The Cult Beneath the World

After a while, the cold weather started to permeate the layers of coats given by Ticho to Hagar back before they embarked on the journey to Amal. Hagar shivered involuntarily, an effort of her body to shook away the wet coldness from itself. She looked at Hannah, who seemed to also struggle with the coldness. Hannah rubbed her palms and put them around her neck, to gave it some warmth.

The metal door opened, and Ticho appeared. She motioned them to get inside.

Hagar looked around her, taking in the room they were just entered. A massive chandelier was hung in the middle of the high ceiling, which turned out to be just a flat ceiling, not directly incorporate the dome when perceived from the outside. The dome was probably a second-story structure, which could not be accessed from the particular room they were in. The interior itself looked like an abandoned temple, with pillars and high arched windows. The windows seemed to have stained glass scenes depicted there once, as she could see some of the original stained glass here and there, but most of it was substituted with regular glass.

Hagar wondered what the stained glasses depicted originally.

The room was not properly lit. The blueish sunrise ray from one side of the building's windows was the only source of the lighting. She suspected that the building interior would be brilliantly ornamented like old temples usually were. But under this minimal light, she could not see them yet, only dust particles floating about the air where the sunlight passed.

Adam's comatose body was then floated into the building. At the same time, a figure of an older guy stepped outside the shadows, "I'm glad you all arrived here safely," he addressed no one in particular, "I'm Gregorr."

Hagar didn't know what to address him correctly, so she tried the best she can, "hi. I'm Hagar."

"Yes," the old man nodded to her politely and then looked at Hannah, "and you must be Miss Delaney. It's an honor to finally meet you."

"Pleased to meet you too, Mr. Gregorr," she answered gracefully.

"Call me Pater," the man answered.

"Of course... Pater," She said, "hopefully now you can tell what this is all about."

"All in its own time," the man smiled to both of them, "now we need to treat for Adam."

"How do you know his name?" Hagar asked him. A stupid question, Ticho probably told him.

"Because I know him," he said and looked deeply into Hagar's eyes. The answer felt jarring for her at threw her out of balance. She didn't know what to answer to that. The man motioned Ticho, then Ticho motioned to her soldiers, they moved following the old man, who already walked back to the altar area.

They followed the crowd. The altar was placed on the other end of the door and elevated around half a meter from the main floor. Turned out in the area between the podium and the statue of five symbols behind it, there was some sort of a wide trap door. They were going downstairs.

"We're going underground?" Hagar asked no one in particular.

"We have to," Ticho answered, "if we set our headquarter on the surface, the world will eventually find us. This town has long been considered empty and falling apart. We need to at least maintain that facade."

"So..." Hannah started when they entered the trap door, "at least you can explain to me what Callisto has to do with all of this." Several balls of orange lamps lighted up, the same as those in Ticho's lair under the Angkara City pierced the darkness. They found themselves at a large corridor beneath the temple, "why are you trying to poison people?"

"That wasn't us," Ticho answered, "that was Julian's trickery."

"Yes, it was really unfortunate for us," Pater Gregorr said, "for years we are made like this 'terrorist' people. Poisoned Angkara with Bel's Encounters and attacking bourgeois establishment for the hell of it."

"But you are the group who did that, right?" Hagar asked.

A silence dropped, and then, "well yes. We did those, unfortunately..."

Hagar stopped her walking, "wait a minute! Wait!"

Everyone stopped.

"You actually admitted that you're doing all that and still deny that you are the terrorist?"

"As we said, we are tricked by Julian..."

"How?" now it was Hannah who asked.

"For a long time, he convinced us that we have the same goals." Pater Gregorr answered, "but turned out, it was the opposite. The attack on your gallery, for instance, we had no part in that."

"But you did the other attacks before, right?" Hagar insisted.

"Yes. But only attack empty buildings. We always made sure that there would be no victims."

"And the narcotics?"

"We never did that," Pater answered.

Hagar found that hard to believe, but she had no other choice than to believe them for now.

"So what is your... organization nature, really?" Hannah asked them, as they started to walk again.

"We are the descendants of the Calervo army, your former family guardian, Miss Hannah."

"And what is your goal, which you said different from Julian's?"

"The return of Bel."

Hagar decided to stop asking. The mention of the devil's name and their claim that they were somehow wanted Her return made her realized that she, along with Adam and Hannah were being taken by some sort of a cult, and an act of visible defiance against their beliefs could compromise their safety. She looked at Hannah, and she returned her gaze. A dread flashed her face, only to immediately disappeared. Hannah was probably thinking the same thing.

After some twists and turns inside the underground labyrinth, they came upon another staircase leading further down the ground, ending in one long corridor with a great double door in the end. When it was opened, a breeze came through, followed by murmurs that grew louder and louder. It was a city, underground, with those orange globules floated everywhere along its roads, building, and ceiling created an orange starry perpetual night.

"A city?"

"Welcome to the New Amal," Ticho said.