Walking through the darkened miniature city below our territory, I scanned the ground carefully with Eye of Revelation. “This is stupid.” I grumbled. “I’m not a metal detector. I get not wanting to waste wishes on this, and dedicating todays to getting the plans for the town was fine, I got paid either way, but why does that mean I have to walk around using Eye of Revelation on everything?” I was up to three D-ranked chits now, and was building a nice little fortune, I was planning to use at the conclave.

“Because we need more context.” Callie said seriously as she trailed behind me. “ We can’t waste wishes with only twenty seven days left. Whatever that dark thing was protected the buildings and the shrine, but it was a mutation, which means there’s a good chance whatever happened here that drove off all the people happened before it came into existence.”

“Yeah, but why does that matter?” I held up a small basket. “So far we found six forks, eight plates, what looks like a very dirty sponge, and a rock with a face painted on it.”

She winced. “Yeah, but at least Chelsea seemed excited about the rock. She seems sure it means something.” Her upbeat tone fell a bit flat when I noticed that she was trying not to snicker, but at least she tried.

“Yeah, it means she needs a hobby.” I said flatly. “I get why this place might be important, but it’s just demeaning to have to-” I stopped. “Hold on, what’s that?” I pointed off to one side, indicating a bump in the dirt. My Eye of Revelation showed me something interesting. I knelt down, dusting off the layer of dirt to reveal…a mask.

I reached for it, but Callie slapped my hand away. “Are you crazy?” She snapped. “The mask on your FACE eats people, and that thing looks evil as shit. Call your uncle.”

“Ah.” I said as I pulled my hand back. “That’s a great point.” Throwing my head back I bellowed. “Hey! Zeke!” Callie jumped, glaring at me, and I shrugged. “What? You said to call him. Pick a lane.”

She held up her hand angrily. “On your scan ring!” She snarled. “Not in my EAR!”

Before I could respond, I heard a cough and turned to see my uncle standing there, looking bored. “What do you want?” He asked in annoyance. “I was teaching Cas how to play Straga.”

I groaned. “Don’t teach her that. I still have nightmares about taking lessons as a kid. That game is a mess.” At Callie’s confused look, I sighed. “It’s like chess, only you play it on eight boards and usually with four players. Zeke can play three sides himself, and often does, but it's nightmarishly complicated.”

“He likes to whine about his lessons.” Zeke said pitilessly. “But all you have to do is control your pieces to assault the defensive positions of the inner board, reach the center square of one of the other players, ascend to one of the two second layer boards, beat the other player who managed it, and then get to the third and final heavens board to face off for the win.”

I waved him off. “Enough about your stupid six dimensional chess game. We called you here for THAT.” I gestured down at the mask, and he glanced at it, eyes narrowing in interest.

He knelt down next to it. “Well now, isn’t that interesting.” Snapping his finger, he revealed a long wooden handle with a thin metal blade on it, one of his tools, and picked the mask up out of the first with it gingerly.

The mask looked…weird. It was made of rough, dark wood, with several parts of it lacquered in red to form a sort of fierce bird face.

“Do you know what it is?” I asked cautiously. “Like is it going to kill us?”

He shook his head. “Follow me.” He said without responding to my questions. He stood and strode off toward the buildings, and we trailed behind. Once he was inside the hall where Chelsea was collecting research material, he dropped the mask on an empty table and pulled out his trunk again.

Shuffling through it, he pulled out a few books, and started skimming through them. I winced when I looked at them, the pages were basically black, the text so small and dense even I could barely read it. I saw a few small boxes that might have been pictures, and finally, Zeke located something he’d been looking for.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Reaching down to flip the mask over, he squinted at the back of it, then shook his head, slammed the book closed and repeated the action. We sat there for about fifteen minutes as he scanned books, before finally finding something he was looking for.

“Detwemer mask.” He muttered, then grabbed a new book, starting to flip again. Every now and then he would mutter something else. One time it was “Khalda valley.” Then after that. “Rhugash ruins.” Finally he came to the last thing he needed, grimacing and nodding before saying. “The Cardinal Cult.”

“Was that aimed at us?” I asked after he didn’t go back to looking. “Because you’ve just been sitting and muttering for like a half hour, so it’s hard to tell.”

He shrugged. “Had to check something. As an artisan I’ve studied masks made all across history and all throughout the universe. I’m not an expert on ancient cultures or religions, but I AM an expert on masks, and I know where to look for information on them.”

We’d expected that, it was part of why I called him, I gestured for him to continue. “Yeah, we got that. WHAT information.”

He snorted. “Kids these days have no respect for a dramatic buildup. Fine, I’d seen work like this before, The Detwemers made them, but when I checked it turned out they got the design from some old ruins in the Khalda valley, that place was built on the ruins of the Rhugash. They used the masks for a few centuries but originally they came from the old state religion of the place. The Cardinal Cult.”

“The ancient cult used the word ‘Cardinal’?” I asked in disbelief.

Pausing, he admitted. “Well, the exact translation is ‘bright colored bird with feathers of blood’ but Cardinal is pretty close. Plus the alliteration sounds better. But yes, the Cardinal Cult. I don’t have much on them, the masks they used weren’t a huge part of the religious rites, but what little I know matches up with the other stuff we found.”

I turned to my sister. “Ok, what do you know about the Cardinal Cult?”

She just stared at me. “Shane, I’m slightly nerdy, as we’ve discussed before I am NOT an encyclopedia. I have no clue who or what they are.” She paused. “But I might know someone who would.”

Without explanation, she got up and all but sprinted out of the room, Callen following her with a sigh as I glanced at Callie in confusion. Of course I figured it out pretty quickly, but wasn’t able to confirm it until about an hour later when she came back in. By the time she got back she found us combing through Zeke’s books again (I was using a magnifying glass), and had Anna’s friend Syl from the library with her.

The tiny blonde woman from the library was a member of the History Hunters, an Archivist faction that searched for historical documentation for an S-ranked force called the Vikram family. She was scowling as Chelsea dragged her in. “What are you doing, Anders. If you found some ruins you just had to tell me. I’d have scheduled…” She trailed off as she came into the room, where all the various odds and ends I’d found had ended up.

“See.” Said Chelsea smugly. “I told you there’s interesting stuff down here. You’re lucky I’m letting you in on this dig.”

The blonde stepped forward, poking at a few things. “I’m not familiar with this style of pottery.” She said, touching one of the plates. “It’s Rakian glazing practices, but the molding of the clay is Veltish.” She leaned down, pulling out a small brush as she started dusting off some of the dirtier parts of the dish.

Chelsea stared at her, sighing. “You can study all of this later Syl. We need your input on this.” She grabbed the smaller woman, physically turning her body by the shoulders to look at the mask.

Syl had started to get annoyed, but once she saw the mask her expression became interested. “Is that Khaldish?”

“Not originally.” I said absently, passing her the book and magnifying glass. We’d marked the passages we’d found on the masks, and she scanned them in fascination. “Where did you get these texts?” She demanded. “This one is a Malkan Artificium. I didn’t even know there were any of these left intact. And this one is some kind of porcelain sculpting text from the Drellan Empire.”

I blinked. “How many cultures were there before the five factions.”

“A lot.” Answered Zeke, Chelsea, and Syl in unison. The librarian picked up the explanation after that. “Almost every planet we’ve terraformed had some other people living on it at one time. Especially higher ranked ones. Just look at the other gods, who do you think worshipped them.”

I nodded. “Like the Aetherbright Empire.” I said, happy to know something.

Syl whirled on me. “Like the WHAT?” She snapped. “Because I’ve met probably ten people who have HEARD of the Aetherbright empire, and two of them are S-ranked Historians.”

“I’ve been there.” I shrugged. “Or at least some ruins. But that’s not important. Do you know anything about the Cardinal Cult?” I tried to refocus her on the task at hand, and despite her glare which promised later conversation, it seemed to work.

She snapped her fingers, and a book appeared. Then another. Then about ten more. She made a pile on the table.

“First of all.” She said bluntly. “Cardinal cult is a mistranslation. The word means ‘bright red bird with feathers of blood’. That’s important, because while I’ve never heard of the Cardinal Cult, I HAVE seen that word before. Or at least that phrasing.”

She leafed through her books for a bit until she found something, then scribbled a few notes on some paper and did it again. Finally, she spun it around., showing us the writing. “I’ve cobbled together a few different sources, but I have an eidetic memory, and this tickled a few keys for me. From what I can tell, you’re dealing with this being.”

“The Lady of Lamentations?” I asked as I squinted at the page. “That sounds…morbid. She’s a god?”

“Well they don’t call her that. But the descriptions basically confirm it.” She agreed. “Her name is Felicity, and she appears to be some kind of goddess of torment.” She pointed out a few of the references, and as I read them, my blood drained from my face.

I pointed at a line. “Your notes on that aren’t clear.” I said as a cold feeling of dread settled in my stomach. “You mentioned associates, what’s the translation of this one. It says Bellow of Loathing.” I could think of another way to say that, and I desperately hoped I was mistaken. She read over it, then crossed a few things out.

“My mistake.” She said casually. “I misconjugated. Contextually that’s not supposed to be an angry action, but a fearful one. Scream, not bellow. Which changes the sentence structure. It means that other word should be-”

“Hate.” I said flatly. “The word is supposed to be one title. Hatescream.” Looked like we found a connection to this place just like my instincts told me. I looked at Callie, who took my hand in worry as I turned back to Syl. “We need you to pass this up the chain of your organization.” Chelsea could contact mom to have her follow up, but this needed to be checked. I was pretty sure we’d just found the identity of one of the other enemy gods.