Is that an erotic statue in your temple or are you just happy to see me?

Walking through the temple, Claude reassessed his impression of it. Though the outside made him think of ancient Mayans, the inside made him think more of some sultan’s palace. Everything was faded with time and crumbling with age, but there were obvious parallels to him. Now empty bathing pools. Ornate columns that seemed more decorative than supporting. A few thread bare rugs, eaten away with age but still depicting luxurious designs. The complex was surprisingly vast and they were moving slowly through it. Ernest wanted to stop and examine almost every room they entered, which was making it take even longer to find the energy stone.

“Oh my!” Rena exclaimed.

Claude hurried over to find her blushing rather heavily. Her eyes were wide and she quickly turned her back to the room she’d been looking into. Confused at her reaction, Claude stepped around her and inside. The room wasn’t overly large, but in the center of it was a rather exotic sculpture. A rather masculine figure stood in the center of the sculpture while feminine figures knelt all around him. All of the figures were nude, and the feminine ones seemed to be worshipping the male’s engorged penis.

“Well,” Celine chuckled from behind Claude. “You don’t see that every day.” She turned around to Rena. “It’s just a cock, darling. No need to be embarrassed.”

“Intriguing,” Ernest pushed into the room with Opera in tow. He stepped around the sculpture studying it intently. “Four breasts on the females, suggesting they produce two to four offspring per birth. Pronounced feline features, suggesting a possible derivative of the Fellpool or maybe even a new species. I’m unclear if this sculpture indicates some sort of ruler and his wives/consorts or if it indicates the species was male dominant and all males had multiple devotees.”

“He doesn’t seem excessively impressive.” Celine stepped up to the sculpture and held her fingers near the male’s penis as if she was measuring it. “Five inches at most. What do you think, Rena?”

“I…I really don’t have anything to...base it on.” Rena was still blushing and attempting to look anywhere but at the statue.

“Fascinating as this is,” Opera interrupted, her eyes seemed to be imploring Ernest to focus on her and not statues, “we still need to find that energy stone.”

Claude was more interested in helping Rena escape Celine’s teasing, but it was a good suggestion. “Opera’s right. You can examine the statue later, Ernest.” Opera frowned at him but gave a slight nod when everyone started to leave the room.

The next room they found contained another equally shocking sculpture. This one had only one female and male, but they were posed even more erotically. The male was still standing, but he was holding the female’s butt as he penetrated her. Her legs were wrapped around his waist as she leaned back and down to place her hands on the floor. Her four breasts all jutted out prominently. Rena took one look at the statue and then quickly left the room. Even Celine blushed a little at seeing it.

“This civilization certainly seems to have been quite promiscuous.” Ernest was once again studying the statue critically. Opera stepped up and whispered something in his ear. Ernest’s eyes grew big and he looked at Opera for a second before blushing almost as brightly as Rena. Opera smiled secretly as they moved onto the next room.

They found several more statues, all increasingly erotic. When they finally got the central chamber, Claude was half expecting to find some orgy preserved in marble. He’d noted that Rena had slowly grown less bothered by the statues and was hopeful that it might spark some movement in his attempts to woo her.

“That can’t be good.” Opera was the first to note that the central chamber contained something quite different from a sculpture. In the center of the room, floating a few feet off the ground, was a large orb of swirling runes and glyphs. The lettering glowed with a bright magenta color that matched the color of the smaller stone in the center of the orb. “Does this remind anyone else of the Symbol of Annihilation?”

“It’s definitely some sort of symbology.” Celine stepped closer to examine it. “But I don’t think this is the same symbols. Also, the stone in the center is magenta. Energy stones have always been green in color.”

Claude studied the orb. It definitely gave off a vibe of some sort of **** symbology. He didn’t feel threatened by it though. He almost felt drawn to it, like there was a whisper in his ear promising power. He took a step closer and then shook his head at the thought. “It might be a different color, but it's still giving off the same readings as an energy stone right?"

Opera pulled out a device from her pack and studied it. "Well...yes, but also no." When everyone gave her a confused look she continued. "No energy stone has been quite the same. They are all mostly similar though. This stone fits into the same range of readings, granted it's the most divergent we've come across."

Claude turned to look at the stone. The more he looked at it, the less it made him think of the Symbol of Annihilation and more like something else. "Can we determine what the symbol is or remove the stone from it?”

Ernest seemed to perk up at the idea of exploring the find further, but Celine frowned first at Claude and then at the orb. “It's definitely possibly, but it will take some time to figure out how. Without knowing what this symbol does, we risk setting off any sort of reaction if we tamper with it or the stone.”

Claude blew out a sigh of frustration. After two years of searching and finding only energy stones, he was no closer to proving his story about the Ten Wise Men. Now he'd found something potentially completely unrelated to them. Was he just wasting his and everyone's time on a fool's errand?

Rena seemed to sense his frustration and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe this is exactly what you've been looking for Claude. It could be a remnant of the Quadratic Sphere but different from every other energy stone.”

Ernest had been studying the orb for some time while everyone else discussed it. "The symbological runework is moving slowly and in predictable patterns. I'm pretty sure I can get the stone out of it easy enough.” He started to reach for a gap in the swirling glyphs.

A tingle of alarm raced through Claude. Not fear for Ernest, but a sudden concern that he was going to lose out on something important. An almost foreign thought fluttered through his mind. Don’t let him claim it for himself! “Wait!” He quickly stepped forward and reached out to grab Ernest’s hand. As close as they both were to the orb, he ended up brushing against the swirling symbols in his haste.

In a flash of magenta light, the symbol seemed to explode outward in a wall of ****. Claude and everyone else were lifted off their feet and thrown backwards as a wave of energy spread out from the orb. The air in his lungs was driven out of him as Claude crashed into a column in the room. He tried to draw in oxygen as he slid to the ground but couldn’t quite catch his breath. The energy from the symbol, or maybe it was the stone itself, seemed to rush straight towards and into him, filling his vision with its magenta brilliance until he passed out.