SANGKARA - THE TEMPLE OF THE HUNTER

Below you'll find the first chapter of the New Year in Heart Eater, as she arrives in the dreaded TEMPLE OF THE HUNTER and walks its steps for the first time. The moment draws near.
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She loathed to admit it, but she was lost. Sangkara had relied on herself, on her own navigation and tracking, for much of her life. But the Garden was playing tricks. In the distance, the hot breath of mist concealed much, but it could do little to hide the looming shadow of the great and twisted folds of the trunk of the Red Tree. This should have made navigation easy, even in heavy rain, which fell often, but the foot of the Red Tree was no North Star. After firmly planting it in one’s mind, you could creep beneath a fallen tree, pull yourself through a rocky pass, and when you peeled away a curtain of vines to see where you stood, the Tree would seem to have moved randomly… or perhaps you in relation to it. Even in dull daylight, which the Tree mostly drank, it was difficult to keep a heading. Even the length of the day became difficult to tell as they marched deeper and deeper into the unknown. Were the positions of the Sun and Moon becoming more difficult to tell as they drew near, or were they really jumping back and forth in the sky? Was the Garden a mere tangled forest in the center of the City, or was it as great or as small as it wanted to be to whomever it wanted to be? Sometimes Sangkara would search the horizon for the caldera rim. Some of the highest spires in the city had been built on those peaks. But in the end, she would see nothing but an endless, primeval wild ascending into fog. It was enough sometimes to believe that this was all there was, a green hell to die in.

Sibiren had perhaps learned not to ask herself such questions, dare not to look so much farther beyond her feet, lest she go mad and truly lose herself in this place. She would have voiced her impatience and vexation more as they drifted in their hike across the Garden, but she wouldn’t dare admit to Sangkara or to herself she was afraid to look and see where they were. Everything to her were tactics and strategies to gain the edge, to stay sharp.

Sangkara, however, had long ago taught herself a different lesson. In the wild you stare into the darkness, for what stares back can kill you. Neither sacrifice to this trial had become more acquainted with the Tree than her. Against her instincts, she had watched it closely, standing like a mountain in defiance of nature. It exuded more onto her mind than just its presence. It seemed to emit small traces of emotion, of wordless profundity. Some days she felt like she could feel herself sway with it in the wind. Strangely, she had begun to get the feeling that the Garden was not warping their hike to keep them wandering endlessly. Sangkara did not continue to stride through the jungle simply for their survival, but because she felt as though she were being guided on a collision course with something. When she was unsure of herself, she felt a void in her chest pulling her forward like gravity, as though the blood in her veins were magnetically drawn to an ineffable destiny. 

At such altitudes in the summit caldera, clouds would occasionally drift into Andrala. The mountain was a kind of center point for so many wind streams to converge or gather around. This made the weather in Andrala very turbulent at times, especially with the seasonal rains. Though the winds were great, in the Caldera of the city and against the boughs of the mighty Red Tree, the winds would break. The boughs would shudder and sway, lightning arcing between branches in the head of the Tree, and the storm clouds would amass. But in the streets, in the jungle of the Garden, the people would often only feel the rain. The winds of the storms hurled by the ocean were broken here into little more than a sweet smell. 

The air was saturated with a charge even now that threatened to break at any minute. Here the storms threatened with a flood. In some places the water could raise over five feet, meaning Sangkara and Sibiren would have to navigate to higher ground and shelter, but this time Sangkara felt differently. She wouldn’t argue. She wouldn’t even speak. She only wanted to keep going while the pools only rippled with the dusting of rain. She scantly had evidence for it, but she felt a general incline in the spirit of the marsh at her feet, the waters growing more shallow around her waist, and then at her thighs. 

There was no flash to be seen, only the distant, dull roar of thunder as Sangkara lead herself into a moss-laden clearing. Still, it was the only tremor the air needed to break open the clouds all around into a windless rain. 

Sangkara felt the soft moonglow of eyes upon her. She looked as the mists parted in front of her up the mouth of a trail of a mountain pass, and there, for a brief moment, bones scattered at its feet, she saw a red animal. It was a pitiful, atrocious thing, emaciated and trembling near collapse, its face gaunt, its eyes pale and shining like the moon. Bare patches of skin revealed its crooked jaws, its bent limbs. Its alien anatomy could be seen beneath its translucent, sinewy flesh, its throbbing veins, its shriveled organs. And yet beauty could be glimpsed within its terrifying visage. It was wolf and bat, orca and hyena, all as one undefinable being. It could scarcely keep its own shape, and as soon as Sangkara tried to look at it deeper in the rain it was gone without a single movement or sound to disturb the mist.

The fog began to collapse around them, and Sibiren’s foot disturbed the hollow bones beneath her feet. Sang would have returned Sibiren with a scornful look, but they were already beneath watchful eyes and she dared not turn away. The fog lifted as though the Garden were inhaling. Sangkara could almost hear the distant sounds of some terrible breath. A chill overtook her, rippling across her skin with the embrace of the rain.

As the veil lifted, the vine netted canopy and peaks of a ruined stone temple could be seen, perched with the watchful eyes and bare, painted bodies of red priestesses, hunters like the one they met with the crocodile. They were dressed only in blood, cloaked only in mist, and adorned with obsidian and bone charms. They stood motionless, as though expecting the arrival of Sangkara and Sibiren. 

At their feet, through every stone and moss-laden patch, wound red, tentacle-like roots, both securing and upheaving the foundations of both earth and temple steps that lay before them. Almost growing out of the earth were the decaying bones of legions. They lined the pools of still water and arose in heaps. It was not a barren of wastes, but a garden of death. Blooming from every knot were the skulls and ribs of devotees and prey alike. It was both a shrine entrance and the mouth of a catacomb. Here, every standing stone and archway had its intricate, spiraling, carved designs painstakingly painted with the blood of sacrifices, and every impression filled with the searching arm of a root was embellished by further designs painted in blood. The crooked steps rose before the sacrifices into a glorious, dark, ruined stronghold at the foot of the Red Tree, lined with worn marble and purest obsidian, enraptured at every spire by the scarlet claim of roots. Finally, they stood beneath the Tree in all its terrifying majesty. Finally, they were in the presence of the mythic Temple of the Hunter. In the distance, mingling with the thunder, the low drums of the huntresses could be heard, the heartbeat of the wilds.

Toward them swayed the naked hips of red-painted guardians, their bodies carved like stone from the hardships of this wild jungle. They were armed only with bone and obsidian spears. They stared at the two girls, waiting for a reason as to why they were not simple prey. Sibiren carefully shouldered the burden of the grizzled Black Crocodile skull off her back and knelt. Sangkara did not. 

"Oh mighty Temple Guardians," she beseeched them, “We make this humble offering to the Hunter, a prize from His Garden.” She then took the bow of the huntress they had slain. “Together we have made this kill, and claimed also the life of one of your sisters.” A moment later, and without a single word traded between them, the trophy offerings were taken by others. There appeared to be almost no hierarchy between them. Each huntress was both nun and warrior to the Temple. Sangkara and Sibiren, still weary from their travels, were led up the steps through the monastery. 

Even claimed by nature, the Temple was still a marvel of art and architecture. Abbey, monastery, fortress, all these words fell short in describing the Temple. Though all but abandoned, it was a city of sacred geometry and craft that was all but lost to the world. Every facet of every structure flowed with the nature around it, and yet at the same time was consumed by it. Pillars, entire walls, whole platforms, were all singularly carved stones, latticed with engravings of many sharp and organic runes, with hardly a fault or crack between them. Such care had been devoted to each and every space and its relationship with the others. Every empty street and terrace, every balcony and bridge was made as a place of worship in full view of the sky overhead. 

And yet, not a single stone was without some crooked upheaval from its foundations or the flowing dendrites of the Red Tree. It was as though the entire monastery were on the back of some shifting, writhing beast unsettled by debris and its unwillingness to move. As Sangkara looked down some streets and over rooves, she imagined a great, raging, flooding sea of red frozen in its midst of swallowing this ancient city. The storied past of these walls was written in the wearing by both the hand and the rains of time, in the steps and courtyards bowed and softened by the passage of so many feet and storms which rolled over them without a care.

Besides this organism of the City itself, save for the trace fossil remains and skulls adorning the halls and archways, there were no people here. There were no furnishings or amenities, no keepsakes, and none of the spaces appeared designed to hold them. Sangkara couldn’t be sure if there ever were a people that lived here, or every trace of their existence had been swept away by weather and beasts. Perhaps even the huntresses did not live here, but this was simply their territory from which they roamed and protected.

However, these priestesses hardly occupied this city alone. If it was not a city, the Temple of the Hunter may have been a museum of art. Embossed over every pillar and on the walls beside every step were the sculpted hieroglyphics of a long-forgotten history of struggle and passion. Andrala’s very soul was engraved into these walls. Passion, lust, pain, hunger, war, ecstasy, and strife were not just depicted, they were living in the stone before them. Names, dates, events, almost all of these things had been beaten away, or the means by which to read them had been lost, but the hot embers of their emotions burned still and pierced Sangkara at every glance, no matter how removed from time and place it was. 

Curiously, though Andrala was no stranger to revering the animals of their lands, many of the Temple of the Hunter’s plinths were dominated by animism. Gone were the kings and saints honored with civilized pageantry. Here only monsters ruled. Strange, warped monsters unlike anything Sangkara had seen. Great tusked serpents, multi-limbed, saber-toothed cats, finned sea monsters wreathed in tentacles, frighteningly mutant wolves and dogs of no discernible origin or species, devouring and being devoured alike, ripping themselves and others apart, sharing their organs and having them exhumed from them.

Finally, they began to ascend the ziggurat of the Temple, but their god was nowhere to be seen. The stone told only stories of wild carnage. There was no statue of a lounging god of love and war. In his place on the plinth was a mutant demon, a wolf-bat with many tails and limbs. The humanoid abomination knelt like some savage and beneath its waiting wings it held out its arms crossed in front of its face, its palms faced outward, its claws flared. Hanged and draped over the feet of the statue were the maimed corpses and pieces of six other sacrificed girls. They had all met their ends in different ways, eaten by some creature, drowned in the swamp, carved by some butcher. Somehow, though they must have been dead for days, their flesh was not rotted, their blood still warm enough to drip on the stone beneath them and steam in a red mist. 

Sangkara felt the pit in her chest widen, the emptiness fill her, but there was no going back. She had made her choice. She looked by her side and saw Sibiren incredibly tense. She was like a deer unable to bolt. Her eyes barely left the statue, the only spot on it not drenched in warm blood. There was space enough remaining to hang a few fresh kills, right between His arms.

From the shelter of the shadows and the red taproots emerged a pack of witches of such stature and physique, they gave reason to doubt they were human. In all ways, they were beautiful women, perhaps the remnants of some forgotten race in Andrala, sharing their distinct features of fierce, sharp, and angular faces. Like the other hunters, their bodies represented the peaks of athleticism. They stood before Sangkara and Sibiren a full head and shoulders above them. Their loincloths did little to hide the distinct bulges between their thighs. Somehow, within their beauty, they were neither male nor female, but something more. They moved like animals and began to encircle Sangkara and Sibiren.

By the hands of the huntresses, with blades of keen sharpness and the skill of warriors, their rags were cut from them. Sangkara’s chest binding was torn from her with something of a great relief. Her heart laid bare for the witches. 

“This is new,” a female voice rose from their ranks with no discernible origin. 

“She was meant as a delicacy for the Mongrel.”

“An oddity for His taste.”

“I am no delicacy,” Sangkara cut through their words with a growl.

“You are unworthy to fight with this weakness. You are food, child.”

“And yet I stand here, unclaimed like these others,” Sang offered her hand to the corpses. “I am not prey. If I am to be fed on, I will fight.” Her eyes burned. Her heart kicked in her chest like a wild mare ready for a fight. There were no more words. There was no agreement between them. Perhaps they spoke only with their body language. After a moment, Sangkara was spared only these words.

“Speak no more. Sit here.” The two girls did as they were bidden. Sibiren, furious, was glad only that she was permitted to live another day. Sangkara only wanted to die fighting.

Both of the girls took their place to the side near the steps, the demon statue still looking down on them. Sibiren meditated, “preparing her spirit for the battle ahead,” as she would say. Meanwhile, Sangkara filled her senses with the place they waited in. Though annoyed, she dared not move in some violation of the grace afforded to her. She dared not speak either. She had grown accustomed to it in the Garden, where an errant noise could have killed you, but in this place, it was so silent it seemed forbidden. 

From this place, Sang could watch the rains overhead, the rivers and waterfalls from the Red Tree cascade down the breadth of its trunk, some darkened by whatever tannin brewed in its bark. 

Rarely did she take her eyes from the statue and the corpses of the other girls, however. She had seen her fair share of death, but it disconcerted her how fresh their bodies were. The red puddle beneath them never drained and was never washed away. Something in Sangkara even held a suspicion that they were still moving, their meat still pulsing, their final moments of agony preserved in a slow twitch. But of all the strange life the sculptors of this strange land had realized through art, this abomination stirred something different in Sangkara. There was a great unease she found in herself as she looked at it, a profound restlessness, a sensation of being repelled and drawn into it like two raindrops. It took her a long time to realize the statue had four eyes since they were obscured behind its pose and the darkness of the rain, but when she realized they had been looking back at her the entire time they both arrested and repelled her. It was as though she had to look away and she could not.

Beyond, the rains passed. The Sun set in glorious twilight. Orange, blue, and deep purple stretched across the sky. What finally drew Sang away from the gaze of the demon was the arrival of more at the Temple. Two more were draped over the thighs of the statue, one needed her head added separately to the pile. That left only two more girls who followed the huntresses up the steps. Though alive, they seemed dirty and all but claimed by the wild jungle they had come from. Sang couldn’t help but wonder if she and Sibiren had looked that beaten as they walked in. 

Four. There were only four girls left from the twelve dropped in the Garden. In ritual, one by one, each was given the traditional wrappings of a huntress, a high waisted fundoshi loincloth and a traditional, high-necked breast wrapping. The pool of red water at the feet of the demon was mixed with a scarlet ochre from the mud here. The hair of the sacrifices, now initiates, now initiates, was mixed with the red ochre into chords and slicked back. Across their bodies, they were marked with more of the red paint, each of them in unique designs according to what the witches read within them. Only their chests remained untouched, “for only claws and teeth were gifted the heart.” With the middle of their chests exposed, Sang could no longer hide her heart like the other girls. She touched it once to console it, but there was little left she could do to calm herself. She knew why these were the traditional garments of Red Priestesses. 

Over the next few days, they carved their own weapons from the natural, pure obsidian and remains around the temple. One of the priestesses came with the bow of the huntress Sibiren and Sangkara had slain when they killed the croc, a bone and horn bow worth months of work. Though offered to either one of them, Sibiren stood up first and eagerly accepted the bow with proper tact and honor. Sangkara watched but said nothing. Sibiren no longer acknowledged her existence. It was clear to Sang that her usefulness had dried up. They were competitors now. Sang had decided anyway to stick to the simplest of killing implements, her spear and carving knives, with just enough sinew to tie into a tight band.

“Your survival is no small feat,” a voice came from the Pack. 

“But we do not survive in the Garden of the Hunter. 

“To run with us, you must master the hunt.”

“Go and feed the Red Tree with your kill.” 

The girls had been dropped into the Garden as sacrifices. Now they were set loose upon it as hunters.