Day 9

It’s official. I’ve lost my mind.

After last night, I tried really hard to convince myself to stay in the meadow. I face enough perils in my daily life without risking that dark and gloomy place. But, It was impossible. At this point there’s no doubt my attraction to the sinkhole didn’t originate within my own curiosity. Every idle moment, my thoughts were drawn that way and more than once I found myself unconsciously walking towards the deadwood.

The lack of light will be the main complication I’ll face when I go down there. The sinkhole is very deep and when I was last there, the sun had already dropped low in the horizon. At that time of day, shadows completely obscured the interior. Likely, there will be only a few hours when the sun is in the right position to provide enough light.

That’s why I’m going down sometime around noon, give or take a little because solar physics are complicated. I can’t afford to chicken out and I really don’t want to stay in that creepy place any longer than I have to. So, while I have the light, I must be brave and determined. Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Damn, If only heroism was that simple.

That’s not to say I’m jumping in without a plan. The last people who explored it are currently lying dead somewhere down there and I’m not eager to join them.

At first light, I packed the wheelbarrow with my meager possessions including coals to start a new fire and left for the abandoned camp. I wasn’t sure how long it would take and figured it would best to be prepared for an overnight stay. There were tons of dead trees around and with the live coals I got a fire blazing in record time. It cheered me that I now had a little colony away from home for refuge.

Although, I’m hoping when problems arise it’ll be an abandoned colony more like Vinland than Roanoke. Ok, I’m aware that the comparison kind of falls apart when considering the murderous feud involved with one of the expeditions to the former, but bear with me. My point is I’d much rather be capable of packing up and leaving if things don’t go my way than to simply disappear without a trace.

In addition the darkness, the earth around the sinkhole is still cold to the touch. However, this time, I am trying out my latest acquisition. I used my traded fur and cord to fashion a pair of shoes. They are not much to look at. Actually, I needed to stuff them full of grass to get a good fit, so it looks like I’m wearing a taco on each foot, but I won’t need to risk frostbite whenever I tread on the icy ground.

Day 9 – Part 2

Well, the first part of my plan worked. Although; I shouldn’t rush to celebrate. Once the sun illuminated the entirety of the sinkhole, I finally got a good look at just how in over my head I was.

Positives first. Subterranean water dissolving underground layers of strata is typically what causes sinkholes, so there was a substantial possibility that everything below would have been flooded and I’d need to grow gills to explore further. I was reasonably sure that wasn’t the case due to the sophisticated tests (dropping stones and listening for a splash) I performed while waiting for the sun to get into position. Still it was nice to get confirmation on the matter. The second positive was there weren’t Dracopedes or other dangerous creature on the prowl.

Now for the negatives. I knew the sinkhole went deep, but better lighting proved it was far deeper than I’d have thought possible. Multiple hours of complete sunlight now seems hopelessly optimistic and I’ll need to cut my exploration time in half or risk being caught in the dark.

Also, I didn’t expect Stonehenge down there. Ok it’s not literally the same, but what else would one call a circular post and lintel monument constructed from massive slabs balanced atop one another. There were also troubling implications on why it was sunk into a pit rather than built on high ground like it’s Earth analog, but I didn’t want to dwell on those.

I need to admire the stairs that descended along the rim down the sinkhole. I was ho-hum about them the other day. But they showed far more care and skill than I credited at the time. They went the extra effort to lay timber planks over the cut rock and fastened them in place with heavy iron stakes. I learned while descending that it made a huge difference. I stumbled on the slippery and uneven rock by the edge, but I had no trouble maintaining my footing on the stairs.

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The quality of the stairs and the other things I found below forced me to revise my analysis on the group of miners. My previous assumption was they had brought digging tools simply to carve steps down to the bottom. Nope. There was some serious excavation happening on the sinkhole floor. Stonehenge appeared mostly undisturbed, but they dug out a vertical shaft just outside the circle which descended god knows how deep underground. I won’t be able to go any farther until I fashion some sort of lamp or torches. I’m going to check out the center of the stone ring and get out while I still have some light.

Day 9 – Part 3

Revising my opinion of the miners one more time. Those guys are sick!

Day 9 – Part 4

I knew something was wrong the second I set foot within the inner section of standing stones. The whispers from several days ago returned louder and with more intensity. A raspy female voice groaned. It oozed pain and despair and with her next breath added rage and promises of vengeance. Raw emotion echoed all around and weighed me down like an oppressive fog.

It took a while to make any kind of sense out of the figure surrounded by multiple layers of concentric stone circles. At first glace, I thought it was a stunted tree. The gnarled gray exterior was certainly bark-like and it was covered with twigs and dead shriveled leaves. But, a gleaming red eye cracked opened when I approached within a dozen paces.

I froze. The creature in front of me, a dryad, stirred and thrashed on the ground. A sudden and crippling wave of terror and anxiety nearly bowled me over. The yearnings coalesced into words that permeated the air. “Help me… Release me...”

That’s when I noticed the stakes. The same that held the steps together, the ones I admired so much earlier, were hammered through her chest and driven deep into the earth.

I crept forward and knelt beside her. I drew my dagger and stabbed the hard-packed ground next to the restrained dryad. Despite my care, I accidently brushed the flat of the dagger over her arm. She recoiled from the touch as her wooden flesh smoked. Cold iron has a special place in folklore and possesses supernatural qualities over magical creatures. She was in enough pain from the three iron spikes without adding my carelessness so I put away the dagger and dug with only my hands.

Soon, I removed enough of the earth around the stake. I reached underneath and wiggled the first stake loose. The dryad’s field of frenzied longing lessened as I removed it. Relieved, I pulled out the last two to completely free her.

By then, the shadows within the sinkhole had started to lengthen and I didn’t want to leave her alone in the dark. After years of being trapped here, she seemed neither fit nor healthy. Dryads are often depicted as rosy-cheeked young women frolicking through the forest. That wouldn’t have accurately described this miserable creature. Her appearance was more lifeless and emaciated. Look up a recent picture of Ramses III. She looked more like that.

I carried her out before the shadows covered us in darkness. She didn’t measure thirty inches tall so it wasn’t difficult. Camp Vinland was abandoned the second I loaded the dryad in the wheelbarrow and got her comfortable.

After booking it back to the meadow, I restarted my campfire and lay her nearby to warm up. Stupid me. Dryads and open flames don’t mix so she understandably freaked out and I had to endure the overwhelming aura of panic until I moved her farther away.

The first foray into the sinkhole seemed like a success. I’ll need to go back in the morning. Hopefully, not because of the irrational drive which brought me there today, but rather because I left behind the shovel and mattock. I had no choice. It was either leave them or have iron implements share the same wheelbarrow as an injured dryad.

Day 10

Sometimes people are cruel for no particular reason, but that’s not usually the case. Even something heinous like nailing a living creature to the ground in the center of magic circle probably had some messed up purpose behind it.

Well, I think I broke the magic circle.

The dryad was still fast asleep the next morning. I left her and returned to camp Vinland to recover my tools. It had been mere hours since I left, but the deadwood was now almost unrecognizable. Spiders. Lots and Lots of spiders claimed the area overnight. They were big ones the size of my clenched fist and had purple bodies and yellow leg joints. I swung my spear to break any webs in my path and carefully made my way to the sinkhole.

The bright red of a Dracopede caught my eye as I approached camp Vinland. It was nine feet long, which marked it as bigger than the one that almost killed me. I didn’t need to fight it because it was stuck in a web so large that it stretched from one end of the sinkhole to the other. I didn’t stick around to see how big the spider was. Instead, I grabbed the tools and got the hell out of there.

Hmm, what are the odds that the miners used a living dryad to seal away some malevolent force so they could dig in the area?