Deva, Temple of Treachery

Chapter 6

(The video is of the mantra depicted later in the chapter, for those of you who are curious!)

The sun rose and fell, and darkness filled the city as Amara and Vihaan found no sign of life outside the eerie statues, littering every corner of the city. Even inside the building. They had just reached the golden city, as the sky turned red. Shadows danced upon the walls when Amara lifted the makeshift torch Vihaan had constructed for them.

Unlike the cities below, this one was smaller, more like a palace surrounding a garden, where you enter. Pools filled the area, and from what Amara could see, the center piece was for royalty. It was adorned with reliefs and smaller statues, all depicting familiar scenes. The two buildings on the sides were different, one seemed to be homes. It was filled with rooms and toys, almost like it was meant for children. The other seems to be a school of some sort, with scriptures made from sindosi, a processed cloth made similar to paper.

The center palace though was closed. Vihaan had tried to pry the gates open but it wouldn't budge so we snuck into the school area, entering the library to see if we can find any information we can decipher as we settled down for the night.

"Can you read this?" asked Vihaan, frowning at some of the scriptures being too damaged to read.

"Some of it," Amara admitted. "Some seem to be in a writing similar to the Harappan Language, not unlike the writing outside the city on the temple we found, but other texts are in Sanskrit, albeit some weird variation on it."

"An unknown dialect?" Vihaan suggested, perusing a scripture.

"Possibly," Amara said holding up her scripture. "This one seems to talk about the golden city, calling it Hiraṇyapura."

"I recognize the name."

"It is mentioned in some poems such as the Purana and Mahabharata if I remember correctly. It was a golden city said to be the homes of some Asura clans. This scripture seems to support that. It mentions several clans living in the cities below. The golden city was for the children to be raised and protected by the Kalakeyas and the Paulomas," Amara explained.

"That would explain the dorms filled with toys and the school across the yard. What about the center building?"

"So now you speak like Asuras are completely normal."

"Well, I'm still skeptical but you made a fair point. If a rival clan called Asuras once existed and terrorized our ancestors then it wouldn't be completely strange for our ancestors to demonize them, making them over the years into monsters. Though I still can't explain our sudden transportation to a city from a temple, but I will focus on the problem I can rationalize at the moment, " Vihaan muttered. "You still didn't answer me."

"It calls it the home of the king of the Asuras, Mayasura," Amara said after perusing the scripture for a while. Her smile being triumphant. "I was correct. This is most likely Tripura, the three cities Mayasura created and ruled over."

"I'm not as sure as you that he ruled them all," Vihaan interrupted as he scanned a scripture with a similar topic. "This one mentions the king of the silver city, Hiranyaksha, who according to this text was murdered by Vishnu, as his brother Hiranyakashipu was before him. Hiranyaksha's son Andhaka took over, being the current king of the silver city."

Looking over at the scripture after the one he had just read, he frowned. "This one is interesting. It is a historical documentation of Andhaka's and the writer's life."

"Who was the author?" Amara asked, trying desperately to remember all the stories from the Hindi religion but it was too many and too few she had memorized for her to make a perfect recollection."