It was a feeling Loa couldn't put into words. He had never felt it before, yet it seemed strangely familiar.
The contradiction troubled him. Reason told him he had never encountered whatever it was, but his sixth sense insisted there was a deep connection between them.
Loa didn't know what it was, but that wasn't going to stop him from investigating.
He stopped hunting, changed course, and flew toward it.
Meanwhile, in the forest below, Vice Admiral Dalmatian sniffed the air and turned to Haisoken. "No good. He changed direction again! He's moving so fast we'll never catch him at this rate!"
"What a pain." Haisoken sighed helplessly. "You keep after him. I'll find somewhere higher up and hope he spots me and stops."
With that settled, the two split up and continued pursuing Loa.
With flight on his side, Loa soon crossed the dense jungle and found the source of that familiar feeling.
It was an abandoned Temple hidden in the forest.
Thick green vines climbed the ruined walls, holding the cracked pillars upright like ropes. An iron brazier lay tipped over on the ground, its old ashes long since mixed with years of rain and soil into ugly clumps of mud.
Loa landed slowly on the broken stone steps before the Temple. He looked around, then stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"There's something strange about this place!"
Inside the Temple, open to the wind on all sides, the design on the ceiling stood out most of all.
As an engineering-minded man who had come from Earth—not that the engineering part mattered—Loa knew exactly what he was looking at.
Its proportions were peculiar, reminding him of cartoon characters from his previous life, but the design unmistakably depicted a Great Dragon!
And there was more!
Whoever had built the Temple had