The door swung open when I yanked on it with my one hand, and the light of a single large white moon poured into the black temple. The steps of the temple gave way into grass, but that only continued for another hundred meters or so, and then another black temple rose up.
“Fuck,” I growled when my eyes traced the lines of the next temple. There were dozens more that I could see, and a few quick steps out into the grass allowed me to see a hundred more of the temples. They seemed to expand in every direction as far as I could see in the moonlight. They were arranged in careful rows like black crops of uniform width and height.
“There are thousands,” Eve gasped.
“Or more,” I grunted as I swung my head around to look the other way. Did each one of these temples hold a sleeping Draugr? Was this even my dream? Or was this a look at the homeworld of my enemy?
“Where do we go?” Eve whispered. “How do we escape?”
“Maybe I can climb up to the top and get a look around,” I said as I looked at the wall of the temple we had just exited. The black stone was smooth, but it was made of many ledges and various indents that gave it the kind of ancient Indian temple type feel that I recognized from pictures of Earth’s preserved ruins.
“You only have one hand,” Eve said.
“Yeah, but I’m also a crazy strong weretiger,” I chuckled as I jumped up to grab the ledge right above my head. It would have been difficult to reach in my human form, but I was significantly taller now, and I was easily able to pull myself up with the one arm.
The climbing was a bit slow, but I managed to make it up some ten meters before I bothered to look down. I guessed that I was only thirty percent up the total height of the temple, and I took a quick glance around to see if I could tell which direction we needed to go. I was only able to view the main lower bodies of the other buildings though, so I climbed until I thought I was almost three quarters of the way to the top.
My tiger eyes worked excellently in the lower light, and the moon was bright, but every direction I looked seemed to have endless rows of these temples. The only difference I could see was to the back side of where I climbed, off in the distance the sky seemed to turn a red color instead of the white from the moon. I didn’t know if it meant that we should go toward or away from that spot, but it was the only directional clue I had.
“I cannot sense you as usual,” Eve said when I climbed back down to her. “I normally feel your thoughts, but now I cannot. It is strange, I feel something else from you. It is like water flowing from you.”
“I think it is the Nordar bond of submission,” I said. “It is supposed to take a few days to start working, but maybe you are sensitive to it. All directions seem to be the same: endless black temples, but the direction behind this temple has a red glow in the sky. I say we go that way.”
“I will follow you, my love,” Eve said, and we moved across the grass and around the building where we had killed the SAVO woman.
The air was slightly damp and cool, and the dew covered grass tickled my feet as we walked. For a few moments we didn’t speak, but then I heard a distant scream behind us, and we both froze in place.
“That sounded really far away,” I whispered.
“Yes,” she agreed, “but perhaps we should jog instead of walk?”
“Yeah,” I said, and then we both picked up our speed so that we were almost running across the grass.
We passed our first temple, and I felt a bit of relief that its door was closed. When we ran past the third temple, another scream echoed through the night air, and I felt a cold chill ascend from the grass and form a block of ice in my stomach.
“It sounds closer,” I growled, and Eve nodded.
Our jog turned into a run.
Well, it was a run for Eve, but in my tigerman form, I could have kept this pace up all day without even breathing heavy. I contemplated carrying her over my shoulder, but that would have required using my only remaining hand to hold on to her, and I was starting to get the feeling that I was going to have to fight something soon.
Another scream sounded behind us, and there was a second screech that echoed it to our right.
“Shit,” I hissed under my breath. The screams could have just been random, but the one behind us definitely was getting closer, and I had no reason to think that the second voice didn’t know where we were.
“How far away was the red light?” Eve asked.
“Hard to tell,” I replied. “Maybe four kilometers.”
“They will reach us before we make it.” She frowned.
“Probably,” I said as I looked at one of the dark temples we passed. It might be worth it to open one of the doors so I could have a bit of a bottleneck for when these fuckers came at us, but I also didn’t want to risk waking up someone that might have been sleeping inside.
Another scream sounded, but this time it was to our left, and the one behind us and to our right echoed its cry.
Yeah, we were being herded. Maybe I should have picked the other direction, but it was too late now. I needed somewhere to make a stand, but I couldn’t really see a place beside inside the temples. Worse case, whatever was inside woke up, and we would have to fight what tried to come inside and what was already inside. That was probably still better than fighting a battle from three different directions.
“We are going to duck into one of these and--”
“Eyyyyee yahhh!” I heard a familiar voice shout above me, and my heart leapt for joy when I looked up to see black wings descend against the backdrop of the white moon.
“Persephone!” I sighed as she landed on the soft grass ahead of us and shook her wings.
“Persephone?” Eve asked as her body crouched down in a fighting stance.
“Yes!” I said as the platinum-haired woman threw herself into my arms and showered my tiger nose and whiskers with kisses. Her lips burned with wonderful warmth, and I felt the fear in my stomach melt away for a few moments.
Persephone turned away from me, and the two red eyed women stared at each other for a handful of seconds. Then the dark angel stepped so that she stood only a few centimeters away from Eve, took her hands, and kissed Eve’s palms. Then Persephone wrapped her arms around Eve’s narrow waist and kissed her passionately on the lips.
“Ahhh,” Eve exhaled after Persephone let go of her. “I cannot read her thoughts here, but her touch is familiar. I can sense her love for you, Adam. Is this how she looks in your dreams?”
“Yeah,” I said as my eyes trailed down her lingerie clad body. Her flawless white skin showed through the black lace fabric in all the right places, but then I remembered that we were being followed by assholes, and I opened my mouth to ask the winged woman if she could help us.
“Eye yahhh!” she said before I could ask, and she pointed at the two o’clock heading of where we were running.
“Let’s follow her,” I told Eve, and the three of us all began to run across the grass.
We passed four more temples, and then the platinum-haired angel pointed urgently to the next one. As she gestured, another round of screeches pierced the cool night air behind us, and I glanced over my shoulder. There was a group of humanoid creatures sprinting toward us. I guessed they were maybe three hundred meters away, but it was obvious that they were going to catch us if we didn’t figure something out in the next half a minute.
“Eye yahh. Innn!” Persephone shouted as soon as we turned the corner, and I saw that this temple’s doors were slightly ajar.
I ran in first, and it took me half a moment to get adjusted to the red lighting. It was a bit fainter than the moon glow, but I soon saw that the cylinder at the far side of the temple was laying on its side, and the tubes which were once attached were dripping blood down the steps of the dais.
Eve ran in behind me, and then Persephone. I threw my shoulder into the door on the left, and the two women pushed the door on the right closed. There didn’t appear to be any lock on it, but there were two long loop handles that I might be able to use as a door bar if I could find something long and metal.