Chapter 39: Temple time forgot
Once the duo felt comfortable landing, they inspected the tunnel under the mountain to find it quite spacious. To make things more comfortable Tral decided this would be a great time to make an APC (armored personnel carrier) with enough space to act as a mobile home for them to have less to worry about.
Once safely inside Tral spoke up "There is a plethora of wild life all fighting for dominance down here and I'm not liking where we are on the food chain, even in this thing I am sure many of these creatures would open it up like a tin can and it only seems to be getting worse."
"Well we could just keep using flame throwers to remove these pests but that might attract something strong enough to rush right through and I don't like those odds since we still haven't found the dang temple" Darick ponders.
Tral thinks for a bit before replying "It shouldn't take long to find a temple if we are driving around so if it's not found after a couple hours we should probably head back to the shit lake but as for the beasties I believe if one of us operates a flamethrower and the other a high powered sniper there shouldn't be to much of an issue."
Will a general plan in place the pair start up the APC to begin searching. Every once in a while they come across some oversized ants that are almost twice as big as a person but they are swiftly dealt with.
An hour goes by with little to show for it but more ants which are increasing in number as the time goes by. "Hey Darick… you ever get the feeling like you're driving into an ant colony?"
"Not until recently buddy but that issue is starting feel real important right about now" he replies as he fires an other round into the head of an approaching insect.
Suddenly a large rush of ants surge around a nearby bend causing Tral to momentarily stop with the flamethrower in order to summon a tide of napalm while putting the vehicle in full stop as everything in front of them heats up considerably.
Replacing their old weapons with LMGs they pair rapidly deal with anything that moves closer to the vehicle from the blaze but even then more bodies just pile up till more napalm needs to be added.
"This is ridiculous, how many of these things are there?" Tral complains as their guns start over heating forcing him to put the APC in reverse to give them space and time to toss out the old weapons before replacing them.
Eventually the wall of fire once again stops the bugs advance but the pair remain unable to progress. This lasts for over half an hour until Tral decides to change tactics making a new air tight vehicle reminiscent of a submarine with treads which the pair quickly get into.
"This thing should have enough air to last a few hours, If we can't burn them out maybe we can stink them out" Tral laughed "Arc once told me the dangers of dealing with to much shit, he called it H2S or hydrogen sulfide. Highly flammable but also deadly to breath in large quantities so I'm going to make the smell from that shit pond look seem like a fart in the breeze compared to this"
Darick was slightly shocked "Tral, I know it involves farts but you actually came up with a serious plan. Arc would be proud"
At first he used the flames to measure that amounts of gas he released but after they burnt out he greatly increased the volume of gas causing all the ants to drop dead and no more arrived even after they waited several minutes.
With that they were able to move forward again with Tral constantly filling the tunnel around them with this deadly gas. Their improvised vehicle was able to proceed without further issue and as soon as they rounded the bend they could clearly see a massive temple that looked like a intricately carved monastery seamlessly fused into the surrounding rock as if it had always been there.
Bodies of ants piled high all around it as if it where their home. The pair got worried as their vehicle wouldn't fit into the front entrance of the temple forcing them to have to suit up in airtight diver suits that Tral had improvised to allow their breath out but nothing in as he could simply refill their air with his power.
This left them free to continue on without the possibility of being swarmed in a tighter space. The process took a lot of time as they had to constantly pull large insect bodies out of their way but it was much better then fighting each of them.
The inside of the temple was huge with passages going in every direction, they quickly lost track of time while exploring the place with every corridor and room looking very similar to each other while also full of ant corpses.
After what felt like days the pair had become completely lost to the point that they had to stop with Tral sealing up their surroundings with doors before filling the area back up with oxygen.
"This place is driving me crazy, every room is either connecting more hallways or a dead end the ants store stuff in. I'm glad we are seeing less corpses but come on this is ridiculous." Tral once again starts complaining.
"Well the old man did say something about a labyrinth so maybe we are almost there, nothing worth while is easy dude." Darick says trying to sooth is friends worries.
"ok you're right, we can sleep here and maybe when we wake up it will make more sense" Tral relented before setting up some beds.
After waking up and having a bite to eat they briefly discussed their options where they came to the conclusion that the best why to find what they were looking for was to use a temperature gauge as the old man stated the location of what they seek was very cold.
Even with this new method of searching they spent so long looking around that Tral had suggested they use pedal bikes so as to not generate more heat yet it still took them most of the next day before locking onto a current of cold air which lead them to a spiral staircase going down (the first stairway they had encountered since entering the temple).
As the pair descended further the air around the rapidly decreased till they were forced to wear thermal clothing, long since stopping using gas as no ants had been encountered for hours.
After a time the walls surrounding the stair opened up revealing a space so wide they couldn't see the edges in all directions only pitch black and the floor looked like they were the tops of the walls of a labyrinth but that is where the stairs stopped with nothing but darkness and a cold that froze right through their suits no matter how much heat they surrounded themselves with.
Tral tried to test the bottom of the openings in the floor by constantly attaching poles together but after almost twenty minutes without feeling the bottom, the pole had become ridiculously heavy and he just dropped it hoping to hear a sound when it hit the bottom without any success.
"well this is messed up and likely magical, the cold is emanating from these bottomless pits and there is no real direction to follow other then the floor which doesn't seem to split but twists and turns in a chaotic path. We could skip many sections by simply crossing over the gap but then there is no guarantee that we would be going the right way so it would seem our only option is to follow this stupid labyrinth from the source." Tral quickly deduced to Darick's agreement.
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