The Cursed Temple: Preview

Here’s a look at the first draft of the introductory chapter of the book I’m currently working on, entitled The Cursed Temple. Now bear in mind, this is just a rough draft; which means that it is unfinished. There’s likely to be some errors of some kind in there. But hey, you get to read it early. Stop complaining.

Also, You’re welcome.

Also Also, if you’re having trouble with the names of the people and locations, that probably just means you never learned Mandarin Chinese. I don’t know why not, its a perfectly fine language. And while the characters in the book do NOT speak actual Chinese, and their names are not actual Chinese names - except in one or two cases, when I inserted the actual name of a friend - the spelling and pronunciations do follow the standard mainland China romanization (called pinyin). You can take a look at THIS PRONUNCIATION GUIDE to help you out, if you need it. It even has audio examples of how to pronounce each word.

So, you know, you’re welcome. Again.

Enough preamble, let’s do this!

The Cursed Temple

DeXiong stood shivering in the dark alley. The moon cast but little light, and even the pittance it was willing to impart was mostly blocked by passing clouds. Thus, dark, while not exactly inaccurate, was also most assuredly an understatement. But it was not what he could see that had frozen the young man in his tracks – or what he could not see – rather it was what he heard. The horrifying screams of dying men and women; but not just death. DeXiong had never been around too many people as they were dying, so to be far he had little experience with this sort of thing, but somehow he knew: the screams he heard were not made by people dying in any normal type of way. There was too much horror, too much pain, too much…hopelessness. Too much fear. He could not say how exactly he knew so much about the poor souls he could hear being slaughtered on the other end of that horrid bridge; but it was something upon which the normally conservative fellow would have wagered everything that he owned. And it was that very certainty, indeed the dread, which had ceased his heretofore unimpeded progress.

"Well?" LiangPei asked, grabbing DeXiong by the arm and shaking him. "Are you listening to me?"

"Quiet," DeXiong snapped at his friend. "I'm trying to think."

"Think all you want; think til you're dead," LiangPei urged. "Just do it somewhere else."

"I have to get into that Temple, Pei," DeXiong disagreed, pulling his arm away. "I promised her."

DeXiong was not a treasure hunter. He was in love; what young man isn't? And to LiLi, the fairest maiden in all of the golden valley – but then, what young woman isn't, to the young man that desires her? And much to DeXiong's delight, this particular fairest-maiden-of-them-all returned his affections…mostly. LiLiloved him, she swore; and would be happy to live the rest of her life with him, she promised…but she wasn't going to do so as a pauperess. She had been raised in wealth and luxury, and she expected her future husband to be able to continue providing them for her.

Which was a not insignificant obstacle for DeXiong. He was not a wealthy young man, though intelligent – at least I hope so - and industrious. He was hard-working, and he had a good trade. Or rather, he would have one eventually, as soon as he master retired. He had long ago been apprenticed to a smith, and was by now at least accomplished enough that he felt confident in his abilities to survive on his own. But even Master WuLong, who designed the weapons used by the Empress' personal guard, was not a rich man. Even with his own forge, DeXiong would never make enough to satisfy his beloved's expectations; and they both knew it.

"I finally solved our problem, my love," LiLi had purred at him two nights ago. "Have you ever been to the old temple, outside the city?"

"There are hundreds of temples outside the city," he had answered, intrigued but confused.

"The big one," she responded, frowning at him with furstration. "The one on the other end of that massive bridge."

He stared at her. "You mean the Cursed Temple? The Temple that's been haunted for hundreds of years? The Temple that is blocked off by an entire troop of imperial soldiers?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "All you can see are the problems, DeXiong. You are blind to the opportunities."

"The opportunity to what? Get thrown into a dungeon?"

She waived her hand at him. "Daddy can spring you from any dungeon, if I beg him enough," she insisted quickly, as if dismissing his rather pertinent criticism – at least he thought so – with no more care than if she were swatting away a mildly perturbing fly. "But just imagine what must be hidden away in there. A temple that old must have something of value in it, don't you think? Why, I bet there are old gems just lying around on the floor like fallen leaves in autumn. Any single one of which could set you up for the rest of your life…and then it could finally be our life."

She had leveled her eyes at him to devastating effect; and suddenly all of his totally rational concerns had melted away. Indeed, he began to think, what harm could there be in finding out?

"All right, my love," he had given in, wrapping her up in his arms. "Have it your way."

"I intend to," she answered with a pretty – albeit smug – little smirk on her exquisite face. "Now and forever. So you had better get used it."

Which was how DeXiong and LiangPei had ended up here, a hundred yards beyond the imperial garrison which had been ever barred entry to the Cursed Temple. LiangPei was his best friend, so convincing him to come along had been easy enough; they had grown up together. Fought together. Laughed together. And now we might die together.

They had deliberately picked a night when the moon would be waning for their…extra-legal expedition. Sneaking past the guards proved to be no more difficult or costly than the price of a tankard of wine, and the poppy's milk to pour into it. The sentries all fell asleep within an hour, and the two friends had waltzed into the old, dilapidated quarter of the Imperial Capital as if they were out for an evening stroll.

All had seemed to be going his way as they approached the Cursed Temple. They were nearly to the bridge which led the the Temple's massive gate, and DeXiong had started to allow his hopes to soar. After all, her father is well connected at the Court. If anyone knows what's really in that old ruin, it would be the Empress and her Court.

But then the screams had started. Some of them barely sounded human, they were so primal and terrifying. DeXiong wouldn't have even thought they were human, if it weren't for the tumult of spoken words by which they were surrounded. He knew they were words; but he couldn't make them out. He was too busy listening to the screams…

And neither one of them had moved since; until now.

"Xiong, if we don't leave here right now, we might not be leaving at all."

DeXiong shook his head. "I need to bring back something, Pei. At least some sort of evidence that we were here. I can't let her think I'm lying to her."

LiangPei shook his head. "No woman is worth getting…whatever is happening to those people on that bridge, Xiong. I'm not staying here. Those guards are bound to wake up and realize we drugged them soon."

"I don't care," DeXiong insisted again, once more shaking his head. "I have to get in there; I have to try."

LiangPei muttered and cursed angrily. But when DeXiong began to creep back out into the empty, abandoned streets, his old friend followed him.

They didn't go very far.

Twenty yards out, a mass of desperate, panicked humanity came charging at them from the direction of the bridge. They were covered in blood, many of them were still screaming as if they were still being slaughtered, even though – from what DeXiong could see – they seemed to have escaped whatever had tormented them. But more importantly, they were barely cognizant of their surroundings – a fact for which DeXiong was grateful: for even though the retreating crash of frenzied survivors came running down the exact same street, and passed directly between where DeXiong and LiangPei stood pressed up against the walls, they did not seem to notice them at all.

It was not until they had passed out of view, receding into the dark, dilapidated alleys of this fallen section of their fair city, that DeXiong regained his courage. There were still sounds of struggle and movement coming from the bridge; and, though the likelihood of his success had never seemed more bleak, he was not yet willing to abandon his hopes entirely. Let's at least see what we're dealing with first.

So they crept down the street, every step taking them towards the horrifying sounds coming from the bridge. The screams had all died out now, replaced with a chorus of wordless groans and what sounded like the shuffling of directionless feet.

Fifty yards out, they could just barely see what looked like human shapes, moving away from the bridge and towards the massive gate of the Cursed Temple.

Forty yards, and they noticed that, while the shapes of those strange figures appeared human, their movements certainly did not. There was no rhythm or fluidity to their motion. Rather every step seemed to come at random, and only after the tremendous expenditure of whatever energy it was that fueled them.

But they moved on, crouched down low and treading as silently as they could manage.

At twenty yards, LiangPei grabbed his arm again and pointed out the massed, crumpled shapes of what they each somehow knew were corpses.

At ten yards from the bridge, he could see the blood that leaked out of those bodies dripping off the edges of the bridge, down; down, down into the vast, empty darkness of the chasm beneath.

Yet even then, DeXiong was undeterred. They had not yet been spotted, it seemed, and there was still a chance that something of value might be found outside the Temple – since entering it seemed to now be as likely his foot sprouting a fruit tree that grew chunks of gold instead of pears. LiangPei, loyal as ever, walked beside him.

It was not until they were halfway across the bridge that the full horror of the scene became evident; and only then because of a meteorological happenstance. The cloud cover which had until that moment obscured the moon for the past thirteen hours, suddenly disappeared, throwing the full light of that brilliant, pearl orb on the bridge where DeXiong and his friend attempted to pass.

It was not simply a murder, nor a massacre. It was slaughter. It was horror. Limbs that had been torn from their trunks lay strewn about the surface of the bridge like branches blown off an oak by a storm. Heads torn from their previously supporting necks stared up at him, eyes wide and bulging outward. One woman he saw clearly had been torn almost completely in half, from her shoulder down to her groin, and the two sides lay splayed out in opposite directions. It was terrifyingly inappropriate, but he could not help but get the impression that the mutilated corpse looked not unlike an old banana peel, opened and discarded after its tender fruit had already been devoured.

And then something shrieked at them from the other side of the bridge.

DeXiong looked up and saw, for the first time, the sentries that lined the walls of the temple. If the moon had remained hidden behind the clouds, he would never have been able to see their faces.

But the clouds were gone; and he could see them clearly. He just didn't know how to describe them.

There were perhaps a hundred of them. Desiccated, rotting, corpses – except they weren't corpses, because they were still moving.

And shrieking; all of them, in perfect unison.

And they were point directly at him.

"Holy goddess protect me," he cursed in surprise.

"Let's get out of here," LiangPei urged. And DeXiong finally agreed with him.

All subtlety and subterfuge abandoned now, they stood straight up and turned to run. Perhaps home, perhaps out of the Golden Valley, perhaps down to the first gate into hell itself – anywhere, so long at it took them away from this terrible place. But something caught his eye, the golden gleam of precious metal reflecting the unexptected, fortuitous moonlight back directly into DeXiong's face.

He didn't know what it was; he didn't care. He bent down, scooped it up, and ran.

It was not until they had returned to the safety of the city proper, on the other side of the garrison which they had drugged earlier that evening, that DeXiong thought to examine whatever it was he had found.

And when he did, he was perplexed. For it was not a crown, or a jewel, or a bracelet embedded with precious stones. Nor was it an ornately designed dagger, or a piece of an expertly crafted set of armor. No, he would have expected anything of that kind. Yet this? How would he have thought to expect this?

It was a key.