Zorian looked around him, but failed to see any evidence of decay in the interior of the temple. The temple was clean and intact, and the altar — made out of white marble and framed with silk or some other expensive cloth — looked practically brand new. Plenty of stone statues were scattered throughout the building, seamlessly melding into the walls or support beams, and most of the remaining unadorned space was taken up by wooden panels that had various religious imagery carved into their surface, much like the main doors. In short, it was an absurdly luxurious building by the standards of rural temples such as the one in Cirin, and better maintained to boot. Zorian was almost afraid to ask what Cyoria’s main temple looked like if this one was not considered important enough to keep running.
Batak led him to a small, unassuming door next to the altar and ushered him to what was apparently a more informal setting. Rather than being a classical office, it was instead a combination of a kitchen and a living room, far messier than and not nearly as lifeless as the main temple had been. Batak immediately started preparing some tea and started peppering him with questions. The questions were fairly standard — who he was, what he did, where he was from, who his family was, that sort of stuff — so Zorian felt comfortable answering them honestly. Strangely enough, Batak didn’t ask him a single question about his religiosity, something Zorian was glad for. Zorian, in turn, asked a couple of questions about Batak and Kylae, trying to understand what they were even doing here if the temple was abandoned.
Batak was all too happy to enlighten him. Apparently the church leadership didn’t feel comfortable with simply demolishing the temple… or worse, leaving it to the mercy of the elements and looters. A perfectly understandable sentiment, in Zorian’s opinion — not only would it be a shame to consign such a majestic building to oblivion, it would also be a blatant admission of weakness from the church. In the end, Batak and Kylae were assigned to the temple, ostensibly to keep the temple running but in reality more to keep it presentable and ward off thieves and squatters.
Finally, after he finished his cup of tea, Batak finally decided he had danced around the issue long enough.
«So,» said Batak. «You never did tell me why you’re here, mister Kazinski. Do you think you could perhaps tell me what you need to speak with Kylae about or is this too sensitive for the ears of a mere junior priest?»
Zorian thought about it for a second before deciding it probably wouldn’t hurt to tell the man why he came. Future forecasting wasn’t illegal or anything, after all.
«Well…» began Zorian. «For a start, I heard that Priestess Kylae is skilled at forecasting the future through divinations.»
Batak stiffened slightly, but quickly forced himself to relax. His smile did slip off his face, however.
«She is,» he said. «It is a difficult field to practice and I doubt anyone could claim mastery of it in any real sense, but she is as close to an expert as you’re likely ever going to get.»
«But there are other people who dabble in it regardless, one of which has sent me to speak with Kylae about her findings,» said Zorian, privately enjoying the mental image of the aranea matriarch hissing at him for calling her a ‘dabbler’ in the field. «Some of the results she had gotten out of her predictions have been very… irregular.»
All pretenses of good cheer had left Batak’s face by the time he finished talking. Silence stretched into uncomfortable seconds. Zorian was starting to wonder if talking about the topic was somehow taboo or if he had otherwise insulted the man somehow when the junior priest spoke again.
«And these… irregularities… when exactly do they appear? How far did your mysterious backer project her predictions before they went haywire?»
It was at this point that Zorian realized: Batak already knew. He was no more a mere junior priest than Zorian was just an innocent messenger.
«There is only one real irregularity, and it appears on the day of the summer festival. Specifically, the prediction returns a blank beyond that date… almost as if the whole world disappears after that point. But you already knew that, didn’t you?» asked Zorian rhetorically.
Instead of answering him, Batak spat out a very unpriestly curse and started pacing around the cramped room in agitation.
«I’ll take that as a yes,» Zorian sighed.
Batak stopped pacing to give him a wary look. After a few moments, the priest visibly forced himself to relax.
«I’m sorry,» said Batak, «I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just… well, it’s probably best if I go and fetch Kylae now so we can discuss this together.»
«Isn’t she doing a ritual at the moment?» Zorian pointed out curiously. He knew it was a very bad idea to stop magical rituals halfway through, but maybe the ritual Kylae was performing was purely religious in nature?
«Well, sort of,» Batak said sheepishly. «I don’t think she’ll be terribly bothered if I interrupt her. Not for this, in any case. Please wait here while I go get her.»
As Zorian watched Batak hurriedly leave, he couldn’t help but wonder why Batak was so spooked out by the termination date they uncovered. Zorian was certainly spooked, but that was because he knew exactly what was causing it, but to Batak and Kylae it shouldn’t look terribly unusual. Much like soul-related magics, the field of future prediction was very poorly understood, and strange never-encountered events probably weren’t unheard of. Zorian sincerely hoped that Batak’s agitation meant they knew something important about the anomaly that he and aranea matriarch had missed.
It wasn’t long before Batak came back with a middle aged woman back in tow. Zorian’s first thought was that she was surprisingly young for a high priestess, but he supposed with the manpower shortage among the priesthood they couldn’t afford to be too picky about such things. For her part, the priestess gave him a long, searching look upon entering the room before giving him a strained smile and sitting down next to Batak, so that both of them were facing him.
«Hello mister Kazinski,» she said. «I am Kylae Kuosi, the high priestess of this temple. I hear you’ve wanted to speak to me. Specifically, that you wanted to speak to me about future prediction?»
«About the termination date on the day of the summer festival, yes,» Zorian confirmed.
A short exchange followed where they both confirmed they were indeed talking about the same thing and then the priestess leaned back on her chair and gave Batak a mild glare.
«I told you it was not a mistake,» she said.
«And I told you it wasn’t you who was the problem,» Batak shot back. «I guess we were both right.»
Kylae sighed before refocusing on Zorian. «I don’t suppose you could introduce me to your master so I can discuss this directly with her? Not that I have anything against you but you just don’t have the necessary expertise and all your information is by necessity second-hand…»
«Sorry,» Zorian said. «I’m afraid my ‘master’ definitely wishes to stay hidden. I agree she could help you better in person, but this is how things are at the moment.»
And it was vanishingly unlikely that would change any time soon. According to current church dogma, aranea were classified as monsters — servants of the Dragon Below, to be precise — and therefore not to be dealt with. Kylae and Batak seemed fairly liberal as priests go, but probably not that liberal. Admitting he was speaking on behalf of a giant sentient spider would have led to him being forcibly expelled from the temple at best.
«If I may ask, though, why has this gotten you so spooked?» Zorian asked curiously. «I mean, I know why me and my, ah, master are concerned, but why do you have a problem with it?»
The priestess looked at him curiously. «And why are you concerned, if I may ask?»
«Trade?» offered Zorian, suppressing a smile in favor of a most innocent expression he could manage. Hook, line and sinker.
The priestess shared a silent look with Batak, somehow communicating without words with her fellow priest. Apparently they knew each other quite well if they could manage that. Maybe they were lovers? If Zorian remembered correctly, priests were forbidden to have relationships with each other, and thus had to look for romantic options outside the church hierarchy, but it wouldn’t be the first time such rules were ignored. In any case, after a few seconds they seemed to reach a decision and turned again towards him.
«We will share our concerns with you, but only if you go first,» the priestess said. «And be warned — I can tell when people lie to me. It is a supernatural ability and has never failed me before, so please don’t waste my time with lies and half-truths.»
Well. That was kind of inconvenient. Zorian didn’t detect any attempt at barging into his mind, so whatever ability she had probably wasn’t mind-based in nature. Was she instinctively divining the truth of his statements? Peering into his soul? He supposed she could be bluffing, but he somehow doubted it.
In the end he decided to take a risk. He fired off a couple of divinations to make sure they weren’t scried and that there were no cranium rats around and then started to speak when they returned negative.
«Let’s see if this will be a sufficient price for your help, then,» Zorian sighed. «The reason we’re concerned is that there is a well-funded, well-organized group of terrorists planning to take advantage of the summer festival to cause trouble. Some parts of their plan — like their usage of artillery spells and war trolls smuggled through the Dungeon — was fairly pedestrian. But there is a more exotic component to their plans — one that wreaks havoc with future prediction by its very nature.»
There was a brief moment of silence as the two priests stared at him incredulously.
«That… is not what I expected to hear,» the priestess said. «Gods and Goddesses, this is way above my pay grade. I… don’t think I want to know more, to be honest. I don’t want to get involved into such things.»
«Probably for the best,» Zorian agreed.
«If that is indeed the true cause of the irregularity, though, then my own reasons to panic about it are largely misplaced,» the priestess mused.
«I’d still like to hear about it, if it’s not a problem,» Zorian said.
«It’s about the angels,» Batak interjected. «Ever since the gods have gone silent, angels have sort of taken their place. They can’t grant magical powers to the priesthood or work miracles the way gods could, but they can be summoned in order to provide advice or give aid with their considerable personal abilities.»
«And what did they say about the anomaly that got you so spooked?» Zorian asked curiously.
«That’s the thing,» the priestess sighed. «We can’t ask them because no one has been able to summon then since about a week ago. We’ve been in contact with churches as far as Koth, and they report the same thing — even the most approachable of celestials are ignoring us. Hell, I’ve even heard rumors that demon worshippers cannot contact their vile masters any more. It is as if something has cut the entire material plane off from the spiritual realms.»
Zorian swallowed heavily. A week ago… the start of the time loop obviously.
«Quite disturbing, isn’t it?» said Kylae. «Coupled with the timeline simply cutting off a few weeks from now, well, I must admit it had really gotten me spooked. Finding out the two are basically unrelated certainly makes me rest easier.»
There was further conversation after this, but none of it was terribly productive. He promised Batak and Kylae to be discreet about their troubles with contacting the spirit world and left.
Unlike the priestess, Zorian didn’t feel like the conversation had eased his worries.