shining like the stars

59

The temple of the Guardian of the Sky was gone.

Well, it was either gone, or completely invisible, Lance thought as the Blue Lion made a low pass over the point in the terrain that was indicated on the HUD. He wouldn't be surprised if it was invisible, all things considered; but the sweep of the landscape, amber grass growing up over black jagged rock, and what could be ruins told him that it had been destroyed, long, long ago. Lance wasn't about to get out of the lion to investigate this; but the other Galra fighters did not seem to be present here.

"Man," Lance said, and tilted his head back, to look above; at the sky obscured by cliffs or branches or anything; he let out a low groan and then tilted forward, both hands on the controls. "I have a bad feeling about this," he muttered. Blue rumbled in agreement.

#

Keith felt like they stuck out like sore thumbs in the mix of aliens entering the temple. He looked around again, trying not to fix his attention on the sleek fighter craft parked outside the temple despite the fact that many of the creatures would gesture at it and mutter and fuss in their own languages. There was a large, green alien to his left; it was bipedal and moved slowly and stank in a way that offended his still-delicate nose. Keith angrily swiped the back of his his hand under his nose and shivered a little; his heat was definitely over so he had no idea why the scent bothered him so much.

Shiro's hand on his arm made him start. "Calm down," Shiro murmured, his voice comforting.

"I am calm," he said defensively, feeling a prickling sensation crawl up his neck. He was, he was.

The interior of this temple, like the water temple, was large and mostly empty; there were some carvings and statues here and there that clusters of aliens would crowd around to observe, but nothing clearly apparent as to what the trial would be or where it would be at. "Think it's another memory core?" Keith asked, and Shiro made a noise of agreement. It made sense, a memory core could be concealed in a statue, or hidden even in a pillar. He remembered the trunk of the fountain, the script-like runes lit up in a soft glowing blue as he entered the hall, looking for Lance. "It could be anywhere."

"It's going to cause quite a ruckus if you lay hands on something and it starts glowing," Shiro said with a frown.

"No kidding," Keith said. There were several furry aliens gathered around one of the statues; it looked not unlike a dragon; several heads extending from a strong, winged trunk. It was missing at least two heads, and the others clearly had been damaged over time. Keith locked eyes with one of the statue's remaining heads, and stopped dead in his tracks. Shiro nearly walked into him.

"Keith!" Shiro said, and put both of his hands on Keith's shoulders, intending to steer him forward but stopping when he realized how fixated Keith seemed to be on the statue's form.

It took a moment for Keith to register Shiro's voice, or his hands on Keith's shoulders — he blinked himself out of his reverie and jerked a little. "Is that it?" Shiro asked quietly, tilting his head in toward Keith's.

"I — I don't know," Keith said, and felt that same crawling sensation on his neck. The smaller, furry aliens were moving on; and Keith could see that the solid trunk of the stature tapered into a long tail, that wound around a short pillar that served as its base. "I think it is."

"All right then," Shiro said. He didn't remove his hands from Keith's shoulders, a touch that he found calming. If Lance was able to do this he wouldn't have any trouble with it.

They approached the statue — the remaining heads were stretched above like an umbrella, and Shiro reached his hand out and trailed his fingers along the dark stone that the statue was made of, causing some of it to flake away. "Doesn't seem very sturdy," Shiro said with a frown.

Keith wasn't paying attention. Now closer to it he could see the now-familiar script half-hidden by the dragon's tail. "This is definitely it," he breathed, fingers touching the script beyond the tail itself. It lit slowly, the lines under his fingers faintly purple; then transitioning to red before the red light flashed around the circumference of the pillar. Keith wasn't paying attention to Shiro, or looking around himself to see if he'd been noticed, watching instead the way the light pulsed and glowed.

The loud crack of stone, however, made him look up.

Shiro had him by the arm before he could even focus, yanking him back and away from the pillar as the neck of one of the dragon's heads cracked right through, dropping the heavy head to the temple's floor; right where Keith had been standing a moment before. Keith slammed back into Shiro's chest with a gasp. "Are you all right?" Shiro said, voice strangled; but Keith didn't hear him, couldn't hear him, his attention still focused on the glowing lines of the memory core as if in a trance. "Keith!"

Keith lunged out of his arms but the grip in Shiro's Galra-made hand was stronger, and when Keith's palm made contact with the memory core, the color of the light changed again.

#

Hunk hauled himself over the last of the shattered, downed columns. There had been next to nothing by way of traps, although with the ruin that the temple was in they may have been disabled by time and decay. He'd stopped a few times; the entrance had led into a great, long corridor that made him wonder if he was about to be chased by a giant, rolling boulder of death (tm) — but along the walls of the corridor were etched reliefs and one, which was very clearly the Yellow Lion had caught his eye.

The Yellow Lion's eye and head were damaged, the relief old and worn from centuries of exposure. But this damage was deliberate, chunks of sand-worn stone gouged from the wall. Hunk ran his hand over the damage with a frown; then found a larger swatch of damage below the lion, where all that remained of the relief were feet and legs. The original yellow paladin, wiped from memory.

There were other bits of damage to the walls of the temple of Empedocles; most deliberate, some the product of time and ruin. Hunk hurried past most, wanting desperately to be done with this place. He wasn't scared of being alone in a ruined temple on an alien planet with who-knew-what kind of fauna watching and waiting for an opportunity to make a tasty snack out of a rare delicacy such as himself. It was just prudent to be done with this quickly. The quicker he was done, and he had his totem, the quicker they could all get back to the Castle of Lions and away from whatever Galra force had realized they were planetside.

The main room of the temple was dark and musty; Hunk had to use his bayard as a light source. It functioned poorly, but he wasn't exactly in his paladin armor, so he had to make due. He moved carefully through the room; several of the interior pillars had partially collapsed and loomed up out of the darkness. "Okay, trial," Hunk said, his voice echoing faintly in the darkness. "I can do this."

At his words, something lit the darkness. It glowed faintly gold, like the light around the edge of his bayard. Hunk turned toward the source of the light with relief. "Oh good," he said, recognizing the tilted script. "It's a memory core. Just what I needed to see."

As he spoke again, something moved in front of the light coming from the memory core, and blocked it from Hunk's line of sight.