In a few short minutes, he was standing down the alley talking into his kalodia to Sanje. Soon, a military team was setting up a barricade outside the building. The homeless were cleared out, and the perimeter secured. The team captain called for Haytoo to come out. For some time, there was no response, so they sent in a fully armed team with orders to kill if necessary. They equipped some with sedatives. The same one mixed to sedate Varin when he had lost control of his mind. They spearheaded the invasion with two concussion grenades. Eight men filed in, weapons ready. Varin and Sanje watched from outside. Plasma shots were heard, and suddenly men were crying out in distress.

“Man down! Man down!”

It was as Varin had feared on Spirea. He knew the men were shooting each other, and he was filled with regret that he let them go in. Then the shooting fell silent. There was nothing from the building for what seemed like an eternity. One of the detachment finally appeared in the door. His gun was dangling at his side like a useless toy. He was in a state of confusion. Varin was relieved to see someone was alive. 

“He wants the extuiter! He has Rykes. I think everybody else is dead.” Medics scrambled to help the man.

“Does he want this extuiter dead?” the captain asked Sanje.

“No,” Varin interrupted, “I don’t think so. He thinks he’s found something in there and he wants me to be some part of it. If I get close enough, maybe I can sedate him.”

“I want my man alive.”

When Varin entered the building he found six bodies; two were dead with disturbing gashes from plasma rifles, another two were still alive but barely breathing, having been victims of their own sedation darts, a fifth was dead with a sickening blue color. He approached the sixth man, who was frozen in mid-attack, encased in some kind of clear resin block that disintegrated to nothing when Varin touched its surface. The man’s body collapsed dead to the ground, he too a gruesome blue. 

Varin noticed there were other smaller holes dug into the foundation that had been abandoned and refilled. At the far side of the room, was the opening that led to where Haytoo was holding Rykes. A scream let out from the hole, and a bright light could be seen as if a fire was started. Smoke escaped in a plume. Haytoo was burning Rykes alive. Varin ran to the hole and peered inside. Rykes was at the far end of the chamber, tucked into a cove of some kind. Flames were on him, but he was not ablaze entirely yet. Haytoo traced a pattern in the air with a flaming bundle of some dried weed. His movements were meditative as if they were a practice to focus energy. Varin tugged at the thrines in the space before him, ripping open a path to the burning team member. He was on him fast, despite the dangerous drop to the chamber floor, pulling the man free from the cove and putting out the flames. Haytoo subsided his movements but made no advance on Varin.

“Let Rykes go, and I’ll stay.”

“I’m sorry. We’re going to need him.”

For the time being the man was tucked aside, still bound and gagged. He was bruised and bleeding from his head. Other than some burns on his arms, he would be all right. Varin tried to keep calm and find a way out of the situation or a way to bring it to a definitive end.

“It’s a little hot in here. Do you think we can talk up top?” Varin asked calmly.

“No.”

“What is it that you want?”

As he talked, Varin studied the rectangular chamber. It was about ten feet wide and twenty-five feet deep. The walls were long smooth segments of stone with markings along their surface. It was fairly well lit by a couple squatty floodlights stationed on the floor. At the end of the chamber, near the carved out cove laid Rykes’ plasma rifle. Haytoo’s burning thatch was now smoldering in the cove where Rykes had been bound. It looked like a sealed doorway. Haytoo grabbed a torch jammed into the wall and gestured for Varin to come closer.

“Come on. Look.”

He held the torch to the wall, and Varin approached, his hand close to his hip where the sedation darts were packed. He looked on where Haytoo was shining his fire. He illuminated some hieroglyphs on the wall. The image was of exceedingly thin men and a door. The men appeared supernatural and made of white light. They trailed toward a being with many arms and under the being’s foot a slain misshapen humanoid. A strange species. Haytoo pointed at the men of light.

“Here. The shone men. They come in from both directions and become this one. The God Urga. They are Urga’s combined power. He whipped the torch around to hold it beneath the archway into the ritual burning area. “Here! Aiek Tham Kut.” He pointed. “That Art Thou.