Baltukhasar - Held His Hand Inside A Waterfall

Baltukhasar held his hand inside a decorative waterfall. It felt wrong. For one thing, the water was too cold. Although that was a clue, it wasn't what attracted Baltukhasar to the waterfall in the first place. In fact, he had ignored it five times. The waterfall was almost at the base of the abbey's spire. Baltukhasar passed it on his first climb without paying much attention.

He ignored it during two more trips up and down. 

On his most recent trip down, however, something caught his attention. At first, he wondered if the water was too high up to flow out of the rock with such force. The top of the waterfall was twenty or thirty feet above the river flowing around it.

No. Baltukhasar decided that was a shoddy observation.

The River Aleph dropped in elevation as it flowed around the spire. The waterfall's upper pool was higher than the river immediately around it, but lower than where the river hit the spire's north face. Cracks in the rock were channeling water until it emerged in a pool, overflowed the rim, and fell past his outstretched hand.

It hurt to touch the water. As the Incense Master had demonstrated, the spire's fractured rock let cold wind sinking down the Jormu Mountains blow through it. In some caves, the wind created ice during the summer. However, the waterfall was colder than ice. Supernatural forces were at work.

The water contained a shadow that destroyed warmth.

That was….

"The Gloaming Realm," said Baltukhasar.

"Yes," agreed Jin Peak Abbey's Incense Master. "The Gloaming Realm has worn through the veils between reality in this valley."

He held out his hand and rubbed the air. Baltukhasar blinked.

"That doesn't bother you?" he asked.

"It's not as bad up at the Abbey," said the Incense Master.

The assembled gigolo monks nodded. The Gloaming Realm helped them improve their shadow techniques. Baltukhasar turned to Pin Fun.

"And you're the most accomplished shadow practitioner?" he asked.

"Yes," agreed Pin Fun.

"Now you've got an ancient vampire's sword," said Baltukhasar. "Your plan to use the sword's desire to find the most appropriate master is good. But you're in too deep. The Gloaming will take you before the sword has a chance to let you go."

"You're the one who told me to stick around," said Pin Fun.

"Guilty," conceded Baltukhasar. "I apologize."

"You've got a good body," said Pin Fun. "All is forgiven. But why mention the Gloaming Realm now?"

"Saying this water flows through the Gloaming would be too poetic…," said Baltukhasar.

"Poetry is how we roll at Jian Peak Abbey," said the Incense Master.

"Fine," said Baltukhasar. "This water is flowing through the Gloaming Realm."

He tasted it.

"Is that wise?" asked the Incense Master.

"No," said Baltukhasar. "This water is in contact with more than rock. It's been exposed to air somewhere inside – bad air."

"How bad?" asked Pin Fun.

"Dead," said Baltukhasar. "And that dead air is in contact with dead bodies."

"How many?" asked Pin Fun.

"Several dozen," said Baltukhasar.

"We haven't lost anyone other than the Abbot," said the Incense Master. "Recently. Furthermore, we don't bury people on this rock. We burn them and scatter their ashes in the wind. Can you tell how long the bodies have been dead?"

"A long time," said Baltukhasar. "An impossibly long time."

"Impossible in what way?" asked the Incense Master.

"They have been dead so long," said Baltukhasar, "there shouldn't be any bodies left."

Pin Fun jumped to the pool at the top of the waterfall. The other gigolos leapt after him. Baltukhasar climbed the old-fashioned way. The pool's bottom sloped down from the edge back into the spire. It went down farther than the river.

"I can move through water with my techniques," said Pin Fun, "but this current is too strong."

"You don't want to be in that water anyway," said Baltukhasar, "or in the air inside."

"In addition to being accomplished pillow performers," said the Incense Master, "our monks are sculptors, masons, and architects. We could bring down tools to cut stone. But excavating into this rock would be tricky business."

"Collapse?" asked Baltukhasar.

"Collapse," said the Incense Master. "Water pressure. Giant curses."

Baltukhasar began to peel off layers of clothing.

"You're not going to…?" said Pin Fun.

"I'll drown," said Baltukhasar. "But that won't stop me."

"I see," said Pin Fun. "Neither will the dead air?"

"Drowning and suffocation are miserable," said Baltukhasar. "But until I fill my lungs back up with something breathable, I'll only be miserable once."

"You look kind of rough and hairy for a vampire," said Pin Fun.

Baltukhasar jumped into the numbingly cold water.

"I'm not a vampire," he said. "The good news is that I might freeze before I drown."

"Will freezing kill you?" asked the Incense Master.

"No," said Baltukhasar. "But it will do unflattering things to my manly attributes. I'm confident I'll find a better way for you to get inside."

"Why don't we find it now," said the Incense Master, "and spare your vanishing attributes?"

All the gigolos expressed sympathy for Baltukhasar's attributes.

"I expect the doors to be on the east and west flanks," said Baltukhasar, "at the water level of this pool. I'll try to open them from inside. If you listen, you might be able to locate the doors from the outside."

"Understood," said the Incense Master.

After submerging, Baltukhasar followed the pool's bottom. His senses gave him an understanding of the boundaries between water and rock. With that understanding, Baltukhasar knew he would fit through the tight squeezes. Nevertheless, the rock gashed his skin. If he hadn't already frozen to death while drowning, there would have been a lot of blood.

Baltukhasar's body became lethargic when it was dead, but continued to heal. The gashes closed. If a fight waited ahead, he would be far from top form. He broke the surface of a pool. It was much deeper than the one by the waterfall. The rock containing the pool had been carved into the forms of leaping fish, croaking frogs, and beautiful water nymphs. The pool's water entered from other cracks beneath the surface. Some of those cracks have been interesting – but not as interesting as the pool's chamber. 

There was no light. Baltukhasar's saw the cavernous space in variations of ghostly blues. The air inside reeked of death. That was expected. But this was not the ordinary stench of decay that natural scavengers and bugs might follow.

This was the stench of horror; the chamber was horrifying.

Egg-shaped, wider at the bottom than the top, its walls were carved so garishly, the pattern of reliefs, inlays, and projecting statuary was repulsive. Balconies appeared frequently. None of them aligned with any other. Their balustrades were as garish as the walls. The themes represented were older than the Qianqiu Dynasty. The exceptional craftsmanship, however, dated to that dynasty.

Batlukhasar interpreted the artwork as a rebuke of First Qianqiu Emperor. The artists implied that the First Emperor accomplished nothing himself, but succeeded in hijacking the accomplishments of others. This premise was communicated through profanely violent sexual themes which were too exaggerated to be considered sensual. Baltukhasar chuckled. He should thank the minds behind this chamber for creating a perspective in which his own sins were reduced to fluffy nonsense.

Disturbing as the carvings were, the bones were worse.

There were a hundred or more skeletons.

But if this was the tomb of a madman who buried his concubines and retainers alive, not everything added up. Most skeletons had their backs to the chamber's walls. All were male. Their postures were calm and meditative. A theory took shape in Baltukhasar's mind: lost in contemplation, ancient monks failed to realize the air had become toxic and died before returning to consciousness.

Skeletons on a platform at the center of the chamber told a different, not necessarily contradictory, story. There, a dozen bodies lay entwined in a sinful ritual. There had been no attempt to escape. On the contrary, all the bodies were struggling to reach a pair at the center. Lost in lust, these monks also failed to realize the air had become toxic.

But problems remained.

Jewelry on the monks corroborated a date near the beginning of the Qianqiu Dynasty. The skeletons were too well-preserved to have died four thousand years ago, however. If Baltukhasar were to estimate how long ago they died, he would count back in decades, not centuries or millennia. A hundred young men asphyxiating themselves in a sex ritual fit Jian Peak Abbey's brand. But the Abbey's archivists talked up their sect's indiscretions. If there had been an official ritual on such a scale, it would have featured prominently in the Abbey's promotional materials.

So who were these people?

Baltukhasar climbed to a balcony. Its space was more complicated than expected. The wall behind the balcony was a lattice of carved stone. Behind the lattice was an alcove. Pressing on the lattice caused it to rotate, providing access to the alcove. Shelves had been carved into the alcove's walls. Scrolls lay on the shelves. They crumbled to dust at the slightest touch.

One balcony after another had an alcove full of scrolls.

Baltukhasar returned to ground level and searched for hidden entrances. The walls were carved so profanely, and everything around was so homogenous and foul, Baltukhasar's senses had difficulty picking out seams. After finding a seam where he more or less expected a door, he pushed on the rock. Reluctant to move at first, a section eventually rotated without resistance. The door was not explicitly meant to be locked or hidden.

A short corridor brought Baltukhasar to a plain stone door. With the egg's doors shut, no "monks" would see down the side corridor. So why carve it?

That pragmatism amid such overwhelming debauchery warmed Baltukhasar's heart.

The plain stone door would have opened out, but was blocked. That aligned with his theory that the interior had been sealed from outside. Busting down a stone door backed by rubble was not entirely Baltukhasar's thing. He had no tools, but there were carved boulders in the pool. He searched the pool for something he could use to smash. Finding a suitable candidate, he prepared to smash.

Then he heard the gigolos at work.