Chapter 12: Temples
"They all fucking scammed me! God damn it! Fuck! Fuck!" he yelled in the ship and hit the controls with his fists. He followed the advice of the bartender and after some slight confusion he found the cross routes, but the signs were broken. So he flew around in a radius of several kilometers and found no temple.
"Oh, my god people on this rock are so god damn useless! Flying with the ship is going to more efficient!" he yelled angrily. The country wasn't that small and so it took him only until the evening to find the temple. It was in a deep forest up north of the country and there were barely any towns nearby.
The temple looked like an antic building covered in dirt and moss, the trees have overgrown it as well. People made a small camp in front of it, so several scholars and holy men could study it. Steve parked the ship on a clearing several meters away and walked to the temple very pissed. He even took his sword with him. There is no need to be subtle!
"Who are you? Why are you here?" asked the closest man to Steve when he emerged from the forest.
"All are welcome all can learn!" Steve shouted. There were about seven men around him and they all took notice.
"That's what that big letters say!" Steve pointed at the temple entrance.
"We know..." said an old man with a white beard and no hair. He came close to Steve while the rest was just silently watching.
"But how do you know that?" he added when he got too close.
"I read it, how else? I need to look around the temple, so get away from me," Steve went around the man, but others blocked the way.
"A temple is a secret place, you cannot just walk inside!" the old man said.
"Of course I can, can you hear me speak in the voice of gods?" Steve says in the alien language, but although they look confused they didn't budge.
"What is this?"
"It's the language of gods," Steve explains but just angers them more.
"Heresy!"
"I am not kidding! If you don't believe me let me translate something!" Steve's heart jumped a little, believing they would all bow to him like the Holy man, but he forgot that man heard the voice from the recording.
"Reading and speaking is something completely different, young boy!" the old man said with a calm demeanor. "Very, well! I will let you try!" the man added to others' protest.
"I'll lead the way," the older man said after shutting up any opposition showcasing his leadership position. The others go back to their work, but two-man decide to go with them for the protection of the Headmaster. They both had swords and light armor, so Steve was ready to leave in a flash.
"We are now translating one of the small chambers, the entrance hall is already finished," the Headmaster told Steve, but he was listening only with one ear. The inside was completely different then the space station he was in before. It looked like some ancient buildings on Earth especially Rome or Greece. Although the writings were alien they talked almost like a poem, talking about wisdom and morality.
"This place is not what I expected..." he wondered.
"You wanted gold? Don't be ridiculous,"
"No..." They enter a small chamber that was much more to Steve's liking. It had writings about the stargate on small stone tablets around the walls. It told him that stargate could be controlled not only by his ship but a mechanism separate from it which looked almost like a big boulder with the star signs used by the gate. He knew that some control devices must be on the gate itself since the first people he knew didn't have a ship, but still used the gate, but it was still an interesting find.
"Interesting..." Steve reads other tablets that explained to him that this planet was used to harbor people from different planets, which could not support them anymore. It looked like the aliens knew humans and helped them. But how did humans and other life from Earth got so far away was still a mystery.
"Can you read it?"
"Yes,"
"What does it say?" Steve sighs, he was too tired to think of a lie.
"It says this planet was used as a safe haven for refugees of different ones,"
"What does that even mean?" the old man said surprised.
"Let me see the rest," Steve pushed the old man out of his way and slowly went to the other room, which was sadly destroyed, the ceiling could not support the trees anymore.
"Don't touch the Headmaster!" the two-guard came to him, but he ignores them and slowly explored the other room. The walls here were all covered in other symbols, stargate coordinates.
"This is it? Just some addresses? Like there is a lot of them, but come on! Nothing interesting?"
"What do you mean?"
"There is no stuff?" Steve looks at the old man
"Stuff? Everything we found was given to other countries, well expected of the smaller artifacts we have here in the camp,"
"Show me,"
"I think you saw enough!" one guard wasn't happy with Steve's behavior, but the Headmaster stopped him.
"How can that hurt us?" he simply asked.
"How indeed?" Steve went back outside with a smirk.
"Where are the artifacts?" he asked, but he saw the big table with them without anybody telling him. He walked right towards them.
"Junk, junk..." Steve sighed. Everything was just junk!
"Stop touching that..." The guard snapped, but Steve finally found a small item that lightened when he touched it. It looked a bit like a gun, but more like a scanner for codes in a store. He pulled the trigger and a small energy bolt hit a tree on the other side of the camp, making a smoking hole inside. There was no recoil and even Steve looked surprised, but not as much as everybody else.
"Who are you?" he only heard, but at that moment he started running towards his ship.
A gun! He found a laser gun!
That is at least something!
When he sat in his ship he tried to look up something about the gun in his ship logs, but it looked like the ship was not made with a basic guide for alien weapons. Also when he looked at the number of possible planets he could visit he realized that that inside of the temple might actually be more useful than he thought before, but now getting there wasn't really that easy.
"Wait! I have these!" he almost forgot about the small video balls! They could even see in the dark so he waited for the night and made one ball to record the wall filled with planet coordinates without even stepping from his invisible ship.
They were really easy to control, putting manually the addresses inside of the ship computer was more annoying, while he was doing that he also put some notes on every planet he visited, of course in the alien language, because it didn't have English localization.
In the morning, before he decided to check up a new planet he looked at the video again, it reminded him of a movie, since the camera had a really good resolution and it moved almost life-like. He noticed something interesting. Fifteen of the coordinates had a little bit different sizes, it didn't bother him before since he was tired, but now it made him curious and he decided to focus on those.
When he finally flew close to the stargate, people were standing around it doing some kind of ritual. Steve didn't care about them and lowered his ship closer and start dialing, the gate start to turn and spooked the people making Steve laugh, but the first one was busted. Second didn't even start dialing. Meanwhile, the people were really confused, they didn't know what made the gate shine so start to dance and sing. Third dialing made the gate turn several times, but also useless, the people start to praying towards the gate, and finally, the fourth try made the water like wave spring from the gate.
"So long suckers!!" Steve yells as the ship uncovers itself and goes through the gate, but Steve didn't expect to see such beautiful scenery. In front of him was some kind of colorful spiral of dust, thankfully he pretty quickly realized that the gate wasn't rotating around any planet and was spinning out of control away from the spiral, he quickly dials another planet, before the gate was out of his reach. That was a terrible feeling and he was glad to dial the Emerald world since he knew it was reachable.
The next planet was completely barren, Steve had to steer the ship, so it didn't hit the dead volcano. After a quick look around, he understood that this planet was in a middle of a disaster, he thought at first, that it was just local, with the dead plants and big cloud of ash. After going to orbit he understood that the planet was fully covered with dust, probably thanks to an asteroid.
"Six is the charm then,"
It wasn't, the gate didn't even budge.
"Seven then?"
"Seven it is! Damn, I was almost afraid that they all well be just dead ends!" but thankfully, this world was alive. The gate was on the ground and the vast rain jungle reminded him of the emerald forest.
"What is this? A signal?" the ship showed a small dot on a map, close to the gate. The signal was just a location signal for pilots to navigate to the temple without problems. It was weak so the computer barely picked it up, but never the less Steve flew over the small temple. This one was completely covered with jungle and must have been more destroyed than the one he saw before, but the signal made him believe that every temple had a different purpose. Since the terrain was overgrown by jungle he simply landed on top of the temple, there were small trees growing there as well, but not big enough to not let him land. This temple was almost the same in design, but the rooms inside were much more destroyed, like he predicted, although still accessible.
"Damn, the humidity is so annoying here!" also he didn't see anything that looked like technology. It was also much bigger and the last room he discovered was strangely clean. It was almost like somebody come here recently and pulled all the weeds and washed all the mud. To his excitement, the platform on the middle lightened, ever so slightly, when he stood on it and crackling noise that sounded like radio static, weirdly slow and echoed in the room. After that broken recording, he did not understand, the platform flashed and he faced a familiar gray wall.
"Did I got teleported again? Ohhh... what is this smell?" the boy started to wave around to get rid of the awful smell. He looked around.
"Is that...?"
Yes, there were several dead bodies in different stages of decomposition. There were even some skeletons. Steve quickly searched the room for a control panel and found a door leading to a hallway. The control device on the side was the same as was the one in the space station. The hallway was looking old, but it wasn't covered with any plant life and was just slightly lit. It led to a room that, well, looked weird. It had red paintings on the ground and several wooden statues and colorful feathers all over the walls.
"What the hell is this?" the boy started looking around. There were two other doors, but all were stuck. He noticed several panels and computer screens, but they were all covered in primitive art.
"Damn it is a dead end!" the boy turns to leave, but to his surprise, there was a man dressed only in leaves tied to his waist and a wooden mask on his head. Steve stepped back and quickly pulls his gun, well he tried, but it took him a while to aim it at the man, who was crunching before him motionless.
"Who are you?" but the man talked in a language unknown to Steve.
"Move!" Steve yelled, but his gun wasn't intimidating for the man, so he didn't move, only spoke in his own language.
"Move!" Steve shoot the wall making a lot of sparks fly around and the man jumped scared away. Steve used the situation to run back to the teleportation room. The platform lightens again and he appeared back in the temple.
In there he bumped into about a dozen men that were standing around the room. Every one of them looked surprised to see him and nobody had a mask like the one he met a while ago. Half of them were a woman with revealed breasts and the other half were muscular men. They weren't armed, yet there were a lot of them. The platform shined again and the man with the mask appeared next to Steve. He started talking while the boy next to him was aiming his gun all around. The boy was confused and thinking about what to do.
The situation changed when the man with the mask made everybody kneel before Steve. The boy was out of breath.
That he didn't expect.
The leader tried to make Steve follow him and the boy did. After all, there was only one exit from the temple, and right when he entered the jungle he quickly ran away around the temple to climb up. The man didn't follow him so he reached the ship with no problem.
"What am I even doing? Did I really think even for a second to be a god? They kneel before me like it was normal! The Holy man was like a little girl when he was talking with me...God damn it!" Steve kicks in the side of the ship and pulls out one bottle of wine.
"Although those naked girls could worship me all night long!" he laughed to his own joke.
He spends the rest of the day just drinking depressed and watching the jungle through his flying camera.
***
"Ahh... I hate alcohol!" he said as he woke up. Last night was broken into a few pieces of memories and the camera was recording somewhere in the jungle. He ate a small breakfast while trying to take control of the camera and guide it from the dense jungle to fly over the top of the trees to him and finally leave this planet.
It looked like from the rest of the highlighted destinations only one more opened the gate. The gate was standing in the middle of a forest, and right in front of it was a rocky cliff. Steve couldn't steer the ship fast enough and it slightly hit it making it change direction and hit several trees, before crashing down. He wasn't hurt, but the screen in front of him made him really angry. The ship was damaged in several places and couldn't fly. Thankfully invisibility was still working.
"Fuck my life!" Steve kicks the side of the ship when he goes around it to look at the damage. There was no way he could know how to repair it, so he went back to turn on the invisibility and start drinking wine.
Since nobody came after his loud crush he reasoned that nobody was near. He looked up the sensors of the ship and at least they pointed towards the temple. It wasn't that close, probably several days on foot, but Steve's other options were also bad. With this new plan, he went back to the gate to look at the device in front of it. It was identical to the control panel of the gate in his ship, so he went back and made a small map from his sensor on a piece of paper from a book he got in the royal palace. After he made sure he had everything in his backpack he started walking towards the temple.
The forest was interchangeable from Earth's woods. Steve camped few times before with his family or friends, so the forest wasn't intimidating that much, although the fact it was alien made him be on the lookout. He had enough food for days, but he could take just enough for a few days, so he only drunk the rest of the wine.
Since he was alone again he thought out loud breaking the silence. He walked for hours without meeting anything bigger than a rat and without wine, he was forced to think about his fate again. His goal was the temple, just because the aliens could have some answers, but from his last experience, he doubted it. Never the less he continued to walk and walk and walk.
***
Three days later he reached a grassland with the temple insight. It made him happy not only because he was running low on provisions, but also because the temple looked intact. He was a bit afraid of a distant group of animals, but when he came closer he recognized some kind of deer species and reached the entrance of the temple in no time.
"This is nice...." the decorated pillars looked really like those in Rome and several untouched statues of humans were also present. Making the boy wonder, why the aliens cared about humans that much.
"Here goes nothing!" he said and opened the stone door, making all the dust twist around him. He coughed and looked inside teary. The layout was a bit different. One big hallway led to a hall with few doors on the sides. Nobody was inside for years.
"There is no writing on the walls... only on the doors, but these labels are just numbers," he pushed and opened door number one. Inside was a small platform that was similar to the teleporting on before, but it did nothing when he touched it.
"There is some writing here at least! Let me see... the database?"
Steve looked to the other doors, but they were practically empty with nothing interesting and the hall looked more like a church. He was not happy with this outcome at all, but after he ate dinner he started looking around more carefully and in one room he found a computer!
It told him that the temple has applied a shutdown protocol and is not getting any power. Steve start browsing the computer's files and learned nothing of importance about this place, but he remembered that he had a battery from the station. He left it in the ship of course and going back and forth wasn't that tempting.
"What the hell am I saying? My other option is to go to a random planet possibly deathly, go back to the Dark ages, Stone age, or to the people who blame for the abduction of their loved ones! But wait! I can go back there just to trade some information... they knew about the gate and used it! No... This temple is right here and is not going anywhere... I have a lot of food on the ship and it's not going to stay edible forever, so let's do it!"
Going back took him a little bit less time since he was a bit more comfortable. When he was near the ship and without any food, his stomach growled like an animal.
"Shu..." Steve said to it and looked at the map. He must be several meters away from it. He was really glad that he knew how to make a good map. The ship was hidden, but he didn't bother to clean the crashing signs, so he found it quickly and went inside to feast. Eating the jam and old bread wasn't that nice, but he didn't care at all.
"What the..." he looks at the device that could detect the beings near him and it vibrated and showed him four dots few meters away from the ship. He was hidden inside, but those dots were not a good sign. He looked from the ship's window, but they were behind him, so he was blind.
Not for long, because he heard an explosion that shook his ship and made him take out his gun and prepare it for shooting anything that comes his way. His backpack was ready with the battery cell and everything else, but the explosion wasn't made to destroy the ship.
"Damn, those damn aliens destroyed the cliff to used the gate with their ships!" he realized after the dart-looking ship flew over his head and another, another and another. Seven in total. Much more than before. He was afraid that they were coming to the temple, but judging from their direction they were flying slightly off. The ship disappeared and he took the device and with all his stuff he left the ship.
"They'll come back!" with this realization he walked towards the temple. The gate was under the cliff and the device might not see so far, so he didn't want to risk meeting the aliens.
Now the walk in the forest changed dramatically. He carried more stuff than before, was scared of the aliens and they might even be at his destination. Another three days before he reached the grassland were filled with more gloom than before, making him eat less.
"Of thank god and everything which is holy and ...." the temple was empty. That ship really had another goal. He thankfully put his backpack down, scratched it, and ate some food.
"Now let's go to work!"
This place wasn't powered by the battery cell, so he had to spend two days at the computer figuring out where to put it and he finally found the place. The platform had a similar slot to the one at the station so he used that and made that teleport work like the rest of the temple. There was nothing else than this teleport though so he used it with a little bit of pride.
The place where he was teleported in had no windows and was lightened by dim blue lights. It was just one empty room.
"What the hell... so much stuff for this? This!?" for the first time he drew his sword, not for training, and hit the wall in rage.
"Why? Why?" he continued to hit the wall until he was tired. He fell on the ground desperate, but before he could start crying the wall moved after his hands touched it and a small device appeared before him. It looked like there was a light inside so Steve looked inside without thinking. The device moved and created a headgear that trapped his head in and a beam of light burst into his head, making him pass out.
"Ahhh!" the boy woke up laying on the cold ground. His head was completely blank and his memories gone, the only thing was the feeling of the cold and pain in his head. But then his other senses kicked in and made him remember where he was, then who he was, and finally, he calmed down.
"Ae..." he couldn't talk, not because his tongue was injured, but he simply couldn't remember how to move it. The realization of such a thing made him panic and quickly sit down. The device was now dim and looking like some weird ornament.
After an hour of arranging his thoughts, he could finally move normally and think like before. His old memories were back and the pain was gone. His emotion didn't change much, he was still angry and so he picked up his sword and hit that device several times, just to put a few dents in it and chip the sword. After releasing his frustration he sighed and headed back to the temple.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone