Meeting

Alice quickly moved through the short and perfectly straight hallway that had welcomed her as after crossing the armored gate, its walls lit up by multiple, glowing squiggly lines that she wasn’t able to translate given the absence of images or symbols that could aid the process.

Despite that, she did spend a few minutes trying to inspect the glyphs on the wall, soon growing frustrated and deciding to ignore them for the time being, her feet bringing her past the area that had been invaded by the sudden surge of stagnant water and towards an opening that let her emerge in another stone corridor that progressed almost perpendicularly to the first one, the new passage slightly curved and so long that she simply wasn’t able to see an end on both of its directions before the view was obstructed by the curvature of the inner wall.

That fact, however, still gave her some clues of the nature of the place, her brain connecting the small amount of information she had been able to glean before managing to open the door.

If the small map on the metal doors were to be trusted, then the museum, the temple and whatever the larger structure had once been—along with a few others ruins that she hadn’t had the time or inclination to search and explore—had probably been built in a circular pattern.

Accordingly, if the secret doors are to be a clue, then maybe the inside of the mirror structure is connected and is going to mirror the outside, with the corridor being a ring that runs along the buildings and connects them for one reason or the other.

Finally, if all my theory is correct, then it’s only a matter of searching everything for possible secrets and loot. This doors are too fricking well made to just be a random hidden passage.

That thought in mind, she simply picked a direction and began moving along the passage to the right, immediately noticing that the place was in a surprisingly good state for a ruin, most likely thanks to the armored gates that, over the years, had protected it from possible intrusions and, more than anything, from the spread of the local underground flora and fauna, the ground clear of growths and even perfectly dry, at least aside from her own, rapidly-drying steps.

Whatever the reason, for many long minutes she walked on a carefully-grooved stone floor, the chitin soles of her shoes crackling slightly over the thin layer of dust and sand that had started gradually covering the slight fluting that had probably been created to improve the traction of whoever trod on it.

Which is not a bad thing, she thought as she walked and, at the same time, used the Lumen under her dress to clean herself of the smelly particles that had been in the water, It’s tiresome to have to constantly watch your step if you don’t want to die a horrible death by falling through a collapsing floor or something. This is much better; I even have an actual lighting system available!

Numerous, still-glowing ellipsoids were in fact evenly spaced along the walls to provide the perfect lighting during her advance, their large and warm spheres of radiance casting away any shadow.

Alice couldn’t help asking herself why these ones had held on for that long, the one she still carried in her bag intact but inert at the same time. Was that one simply a malfunctioning one? Or do they use some kind of power source?

Unable to stifle her curiosity, she stopped in front of one of the lights and immediately raised both arms towards the object to pull it off like she had done with the one in the museum just a few hours before, an annoyed expression appearing on her face when she realized just how distant the ellipsoid was from the floor, the point of her fingertips barely able to reach the bottom of the crystalline object.

Dammit. I’m 178 centimeters tall! I shouldn’t be subjected to the ‘girl can’t reach things on her own’ cliché! She shouted in her mind as she stomped away.

Her pouty expression disappeared soon after, morphing into one of careful wariness when, after progressing for a couple more minutes, she spotted the small stone emplacement that blocked a good half of the wide tunnel, its appearance resembling a mix between a pillbox and a guardhouse that had been created out of thick slabs of rounded stone, a single glassless window working as a point of observation for the guards inside.

She, however, didn’t spare much more than a cursory glance at the way the structure had been created, instead focusing on the clear signs of the long-forgotten fight that had taken place there, focusing on the numerous scorch marks and cracks that riddled its outer surface and observing that the vast majority of the lights in the area laid in pieces on the ground, only a couple still shining their bright halos through the darkness.

She stopped well before reaching it, her hand on the pommel of the pick as she pushed all of her senses to their limits, attempting to search for any kind of hidden danger that might be waiting for her there and only approaching after she was sure that she didn’t feel anything wrong or off in the ruins.

It didn’t take long to inspect them, the entire construction no larger than four square meters and completely devoid of anything significant aside from two small piles of completely dried matter that resembled algae or bacterial colonies, the rest of the place seemingly empty of everything but the dust and rubble that had been scattered all over the ground.

Why can’t I find a single corpse? Even here there should be something! Did something eat them? Was it a creature attack? I hate not knowing.

Alice kept going, her thoughtful expression gradually turning more serious and focused as more and more lights disappeared, leaving a pitch-black void that soon forced her to reactivate her own luminosity to actually see where she walked, the crystalline layer behind her retinas redirecting the errant light particles back into the photoreceptors, allowing her to constantly scan the floor, walls and ceiling in search for traps and ambushes while she progressed further in the underground structure, her ears strained to catch the slightest sound and even her nose working hard to smell something despite the dusty dryness of the place.

How quickly things change.

Roughly another ten minutes passed before she stopped again, her hand back on the pick as she observed yet another battleground, this one even more noticeable than before, her eyes widening in recognition when she spotted the square entrance that led into a perfectly straight corridor cutting through the outermost wall, perpendicular to the curved one she was in.

At the very least, Alice now knew that she had managed to travel all the way back to the first gate she had discovered.

Walking carefully, she moved forward, pushing a bit more of her magical energy in the cells that composed her skin to make them glow just a bit brighter, revealing in perfect detail the mostly-destroyed remains of another defensive position, this one quite a bit larger than the one before, the outer portion of the rock turned into actual glass under some kind of intense heat, the rest of the pillbox riddled with cracks that had probably been created by the rapid change in temperature coupled with the impact of what she was sure had been an explosion.

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What really troubled her, however, was the barely-visible, actual silhouette that stood out against one of the blasted walls, revealing the faded outline of a tall and lithe figure that had probably stood over two meters in height when it was alive, its strange, wing-like limbs raised in the air as if taken by surprise.

More glass and rubble creaking under her shoes, she approached the figure, raising a finger and touching the wall just beside the imprinted shadow, feeling the numerous cracks that webbed the surface.

Forcing herself to step away from the eerie sight, she took a bit of time to explore the smaller corridor, hoping to discover a way to open the door from the inside, her expression turning into a grimace when she saw what had happened to the passage, her eyes staring disbelievingly at the melted stone of the walls, the symbols that had once been inscribed on it gone forever.

They did it from the inside… Did they want to keep something out? Were they being attacked? Either what attacked here was clever enough to block the door to prevent reinforcements, or they were fighting against someone else or maybe even themselves if they knew of this hidden place.

Lacking a true answer once again, Alice soon left that place behind her back, her knife now unsheathed and in her left hand, her fingers gripping tightly on the hilt, using it almost like an anchor against her unease as she moved forward, walking in complete darkness for ten more minutes before finding yet another emplacement, this one revealing large, immobile forms of twisted metal that blocked most of the way, only a small portion of the route having seemingly been cut open by someone, multiple pieces of the misshapen objects laying on the ground in small heaps, their surface only slightly pitted by oxidation, the dryness of the air probably able to keep them more or less intact through the ages.

Whoever had been responsible for the attack clearly hadn’t been stopped there, the rows of dark, cracked lights continuing onward without a sign of stopping.

Alice also found more of the dried, crumbling piles of biological matter that she was more and more sure were the remains of the people that had fought there, an entire section of the ground completely covered in it, her feet dispersing the fine power in the air and causing it to settle on her clothes, hair and, skin as she moved forward with a hand on her nose and mouth, squinting and blinking to prevent the worst of the dust from blinding her.

She had to keep moving.

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Probably more than an hour had passed ever since entering the place but, in the end, Alice finally found herself standing in front of two large, partly-agape metal doors that were probably double the size of the outer ones; on these gates, however, she couldn’t see any of the signs of struggle that she had witnessed throughout the structure, soon stepping into a wide chamber with two more gates embedded in its walls, both wide open.

The first one was right in front of her and was the twin of the one she had stepped through, its bluish metal blank and lacking any ornamentation.

The latter, however, was different; a main gate that stood probably three times as she was tall and was covered in intricate streams of symbols, glyphs and concentrical lines that crisscrossed each other, creating a confusing artwork with neither head nor tail.

The rest of the room was instead occupied by rows upon rows of long counters made of metal, glass and stone alike, their surface also covered in multiple signs and with small round divots that had the same size of the numerous crystal spheres she had seen during her explorations, each of them empty and covered in dust, a few even chipped and damaged by some kind of impact.

If that wasn’t enough, the floor of the room was also littered by numerous heaps of biological remains and Alice was forced to avoid them as she moved towards the largest door, heart hammering in her chest and weapons at the ready in her hand when she stepped through the final gate and found herself in a massive, circular room of probably more than forty meters in diameter that was entirely composed of the perfect bluish metal of the doors, her eyes widening when she spotted what had been hiding for eons inside of it.

Her pace faltered and then stopped altogether as she stared at the huge, circular hatch that covered most of the center of the room and, more than anything else, at the dark Monolith that loomed on the wall opposite to the door, a towering slab of black material that resembled stone but surely wasn’t, its surface covered in swirling engravings, each one recurring on itself in a fractal pattern that seemed to go on forever, the sight so unbelievable that she could do nothing but stare at the thing she had seen so many months before as she was slowly dying of blood loss in the caves, her time in the sunless void still etched in her mind with perfect precision.

Now, finally, Alice could stare with her own eyes at the huge monolith, feel the powerful magical energy it emanated, and experience the constant hum of its power as it reverberated through her body and interacted with her own magic, her warmth fusing and fighting it back at the same time.

The menhir, however, wasn’t the only thing that occupied the round chamber.

When, many minutes later, she was able to pull her eyes away from the object, her eyes were immediately attracted by the four, square recesses that had been created in the wall beside the monolith, three of them occupied by more inscribed slabs of the material, each one easily towering over her, while the last one only revealed an empty, if heavily inscribed, metal wall.

Around each of the strange things, Alice could also see numerous smaller, differently-shaped hollows, most of them devoid of their contents, only a few still showing the smaller hunks of dark material they held, each one covered in minute engravings of different shape and complexity.

Each of the slabs had a different number of those nooks, with one having only two and another more than a dozen.

Stepping forward, she approached the wondrous sight, so entranced that she didn’t even feel her forgotten pet as it frantically slithered out of her dress and away from the objects, halting its escape only when it was at least a dozen meters away, stopping there and staring at her with its large purple eyes.

Alice shivered when the energy exuded from the monolith became stronger, soon joined by three more streams of power, each one so impossible to forget that she was forced to stop again on her tracks, her heart hammering so madly in her throat that she feared it would implode as she stared at the three higher beings that had made their offer to her, experiencing the barely suppressed fire of The Bloodied Pawn, the cold tranquility of The Sleeping One and the familiar and alien touch of The Whispering Mother, her eyes frantically moving from slab to slab until, finally, she connected the sources and she was able to stumble towards the correct menhir, one with four divots around it, only two of them holding something, the others empty and inert.

The closer she moved, however, the more the energy seemed to envelop her, the warmth in her body struggling as if drowning in the foreign magic.

Entranced, she ignored the countless bells of alarm ringing faintly in her head, the rational fear pushing from the back of her mind, and even the barely audible crash of metal that echoed from the corridor she had left behind her back, simply pushing forward, a hand already extended to touch the patron that was calling to her, unable to contain the curiosity and expectance that was filling her body and brain.

When the palm of her hand finally touched the material, Alice felt a cold and impetuous lightening course through her body, coming from the point of contact and flooding into her brain as her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she suddenly found herself in the silent forest of pearlescent tendrils that was the being itself, feeling the connection with that strange consciousness through the few coils that brushed past her as she floated forward, trying to get closer to the true source of the energy, where the truth laid in wait for her.

An audible gasp echoed through the silent, circular room and Alice found herself suddenly falling backwards and away from the object, landing painfully on the cold floor, her eyes somehow already filled with tears, her mind still in the process of experiencing the shower of thoughts and sensations that had washed over her when she had attempted to delve further in, to access that reservoir of pure knowledge.

She had been forced to analyze that flood of information and had been forced to reach the same conclusion that had been reached by The Whispering Mother herself.

Not Enough.

That horrible, horrible thought of absolute shortcoming had been slightly tempered by what had come next, if only barely.

Yet.

“I need to be more? To do what? To go home?” she whispered, unable to really understand what was being asked, that knowledge hidden from her.

Then, just as she was asking those lost questions with uncertainty and fear in her trembling voice, a small shard of the perfectly-shaped slab suddenly detached and clattered at her feet, a small piece of the dark material that was half the size of her pinkie finger and shaped like a very stubby arrowhead, small recursive symbols appearing on every side of the object, even the ones that hadn’t been on the surface.

Uncertainly, she crawled towards it and tentatively touched it with a finger, flinching slightly when she was invaded by another mass of information, even if this one felt smaller and calmer in her mind.

She could feel the way it moved into her mind whenever she was in direct contact with it, a strange tugging feeling that was weakly trying to compel her to move somewhere else; somewhere far.

Alice stumbled back up on her feet, still clutching the fragment in her hand as she turned and looked around, finally noticing the small snake lying in wait a few paces away.

“When did you get out?” she asked absentmindedly, extending a hand and watching as the creature gently slithered upwards before coiling just above her elbow.

Still quite dizzy after the surprising experience, Alice was just beginning to turn back towards the different megaliths when she heard the sound of something large and wet sliding over the ground in the other room, freezing in place.

Cold sweat started beading her back when a horrible smell of stagnant water and rotting fish started filling the air and she saw a long, dark shape slowly slither past the numerous counters, taking the wider, central route before finally pushing into the circular room, completely blocking the only entrance.

*****

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