Chapter 6: Malikai Unveils the Altar

The building was a temple, an old and forgotten place.  None 
remembered the name of the god or goddess it was built for.  
The building had fallen into disrepair before the destruction, 
but the waves of war that had flattened the buildings around 
it had left this building untouched.  This was a bad place, a 
slum before the festival day, a graveyard now.  Noone moved 
the rubble here.  Noone cared enough to find and lay the dead 
to rest.  Malikai sent fear to any he sensed, making the area 
even less populated.

Malikai carried the woman, Mary, towards the temple.  She was 
still wrapped in his mentally-induced sleep.  He carefully 
sifted her mind.  She was the daughter of a whore, forced into 
her mother's trade at a young age.  She ran away to Montfort to 
escape that life.  And found hunger and sickness.  Then the 
destruction, and her own violation.  He smiled.  "Beautiful... 
so beautiful"

Mary awoke in a cold dark place.  A young boy and an bent old man
looking at her.  She pulled away, and shivered.  

The boy spoke, "We don't want to hurt you."

"Why not?  Everyone else does."

"I promise, you're safe now.  I'm Alex." The boy held out his hand.

She ignored the hand, "Alex.  I'm Mary.  What do you want with me?"

The man reached over and stroked her hair.  "I'm Malikai, and you 
will join Alex as one of mine.  You will repay the world for hurting 
you.  Follow." He got up and began walking.

Alex and Mary could not help but obey him.  They walked down a flight 
of stairs, past a dead-end hidden passage, and into an altar room.  
It sat on a dias, a slab of cold red stone.  Malikai walked to the slab
and spoke, "Here is the begining of the new order.  On this altar, I 
will bring the goddess of pain to this world, and she will grant us 
power.  I will lead you to rule this place!  Death itself will tremble 
before us!  We will throw them all down!"

Mary's eyes gleemed.  He was insane, but she craved the power he 
promised.  She had wished for a way out of her life of misery, and this 
was it.  She would follow him, to hell and back if she had to.