I spoke to my sword. “Forren is the Beloved Hearth Mother, but what does that mean—the Dual One? Does Morphren govern balance?”

  I wish I’d paid more attention to its beliefs and tenets when Mother Marteen evangelized them over cookies and tea. If I restored the good name to its pontifex, perhaps this might be a place to cash in that chip.

  Gladius Cognitus dispelled my hope, vibrating otherwise. “Morphren embodies duality. Monks pursuing perfect minds and bodies follow him. He’s split between thought and physical form. Balance is one of the faith’s pillars, but Morphren doesn’t formally associate with Her Lady of Balance.”

  “Monks striving for a perfect body explains the dojo.”

  “Perfection is a human pursuit. Morphren doctrine emphasizes duality.”

  “Mind and body. Gotcha. That seems straightforward. But I don’t see an idol.”

  “Oh, this is the chapter house. The cathedral itself will be underground.”

  “An underground cathedral?”

  “A monastery this size and age wouldn’t have settled for a mere temple. You’ll find its idol in a cathedral.”

  “Hmm. That makes me wonder. If the villagers burned and plundered the place, would they steal or destroy the idol?”

  “Razing the sanctuary was a populist incident against a quarantine policy. The blasphemy against Morphren was incidental. The mob focused on monks and the zombie pox victims. Scholars are skeptical villagers violated holy ground.”

  “The scholars don’t know if the cathedral stands? Didn’t someone review the damage—at least for historical records?”

  “Fear of disease deterred investigations.”

  As I walked from room to room, I cast Detect Magic and scanned with Mineral Communion for traps and footprints. The footprints of the three players circled the central floor between the stands. It looked like the aftermath of a boss fight.

  I settled onto one pew and concentrated on a buttress uncovered by smoke. I combed through flickering memories until I spotted a trio of adventurers fighting an eight-foot corpse draped in purple robes. It swung a heavy lantern like a weapon, which issued a stream of ghostly figures into the air. The adventurers fought the giant undead and ghosts with heals as offensive spells.

  Mineral Communion showed no nameplates or item descriptions. Aside from familiar spell effects from the light magic, I recognized none of the spells. The player I’d seen before, with the punk hairdo struck me as the primary fighter. He flung bolas at the giant, slowing it the way Audigger’s flails wore down Fabulosa. Grappling opponents seemed to be a popular takedown mechanic in the contest. I understood why Audigger had gotten so upset over losing her flail.

  Another player summoned transparent tentacled creatures that sprayed the room with colors, splintering the ghosts into wisps of ectoplasm.

  After they killed the giant, the punk character looted it, taking rewards without consulting his comrades.

  This must have been before Toadkiller acquired a demon to fight for him. Perhaps he found him here, in this temple.

  I didn’t have specific game mechanics for battling demons. I had a charm that bolstered my resistance to dark magic, but whether demons related to particular schools of magic wasn’t clear. If I faced an intelligent demon, I might bluff it with my Mendacium pendant. Defeating it might call for such an occasion.

  If Toadkiller depended on regular bolas, my Avoid Ammo spell would be quite a surprise to him. Aside from a demon, I saw nothing in the boss fight that I couldn’t handle. Of course, these scenes were old. At level 43, he’d have more formidable spells and equipment.

  I checked the contest interface. None of the players had changed levels.

  The chapter house had a small doorway leading into a cooking area, with fireplaces on the opposite wall. Monks wouldn’t want smoke or the smell of cooking food interfering with their meditations. A broken set of double doors opened to a garden connected to the kitchen. I scanned images of its past. Its original space showed a more traditional farmyard, whose barns had risen and fallen over the ages.

  A closed twelve-foot door stood on the opposite side of the chapter house. The glyphs adorning it came from a language I knew nothing about, but I translated the phrase by holding Gladius—With Balance, Strength. I reminded myself of Darkstep’s advice—to look up when things got dire.

  The words jived with what Gladius said about Morphren’s religion, which could be a clue for later in the dungeon. I rearranged the word order and the comma to reinterpret the phrase, but I couldn’t figure out how to wring out further meanings.

  Oddly enough, the door with the glyphs was immobile but possessed no locking mechanism that I could see, nor had it taken fire damage. Age must have sealed the portal.

  I stopped myself from reaching for the ringed handle. If I were Toadkiller, what would I trap? The answer was simple—this giant door.

  Detect Magic showed nothing, but I couldn’t be sure about the other side. Using Slipstream’s interface, I squeezed the targeting reticule beneath its crack and examined the space. A broad split staircase descended into the dark, but no runes awaited on the other side. The only light I had came from Presence, leaking under the door, but it looked safe otherwise.

  I could Slipstream through, of course, but I was not too fond of needing it again to escape. I backed to the far side of the chapter house and cast Mineral Mutation on the hinges, turning them into cotton.

  The door creaked and fell with a bang loud enough to hurt my ears. If Duchess or Toadkiller were on this mesa, they might have heard it. I might as well have cast Compression Spheres.

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  The collapsing door was loud, but this wasn’t the dungeon I expected. Where were the traps and demons? This was too easy, but stopping to watch how Toadkiller and his friends got past the door would burn too much Mineral Communion.

  Even though I couldn’t use Mineral Mutation for ten minutes, being overly cautious wasn’t a bad thing.

  I slowly followed glowing footsteps down the stairs, checking my corners with Detect Magic. The obtrusion of Presence wouldn’t surprise anything, but I crept anyway. Even though this looked to be a cleared dungeon, I couldn’t assume anything was safe.

  At the base of the stairs, two hallways extended toward locations that my interface called Dormitories and Catacombs. The dorm hallway had rows of doors on either side, cells where monks laid their heads. Naturally, the catacombs hall ended on a downward stair. The middle passage was wide, and its location moniker fell on the default name for the overall complex—The Morphren Sanctuary.

  Unlike the upper temple, the lower sections possessed no rusty bars, dilapidation, or arson damage. Worn floors showed age, and ceilings bore a black coat of smoke residue from countless tallow candles, but the architecture looked sturdy.

  The footprints split up, circled back, and went in all three directions. Of course, the split made perfect sense—Ipix, Narol, and Toadkiller had explored every nook.

  I settled for the middle passage, deciding it made more sense that something important like a cathedral would be at its end. The corridor didn’t disappoint, leading to a set of beautifully carved double doors, which stood, thankfully, open.

  Approaching the doors brought me to a large circular chamber. Cushioned seating ringed its walls, looking over a wide, shallow pit shaped like an upside-down hamburger bun. But its architectural trim and design work seemed too opulent for an arena. Its low, flat ceiling held a giant dark mirror, the size of which looked impossible to create, even with modern means. It reflected the entire room beneath it. Given the atmosphere’s moisture, it surprised me that it hadn’t tarnished over the ages.

  Casting Mineral Empathy made me realize it wasn’t glass but a giant piece of polished obsidian. Darkstep’s words to look up at my moment of despair came to mind. The darkened reflection showed details in the room’s polished marble, metal trim, and rotting fabric seats. Nothing appeared unusual.

  The pit's center was raised, forming a plinth that supported a life-size statue. The statue’s description didn’t appear from this distance, prompting me to glance at the looming mirror once more.

  Casting Detect Magic made nothing in the room glow—not even the mirror. That wasn’t surprising, given that Forren’s idol didn’t glow. Religious powers differed from schools of magic, so if the mirror possessed powers, they’d come from blessings, not spells or magic.

  Communing with the mirror showed scenes of monks and pilgrims filling the seats, but the only remarkable difference was the arena wasn’t there. Instead, another upward-facing mirror covered the floor, ringing the idol.

  Subtle imperfections in the floor’s mirror showed it to be a liquid.

  Approaching the arena, I noticed its curved edges, like a shallow bowl. Below me, a giant crack revealed a sinkhole of boulders and rubble.

  The bowl wasn’t an arena—it was a pool that held mercury, yet someone had taken the trouble to drain it into the earth. I sat in a seat overlooking the fissure and combed through Mineral Communion images until I spotted the trio of players emptying the pool. It took me half an hour to reach the scene.

  They hadn’t used Earthquake, but another spell or power, and when they finished, they climbed into the empty bowl and fussed about with the statue. They attacked it, splitting it vertically into two equal pieces. After prying it apart, they continued casting spells and hitting one half with hammers, but the thing wouldn’t break further.

  The boldness in desecrating a deity’s idol shocked me.

  Morphren represented duality, so it wasn’t surprising his statue fell into two neat pieces, but why would they try to destroy one half?

  Ally once explained that taking an idol cursed the settlement or negated the deity’s power. Either way, it was why people hid them in protected areas. Had they somehow cursed Oxum or the monastery? It seemed unnecessary since Oxum suffered from zombie pox centuries before The Great RPG Contest unleashed us into Miros. No—something else was at play.

  When I first entered the room, I expected it to be the site of another boss fight, but none of the visions showed fighting. From this distance, I couldn’t get a good look at their interaction, only their number.

  Instead of a boss fight, a fourth figure materialized from thin air, making their party a quartet. Then two of them vanished.

  Had these players discovered teleportation? Was the unknown figure Toadkiller and not the muscled mohawk dude issuing orders? Or could the fourth be Darkstep?

  These questions warranted further investigation. I left my seat on the arena's rim and climbed into the bowl. From above, the stone’s vision of the players wasn’t clear, and I couldn’t inspect the idol’s description.

  After climbing over the railing, I slid down the arena’s walls and approached the crack in the floor. When I did so, the game’s interface changed my location from cathedral to Pool of Reflection—a name that made more sense when filled with mercury.

  Before reactivating Mineral Communion, I climbed up to the island in the drained basin and examined the idol.

  One didn’t need magic to see that the marble statue on the pedestal held greater definition and artistry than Forren’s crude humanoid form. Maggie had done her best with the Hawkhurst’s tough granite, but this two-foot idol had far more details, looking like the left side of a monk holding a staff. The missing right half made it a strange avatar. It didn’t appear broken or cut into two—someone had purposefully carved it to represent only half of Morphren.

  Even though I couldn’t use the blessings, I tried to inspect their descriptions, but the idol seemed inert.

  “Gladdy. What do you think is up with this abbreviated name—Phren? The interface describes this complex as The Morphren Sanctuary.”

  “Phren is a suffix in an ancient human tongue for words relating to thought. Morph means shape, but I’m afraid there are no records explaining the split. In every citation, Morphren is one deity.”

  If Morphren governed duality, and the second half of the idol rested in the crevasse where the players had dumped it, perhaps reuniting it would foil any power that Toadkiller wielded over this deity. Before unleashing unknown forces into Miros again, I performed more due diligence with Mineral Communion.

  I focused on a boulder in the crack and summoned a scene of the pool draining of mercury. Before splitting the statue, the trio drained the liquid metal through the crack. That’s when they approached the statue and removed half of it. I rewatched the entire scene from a closer vantage.

  After the fourth person appeared, I got a closer look at the figure materializing between them. The newcomer’s features matched that of the monk statue wielding a staff.

  The mohawked player gave orders to the newcomer, who turned toward his partners. They must have been Ipix and Narol—Toadkiller’s allies whom Darkstep had written about.

  After the monk made apologetic gestures, the pair disappeared with hands raised in alarm.

  A realization dawned on me. Other contestants thought Toadkiller controlled a demon who Banished players from Miros. That wasn’t correct. Toadkiller controlled a god.