Chapter 1: You’re finally awake
Jordan felt a little uncomfortable. His ride was bumpy.
Above him was a bright blue sky, the kind of sky that makes you a little dizzy looking up at it because it’s just so uniformly blue. It even fills up your peripheral vision, and becomes the biggest thing you can ever look at. Jordan loved staring at it and daydreaming about whatever odd fantasy his little mind thought of. Sometimes he likes to just imagine flying through it, feeling the cool air and freedom from responsibility, stress, and judgment. And gravity too.
Jordan just wished that the cart carrying him would hit a few less rocks. He wondered if the driver was hitting bumps on purpose, or if it was just the road’s fault.
‘I’ve been on this stupid cart for a week, according to Gale. How much farther are we going? Ugh. Well, at least I’ve never been out this far. It’s a new… experience… I guess.’
Gale was a skinny man sitting next to him.
Emphasis on ‘was’. Gale seemed to have starved to death a few hours ago and no one important except for Jordan noticed. And the other slaves on the cart. He smelled really bad. Jordan wished they gagged his nose too.
Ah, but then he wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Jordan, with his mouth gagged, his legs bound, and his stumpy arm burning, stared up at the sky and wanted to cry. He was too thirsty for even a single tear to come out.
‘How’d this even happen? Ngh… I miss my mom.’
-One week ago-
A small group of three snuck through the dense brush of the Lian Jungle. The air was hot, heavy, and moist. The sound of random jungle animals screeching and insects chirping could be occasionally heard.
The teenagers were dressed in standard, loose fitting servant robes. Their names were Ashley, Jordan, and Alex. They were off the path, treading up through bushes, trees, and vines. They’ve already been out in the jungle for an hour, and were eager to see their destination.
“Ashley, how much farther?” Alex whined.
“Yeah, how much farther?” Jordan mimicked.
Ashley exasperatedly sighed for the tenth time, and whispered, “Guys, we’re literally like 30 seconds from seeing it. I even told you before we started up this hill.”
“...”
“It’s so hot.” Alex complained, ignoring her.
Jordan agreed. He thought they were going to be swimming in a river, not hiking up a mountain. ‘Why’d I even ditch work for this? Same shlop, different day.’
When they made it to the top, they came across an old wooden bridge about 40 meters long connecting two mountains. The valley it hung over was formed like someone split a mountain in half with a sword. Ashley, the eldest of the group, spoke up in a hushed tone while peeking over the edge of the cliff.
“Alright, it should be down there.”
Smiling, she pointed down past the bridge into the river that ran below, between the mountains. Alex and Jordan laid down to poke their heads over the edge. Pushing each other’s sweat filled faces a bit, they followed where she was pointing and squinted, as they tried to see what they were looking for.
“What? Hm… I can’t- Oh! Oh, I see it!” Alex said.
Jordan looked over at him, scowled, and tried to follow his gaze. Alex’s eyes were better than his, but he didn’t want to admit it.
‘Gray and round… made of metal so it should reflect light… really old so it should have like, green and orange stuff on it… There!’
“I see it too!” Jordan exclaimed.
They were looking at a cylindrical sunken building, deep underneath the waters. It wasn’t just submerged, but also sunken into the riverbed, laying on its side. It wasn’t that big. Maybe a little bigger than Jordan’s two story home. The building was an ancient relic from god-knows when. The architecture and material of these relics didn’t match anything from the current era nor anything from the past millennium. Treasure hunters and Tech-Wizards loved the stuff, since the former could sell whatever they found in it to the latter, for a small fortune.
That prospect of treasure was the reason why those kids ditched their foraging job after Ashley told them she saw an ancient ruin on her patrol job. She took the two along in order to help her carry out the relics. Jordan agreed, seeing that he wouldn’t have to keep picking mushrooms if he went, and Alex agreed, saying he wanted his sister to be safe.
Jordan knew he just didn’t want to harvest any more nuts.
The three descended the cliff face by climbing down vines and branches and gripping into small crevices in the rock. The three grew up playing in the mountains, along with the other kids in the village. They were all fairly athletic and even trained diligently back at home.
When they got settled at the bottom, Ashley immediately stripped into her underwear and left her clothes and bag hanging from a tree. She grinned after side-eyeing Jordan, who immediately pretended he wasn’t looking. She saw his reddening ears though. Alex scoffed.
“Horndog.” Alex remarked.
After the two boys undressed, they hopped in the water. It was pleasant and refreshing compared to the humid atmosphere they’ve been sweating in this whole time.
“Hey, uh, aren’t these ruins supposed to be dangerous? Like at least guarded or something?” Alex said.
“Yeah, uh… I think I read about these types of things being homes for demons.” Jordan said.
“Demons? Nah, I’m thinking more like automatons.”
“Yeah, no, that’s what I mean. Scary machines that look like demons, y’know?”
“Eugh.” Ashley shivered. “Guys, you’re giving me goosebumps. What I see is a waterlogged ruin and an adventure ahead of us. I can’t even sense any mana down there. Let’s think optimistically, yeah?”
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Jordan and Alex looked at each other skeptically.
“Alright, you first.” said Alex.
“What happened to protecting your sister?” Jordan muttered.
Alex glanced at Ashley and turned back to Jordan.
“Just goooo~”
Jordan gave Ashley the most pleading and whiny look he could, and to his surprise it worked. Ashley just grinned and dove under.
Alex and Jordan tread the water on the surface, watching Ashley swim into a window. She turned her head a bit, surveying the inside, then went in deeper. The two boys nodded at each other and swam in after her.
Inside, Jordan saw a spiraling double-sided shelf filling the center of the room. It was bolted to the floor. There were a bunch of random marine life making their homes on the shelves. Mostly brown bumpy stuff with spots. Jordan saw a crab or two scuttling about.
‘Looks like some sort of storage facility,’ Jordan thought. ‘Maybe a library? Lots of shelves but no books.
Alex busied himself looking at the shelves, while Jordan tried to look for any storage containers. ‘Whatever is still here probably wasn’t freely floating around for a thousand years,’ Jordan thought.
Jordan watched Ashley swim over to some sort of counter, but she just frowned, and shrugged.
Alex made a bubbling noise and pointed at the entrance to the second floor. The three swam over to it and gave the handle a pull, then a push.
The handle broke off then straight up disintegrated in their hands, leaving a hole. The boys backed up and watched Ashley as she got into a fighting stance, and Jordan could feel a pulse of mana as she charged up force in her palm. There was a deep crack, the building rumbled, and the impact pushed everyone away as the door was blasted into the room.
Swimming inside, they found a floating end table, a dresser, and a bed. They checked inside but only found a few rags and a weird squishy package. What was really exciting was the safe, sitting behind the broken door. Jordan and Alex grabbed it, Ashley gave them two big thumbs up, and the three began swimming up to the surface. Despite their training, the boys couldn’t hold their breath for more than 6 minutes. Ashley was two years older than them, and thus had two extra years of training over them, so she could hold her breath for nearly 30 minutes.
When the three made it to the shore, Ashley hurriedly picked it up and ran to her bag. She dropped the safe in the grass and pulled out a drying cloth. Jordan and Alex walked up slowly, catching their breath.
“So… What’s in the box?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know yet! But look!”
Ashley held the safe with the door facing down and shook it.
“Water isn’t coming out! That means it’s been untouched all these years! We might be able to go on our adventure, guys!”
The three couldn’t help but smile, until they realized they had no idea how to open it.
It was just a black box with a door. The lock looked digital, with buttons, levers, keypads and whatnot. No obvious keyhole.
“Alright. Let’s just press random things until it opens.” Jordan stated proudly.
“No, you idiot.” Alex rebuked. “What if it locks us out? Then we’ll never get our millions of Crystal. We should take it back home, have someone else open it for us.”
“No, if we do that then they’ll just take it for themselves!” Ashley exclaimed. “We’ve gotta figure this out ourselves. And obviously I can’t just break it or whatever’s inside’s gonna break too.”
‘Darn. That’s what I was gonna say next.’ Jordan thought.
“So what should we do then?” Alex asked.
“Give it to me,” came a gruff voice from behind.
The three jumped, sand going everywhere, with Jordan literally falling on his back and scrambling up, Ashley spitting out profanities, and Alex jolting upright and stiff. They couldn’t even sense who appeared. They didn’t hear, smell, nor detect with mana the man who snuck up on them.
But they saw him.
But they couldn’t see him.
When they tried to look at him, their mind lapsed. It was as if light itself curved in and around him. They couldn’t comprehend his form.
But they began to feel him.
His presence. His aura. It felt unnatural, like a primordial fear of the dark awakening in each of them. Murderous. One wrong move and he would crush them. As they tried to wrap their minds around his existence, the man spoke again.
“I’ll be taking this. And just so you know, I was here first. I even had a camp behind you all.”
Only Jordan dared to peel his eyes away, and sure enough, there was a firepit, sleeping bag, and tarp shelter set up under the canopy.
Jordan trembled hard, with a feeling like ice permeating through his body. It started in his core and stiffened him up all the way to the edges of his fingers. His senses had never failed him before. What he was looking at shouldn’t exist. He was scared of the formless thing. They all were. So when the man just up and took the safe, the three couldn’t say anything. They couldn’t do anything.
“And a word of advice. The last remnants of the ancient ones are not children’s playgrounds.”
The man’s form along with the safe seemed to flatten out, into an almost two-dimensional shape, before flattening the other way and disappearing completely.
They were left with a huge headache, and fear they’ve never felt. The jungle air was thick, damp, and suffocating. Sweat dripped from stiff faces onto cool sand. A small breeze seemed to blow a bit of the tension away.
“I think that g-guy actually killed my b-brain cells.” Jordan stuttered, trying to laugh.
Ashley tried to smile, but just ended up losing control of her facial muscles and putting her head down, her arms trembling as she rested them on her knees.
“Who… no, what was that?” Alex mumbled.
They sat in silence, trying to digest what they’ve just seen. But Jordan heard something in the distance.
Pat. Pat. Pat.
Jordan was still alert, and sensing vibrations in the earth, he immediately looked down the shoreline, where the wind came from. Alex followed Jordan’s gaze and saw men lightly armored with metal pieces protecting vitals, and rags covering the rest, talking and joking with each other. A few had dented helmets, but all of them had weapons. Behind them were even more raggedy people, carrying a bunch of bags or equipment.
“Oh shit. Bandits. We’ve gotta run, guys. Now.” Alex spat out.
Ashley and Jordan got up immediately, albeit still shaking from their encounter. Still, they ran to their belongings while discussing the plan.
“What do we do Ashley?” Jordan asked, knowing that she had the most training and experience with this kind of stuff. She was strong, and often assigned to patrol the village outskirts. The boys relied on her to get out of this mess.
Ashley thought out loud, “We can’t run down the shoreline. It just leads to the waterfall and that’s impossible to scale. Those bandits might even have their base there, seeing as they’re coming this way from the river mouth. We’re at a dead end here. Our only options are hiding in the ground and ambushing them, or scaling the mountain.”
“We can’t ambush them! There’s like twenty of them and only us three!” Alex whispered.
The three crouched down next to the tree that Ashley hung her stuff on.
“So we have to make a mad climb up the mountain then. Did you see any guns, Alex?”
“No, but I did see bows and slings.”
“Damn. This’ll be rough. Alright, nothing we can do about those, but be aware of them. Let’s run up the shore a bit so we can get some distance, then climb up.”
The three sprinted up the shore towards the waterfall. Jordan could swear he ran faster than he ever had before. After a good 500 meters in a minute, they began climbing up the mountain. That’s when the bandits spotted them.
They pointed and yelled, and some of the bandits got out their ranged weaponry. Their bows were big and heavy, nearly as thick as their arms and as tall as they were. Their slings threw up sand as they spun them around.
Jumping from vine to branch and even running up the wall at some points, the three were very hard to hit. Scampering up the cliff like lightning, they performed the greatest acrobatics of their lives, all the while dodging mana-enhanced projectiles. Arrows pierced deep into the walls they were climbing, and impacting rocks exploded into shrapnel that disrupted their climbing. Still, they were making good progress.
Until Alex got his head splattered by a stone.