The streets were unusually quiet as he walked through the temple district. He noticed eyes peering through the wooden shutters of the houses as he passed. "Hmm, this seems a bit strange," he thought.
As Rickard walked into Temple Square, he saw a gruesome sight.
Crushed and cleaved bodies of custodians littered the square. Their ruptured plate armour spilling out bloody innards.
Among them were the priests and sextons, who wrapped the bodies as best they could.
The white cloth quickly turned red as they carried the body up the steps and into the temple.
"By the Divas! What happened here?"
He looked down and saw impressions of large, bloody hoofprints. Some were where a custodian's head had been, replaced by an explosive pattern.
Rickard recognised the hoofprints as belonging to a monster he had once escaped by the skin of his teeth.
"It can't be a minotaur!"
But how could the huge monster get within the city walls? "Makkito was staying here!" Rickard dashed up the temple's bloodstained steps and past the ruined doors.
Pews were pushed to the sides of the main temple room, and the slain were laid out neatly on the floor. A priestess was giving the dead their last rites, holding a smoke-billowing incense globe as she swayed the chain around the corpses, reading from a Divianic book in the other hand.
The smoke flowed from the decorative sphere, which seemed to hug the bodies as if embracing them. The smoke almost looked as if it were forming hands, Rickard thought.
It was a strange phenomenon common in Divianic temples, where ethereal smoke would snake around the edges of the stone walls and the wooden rafters above. It was said to be the presence of unseen seraphim inhabiting holy places wherever the faithful came to pray.
Rickard had witnessed this phenomenon many times in his youth, having been raised in a Divianic temple orphanage.
The idea of smoke as a seraphic presence, or as wild, loose magic, was never officially agreed upon in the Celtic faith.
But to Rickard, it was true. In his youth, he would read through books and admire the religious art of the Winged beings. He would talk to the smoke in vain until the temple matron warned him away from that behaviour.
He watched as the priestess spoke words of celvaric to the wisps of smoke around her. Maybe there is something to it, he thought. Not wanting to disturb the priestess' blessings, Rickard slipped past her and deeper into the temple.
It seemed all the priests were too busy dealing with the dead to notice Rickard passing, or maybe they thought he was another sexton?
As he passed them, he was looking for signs of Makitto. He couldn't see Makitto amongst the priestesses running around, and he wasn't willing to look at the dead wrapped in cloth.
In his gut, he knew she was still alive.
By a fountain, he saw sextons and young novices cleaning bandages, filthy with blood, in a large, boiling pot, then scrubbing cloth strips in clean water that glowed a pale blue.
The water not only seemed to remove the blood easily but also brightened the white fabric. The young female novice placed the dry, rolled, clean bandages on a wooden tray. A small, robed mouse boy with grey fur hurriedly picked up the tray and headed towards a stairway leading down. Rickard followed the Mausian quietly, tailing him through the underground catacombs.
The passageways were dry and cool. The stone-grey walls had several alcoves containing stone tombs, each decorated with a recumbent stone statue of a deceased Royal of Balzarsa from centuries past. The alcoves were painted with murals of their deeds in life, well maintained with fresh paint layered over the fading old.
Rickard stopped and looked at a mural. It depicted seraphim surrounding a sphere containing a ball of fire.
He knew that was a depiction of the Fire of creation, said to be used to create every life on Celvar'Wyn.
As a young novice himself, Rickard remembered his time keeping the murals vibrant with gold leaf and rich pigment, painting alongside his novice brothers and sisters, marvelling at the illustrations of kings, queens, knights, monsters, and especially the depictions of the seraphim carrying the souls of the dead to the eternal fire of creation to be reborn.
Rickard was fascinated by the depiction of the winged seraphim, whose skin was alabaster-white or obsidian-black. Their bodies were shapely yet muscled. Seraphim's heads bore the likenesses of the many animalfolk races of Celvar'wyn. Jackals, bears, wolves, panthers, lions, tigers, and rabbits were the main subjects of these murals. Strangely, neither lizards nor avian folk were depicted as seraphim.
The scaledfolk may have been excluded due to the harm the Diva Tek'lana had caused to mortals, Rickard thought, but he couldn't understand why the avian folk were not depicted as seraphim. "Perhaps it's down to the artist's preference?" he thought.
Rickard's ears pricked at the echo of a cry of pain, and he followed the sound.
He entered a large, candlelit chamber where many wounded clerical guards lay on bloodstained straw bedding. A couple of priests and priestesses tended the wounded, applying their healing arts as best they could. They looked exhausted, likely from overusing healing miracles on the injured.
He couldn't see Makitto here. He pressed deeper into the catacombs.
He walked through the dimly lit catacombs, pausing to let hustling priests pass in the narrow corridor. Unconcerned with his presence. Eventually, Rickard saw a door with light filtering through the gaps around it. He quietly pushed the door open and peered in. The chamber was quite large, resembling an unused burial chamber, hastily furnished with straw bedding on the stone slabs.
Makitto was there with her travelling companions. The Samurai Rabbit wore finely crafted armour and a shiny, curved blade on his lap, which he was carefully cleaning. A rhino looked as if he came from the same realm as the rabbit, but he was scruffy and missing his horn. Makitto was tending to a female sheepess who was lying on one of the stone slabs, covered with Makitto's blue clerical cloak.
The samurai spotted him, and the rhino man immediately reacted, brandishing katanas towards Rickard. "Whoa, hey, I'm a friend." When Makitto looked at him, he noticed she appeared frightened, her eyes weary from lack of sleep.
"Rickard? It's alright, I know him, Usagi", she said. They both eased up and sat back down. "Come in and close the door, please", said Makitto.
Rickard entered the room and closed the door behind him. "What happened here?"
"You never heard anything during the night?" said the rhino. "The fighting would have awoken the dead!"
"My comrades and I stayed at an inn far from here. We couldn't possibly have heard anything from there."
"What inn were you staying at?"
"The Harem and Ruby Inn."
"Hmm, I know that place. Those rooms are not far from a dungeon," said the rhino man, scratching at his nose.
"Yeah, I've been told it was formerly, but I digress. What happened?"
"It was a monster!" said the rabbit samurai. "A black beast I've never seen before."
"Tough bastard. Took the deep cuts of our strikes like it was nothing but scratches," said the rhino, cutting his hand in the air.
"It left before the city watch came, though I don't think it was that concerned with them."
"Would have killed them and us just to get to her." The hornless rhino man pointed towards the sleeping sheep woman. "Then it left as if it was called away."
"I've seen my fair share of monsters in the wilds, but this is the first time I've seen a Minotaur. It was huge! How on Celvar'wyn did it roam into the city undetected?" said Makkito. "Such raw violence and anger. Cut down our paladins and clerics like wheat."
Makkito stroked the sheepess's forehead as she spoke. "I gave her a sedative to calm her; she was scared out of her mind while the Minotaur was out there. To be honest, so was I."
Rickard gave her a reassuring hug.
"Did she say anything?" asked Rickard.
"She said they killed everyone, the men with red scars. She didn't say where."
"Red scars?" Rickard thought, but couldn't recall seeing anyone with red scars.
A knock on the door broke his concentration.
"May I enter?" said an elderly voice Rickard recognised. He left Makkito's side and went to the door.
He opened it and stepped aside. An old, weary-eyed, grey-furred hare wearing priestly blue and gold-trimmed robes entered the room.
"Oh, you're here too, lad?" said the old hare.
"Bishop Silvergrass," Rickard brought his palms together and bowed, while Makkito signed with the downturned triangle and dipped her head.
"How's our guest, Makkito?"
"Resting, your excellency."
"Ah, good, good. She was quite irate with that Monster outside."
The hare walked to the sleeping sheep woman and placed his palm on her forehead.
"Hmm, if she awakens coherent, perhaps we could find out why that thing was after her."
He turned to Rickard and Makkito. "Well, since you're both here, let us talk in my office. Can your companions look after our guest?"
The rabbit samurai bowed to the bishop. "We shall protect her with our lives."
"Very good! Let us go then."