Light, David thought as he turned on his back slowly. The place was wide and partially lit. The light was coming from something he couldn’t see. He tried to sit up and heard the giggles. Someone laughed. It was a riot of sound. Scattered, like echoes of a clatter. Then they snorted and dove into more laughter. David sat up. His eyes adjusted to the punctured dark. The yellow light spread, touching walls and floors. Then at the dark crouching form staring at him. And behind whatever that was, a man stared, face stuck in a soundless laugh.
“Another dropper,” the dark form said, standing up to become a tall, slim man. He stared at David, half his face was veiled. The man behind him chuckled again. “You laugh too much, Liam. You will scare the new bird.”
“He should be scared already,” a female voice said, sliding out of the darkness to David’s left. “No one drops down here from paradise, Butcher.” She turned to David, her expression unreadable. “Where are you from?”
“O–” He stopped because the name had filled his mind for a moment and vanished. He could feel the absence, but not what he had forgotten. It was an itch he couldn’t scratch. “There was sand everywhere. And Sand Snakes, or God Snakes. Then doors.”
“Doors?” The man, Butcher, asked. “What kind of doors?” David tried to stand up and heard the hiss of steel being pulled out of a sheath. He froze. He hadn’t thought they’d kill him, but this was the tower where anything could happen. He wasn’t going to take that chance. He let himself go back down and looked up to the woman.
“Smart,” She said, letting her knife slide back down. “What was the last floor you were on? The first? The second?”
“The fourth,” David said. “And I think this place is connected to it. I don’t recall how I came here–”
“You fell,” Liam said and snorted. His smile was wide and disconcerting. The man’s eyes had madness in them. As if he was torn between lunging for David with his sword or shaking his hands. David noted to stay far from him. As far away from him as possible. Then he realized he’d missed the tower message because he’d been too focused on Butcher and the others. It came into focus now.
Welcome to Olam’s Lair!
Olam is the eternal of passage. The lord of doors. He is the one who guides the lost, providing the path for the worthy. You must reach Olam’s nest for the Eternal’s lamp.
“Olam,” David whispered. Another eternal. He cursed. Butcher was whispering to the woman. She turned to David, as if watching him, or weighing him to see if he was trustworthy. David stood up, slowly enough not to cause alarm. He could see more of Liam’s face now. The man had one bad eye–milky white. There was a scar over his bad eye. His good eye was verdant green, catching light and brilliant. He grinned at David and gave him a hand which David took slowly. There was no need to antagonize the crazy one. Liam chuckled.
“The fourth floor,” Butcher said. “How did you find the portal in Gaora? Those old sphincters wouldn’t just give you passage. and Balek’s minions wer–”
“We killed them all,” David said, meeting the man’s eyes. “They are all dead. I…” he cleared his throat. “I lost some friends, but we won.”
“And you expect me to believe that?” Butcher asked. David thought he saw shock on the man’s face, but he quickly hid it. There was something about him–not the broadness of his shoulders or the thick arms that could choke life out of his enemies–that made him seem reliable. Perhaps it was the hardness in his eyes. David wanted the man to like him, believe him. It wasn’t the same for the other two.
“I don’t care if you believe me,” David said. He stretched, feeling the knots in his bones. Finally, he could rest. “I don’t have to show you how I survived or tell you how we got out of that damn city. But we did. We won, only to be thrown into another hell. I don’t owe you my story.”
He turned around, searching for a path out of the cavern. It was a strange space, carved by time and some other special power. The walls were cut into roughly, the roof too; some parts were sharp and jagged. As if whoever created this space had done it with great nonchalance. Behind Liam, a statue stood as tall as a pillar. Its hands spread up and lost in the darkness above. The head was missing, or perhaps he just couldn’t see it. Strange.
“This one has a spine,” the woman said, still half shrouded in darkness. Butcher grunted.
“How do we get out of here?” David asked, turning and searching. He’d expected a tunnel or a series of tunnels. If this was the lair of an Eternal, it should be better, and it should have some kind of danger. He had found or felt none. “What is this place?”
“A cell,” Butcher said. “ Or that is what Liam said when we fell to meet him. He has been here the longest.”
That explains why he is crazy, Ignis said and David agreed. Yet, that didn’t help. This didn’t look like a prison. It was too large, too…unnatural. He tried searching for clues, almost turned to call Zoey to help only to remember that they were not there. They had gone through the portal, probably dead. He’d pushed them to their deaths. That cut him in the heart. If their death turned out to be his fault, he’d carry that forever like a curse. He would drag it up to the top where he’d crush Amareth with the weight of his rage, his hunger for justice.
The thought felt hollow, impossible. David scoffed. He couldn’t believe how naive he sounded. He would have expected something like that from Elisha.
“What are you looking for?” Butcher asked. The man was not much older than David. His hair was cut short to his scalp. He looked like he’d been to hell, or whatever version of it the tower had thrown at him. David didn’t want to think about how he’d gotten through Krak and the others. He didn’t want to think about anything that would distract him from finding his family. The grip on his arm startled him, made him summon his sword in a flash that stunned Butcher. The man took a step back, hands in the air to show that he meant no harm.
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“Jumpy, aren’t you?” The woman asked, a smile tugging her lips. She still hadn’t come out to full light. But from the outline he could see, David could tell she was tall. Butcher glared at her and turned apologetic eyes to him.
“Look, I would like to know what you are trying to do. This place, we can’t tell how long we’ve been here. We have tried to explore the scope of it and the only thing we’ve discovered is that the walls are rough and there are no edges. No way out. For a spirit or whatever of passages, there are no roads, no tunnels. Nothing.”
David shook his head. That didn’t make sense. The message had asked them to find the Eternal’s lamp. There had to be a way out. He ignited his sword and it burned bright orange, casting light on more of the dark places in the cavern. The woman pulled a gasp from David. Her hair was cut short just above her shoulders. Dark where Butcher’s was burnt gold. Decked in leather armor with a breastplate and matching greaves. She was not armed, but she didn’t seem like the type to need it. David couldn’t look past her arms. The left was shorter, cut off at the elbow. She snapped her fingers to get his attention, grinning.
“I can still kick your ass. You and your flaming sword,” She said, frowning at the sword. “What is your plan?”
David shook his head and said, “None yet.” He turned to Liam who seemed to shy away from the light, or perhaps the flame. “This is not how Eternals work. They don’t cage. I have seen one and even though she was corrupted, she let her prey roam. How do you make those beneath you shudder in fear?” They didn’t answer.
“Not by putting them in a cage.” He turned toward the nearest wall and then followed down left, searching the whole surface for clues. He found none. The wall looked solid too, which meant he couldn’t blast through without using a considerable force of essence. The problem with that was he could just as well crash the place on them too. He walked back the way he came, touching the wall at different points to see if there would be a click, some kind of way to move past this place. Nothing. The more he moved around, the harder it was to keep up hope. Perhaps he’d been wrong? Or maybe there was another condit— screams cut through his thoughts and then two bodies hit the floor where David had been moments ago.
You have reached the holy number of seven.
Find the lamp of Olam the Eternal where it rests in the center of its nest.
Amareth be with you!
A portion of the wall slid down, making the hall tremble briefly. Liam shrieked and then started clapping and laughing. Butcher gave him a look and then turned to the men who had just been dropped. The first stood up with a start, locs of hair whipping as he summoned his bow, nocked it, and pointed the arrow at Butcher. The other staggered, eyes settling on David and his sword. His delayed reaction and his round mid-section made him comical until his great axe appeared in his hands.
“Oi! We don’t want any trouble,” the big man said, his axe on his shoulder. “We don’t know where this is. One minute we were running from large, feral monsters and the next we were falling here. Huh? Olam?” He scrunched up his face, perhaps reading the tower message in front of him. “What’s an Eternal?”
“Some kind of spirit,” Butcher said.
“Spirit! Spirit! Like Casper the Ghost? Comes in the willy night to cut off your balls,” Liam sang with a grin that should scare anyone. Butcher waved him away, hands still up in the air. The woman gave the two newcomers a deadpan look and shook her head as if she was tired of it all.
“I am Sam,” the large man said. “This is me brother, Cain. Not really me brother, you know, skin color and all. But Cain saved me from the teeth of some mean beast in Sulek’s Forest. Those damn crawling pests. Large as a mountain. This man shot them to death.”
David lifted his sword to see Cain better. His locs were long and unkempt. His shirt was loose, and unlaced, showing tufts of dark hair on a chestnut chest. He looked young under the beard. Even his eyes were alive. David wondered if he was as good with his bow as Zoey. That would be a really helpful.
He watched the others introduce themselves, learning that the woman’s name was Andrea. Sam was shocked by her arm, but Cain looked at it like it was nothing. Cold, David thought, that was both good and dangerous. It meant the man would be reliable in a skirmish and could also be a threat to any of them. David kept note of that. He could see Andrea watching him, but she wasn’t the problem, not yet. Out there, there would be more monsters and demons to fight. He had to be ready, but he didn’t want to be at the center of whatever plan they were making.
“We have to know what we each can do so we can complement each other. I am a brawler. I can’t do many fancy spells, but I have high defensive spells and I can attack fast. Close range.”
“Do we have to do this?” David asked and the others turned to him, even smiling Liam. He sighed. “I can use my sword to channel fire. I can do some fire spells too.” He shrugged, not willing to show much of what he could do to strangers. “Not much on defense.”
“Light Knight,” Andrea said before Sam could speak. “I can channel light, transforming it into weapons. Any light is enough, but the brighter the better. Once the structure is firm, essence makes it dense and sturdy enough to use.” She gave David a meaningful look and then a smirk that told him she hadn’t been completely honest.
“Archer,” Cain said, his voice gruff and reluctant. “As long as I have essence, I have arrows. I can tweak them to do some special things, but that’s about it.”
“Me—” Sam began.
“We know,” everyone said except David. Sam looked scolded, but smiled shyly, heaving his axe. They all turned to Liam who chuckled and shook his head.
“Liam, what can you do?”
“You will see,” he said, chuckling. David frowned. He hadn’t paid much attention to the man. He had simply written him off as a madman. But now he realized he was dressed in a large dark robe, burnt at the hem and other parts, but it was velvety. There was a hood too, or there used to be. It had been cut off. Liam smiled at him, lips stretching to mask the unease. Something chewed at the edges of David’s mind but he couldn’t figure it out.
He is a mage, Ignis said. A good one too.
“You are a mage, aren’t you?” David asked and Liam’s smile faltered. His one good eye blinked nervously and then he laughed.
“Correct!” Liam said, stretching his hand out and the space around his hand dipped, as if there was a pull in the fabric of reality. Liam’s hand slipped into it and then he pulled out a thin, curvy staff. It looked like the dry remains of a tree branch until Liam slammed it on the cavern’s floor and all the light in the place flared bright for a moment, even David’s burning sword.