Awakening Of The New Emperor

POV: Recruit 79

Thanks to the new light source that Oswin decided to just now share with me, we were finally able to comfortably continue down into the temple.

"Could've been useful if you pulled that out at other times," I spoke.

I recalled back the few times where the dark loomed over everything, not even light from the blood moon getting in. The pitch black was truly frightening, especially in this neck of the woods. Some reassurance would've been nice.

"It seems were closing in on the main hall," Oswin whispered, totally blissful and unaware as to my previous comment.

"Is that where everyone went for their offerings?"

He shrugged.

"No idea, but maybe there'll be something we can sell," he admits.

"Then I'll finally be able to get a weapon and not have to rely on you four drinks deep to kill a pesky animal," I remark.

"Come on, you make it sound so much worse than it is!"

"No, it's definitely that bad," I snapped.

I had felt like Oswin wanted to give me a slap on the back of my neck after that, however he still held the flame in the palm of his hand so his actions were pretty limited, thankfully.

"We're here," he spoke as he held his hand out wider.

We walked in, revealing a giant, open room. Even the flame wasn't bright enough to light up the entire room, so Oswin improvised, he clamped the ball of flame between his hands before emerging once more as a much larger ball of flame, this time sending it up to levitate in the air just above us.

The flame grew brighter as it flew up.

After just a few seconds, it lit up the entire room from wall to wall.

Thanks to our newly found sight, we had noticed a giant, towering, humanoid statue just in front of us, in the center of the room.

The statue held itself with might, and it aged like fine wine against the test of a century's time. Both of the statue's arms rested on a sword, gripping it tightly, as the blade pointed downward, nearly piercing through the bottom part of the statue, a resting sword stance if you will.

It had almost like a flowing cape, moving in the wind, except of course, it was still.

"Is this... was this... the Emperor?" I asked.

"Yeah, I guess so. It's hard to really even see what he looked like—those facial features of his definitely didn't hold out as well as the rest of the statue," Oswin replied.

"What a shame," it was true, you couldn't really make out his face.

Outside of that, the rest of his body looked like it was almost in mint condition.

"Well, enough with art," Osken spat as he walked over to inspect the statue, looking around the sides of it. "If there isn't really anything of value here, I don't see the point in sticking around. Was cool to admire for a minute, I suppose."

Looking around the sides, I began sweeping away all the dust with my hand, even letting out a cough or two as it all flew around in the air.

Brushing it all away, I saw some text engraved to the stone.

"H-Hey, Oswin," I stuttered. "Come over here, there's some sort of like... text?"

Oswin rushed over, excited to hopefully get something of interest out of this whole place. He took a knee beside me, brushing off some of the excess dust I seemed to miss.

"Do you know what it says? I'm pretty tired so my eyes aren't exactly cooperating," I admit.

"Most of it appears to be unrecognizable, except for one word, Trial. It goes on a bit longer," Oswin pointed out, as he continued brushing off a bit more dust, revealing more text as it blew away. "However it does seem like the rest of this will prove to be nothing."

"Trial? What could it be saying?" I trembled.

"Beats me," he sighed. "Let's just get out of here, place gives me the creeps."

"Yeah, I guess so," I watched as Oswin got back up and began walking over to the hallway that led outside, but I stayed just where I was, just out of pure disappointment this turned out to be nothing.

I mean come on, a temple hidden by some... magic—maybe?

They obviously had to be hiding something here, but all it leads to is this giant, empty room with this deteriorating statue.

'What a waste of time,' I thought.

However of course, almost like a broken record, I did spot something unusual, just as I do most of the time right before I leave. It was covered in dust, as was most of the statue, however it was indented, almost like something was there.

All the letters were slightly pushed out, easily symbolizing their location, however because this was pushed in, it couldn't have been a letter, and definitely wasn't naturally sunken.

I dragged my body over, quickly getting rid of all the dust, not even caring that it blew right in my face instead.

"Huh.. this is interesting," I whispered under my breath.

My words definitely didn't reach Oswin, but I didn't really care right now.

It was a hand scanner. Perfectly outlined for a hand outside of a few rough edges, as one would expect of a century old statue—if not older, with more text, however of course they were also pretty much unreadable outside of the letter T.

I took a moment to contemplate whether I should activate it. Looking over, I noticed Oswin had already entered the hallway and began walking down.

'Well, if I want to try it, got to do it now,' I thought to myself.

With a bit of natural hesitation, I put my hand into my scanner perfectly.

Nothing happened at first.

Seconds later, the entire room began to shake, dust and tiny pieces of rock began circulating around in the air, falling down as well.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Oswin becoming all too alert, as he tried to sprint towards me, however a giant pillar closed the gateway between the main room and the hallway, seemingly leaving me trapped inside of here, by myself, without a weapon.

"M-Maybe it's... just a door?" I stuttered, trying to make myself feel better.

I put my hand on the scanner once more, but nothing.

Finally, a scratchy voice of a man, almost one that's been dead for 100 years, began to speak from within the walls it seemed.

"Let the trial begin!" It screamed.