Sinatro
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Chapter 131. Gods And Temples
🕑 Added 2025-08-05 16:08:44 +0000 UTCA/N: Hey Everyone, sorry for the delay. I'm not having the best time, and this week may be a bit turbulent, but I want to increase the number of chapters a week starting next week, once I'm out of the woods. Please be a little patient.
Rafe wanted to see the temples first. The temple district was quite a distance from the harbour, and there were a lot of places in between, but Rafe did not pay attention to any of it.
He didn't consider it before, coming to the capital that is. And even after coming against his will, he didn't think it could help him solve his problems. But the moment Helare told him it was the temple district that night on the ship, Rafe knew he was going to go there eventually.
The city was huge. The largest land mass in Ma’la land. It would take them weeks to reach the temple district if they insisted on walking and touring the festival attractions like Helare wanted.
She still insisted, quite adamant. She wanted Rafe to see the good side of Primus, she kept saying.
She finally cracked when the sun was at its highest.
Rafe wondered why she was trying so hard to cater to him.
“I might think you're in love with me,” Rafe muttered to himself.
“What was that?” Helare asked.
He couldn't tell her what he'd been thinking, so he said it was nothing. Of course Rafe knew the princess liked him. He knew she was attracted to him, for some unfathomable reason. He was attracted to her as well.
But love… that was a whole other matter entirely. Rafe wasn't sure he knew what the word meant. They made such a big deal of it in movies and romance stories. It couldn't be something as simple as sexual attraction, could it? Sure, it could start like that, but then what? Where was it going from there?
With how things were developing with the princess, Rafe found himself getting more and more philosophical. Maybe that was love. Thinking about what you meant to the other person. Thinking about what you meant to your family.
Rafe felt a pang in his heart when he thought about it. His normal reaction was to try and push it to the back of his mind, but this time he tried to consider it. Why did he not know about love? Could it have to do with his family?
Helare weaved through the streets so deftly, like she'd been through these alleys a thousand times. The city was huge. Moving across it, if one were walking linearly (which is obviously impossible) would take weeks. Moving to the white spire at the centre of the city the way they were now moving, by taking dark alleyways and a weirdly circular route, would take months in Rafe's humble estimate.
The temple district, luckily, was on this side of the island, and at least a little closer to where they were than the spire. It should probably take them only a few weeks. Of course the festival would be over by then, so Helare was probably going to be finding them a solution.
“Are you trying to find one of those transportation crystals?” Rafe asked her.
She turned back with a frown. “Do you know how expensive those are? Besides, there was a Primus before the system. How could we call ourselves the ultimate citizens of this world if we were unable to solve such a little problem.”
Even as she spoke, the dark alleyways they were traversing opened up onto… another landing site? And now Rafe started to see why Primus, a world he was sure was probably larger than Earth, was called a land of water. Even in this the largest land mass owned by the Ma’la, there were rivers snaking through the city.
In fact, the wind Elemenoids did not have land. Or so the rest of the world once believed.
Rafe was not so sure.
The wind Elemenoids lived on the floating islands. The Earth users had a continent that housed more than ten cities, but Rafe remembered that continent was the size of Madagascar or there abouts.
“So one of these river barges can get us to the temple district,” Rafe asked.
“Well, no. There is a tiny stream that branches off this river and feeds into the temple of Ma’la, but we can't travel on it,” Helare said. “We will have to walk a little.”
Helare was a surprisingly trustful person. She did not even ask Rafe why he was so obsessed with getting to the temple district. She instead led him to the temple, trusting that whatever reason he had for getting there was a good one. She was not his only traveling companion though.
“Why are you so hell bent on getting to the temple district?” Filoria asked, her tone less than friendly.
Unlike most of this trip, Filoria had been distant this morning.
Maybe it had to do with the fact she did not sleep the night before. Rafe remembered waking up to find her still standing over him and Helare, glaring at him even. It wasn't his fault Helare wanted to sleep with him. If anything, it was probably his hot body's fault, and no body liked to be judged by their body. Well, no body except Rafe. And maybe most men? If they had good bodies anyway.
Rafe decided that telling the truth in this situation wasn't the worst idea. He did want to find out about this pantheon, to be sure.
“We didn't have gods were I came from. So I'm mostly for educational purposes,” he said with a shrug.
Filoria gritted her teeth in response to his answer. She was a strange person, so he ignored it. She kept glaring at his back. He could still see her through his first racial ability even in its retracted form.
“You didn't have gods?” Helare asked curiously. “I mean, not that I can relate. We've always had our gods. And they are who created our world, and all of creation too, or so we thought. It is still strange, thinking other worlds exist. And they have their own gods too. It is kind of a crisis of faith, you know?”
Well, it wasn't exactly true that there were no gods on Earth. It's just that they were mostly invisible, and hands-off? From what he knew, the gods on Primus were hands off too, and he could very well have thought these Elemenoids were as delusional as the people back on Earth. Only, he'd seen some of these gods. Or he thought he had at the very least.
“Well, it's not that there are no gods or anything,” he said, although he didn't know why he was explaining to Helare like he expected her to visit Earth someday. “I mean, there are no gods, but there is religion. People pray.”
“What do you pray to if there are no gods?” Helare asked disbelievingly.
Rafe shrugged. “Some people believe there is a God, others believe in other kinds of things, you know. Me, I didn't really care one way or the other. I did like to pray though.”
“What for?” Helare repeated, stepping forward to pay some kind of toll before they could be allowed aboard a river vessel.
“I liked the ritualism of it, I guess, the symbolism. I liked the sense of belonging, and even if I know now there is probably no one God, if I went back in time I'd still go for prayers, I'm sure.”
“Hmm?” Helare mulled over his answer.
She didn't say anything until after they were settled on the ship’s deck, closer to the aft.
“You didn't strike me as a particularly social person?” she said.
Rafe thought about that. With his overreaction that one time she'd annoyed him, he could see how he had come off as slightly antisocial. And it was kind of true. He was an awkward guy, so he always defaulted to working hard in order to make himself stand out.
Actually, working hard was a stretch. Maybe trying hard was more it. Trying to impress. He threw parties, had a sports car, was the hardest working player on the basketball team, although his skills were only average. He was scared of his girlfriend, scared of touching her, of being too forward. He was an awkward guy.
“Maybe you're right,” he said to Helare. “But… I didn't… no, I don't want to be this way.”
His voice was pained, and he couldn't look at Helare for fear of what he would see in her expression. He did see her in his racial ability though. It was automatic, like a limb with nerve damage that you could control most times, but then sometimes it'd jerk suddenly, uncontrollable.
She hesitated, her face shifting through a handful of expressions, though none of them was bad from what Rafe could see. She seemed worried, concerned, a bit pitying, but she was also clearly hesitating on how she could comfort Rafe.
Rafe decided he would take the initiative this time.
Even as his face reddened, Rafe raised his left hand and touched Helare's hand. For a few moments, Rafe felt weak, weaker than he'd felt ever since he regained his memories in the legacy trial. He clenched his right hand, waiting, waiting.
He looked up at her. She was staring at his hand, frozen. Then she moved her head and their eyes met. She flinched and turned away from him like she'd been burned.
But she did not pull her hand away. She did not pull her hand away. Suddenly feeling braver, Rafe tagged on it.
She offered no resistance. He pulled her down next to him. Close, so close. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her head to his chest.
She was also decidedly studying the flooring of the deck on which they stood. She still hugged his chest from her awkward position. Then she struggled to get a bit more comfortable, her soft body pressing up against him.
They stayed like that the whole boat ride, not noticing a trembling Filoria standing quietly in a little distance away. If they had, they would have noticed the rare tears sliding down her face. But they were too busy, unable to get their eyes off the floorboards.
