Under the Moon of Taxoxcia Chapter 4
Version Beta-3

Thomas Logan crept through the damp catacombs beneath the Outer Sanctum, his flashlight flickering among the walls like a hyperactive firefly. Dim red light permeated the tunnels, casting everything in an eerie crimson shade while the echo of running water and crackling flame swept past him.

The sound of distant footsteps and creaking stone leapt at him from the dark. All the while, his heart hammered in his chest. The presence was so much stronger here than in the settlement of Taxoxcia. It was as if the very walls were alive and reacting to his presence within their domain. Shivers ran down the length of his arms.

“Bethi?” he whispered in the darkness. The sound was louder than he expected and it bounced off the walls like a crazed tennis ball, leaping from one surface to the next in a cacophony of noise.

“We’ve spent out entire lives digging into the earth, Tom.” Bethi’s phantom voice echoed in the twisting tunnels. He glanced behind him, but she was nowhere in sight. “To find the secrets of the lost peoples. And this…this is the greatest secret of all. It’s no coincidence that we were brought here now.”

“Why’s that?” He did his best to keep his voice calm and patient. “These people have been gone for half a millennium. What makes this place so special?”

“All those other places…” she said as he turned a corner into another passageway. He could see a gaping hole about a hundred feet up the corridor. “Those places have been dead for centuries, if not millennia. But here, the magic lives on. And I am going to experience that magic, Tom.”

His boots crunched the soft rocks beneath his feet and his flashlight flickered for but a moment.

“And what about me, Bethi?” he asked. “Am I just supposed to leave you here?”

A long, awkward silence filled the damp air.

“Bethi, answer me,” Thomas instructed. But nothing happened, save for the sputtering of his flashlight. With an annoyed grunt, he slapped it. It responded with a faint pop and the catacombs around him plunged into darkness.

He stood there for several seconds before muttering, “I hate this place.”

Fear rooted him to the spot as his breath shuddered in his chest. He could feel the walls creeping toward him, intent upon smothering and entombing him beneath the ancient temple. His hands clenched in a desperate bid to control his raging horror.

Then a faint echo of Bethi’s voice came through the halls. It wasn’t so much as word, but a memory of a word through the ancient tunnels. It was just enough to push him forward the last fifty feet through the tunnel, guiding himself slowly with a hand against the rough stone.

When he nearly tripped over the threshold of the door, he felt a sense of accomplishment and the terror began to fade away. The sound of trickling water swam about his hearing. Then, a blinding flash dazzled him and he staggered backwards. Squinting against the sudden flare, he looked around him.

A cheerful red fire burned in a glowing ivory circle in the middle of the floor, producing no smoke of any kind. Moving past the low stone bench encircling the strange flame, Thomas knelt and realized he couldn’t see a fuel beneath the fire. It simply sprang from the floor of the chamber. Then his eyes wandered over the room itself.

The dome-shaped chamber was about ten feet high with a thick ridge of ebony stone running three quarters of the way up the wall. Underneath the ridge, a nearly invisible curtain of water fell along the sides of the room, breaking only for the door he had just entered and another door beyond the fire. He ran a finger through the cool, crisp water and marveled at the way it hugged the wall before it splattered into a small depression around the lip of the chamber.

An astounding relief of stone, wood and metal glimmered beneath the flowing water. It took him several moments to realize he was looking at another version of Taxoxcia’s history, crafted lovingly from the very walls of the chamber itself, then enhanced with bits of woodwork and bands of metal.

He resisted the urge to run a finger along the beautiful work and contented himself with interpreting the relief. It began with the war that waged through the jungle, the stacks of dead piled as high as the ancient trees. As he moved through the chamber, he watched the brutal violations of villages and families by a mad warlord, ending with a lone shaman, the last survivor of his village, kneeling in prayer. Faint glimmering sparks of metal showed the spirits whirling about him.

Bethi’s voice suddenly flowed through the chamber. “They call this the Alcove of the Fallen,” she whispered. “The acolytes came here to remember those who died during the war. They would meditate here for hours, as simply reflecting upon those who passed beyond.”

Thomas couldn’t speak as he felt the emotional energy ebb and flow around him like the surging ocean.

“Move to the next Alcove, Thomas,” she bade him. “You need to understand what really happened here. You don’t have to come with me, but you still need to understand.”

His own natural curiosity welling up inside him, he moved through a short stone passage into the next chamber. The room was nearly identical to the previous, save for the continuation of the story under the streaming water.

These reliefs showed the shaman leading his followers to the red dome within the middle of the jungle, two sparkling spirits on either shoulder of the man. In the center of the displays was a partially constructed version of Taxoxcia itself, protected only by the Wall of the Eternal.

“Once the first Wall was built, the warlord learned of what the shaman was doing,” Bethi echoed. “You can see the armies marching upon Taxoxcia, lead by the warlord himself. As his acolytes attempted to defend their home in the middle of the night, the shaman gave himself to the spirits in the Rite of the Tail.”

And the last image before the next passage was indeed that. As the armies of the warlord struck the Wall of the Eternal, the shaman stood in the center of the Chamber of Red, the glow of the moon bursting down upon him.

“The Alcove of the Builders was used to remember those who worked so hard to create this place and those who died in its defense.”

Without Bethi’s prodding, he moved to the third chamber. He knew this part of the story, where the shaman underwent the transformation into the First and was reformed into the shape of a female Foxfolk. Bethi said nothing as he watched the events following the transformation. The water pulsed along the displays and Thomas could see the actions playing out before him as if he was watching a movie.

The fighting had broken through the Wall of the Eternal and the acolytes were just trying to defend the dome around the Chamber of Red. But when the First came out, the combat stopped immediately, leaving all to stare at the new creature in their midst. She strode up to the warlord, whose face was a mask of madness and hate. For a moment, they simply stared at one another before the warlord stuck out with his sword.

The First lifted her hand and the warlord transformed into a creature just like her.

Thomas gasped as he realized what he was seeing. He barely registered the images of the armies bowing before the First and the two groups working with the people of Taxoxcia to build the Wall of the Beloved and the Wall of Adored. His mind haltingly proceeded the new information

“She forced the change upon him,” Thomas whispered. His voice never carried beyond the room. “Who else was forced into these bodies?”

For a horrible second, he wondered if all the statues they’ve seen were actually once soldiers in the warlord’s army, forced to serve as idols for the faithful people of Taxoxcia. The thought filled him with a creeping dread.

“Do you understand now, Tom?” Bethi’s voice said.

“All too well,” he snarled. He jogged out of the room and down a narrow passage filled with scones of light. “And I’m not letting you become one of these things.”

“It’s not your choice,” Bethi pointed out. “And why would you deny me this? You saw what happened when the warlord’s armies struck!”

“I saw a man being transformed against his will into one of those things.” Thomas had trouble breathing in the damp subterranean air, but did not stop his movement. He needed to reach Bethi before she made a terrible mistake.

“You don’t understand.” Her voice was pleading now. “You don’t understand what really happened. The warlord never would have undergone the transformation willingly. But it was the only way.”

He didn’t respond. He was too busy trying to maintain his footing against the slippery rock in his mad rush down the tunnels. Bethi’s voice sounded no nearer, no matter how far he traveled. Small chambers broke off to either sides, but Thomas didn’t stop to inspect them. He continued to move until he reached a sudden stairwell that spiraled down into the earth.

“Thomas!” she cried suddenly. He knew instantly she was somewhere below him. He began to race down the stairs. “You need to stop!”

“Why?” he huffed, his feet barely able to keep up with the frantic pace.

“Because the magic of these chambers hasn’t diminished!”

Before she could say another word, he hit the bottom of the steps and slammed through a thick wooden door, emblazoned with the figure of a Foxfolk upon it. He stumbled into the next room and crashed into the ground, sending a cloud of thick green mist whirling around him. There was a rumble behind him and he turned to see a stone slab moving up into where the door had been.

“What the hell?” he cried as he scrambled to his feet. The mist swirled around him as if it was alive.

“This is the first of the purification chambers, Tom,” Bethi said. His head shot back and forth, but he could identify no exits from the room. He didn’t even know where Bethi’s voice was coming from. “A Foxfolk cannot inhabit one of us as we are. Millennia of anger, hate and destruction have poisoned our minds.”

Thomas began to have a nasty suspicion about the mist twisting about his legs.

“Those who desired the transformation meditated in these chambers, so their minds were better suited to being a host. It enhanced their passions and desires, their dreams of peace and wonder. I’ve already passed through the three chambers Tom. I can see the moonlight at the end of the path.”

“You need to come back here!” Thomas called.

“Thomas, you don’t understand this obsession of mine. You were always the levelheaded one. My heart simply will not allow me to turn away from this opportunity.”

“And what about me?” he screamed, his voice blasting back into his ears with an echo. “What about us?”

“I will remember you,” Bethi sounded close to tears.

“No,” he said. He could feel something in the back of his mind, tickling his consciousness. He tried not to breathe in the mist, but it was everywhere. There was no escaping it. He did his best to ignore the whispers in his mind, like voices just out of the edge of hearing.

“You cannot follow me, Tom. Go back.”

Another rumble filled the air. Thomas glanced behind him and the stone wall hiding the stairwell slid down into the floor. In front of him, there was another short passage and an opening into a room filled with purple smoke.

“Thomas, leave me.”

He stood there for an eternity.

The sound of his boots against the smooth stone surface sounded like a brass drum in the confined space. It became even louder as he passed through the short hallway and into the room with the purple smoke. Once again, the door behind him sealed itself.

“I’m not leaving you,” he muttered.

“Tom, you don’t understand what this place will do to you. For me, it’s the realization of my greatest dream. But for you, it will exact a terrible price.”

“We leave together or we don’t leave at all.” The mist felt cool against his skin. His imagination flared and he thought he could feel it seeping into his pores. After his experiences in the three Alcoves above, he no longer doubted that there was some power here. He felt a pressure on his thoughts as something tried to mold his thinking patterns.

He fought against it, the image of the warlord being forcibly transformed burned into his mind. But it was like teasing scent of a summer field, something impossible to fight against. He needed something else to shield him against the invading forces. With Bethi still asking him to turn back, his mind turned to her.

With a brush in his mind, he slowly painted a picture of her. Thick blonde hair, usually caked with mud and flecks of brown twigs, bouncing down to her shoulders. Brilliant blue eyes, just like a summer sky in the Australian outback. That little smile she got when she found something that caught her interest. The gentle curves of her body, often lost under layers of thick expedition clothing.

He remembered their first kiss under the desert sky in some forgotten corner of Arizona. Sumptuous days and passionate nights in Tahiti after their wedding. Fighting their way out of the warlord’s prison in Peru. Spending a week in a tiny submersible exploring the lost secrets of the Mediterranean.

The tingle remained, but there was a shift in the sensation. It flowed around his thoughts, moving through them like a river streaming around an enormous, immovable boulder.

When the next rumble pounded through the room, Bethi once again begged him to turn away.

“I’m not leaving you,” he whispered. He stepped through the next passage.

But this time, the door on the other side remained closed.

“This isn’t your path, Tom.”

“Open the door, Bethi.”

“I can’t make you do this.”

“Open the door.”

“The Rite is almost ready. Just go and move on. There’s so much more in the world to see.”

“Open the door.”

He heard the tears in her voice. “I can’t stand for you to hate me. But I need this.”

“I know. And I won’t hate you.”

“You won’t?”

“I’m not leaving you.”

There was silence.

The door opened. It was just like the rest of them, but this time, it was filled with ruby red smoke. The scent of cinnamon danced in the air as he stepped into the haze.

Thomas Logan took a deep breath.