Lothar, Traetos province, Southern Avestria 

Mythra Auctisila and Akorak Brutarus had been traveling on foot for the last two days. They used to rest at sundown and resume their journey at the daybreak. Their last encounter with the Fyndarin was quite adventurous for Mythra. For some time, he had almost forgotten about his family and the invasion. However, that nightmare never left his mind. They were almost halfway to the City of Harāpiā, the capital of Traetos province.

It was afternoon and they were walking through the warm canopy of the coniferous trees, shadowing their path. The air was filled with the fragrance of the Gelbaki flowers which tasted bitter-sweet to Mythra. Akorak briskly walked ahead while Mythra lunged behind him, trying to maintain his pace. "What's the rush?" questioned Mythra. Akorak didn't respond and kept on walking ahead. Mythra felt like Akorak was trying to get rid of him. His apprehension was finally coming true. Maybe Akorak was trying to eschew Mythra because he had started to see Mythra for what he was, nothing more than a Caligor. Maybe his views about Mythra's birth had changed. Maybe Mythra's presence had started to bother Akorak. Mythra had no way of knowing Akorak's thoughts. He kept on following him, warily and quietly. The fragrance of the Gelbaki flowers got stronger and the ground beneath his feet became mushier as they walked through the canopy towards an opening. He could see Akorak standing in the front, with his back turned against him. Mythra walked as fast as he could with his sprained foot. Finally, he stood beside Akorak, somewhat daunted by his behavior.

"Look," said Akorak, pointing towards something in the vicinity. Mythra's vision followed Akorak's finger to see a majestic sight in front of him. It was an ancient rune that was built over the grassland. The sky touched its peak and the ground stuck to its foundation. It was a gigantic rotunda which appeared monumental in the backdrop of the portentous landscape.

"What is that?" asked Mythra. He was astonished to see such splendid, megalithic rune. "It's an ancient temple."

"A temple?...in the middle of nowhere?" remarked Mythra. "Come on... Let's see what we find there," said Akorak and started rushing towards the temple. Mythra followed, frustrated by all the walking that he had to do with an injured foot.

After traveling for two days consecutively, Mythra was jaded. Nonetheless, he was curious to explore this majestic and cryptic temple. He was familiar with temples because his grandmother was a Roshai. He used to accompany the Roshai in the temple of Seros which was built near the lake Lush in their kingdom. However, this temple appeared outlandish to him. As they got closer and closer to it, Mythra was mystified on seeing it's humongous structure. It was a rotunda with a hemispherical dome, similar to the temple of Seros in the kingdom of Lothar with the exception that this one was much bigger. There were small carvings over the circumference of the temple and it was filled with exquisite architecture that embellished its walls. Akorak was observing the temple quite scrupulously as he dragged his fingers over the temple walls and then retracted them to decipher the type of stone that might have been used for its construction.

Mythra noticed that the carvings over this temple were much different from the ones on the temple of Seros in Lothar. The folklore that was depicted in these carvings was more like a war scene. Akorak was trying to construe the meaning of these intricate carvings while Mythra laid back on the ground to rest his feet. His eyes, however, were inspecting those sculptures. At the topmost column, the carving portrayed a deity that was holding a disastrous weapon in his right hand and he appeared as if he was battling with another deity who was his equal. Below these two statues were the figurines of other deities who were engaged in a great war. Akorak tried to examine the two deities at the top as they appeared to be the significant ones.

"Is that Lord Seros?" asked Mythra, pointing at the deity who was holding the disastrous weapon in his hand. "I think it is... However, I am wondering if this other deity is who I think it is," spoke Akorak. He sounded flustered on seeing those sculptures. "Who is he?"

"I think..." Akorak took a long pause, increasing Mythra's eagerness. "I think it is the God named Caligos," spoke Akorak diffidently, unsure of his interpretation. "Caligos? Who is that?" asked Mythra. He had never heard of this deity before in his life. His grandmother had told him many stories and fables about Lord Seros and the gods Arka, Vaerun, and Prohor but this name had never emerged in her stories.

"You don't know?... That's interesting," spoke Akorak. Mythra was befuddled.

"Caligos is known by many names...Keeper of Shadows, the God of Darkness, the Supersoul... his eternal rival is known to be Lord Seros, the Master of Light," narrated Akorak. Mythra was nonplussed even after hearing that name, although he could notice a linguistic similarity to the term 'Caligor'.

"The word Caligor, in common tongue means the child of hatred... But in ancient Isharian, Caligor means the child of Caligos," replied Akorak and turned towards Mythra. Mythra was dumbfounded on hearing this. He had never heard about this God of shadows and now he was being told that his label of Caligor implied that he was the child of Caligos? He was baffled.

"But... But granny Roshai told me that my father had abandoned me to her," replied Mythra, wondering how the God of Darkness could be his biological father.

"No, Mythra... That doesn't mean Caligos is your biological father. All those children who are born during the Grand Obscura are labeled as Caligor... hence they are known to bring destruction upon the people," explained Akorak. Mythra was flabbergasted on hearing this. He knew what society had labeled him. But he had always believed that it was merely a blind-faith which was followed by the people.

Howbeit, on seeing this sculpture carved over the temple walls, he was crestfallen. Was it true that his birth was unholy? Was he the child of hatred? He remembered the night before the invasion when his grandmother had inspired him to believe, not in his destiny but his actions. Granny Roshai sincerely believed that Mythra was not something that the society had labeled him to be. But the inscriptions made him qualm.

"Have there been any other Caligors in the past?" asked Mythra, eagerly. Akorak sighed and nodded affirmatively. "So why do people hate them? Did they do anything bad?"

"The Caligor who was born before your time is the Ethnarch of the Balenor province, to the North," asserted Akorak. Mythra was nonplussed. How could a Caligor become an Ethnarch? He wondered.

"So isn't that good?" he asked, naively. Akorak chortled at Mythra's ingenuity. "Good?... The Ethnarch of the Balenor province committed a genocide about thirty Mesha ago... He decimated an entire tribe!" exclaimed Akorak. Mythra was unnerved on hearing this. He had no idea about the world outside his kingdom. He was completely oblivious to these heinous acts that were committed across the entire continent. For all his life, he had lived in the kingdom of Lothar. He was a stranger to the rest of the world.

"Haven't you ever heard of the one-eyed king?" asked Akorak. Mythra denied with a nod. His attention was diverted and he felt disgusted about his birth. This was the reason why people hated Caligors.

"The Ethnarch of the Balenor province also known as the one-eyed king killed the entire tribe of Balenorus... It was one of the Eight elder tribes, not anymore though," narrated Akorak.

"Why did he do that?" asked Mythra, petrified and confused.

"The House of Balenorus had a supernatural ability of shapeshifting... the one-eyed king wanted that ability under his command but the Balenorus revolted against him. So he slaughtered every man, woman, and child of that House. He burned them alive. It was a massacre. That single event has been a stigma for our continent and to our culture," explained Akorak.

"I-I would never even imagine doing something like that... I have never even hurt a fly in my life," said Mythra. His voice shivered and his palms were sweating. Akorak realized from Mythra's reactions that the entire story about the one-eyed king was unsettling for him. "I know Mythra... I trust you... I know you won't do anything like that," Akorak asserted. Akorak's words were warm and hopeful for Mythra.

"Did every Caligor do something like that?" he asked.

"Well, not something like that... Nonetheless, about a century ago, there was another one who was born during a Grand Obscura in the Vikanin Range... She was deemed as a Heretic and she was fettered and burned alive in the central bailey of the kingdom," told Akorak. Mythra was shocked on hearing this. He was demented on hearing the history of all the Caligors of the past.

"Why? What did she do?" asked Mythra. His voice faltered, his pupils widened and fixated at Akorak.

"She proposed a new idea that was against our religious beliefs... She proposed an idea that was in direct contradiction to the Testament of Senotahn," replied Akorak.

"I don't know all of it. I wasn't born then... I heard this story from other people at the time when I was a child," he added. Mythra was disappointed after hearing this.

"I was told that she was a high born woman from the house of Brutarus ..." he said. Mythra was intrigued by hearing the name of the house to which she belonged. Akorak himself was a Brutarus.

"She was learned in the first three edicts of the Testament... yet, she proposed certain ideas that were against the Testament... She was charged with Heresy and imprisoned for many months," Mythra harked as Akorak took a pause.

"After a few days of imprisonment, she was finally sentenced to death by fire... They called her a witch, an iconoclast... That's probably where it all started, the hate towards a Caligor," asserted Akorak.

"That's horrible," said Mythra and he grew silent. "But that's not where it ends," said Akorak. Mythra harked at Akorak. "Not where it ends? I don't understand," he spoke, confused.

"You see, she wasn't alone... In the past, the Brutarus had ill-repute of being a male-dominated tribe... Women were often mistreated and sometimes even killed... Caligor's death sparked a revolution in women... Eight women from the Highborn class who were the supporters of the Caligor got separated from the House of Brutarus,"

"Separated? How do you mean?" questioned Mythra.

"They renounced their lineage and established a new settlement to the far south of Vikanin Range... They called themselves 'Auctisila' which means the 'Eight daughters'... They established their kingdom that would be a haven for all those women who were victims of patriarchy and male chauvinism," explained Akorak. Mythra was astounded.

"So that's what my surname means?" asked Mythra. Akorak nodded. It was the first time in his life when he understood the meaning of his surname.

"The kingdom which they created came to be known as the Virgin Cape, named after the Virgin Goddess Iraethea," asserted Akorak. Mythra pulled out his talisman which was tied to the string around his neck.

He always wore the talisman around his neck as a remembrance of his parents. He always stared at the talisman, trying to decipher the meanings of those words but he could never interpret what they meant. Today, he could finally acknowledge the meaning of his surname and the origin of his mother's ancestral home, the Virgin Cape. He just sat there, cogitating about all these stories of the Caligors.

Would I also become one of them? A heretic? A tyrant who kills innocent people for power? He wondered.

But then he remembered the conversation that he had with his grandmother, one night before the invasion. 'You can become the noblest contradiction in the entire history... A Caligor who fought for good,' He remembered his grandmother's words which gave him a moment of relief.

Her words kept on repeating at the back of his mind. Those words made him realize that he had a choice. They made him believe that he was something much more than what the society had labeled him to be. He trusted his grandmother.

"Fret Not, Mythra... I don't think you will ever become a tyrant or a heretic," said Akorak calmly. Mythra was baffled when Akorak spoke the exact thing that he was thinking at the back of his mind. Mythra let out a sigh and smiled.

"So then, you think that it is the same story that has been depicted?" he asked.

"Yes. I believe this story is of the great Mythical war that happened eons ago... The question is, how did the native people of this land build this thing in such an earlier time?" he questioned. Akorak was intrigued by the exquisite craftsmanship of the workers and masons who had built this temple. Their dexterity was out of bounds.

"Maybe it's recent... Maybe it was built around a few hundred Mesha ago," proposed Mythra. Akorak denied.

"No, it's really old... It's much older than just a hundred Mesha," asserted Akorak, examining the carvings meticulously.

"How do you know?"

"Because there are no gargoyles," replied Akorak. Mythra was fascinated when he realized that the temple was without gargoyles. He remembered the time when he used to go to the temple of Seros along with granny Roshai. He was always scared of seeing those gargoyles. It wasn't unusual for a temple to not have gargoyles inscribed upon its walls.

"Maybe they are on the front side," suggested Mythra. Akorak concurred. They were standing near the backside of the temple so they started walking along its rotund walls towards its ingress. When they arrived at the entrance of the temple, they were astonished to notice that the gargoyles were not carved around the niche either.

"This is strange," said Mythra. He had never seen any temple without gargoyles carved at the front end above the niche. "It's not strange at all... This temple is of the era before the empires of the Parso and the Korshen invaded our continent," proposed Akorak.

"The temples which are built after the invasion have the gargoyles carved over them which are representative of guardians... before the invasion, there was no enemy, so no question of guarding and hence no gargoyles," explained Akorak.

Mythra was astonished on learning this difference. As they stared at the temple niche and the architecture, they were astounded on seeing the amount of effort that must have been put into it.

"Did you notice?"

"Notice what?" asked Mythra.

"The temple is a monolith!" Mythra shrugged as he had no idea what that meant.

"This temple has been created out of a single, gigantic rock... imagine the skill of those artisans!" said Akorak, intrigued to his core. Mythra could notice that Akorak knew a lot about temples and this temple had truly fascinated him.

"Should we stay here for the night?" insinuated Mythra. The reason was two-fold; he was tired from all the traveling and secondly, this temple had caught Akorak's interests. Akorak nodded affirmatively. "Well if it's fine with you then why not?" he agreed.

"We will explore this temple for today and leave at morrow's daybreak, what say?" asked Akorak. Mythra agreed with a nod and they trudged inside through the niche, excited and wary.