trans_9 | Mmm, good Bible.

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Mmm, good Bible.

Daimon had chosen the location ahead of time. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was sacred, perhaps more so than the Vatican. It was the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. It had also not been descrated.

Many months had passed since Daimon spoke before a group of people. His palms sweat and he wiped his brow. Silently, he asked God for the strength to not simply speak but to speak on behalf of the Lord.

When the time came, he walked up before the assembled, Bible in hand. While he was nervous, perhaps on the verge of a panic attack, his words were strong and passionate and grew surer the more he spoke.

“I recognize that the people on board this ship come from various walks of life. Some of you, perhaps, are not familiar with Christianity. If this is the case, you may ask whatever questions you have and offer me any comments or insights after I have spoken.” Daimon then gave what he called a “brief summary” of Christianity. It was, in fact, very lengthy and detailed and contained heavy praise of Jesus and the love of God. He then moved on to give a similarly “brief summary” of the context behind the Old Testament.

“Some of you are perhaps aware of the book of Job. Job was a prosperous man. He had seven sons and three daughters. He had herds of animals and acres of land. He was a devout worshipper of God. In the story, the Adversary speaks with God and tells him that Job only praises God because he has no reason to blame him. He says that if God takes away from Job all of his blessings, his animals, his land, even his children, then Job will curse God’s name. God answers that Job will retain his faith and permits the Adversary to strip away everything from Job save his health.”

“A series of disasters befall Job. He loses everything, his land, his herd, and even his children.” Daimon paused. “Job is distraught. Throwing himself upon the ground, he cries:

“‘Naked I came from the womb,
naked I shall return from whence I came.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.’

“The Adversary spoke with the Lord God again. He tells him that Job continues to praise God only because Job himself has not been afflicted. God allows the Adversary to take from Job his health.

“Robbed of his health, bereft of hope, Job laments. He cries out to God, begging for relief, begging for death, and questioning his justice. Each of Job’s friends berate him and encourage him to have faith but Job refuses. Job’s lament continues until God himself answers him. The Lord says:

“‘Brace yourself and stand up like a man;
I shall put questions to you, and you must answer.
Would you dare deny that I am just,
or put me in the wrong to prove yourself right?
Have you an arm like God’s arm;
can you thunder with a voice like his?
Deck yourself out, if you can, in pride and dignity,
array yourself in pomp and splendour.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look on all who are proud, and bring them low,
crush the wicked where they stand;
bury them in the earth together,
and shroud them in an unknown grave.
Then I in turn would acknowledge
that your own right hand could save you.’

“At these words, Job kneels and asks for forgiveness. The Lord grants it and Job prospers greater than ever before. He lives to see his grand children and his great grand children and his great great grandchildren. To the end of his days he sang the Lord’s praise.”

Daimon gazed into the eyes of the people before him. “You may ask, as I have, why the Lord would cause a blameless man such grief. You may, as I once did, come away with the sense that God is not just, that he is fickle and cares not for man but this could not be further from the truth. To ask why God could and does allow such horrible events to transpire to such good people would be folly, for it is as the Lord says: we cannot judge him. We cannot know why the Lord acts as he does, nor can we hope to know. We can only have, nay, we must have faith in his actions. For the Lord is greater than all of us. He sculpted us with his hands and breathed into us our souls. The Lord knows more than we can possibly imagine and has our best intentions in his heart, even if it seems to us that he has caused us nothing but misery.

“Why, you may ask, have I told you this story? ‘What meaning could it have on my life?’ And this, I shall tell you. Every one of us on this ship is lost. We have been stripped of our most precious comforts- our home, our friends, our family. We do not know what lies ahead of us. We may despair, we may weep, we may beg for the mercy and guidance of our Lord. On board this ship, even surrounded as we are by each other, we may still feel, as Job felt, alone and abandoned.

“But I tell you that this is not so. You are not alone. The Lord sees you. In your darkest hour, at the hardest time of your life, you must remember that you are loved. You must remember that there is hope, no matter how dire your future seems. Furthermore, I tell you that though you have listened to every word I said and still do not believe, I tell you this: you are still not alone. For though we come from different worlds, cultures, and beliefs, we stand before each other as equals. We stand here together and so I tell you: we are not alone.”

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Roxie's free hand fumbles in her jacket, and in the dark the noise flares up at the edge of Katara's hearing, echoing against the stone, threatening to become the roar of an angry firebender.

With an electric crackle, a marble ignites in Roxie's hand, bright enough that it's painful to look at directly: she holds her hand forward, and it sheds its harsh, color-washing arc-light down the long, low, wide entry corridor. There are doorways that vanish into shadow, edged with hypergeometric abstract frescoes that almost hurt to look at--

"This is one of the old,really old temples," Roxie says, and her voice becomes the rush of water against a thirsty shore. "The way it's built, the sound, the echoes, it really gets into your head..."

"Yeah," Katara whispered. This place was definitely giving her something of a headache. She was only breathing, and it sounded loud and echo-y to her. Katara could have appreciated the light trick Roxie had done if she weren't a little scared out of her wits. She was again reminded of Daimon and the talk of his god.

Evidently, he had a lot to learn about different gods. Maybe HE should take a class on different religions.

"Do you ever feel like you're in a place that will give you nightmares later?" Katara asked Roxie. "This place is a little like that."

"It'll be better once we reach the threshold," Roxie says, and tugs Katara forward. "This part is made to drive away strangers and trespassers. It's all illusion, just ignore it--"

Out of the sharp shadows looms a dark thing with knives for fingers and mouths for eyes. And Roxie's words twist and echo down the halls, coming back as a shrieking caw of attack--

"Don't move!" Roxie hisses.

Katara had never remembered feeling so apprehensive in a religious place. With Roxie's explanation, she was put a little at ease, but not by much. It was taking much of her own personal courage to not run screaming from this place. The danger wasn't new, but backdrop, and what she'd seen of Roxie's world already-

An at her urging, Katara froze, her eyes locked in fear.

"Now, you're going to stay with me, and we're both going to step to the left here, roger?" Roxie says, voice slow and trying to be reassuring (but mostly failing).

The figure... stays in place. It's almost certain to click all at once, the fact that it's just a bizarrely complex trick of the light, cast by the shadows on the carvings and frescoes and floor tiles.

And as they step to the left, the perspective changes, and suddenly it's just a harmless spray of shadows—

—and the floor just behind where they were standing a moment ago falls away with a near-silent grind of stone into a dark and unknown pit.

Roxie lets out a noise very much like a stressed sigh of relief.

Katara followed the little girl obediently and saw her fears fall away. The menacing figure in the shadows seemed to disappear, and now they were in yet another strange part of the temple. Katara was having to give hedrself a little courage yet again: this place was starting to get to her. She didn't know why, but she suddenly had images of them coming upon a body.

She knew that was impossible though. It was just her own fears being played about in an unfamiliar place. She had to conquer them.

"So..." Katara said. "Why is the teple so guarded anyway?"

"It's meant to keep out anyone without enough drive to work past their fear," Roxie says, and she pulls Katara forward and down a side doorway marked no differently than the others. The sound of their footsteps echoes into the sound of a crashing wave of scuttling vermin descending on them. "And it's a maze," she hisses. "You have to keep your head."

She pulls Katara sideways through another door as the corridor floor folds out from behind them, collapsing into darkness.

A wide-open, bare-walled square room is illuminated by the marble Roxie still holds, an open doorway visible in each of the other four walls.

Katara understood now. This girl was certainly chosen wisrly by the god she served: she seemed to remember exactly where they needed to go. What was really bothering her was how she didn't know where anything was. She was at least used to having an idea where she was going. Going full speed ahead into the breach was not her idea of smart. If she were with Jean Luc she was sure he'd say she should be careful. Still, she had confidence in Roxie.

She followed Roxie through yet another door and let out a gasp when the corridor seemed to disappear behind them.

"Which one do we take now?" Katara asked apprehensively.

"Hold on," Roxie says, taking a half-step forward into the room.

Five walls, set at exactly ninety-degree angles to each other, all the same size; the room is a perfect square.

...five?

It almost hurts to pay attention to too closely. It simply isn't possible, repugnantly so, such a blatant violation of how things work, are supposed to work, that it makes the head spin.

Roxie pulls Katara into the room. Now there are eight walls, and it's still a perfectly square room, all at ninety-degree angles from each other.

"You should close your eyes," she says quietly. The words echo one, two, four, eight times. "The next part gets fairly vertiginous."

Great, now the room wsa playing tricks on them. She thought there five cwalls, but now it turns out there were eight?! Katara was breathing heavy: she wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. Who actually designed this place anyway? She was just going to have to follow Roxie's instinct now.

"I'll take your word for it," she said, not having any idea what vertiginous meant.

Roxie checks that Katara's eyes are closed, and then pulls her forward.

And then suddenly they are, Katara's sense of balance will suddenly tell her, moving downwards—no, upwards—no, wait, left in a spiral—well, perhaps they're upside-down—

She felt herself being pulled forward, and that wsa when all of the semi-normal feeelings of still wanderin around this crazy temple was still happening.

Now, though, she felt like she was moving in various different directions. She was definitely NOT going to be opening her eyes anytime soon, because she was fairly sure if she did that, she was going to throw up. It didn't stop her from gasping a little though.

Roxie keeps pulling Katara forward, and it still feels like they're going in a million directions at once.

And then it all congeals... walking down, down, down, a slope that must be nearly forty-five degrees, in a lazy spiral like a ramp descending far down into the earth.

And then they step forward onto a flat surface. "You can open your eyes now," Roxie says quietly.

They're in the same little-big-confusing room they started out in, just on the opposite side—standing on one of the other doorways.

Katara holds onto Rixie's hands, her eyes shut. Her stomach is definitely doing flip flops, and her usual talkative natured is overridden by the fear that she might throw up at any time. Once they start to go down the slope, she starts to open her eyes again,and groaned. "I never want to do that again," she murmured.

When they stepped into the same room again however, Katara face palms. "Really?!"

"Now that we're on this side, we just need to walk backwards," Roxie says, and carefully leads Katara in doing so. Once they're a few steps away, she turns—

—and they're facing down a new corridor.

"That should be all of it," Roxie says, with a slinky, self-satisfied smile that seems to have an almost sexual tinge to it. "The actual temple's straight ahead."

"Backwards?" Katara exclaimed, shaking her head a little, but doing as Roxie asked. Once they faced a new corridor, Katara sighed. "Finally," she said, shivering a little, a ghost of a smile on her face. She was actually as glad as Roxie that they were done.

Thouh Roxie's smile was a little....interesting, to say the least.

Slowly, slowly, it dampens back down into Roxie's normal expression, but it seems more like an act of will than an automatic response. She lets up her grip on Katara's hand and moves forward, no longer quite so defensive.

The corridor opens up into a broad hall, filled with seating and narrow tables, lit only by the arc-light of the marble Roxie still holds: shadows loom and twist, but somehow they feel like overwatching, benevolent figures here.

"I come with good will, as a visiting acolyte," she announces, lips quirking into a very soft and momentary smile. "I bring a visitor who bears passion and curiosity. We come here to learn and commune with you, elder ones." Roxie keeps moving forward, bowing deeply when she reaches what looks to be a delicately-carved altar.

No response seems forthcoming, but Roxie seems content to go through the motions anyway.

Now that they were where they needed to be, Katara relaxed. This was a lot like some places they visited actually: sometimes there had to be extra protection, in case unsavory people visited.

It was worth reaching their destination. Now she could appreciate the beauty if the temple, and feel awe at the imposing figures. Even Roxie seemed different somehow, almost...spiritual.

"I am honored to be here," Katara said, bowing respectfully.

Roxie... hums. It's a gentle tune, to be sure, almost toneless, but's it's definitely there as she shuffles around the altar to set her flaring marble into a basin so that it can half-illuminate the room a little more evenly.

"There isn't really much to show past this," she speaks up. "Meditation chambers, quarters, art rooms... the real treasures would all be down in the tombs, if there even are any..."

"I want to see it," Katara insisted, a new light shining in her eyes. "I've gone to a few temples in my day, but they've never been anything like this. It's all so intricate. I want to see it all!"

She paused. "It has an art room? And a tomb?"

Roxie nods. "It's—these temples were mostly built a long time before humans were even around. That's why there aren't any windows." 'The builders didn't need them' is the unspoken addition to that.

She moves to look down a dimly-lit hallway. "The art's a little strange to really understand for anybody, but you might like the tombs."

"Huh," is all Katara can reply to this. It was all daunting, but there was nothing that was detering her at the moment. A place that was this well protected wouldn't be unless there were some really mind boggling things to behold, right?

Not that Katara was thinking of obtaining treasure. The Southern Water Tribe had nothing, and associated the wants of treasure to more frivolous nations...like the Fire nation and even certain Earth Nation peoples.

"I've seen a lot of strange things thanks to you," Katara said, smiling. "A few more won't hurt. But I'd like to see the tombs too!"

Though why a girl would want to see a place with dead bodies was beyond her. What was down there?

Roxie ignites another marble taken from a pocket, and leads Katara down a hall, and another hall, and a smoothly spiraling stair that goes down and down and down...

They step out into a narrow promenade, arched doorways opening in every direction. Roxie leads Katara down one—another hallway—and then into another room.

It's carved out of the rock like a dome—a single sheet of rock, not bricks like the rest. In the very middle is a smooth-sided sarcophagus, with an oval outline chipped out of the top casing.

The air of the room is dry and old and cloying, but something about it feels... almost homey. Like a warm blanket wrapped around the both of them.

Where does she keep getting all of these little balls?

Not that there was any time to ask these kind of questions. After all, it was Roxie's god temple. She followed her down yet more halls, which Katara was really starting to get annoyed with. Grief, a thief would be dead by the morning in this place.

Ugh, she rhymed a thought. Who was she, Sokka?

In any case, this next room was a bit more inviting somehow. The sarcophagus drew Katara immediately, and she walked toward it, her eyes wandering about the room.

"It's so...comfortable. Why?"

Roxie goes over and... sits on the sarcophagus, pulling her feet up to settle crosslegged.

"It's because he—" (she gestures down) "—is happy to have visitors. —not 'he'. 'It', maybe, since this feels very old to me and there's probably not enough left of the mind to really be sentient..."

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