of journeying toward a destination. The drawings matched those found on other planets, in similar buildings, but this was the first time, at least for Amarilla, that she had discovered a large templus.
“The layouts of templus are usually the same,” Dryden said as he marched them down another hall. “Three separate courts, three unique rooms. But this templus has an extra room.”
“An extra room? Why?”
“That’s what we were wondering. Why an extra room? Was it for changing? For the support staff?”
Dryden stopped in front of a door—an intact door, to Amarilla’s surprise—and pointed at the carvings around the door. One of the figures held what Amarilla could only understand as a knife and stood before a table with a person on it. The person held up their arms. The next carving depicted the knife plunging into the person on the table. The third carving was the person on the table sitting up.
“You have to read them in a certain order,” Amarilla said.
Dryden nodded. “You can’t read them as the person sitting back down and then getting stabbed because of the numbering to the bottom right.”
“What if our numbering is wrong?”
“We’ve checked it again and again and it can’t be.”
“So what’s behind the door?”
Dryden gingerly opened the door. It opened up a simple square room. In the middle was a metal table and the walls were made of some reflective material so the room mirrored itself for eternity, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors.
Amarilla studied each part of it as she had been trained. The table was at a slight angle. The angle led to the floor, which had a—yes, a drain in it. A drain for…she shook her head. She knew what it was for, but she didn’t want to know what it was for. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and stepped into the room.
“Did you analyze the drain?”
“Yes, blood.”
Amarilla nodded. She needed to put off her human self and focus on her work self. Dispassionate. Analytical. Able to handle the emotions of history. She’d let the emotions release later, but for right now, she needed to understand this room. These people. This history.
“So, ritualistic murder.”
“It seems they favored the word consecrated.”
“But for what purpose?”
“Rebirth, it seems.”
“Resurrection?”
“No, rebirth. Born again. They murdered the people on this table and then somehow brought them back to life. Resurrection implies a return to something, this was another birth. They seemed to have viewed this room like a new womb. When the person came out, they’d be a new person, at least to the society.”
Amarilla looked around the room, attempting to divine if there were any spots for technology to play a part.
“The depiction on the door had a knife. Do we have the knife in our possession?”
“Unfortunately, no, we didn’t find it in the room.”
“The knife must have done something, then, maybe kept the person alive or marked their body or something,” Amarilla said, more to herself than to Dryden. “It must have been the technology—”
Amarilla stopped as she heard the door shut, a sharpness in her back, and a pain blossoming through her body.
“May you be reborn,” Dryden said as he laid her dying body on the table, blood slipping down into the drain.
I am participating in #Archtober from the ARCH-HIVE. They challenged creators to create something every day, or every other day, for the month of October and base it on a theme. I’m free writing for 30 minutes every two days based on the two-day schematic and theme rules they’ve established. So, the writing will probably not be super coherent, but it’ll be fun.
Consecrated Murder continues with the same characters in Veiled Ruin and enters them into the idea I played around with in Mysterious Rebirth.
