معبد - Temple Revelations

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Southwest Asia was an uncharted desert of comeliness to Ilya, despite the sand and crumbled ruin-dust clinging to her lashes and the fabric of the black scarf protecting the bottom half of her face; the winds were not favoring her this day, but her luck was. Her findings of an unnamed, map-less temple was enough to spark her fascination to an elated degree, and she did not hesitate to explore, starting with ascending the decrepit, ruined stairs that took her to the architecture itself. Any sign of ancient text, artifacts and such-like would be put in the shallow depths of her satchel. 

Once inside, Ilya treaded carefully and quietly; even quiet steps felt like they echoed off of the dilapidated wall structure. Her infatuation with the certain centuries of history that could seek and discover through hours of sifting astounded her curious mind, even if the idea was merely hypothetical in this moment. Her hands caressed the walls and she hummed an obscure tune, lowering the shawl with the shake of her head so she could breathe properly; she never minded her lungs filling with dust for the sake of research.

Ilya continued her exploration only to come upon - what looked to be from the short distance between them - a slumbering statue brushed with the soot of the temple's age. This was a sheer find worth documenting; she closed the distance between herself and the statue, not knowing or even expecting it to flinch since -- well, it was a statue, right?

Wrong.

[Zacharias]

      The statue suddenly took a deep breath, stirring slightly. The dust cascaded from his form, revealing his sphinx form. White hair showed through the dust along with markings of blue from his mane and feathers upon his wings. A deep, rumbling groan escaped his lips, and the sphinx stood up causing the rest of the dust to cascade in clouds and rivulets off his form. Yawning loudly, the sphinx stretched his body, claws flexing and screeching against the stone beneath himself. He turned, freezing suddenly at the sight of the the female in the cavern with himself. The sphinx stared at her, brilliant blue eyes staring directly in to her own with an intense gaze before leaping down from the plith that he had been settled upon.

     Zacharias' decided it would be best to confront this person in a human form. After all, humans (if this was a human, after all he was not entirely sure she was human) usually handled it best when he was in human form instead of his sphinx form. A talking human seemed easier upon their mind, where as a talking winged lion with the head and face of a human seemed to perplex them intensely. His body began to twist and contort, flesh writhing as fur slithered beneath his skin. Bones popped audibly as they broke, lengthened, shortened, and rearranged themselves in to new shapes and sizes. Soon the sphinx that had awoken was no longer there, and a human male stood place of the sphinx.

     The male stepped forward towards the female, slowly raising his hands. He wanted to show her he was unarmed and not a threat to herself. His entire body felt odd, weak and he was clearly in no shape to fight right now. Zacharias did not know that he was been asleep very long, and for all he knew he had only been asleep a few hours. All he knew was that he felt weak and tired, and that this person was standing before him and appeared to be unarmed so thus might not (or very well might be) a threat to himself. Either way he was not in a position to defend himself. His lips parted, and he began to speak to the female in his language which was Old Persian.

     "Hello mi'lady. Please, I mean you know harm. You simply woke me from my slumber."

     To most, his words would make absolutely no sense for they where Old Persian. Also, the fact that the male was standing there, speaking in some bizarre language and completely nude would probably cause anybody to pause. Apparently the male did not realize he was naked and devoid of any sort of clothing what so ever.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Ilya stumbled a step backward with a small shriek of disillusion as the statue stirred, keeping a keen eye on it as if to disprove what she just saw; it could have been a mirage from the high heat of the desert, right? But, to her disbelief, it kept moving, until the sand and dust was absent from its body, and it looked more like a living beast than any other. She didn't feel threatened, not in the slightest, based on the intuition of her gut -- but distance was kept between them as she was caught in a silent stare down, interest locked. Before she knew it, the looming creature morphed effortlessly into a human male, and she was hardly surprised or flustered.

"Oh for Gods' sake, why does strange shit always happen to me?" Ilya whispered harshly, removing the shawl from her shoulders and approaching the sphinx; the shawl itself was the size of a blanket when outstretched, but with much thinner, knit-like fabric, which would cover his bits fine if wrapped and layered around his hips. She tossed it in his direction and instructed, "Tie it about your hips, mate, so you're not flashin' anyone," With an apparent hand gesture from her that explained such. She was, however, caught off guard when he spoke what was considered to be a dead language to her; perhaps it was fate that someone experienced in linguistics both ancient and living had come upon him.

Clearing her throat, Ilya pieced together what she could and matched his language, asking him, "Who are you?" Her tone was neither friendly nor threatening; she was appropriately skeptical and had no reason to trust the assumed kindness or lack thereof in a stranger, even if it were an ancient creature that she wouldn't mind probing with questions.

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias caught the shawl she threw at himself, and at her gestured glanced down. He raised an eyebrow, confused as to how or where his cloths had disappeared to. Taking the shawl she had given to him, he carefully wrapped it around his waist and beneath himself before tucking it back upon itself creating a make shift lion wrapping. It did little to hide anything really, but apparently it seemed to make the female more comfortable as she had apparently offered it to him as such. He did not much mind being nude, after all was he not nude just before as well in his true form? Like this one, it was covered in a body covering but simply more thick.

     Zacharias was, however, growing increasingly agitated by the growing perplexity of the situation. Upon a cursory glance about the room they where standing in, he noticed several things. His cloths where gone, completely and utterly. Even if he was in his sphinx form, he should have some neatly folded somewhere nearby, but by the looks of it there was absolutely nothing around except piles of dust. The second perplexing oddity was in fact, all that dust. Zacharias new that Sama'el Ymir, his god, had put him to sleep and where else would he have placed him except with in one of his own temples....yet there was dust everywhere as if it had been ages since anybody had been in this place and Sama'el would never let his own temple be left to fall in to such shambles. There where crumbled pillars about them, and everything look simply....ancient.

     When the female finally spoke, Zacharias turned and looked upon her with a raised eyebrow. Her accent was the funniest sounding thing in the world, and her words barely made much sense. Perhaps she did not speak Old Persian. She could be a Medean...or maybe even a Greek or Egyptian. He doubt very much she would be Medean, for they would know the Persian language. He unfortunately did not speak the Egyptian language, though could read it slightly. That left only Greek Latin, orAkkadian for him to try, and he highly doubted she would known Akkadian, for that was a dying language already (in the time frame he was in). She did not seem to have the look of a Greek about her, but you never knew. Scholars studied many languages, so he decided to try both Greek and Latin starting with Greek first.

     "I am known as Zacharias Zephyr Zoltan, mi'lady. May I inquire as to your name, and also possibly how long it is that I have been asleep?"

     He then repeated himself in Latin as well, because when he had gone to sleep it had been a rapidly expanding language as well and he figured that if she did not know either of these two then perhaps she was not worth speaking to at all anyways (for he does not realize that both these "modern" languages of his time are not both ancient and archaic, almost completely dead in the modern world of the time he had awoken in to).

[Ilyα Cяσw]

The Greek Ilya was offered was even more difficult to grasp than the Persian; the expression she gave him matched the bewilderment he felt, and with different reasoning. The Latin rang a far better bell in her mind and she came to full realization that this creature must have been out cold, 'slumbering', for centuries; that was three dead languages he had fluently offered her and she could barely keep up without taking a long, drawn out moment to grasp and decipher the words through suffix, prefix and the like; it was dreadfully comparable to her days, years of education, which ensued a quiet lament of a sigh. 

"Zacharias," Ilya repeated, as if testing the name on her tongue, "I'm Ilya -- Ilya Crow. I don't know how long you've been asleep, Zacharias, but the year is twenty-sixteen." She replied to him in slow, well thought-out Latin and took a step backwards, as if sensing the frustration from the sphinx, since she did not know what he was capable of doing to a stranger -- Ilya was duly mistrustful, but sympathetic. If her assumptions proved true, she couldn't imagine the discomfort and confusion that this Zacharias was feeling.

Maybe a friendly state would help even in the slightest, she thought, and managed a small smile with the tilt of her head.

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias frowned, tilting his head in narrowing his eyes. He was extremely confused by the woman's words. Twenty sixteen......did she mean the year two thousand and sixteen. He lifted his hand, looking at it and began to tap his fingers, quickly adding up the years from when he had gone to sleep. If this woman was not attempting some practical, cruel joke (which judging from the look upon her face she was not)....then he had been asleep for a lot longer then just a few days. In fact, he had been asleep for almost two thousand years.

    Zacharias looked at his hand, slowly clenching it and reopening as his mind attempted to come to grasp with the information that he had just been given. He had been asleep for two thousand years while apparently he had been forgotten by Ymir and the other gods and goddesses. The temple itself attested to the fact that the world had changed because Ymir would never allow one of his temples to fall in to such disarray. Zacharias gritted his teeth, then sighed and looked at the female. At least he had found a language to communicate with her through.

"It would seem that I have been asleep for a lot longer then I thought I had been."

Zacharias stepped away from the female and began to move around the room. He started around the plinth he had been resting upon. He ran his hands along the stone. He found nothing, and so moved off and began to search the rest of the room. He was clearly searching for something, and was not have any luck finding whatever it was he was looking for. He reached up, running his hands along a column featuring a statue of Tiamat. His fingers found the eye sockets of the statue and pressed down upon them. A grinding noise suddenly filled the room. Zacharias watched as a section of the wall slowly opened up revealing a new tunnel.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Could this get any stranger? Yes, it can, answered the secret opening to the temple Ilya had not been anticipating at all. She mouthed a silent prayer for the sanctuary of her safety and raked a hand through her the tangled tresses of her sun-touched locks, pulling them all back into a disheveled bun. She looked to Zacharias, and then the newly made entrance, both entranced and wholly uncomfortable. She decided both to follow him further into a hopefully positive conclusion of the unknown, and to spark an opening of explanation for the sphinx. That could - maybe - reconcile Zacharias's and Ilya's confusion at once. 

"Mm, did you lay your head for a nap and happen to -- ah, not awaken? Do you know English, Arabic, French?" Ilya stumbled sloppily over her Latin, but regardless, it still sounded far more proper than her common speech. "What was the year when you went dormant, Zacharias?" She let her hand trace the walls as she trailed behind him, her brows knitting together in thought.

"We could travel to the nearest -- uh, village to get you clothes and food."

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias looked at the female, then the doorway that had opened up like magic. He slowly moved towards it and gazed inside. He peered in to the darkness, then looked back at Ilya again. He then moved away from the doorway and grabbed a torch from a wall bracket. Lifting down the unburnt torched, Zacharias blew a copious amount of dust from the rag wrapped around the end of the wood. He sniffed it before raising an eyebrow finding that the cloth was dry. He moved over to an urn, standing in a corner and lifted the lid. He smiled, and turned the torch upside down and dipped it in to the urn. It sloshed loudly, showing that there was some sort of liquid inside the urn. He pulled the torch back out and let the excess drip from the torched.

     He turned around and looked at the female who had been there when he had awoken.

     "Food and cloths can be found at another time. What I need are my weapons before I go anywhere. Do you have a way to light this?"

     He held up the torch towards the female, because he did not have a way to light the torch so they could delve deeper in to the temple to explore the depths of the temple that had been built and possibly find the weapons he use to have and maybe, if Zacharias was extremely lucky, some damn cloths so he could stop running around naked and disturbing the lady.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Ilya watched Zacharias's meddling in curiosity, staring at him when he looked to the torch and staring at the torch when he looked at her. She really wasn't certain with the courtesy or lack thereof with eyeing him down like a deer in headlights, naturally, since he was born perhaps over a millennium ago, to her assumption. She didn't mind him blatantly letting her questions fly over his shoulder, other than the inquiry on food and garb, but this all was seemingly understandable. He was in a strange state, having woken up after so long -- and unexpectedly, at that. 

"Well, okay. The townspeople will surely find it strange that there is a naked man in a scarf wrap of a diaper, carrying nothing but weaponry, but I digress," Ilya says in improper Latin, trying to find the words for 'diaper', 'scarf' and 'digress' with great difficulty; she knew the folk in these parts were far less accepting and far more skeptical of strange people and happenings. She then looked to the torch and dissected his words to see that his was asking her assistance, and she obliged, having a lighter in her back pocket as she always did. She cupped her hand around the head of it and sparked a flame, holding it to the torch until it was fully ablaze. 

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias laughed, looking at the one who named herself Ilya to him and nodded in to the passage way that had been revealed. He then slowly stepped in to the opening. He moved inside the revealed passageway, holding the torch a high to light both his and Ilya's way deeper in to the temple. As he walked, making sure to moved one foot at a time, he looked around himself at the walls and the floor as if he was looking for something or expecting something to suddenly leap out at them. As he moved, he slowly began to speak and made sure to slow his speech to allow Ilya to keep up with him as she seemed to be struggling slightly with the Latin language.

     "I have my ways of getting in to and out of places that would usually or typically deny me entrance or would treat myself ill. Believe me when I have no wish to engaged with large groups of people who may or may not be able to communicate with in in a civilized manner."

      He paused, kneeling down to inspect the floor and running his hands along the floor intently. His fingers stopped, and slowly in the dust lifted a small wire. The wire was limp, and following it to the other end of the wall he noticed a small hole from which it was emanated. He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes at the strange occurrence. He stood up slowly, gazing forward in to the darkness.

     "As to your prior questions....I know not what those words are that you spoke. They have no meaning to myself, what are they?" He slowly moved forward, his feet shuffling slightly upon the ground as he checked their path but having not told her yet as to why.

     "As to going to sleep....I was put to sleep by my god Sama'el Ymir. For what reason, I know do not know but perhaps I shall find out. One day, I hope to find out, but for now I would watch your step if I where you. That was a trap back there, designed to kill anybody somebody to prevent them entering deeper in to the the temple....or to test anybody entering deeper."

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Ilya stared downcast at the trip-wire with an evil eye and took an exaggerated step over it, trailing a single forefinger over the tunneling structure's walls and rubbing the dust against her thumb. She took on a sour, twist-lipped expression and 'hm'd at Zach's words, consciously keeping some distance from him (only because he was wearing her scarf as some strange loincloth diaper, frankly). "Where is this goin', anyway?" She asked at first, continuing to walk in strange, robotic strides as to avoid possible traps. 

"Ah, uh -- they're not uncivilized persay, the townspeople; you're just a sight, I guess, with the scarf and nakedness and the fact that you are literally speaking a dead language, Zacharias," Ilya quips, wrinkling her nose as she sneered and laughed awkwardly. "The words I mentioned were languages -- like the most common languages in the world, like not-Latin and not-Persian. Persia isn't even a thing anymore, really." She 'harumph'd as she had a single, short moment to refresh her memory of history on when exactly Persia was a thing. She swore she could hear her brain fizzling out with that attempt. 

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias was moving along, watching his own step carefully when the female began to speak. Her first question was simple enough, even though the answer was not so simple. The rest of her words had him pondering things in his own head for a moment though. Dressing like this was a normal occurrence during his time. Many dressed like this for several occasions. People dressed like this in many hard working jobs, to keep their cloths cleaner he supposed and not soil expensive clothing. Gladiators dressed like this as well many times but had their weapons and armor. As he contemplated it, he supposed it was the lower class but still it was not an unusual occurrence. He wondered how and why the world had come to dress with less skin exposed, such as the female before himself. Come to mention it, her clothing was EXTREMELY strange even to himself. How peculiar indeed, and her words about how it was he was speaking dead and uncommon languages, and these strange words she was making where the most common languages. The most perplexing to himself was that Persia was no longer a 'thing' anymore. What exactly did she mean by that?

     "Well, I do not know where this goes to. It would seem that it is a test of some kind or another. Perhaps one left by Sama'el Ymir to test myself for some unknown reason or another. Perhaps it was placed her by another god or goddess, in which case I would not know what it was placed here for. I know that I am going to explore it however, and find out where exactly it leads and takes us. You are more then welcome to join myself, however I am guessing by the fact that there are traps along the way it will not be an easy journey."

     He stopped, as the hallway they had been walking along suddenly opened up in to what could only be a large room. Zacharias stopped walking, freezing with one foot in the air before gently setting it down in the same place it had been before. He glanced around, but it was simply to dark for even his improved vision to see through. He wondered if it was some sort of magic trick or enchantment, but he had no way of knowing for sure or not. Beside himself, leading down the middle of the staircase was a small circular plinth, filled with a black substance. He slowly reached out and touched his finger to the material. He felt the wetness and blinked in surprise. He knew what this was, but had never seen so much of it in one place. He slowly lowered the torch towards the material and dipped it inside it. The flames erupted upwards and traveled down the trail, splitting off randomly and soon the entire room was alight with burning oil that showed a room that slowly moved down the levels that Zacharias had at first assumed where steps. All these tiers lead to the center of the room which was lower then the rest and had a large pit filled with burning oil creating a large bonfire in the center.

      "How interesting and intriguing...." Zacharias whispered, looking around the room at the markings upon the walls which seemed to be different languages from around the world. He could make out several of them, but not all.

[Ilyα Cяσw]

Through the calculated, careful walk down the shadowed hall, Ilya was questioning if throwing her safety down the drain in a conscious trade to experience possible uncharted history and a being that her mind begged to learn the tales of secrets of; she wondered what lied ahead of them, if anything, all the while keeping in mind that every possible step could be a mercilessly built trap. She felt no fear, however, and her apprehension was cut short by what controlled her most -- an eager, insatiable thirst for knowledge. Bravery at its finest, or rather, a purposeful tunnel vision guiding her way.

She broke her own silence by a deep, audible inhale as the room illuminated, her gaze sweeping and darting the walls, trying the impossible -- to absorb every word and symbol into the confines of her photographic memory, but of course no human could do it to that extent, and she picked this day to not have a camera of any sort.

"It's beautiful," Ilya chimed finally, pressing her palm against the wall while standing at its entry way. She didn't dare step first into the flaming room, knowing good and well what it could entail. She simply stood there, in visible awe, ogling the centuries of history like a child in a toy store.

"I mean, it's a nice sight. It's not every day someone like me sees a flamin' room with all these runes and etched pasts."

[Zacharias]

     Zacharias looked around the room, taking in the details and the markings as well. He however was searching for signs that the room was booby trapped as well. He saw no holes in the walls, nothing upon the ceiling that might open up and let something swing down at them and crush them to death or decapitate them suddenly. He rubbed his chin, thought process breaking at the stubble he found there and he chuckled with amusement slightly. He would need to shave, apparently and that amused him greatly. He was not entirely sure way.

     He knelt down, and gazed at the floor, wondering if perhaps there might be traps hidden beneath their feet ready to spring for and activate and attack them. He contemplated that option, so gently placed the bottom of the torch upon the floor and slowly reached it forward, pushing down firmly upon it. When nothing immediately sprang out or flew towards them, he stood up and bravely stepped in to the room.

     When nothing was forth coming, he presumed it was safe. It was some sort of antechamber it would seem, safe here but protected through the hallway. Whatever lay ahead was probably well guarded and protected as well. Yet this room, brightly lit by the crackling fire was safe for them to explore and look around. Moving to the walls, he began to examine them carefully picking out bits and pieces here and there. Fragments of something in the past, some sort of great battle apparently that might have been between supernaturals and humans. Zacharias knew of no such thing, and figured it was perhaps from before even his own time. He did not read whatever other languages there where upon the wall well enough to figure out what it was saying about the battle, why it happened, where, or even when.

     As he moved around, the room, he noticed a grate in the floor near the circular fire in the center. It was behind the fire circle, as they walked in to the room meaning they would not have seen it. He moved over to it, contemplating the grate for a moment and kicked a small pebble down in to the grate. It clinked and clanked softly, the sound diminishing as it slowly went down and down, echoing deeper. Kneeling down he slowly ran his fingers along the grate and found a keyhole to pull upon. He cleared the sand and dust from it, and along the edges of the grate seeing that it would lift and pull open upwards and lean against the fire circle.

      "This seems to be the only way forward, Lady Ilya. Shall we proceed, or would you like to turn back now? This might be our only chance to do so, and I do not know what will lie after this. I can not guarantee your safety, though I promise my hardest to try and protect you from harm." He looked at her with his ice blue eyes, fingers resting upon the ring of the grate to open it.