Page 46 of The Truth-Teller's Bargain
Mika had claimed to know exactly how to find it, despite having never set foot in the Grimm before, and he’d readily struck a deal with Nakir and Balthasar to guide them directly to it. Nakir would use it, and then he would give it to Mika as payment, and they would all go their separate ways.
He’d had no idea how insufferable Mika would be, though, with his constant questions about Nakir, his history, how he lost his magic, how he was going to get his kingdom back, or the various bloodlines of the Four Kingdoms. And yet no matter how irritable Nakir was with him, Mika’s spirit and spunk never wavered.
Nakir had seen Romanexecutepeople for less.
“We should be so close!” Mika exclaimed, excitement lighting up his mosquito-bitten face. “I can’t believe it. After years of research... we’re nearly there. I can feel it!”
Nakir rolled his eyes as he pushed ahead, swinging his blade to clear a path in front of him.
“What’s that?” Balthasar asked, squinting into the late-afternoon sun.
“A clearing,” Nakir replied.Finally.
Boughs from towering trees stooped low to cradle this silent, serene reprieve from the jungle. Nakir stopped to feel the smooth stones there, enduring reminders of nature’spermanence, before noticing the remnants of a large stone shelter covered by the slow movement of the green underbrush.
Just in the middle of the foliage, he could see something... A single wooden door, overgrown with moss and vines. Nakir had never been so thrilled to see a few pieces of wood held together with rusting metal.
“There it is!” Mika’s thrill was infectious as he ran forward, hastily folding the map and shoving it into a side pocket of his overfilled pack.
“Whoa!” Nakir grabbed the young arcanist by his pack, halting his movement. “Check for traps first.”
Mika swallowed, nodding, pale cheeks reddening. “Right.”
The three of them carefully investigated the door and its surrounding areas for any signs of danger before they were confident enough to continue.
Balthasar was the only one strong enough to pull the door open, its edges having warped and shifted over the years, leaving it stuck against the stone. Even after he’d managed to wrench it open, several stones from the ceiling and the walls fell free, tumbling down the stairs and filling the newly exposed corridor with dust.
Mika coughed, waving the dust away and covering his mouth with a handkerchief.
“Here it is,” he whispered, looking between Balthasar and Nakir in awe. “I can’t believe we found it. I... I can’t believe it’s real.”
“We’re not there yet, kid,” Balthasar reminded him, clapping a large hand on his shoulder. “Keep your eyes peeled. Can you tell us again what we’re looking for?”
“Right. Yeah! Well.” Mika scrambled for his pack, withdrawing one of the aged tomes he’d dragged along on this perilous journey. The ancient pages were wrinkled and warped from days spent in the humid climate of the Grimm. Mika flipped through them to a faded drawing of a mural. The sketchwas crude, but Nakir could see the faint depiction of Nehalennia, her hair flowing behind her as she aimed a bow and arrow at a massive stag. “This,” Mika told them. “This is what we’re looking for.”
“Let’s go then,” Nakir said, unpacking and lighting a torch to illuminate the way.
He was the first to enter the downward-stepping corridor, amber eyes scanning every surface for any dangers. It was unlikely they would find anything living down here, but temples containing rare treasures were most often armed with deadly traps to discourage looting. He found one at the bottom of the stairs: a specific stone, set into the floor with a pressure-release mechanism. Nakir didn’t bother to disarm it, but he warned the others to avoid it as they moved forward.
The walls and the floor were all crafted of the same smooth stone. After thirty feet, the stairs gave way to flat pavement, the narrow corridor continuing for another fifty feet. Pools of condensation dripped from the low ceiling, creating small puddles he edged around. Nakir proceeded carefully, each step measured and cautious. He and Balthasar had crawled through enough dungeons to know one wrong step could be fatal, and not a single one of them had the power to heal.
By the time they’d arrived at a wide archway at the end of the corridor, the sweat on his neck had chilled. The room ahead was pitch-black, but he stepped forward, torch held out in front of him, eyes attempting to adjust to the darkness. He found several sconces and lit them one by one, revealing a wide hexagonal room.
Balthasar and Mika entered shortly after him, Mika’s big brown eyes swimming with tears of joy at the sight of the inner room of the temple.
“It’s...beautiful.”
The two walls closest to the entrance were smooth and blank,but the other three joined together to reveal a carved relief, exactly as Mika had described.
On the left panel, the Fate goddess Nehalennia stood among a lush forest, her arms drawn back to fire a massive longbow—except where the longbow would be carved into the wall, there was only an empty relief, as if there had once existed an actual bow, long removed from the mosaic. A massive wolf crouched at her side, teeth bared and ready to strike.
The night sky and an open field took up the entire center panel, three arrows fired across them—or, at least, there were three indentations where arrows had once been. As with the longbow, they seemed to have been pried from the walls. On the right panel was a massive stag rearing up on its hind legs, frozen in time and memorialized forever in the relief carving.
“There it is,” Mika breathed as he approached Nehalennia. He pointed to the amulet around her neck. Though it was covered in enough dust to make it blend in with the rest of the stone, he could just see the amulet was real and not part of the carving.
They all approached, Nakir pulling a dagger from his belt to pry it off the wall. He slowly inserted the tip between the metal that held a center stone within an intricate design, doing his best to move as slowly as possible, even as his heart raced. This was the closest he had come to finding Truth-Teller. This was the big break he had been searching for, for all these years.
“There it is!” Mika cheered. “The Dreamseeker. Now, remember, be very careful. I mean, it’s nearly impossible to destroy an artifact made by a god, especially one made by aPrimalgod, though it’s widely debated if Nehalennia was a Primal god when she made these artifacts, as she only became a Primal deity after witnessing the fall of Osiron at the hands of Aeshma?—”
