Quietly we approached the tomb. The tap of my steps in line with my heartbeat. Could this be? I could tell Ersel had the same thought. Her approach was just as measured.

I bent down to look at the apple. It was fresh, remarkably fresh. An odd sight, especially where we were. Ersel waved her torch above me. She seemed more interested in some letters scribed just above the tombs. How naïve of her!

“Here lies the merchant, faithful to his friends, faithful to his country.” Ersel’s head tossed to the left. “Here lies the Sailer’s maiden, faithful to her word, faithful to her country.”

Her eyes fell to the right, “Here lies the boy, faithful to none, but the coin on his back.”

Ersel went silent. I rose to examine it all. The three tombs lay side by side, separated only by narrow gaps. Bronze plaques lay top of each tomb while a stone brick wall covered their backs. Oddly, there were either burrows or further entrances all along the curved wall save for this estranged area. I could tell there was more to this and a quick eyeshot of Ersel told me she knew too.

I swallowed hard, “Icarus buried his treasure with his family. Perhaps this was it.” I reached for the apple. “Icarus left this here. Recently.”

I picked up the apple.

“You told me he jumpe-”

The ground rumbled underneath us. I shielded my eyes as loose clots of dirt tumbled down. The apple fell from my hand and the dull wall ahead of us split cleanly apart. Separating as the tombs sunk into the ground. I was speechless, Erel was speechless. We store into the abyssal dark as lights, two at a time, lit the long hall a head of us.

I glanced at Ersel to catch her impression. Her awe quickly shifted into a smile, “This is it!” she bellowed, “Crive’s treasure! Stars!”

“What do stars have to do with it?”

Ersel ignored my comment, “Come on!” she dropped her torch and ran ahead of me. I followed her, but more hesitantly. I squinted my eyes as the dust settled. My eyes shot wide, “Ersel, stop!”

Ersel slowed as she turned her head back, evidently confused.

“Stop!” I repeated this time cupping my mouth. Ersel froze. Her confusion quick to become anger. Typical, she tended to do that when I saved her life.

“Look around you.” I pressed. Ersel stopped to do just that. Strange cogs spun all around her. Twisting and ticking. Strange symbols hugged either side of the wall. One side a reflection of the other. I stared at my left. A mirror image of myself glaring back. Hidden and tall.

Just ahead of Ersel was a deep drop. I approached where she stood, and slowly the areas a head of her lit up in kind. “Take a step back.” I informed her. Ersel did as I said. One step and a bronze platform spun from the side to where the fall once was.

Ersel scowled where she stood, “Pressure plates.”

“More than that.” I added, “It’s a puzzle.” I stood three steps from Ersel, I glanced down, six evenly spaced tiles directly behind her. Three tiles to either of my sides. I took a step left. Nothing. To the right. Nothing.

I met my chin with one long arm. “Lets go back to the beginning. Keep to the sides” Ersel nodded.

At the start I noted the number of tiles. Forty. Exactly forty. If a human were to take a step, they would cover two tiles. I took one step. Two tiles. A platform at the far end spun into place. I took another step, the platforms spun back out. I stepped back, it reappeared.

The symbols were strange. Somewhat of a spiral shape, with a line through it? What did that mean?

I took a moment to think. It seemed there was a pattern I had to follow. Maybe if I…

I paused my scheme as Ersel dashed ahead of me. Running on the side tiles. Thirteen tiles in, she crossed to the other side by running over the fourteenth middle tile. At the end she crossed once more, but to my surprise she stopped on the fortieth middle tile.

All three bronze plates slid into place ahead of Ersel. Their click followed by Ersel’s footsteps as she leapt from one bronze plate to the other. How did she do that?

I made my way to where she now stood, easily stepping over the gaps instead of jumping as Ersel did. “How?” I questioned.

She talked while she walked forwards, “The symbols, it’s written in Tuxon. Each set of two tiles had a symbol associated with it. If you read them together it’s a poem. But if you read the symbols by the second, tenth, and fourteenth tiles, they read ‘boy, maiden, merchant’. I figured that was the order.”

I glanced back at the symbols. A poem? I shook my head as the thought escaped me. Ersel’s footsteps a quick reminder that whatever this was. It was not over yet.

I heard a splash then another splash. Ersel stopped ahead of me.

“It’s a wall.” She said, feeling something a head of us. Two lights lit on either side of us.

It was round. A flat barrier which separated us and what lied beyond. No side exits. I looked down as Ersel continued, “How do we.” She pushed hard on the wall. “Get past here!?”

I took a step and heard the splash. Water. I looked down. My reflection stared back. An almost perfect reflection in a shallow pool.

“Ersel.” I said, “Look down.”

Now both our reflections stared back at us. Ersel’s beige face plastered on the ground eyes locked on herself. My pearl eyes fell on myself. Somehow I looked differently. My face was long, covered in an array of wooden grooves. My eyes were deep set. My nose almost human, but very sharp.

There was a loud splash. Then another. I spied at Ersel. “Look!” She started “You can go through, it’s a gateway! Stars! This is it.”

I had a bad feeling about this. She stomped again, “Ersel, Icarus was no fool. Whatever this is, he probably planned it. You have-”

Ersel stomped once more and yelped as she fell through the puddle. I reach for her arm and caught it the instant before her head submerged.

“Are you being pulled?” I edged. She seemingly grew in weight.

“No. It’s-It’s as if I’m falling.”

I felt a yank, then lost my footing. Only one thought held my attention among the chaos. Ersel, you are an idiot.

I gasped, there was no water here. I glanced side to side. Ersel was next to me, as baffled as I. I stammered a little forwards, my eyes glued to the once shut entrance. It was open, a strange round room lit a head of me. The entrance’s reflection was the sealed gate from before. It was as if we entered another world.

Walking forwards, I heard Ersel’s footsteps close to mine. The room was a half circle, bare save for an entrance which led further inwards. The same odd symbols, sprawled across the top of the door.

“The gateway to the heavens. Here lies one thousand treasures.” Read Ersel slowly. Her face lit like a flame and her smile shot from corner to corner, “We found it! We found it!”

Her words were followed quickly by her unrestrained charge. I grabbed her an inch before she stepped on another pressure plate. She squirmed as I held her up by the collar.

“Un-hand me you-you tree!”

“Not your best insult.”

I pointed towards the pressure plate, “Watch.” I lowered slightly to pick up a lose stone, then threw the stone onto the plate.

The tiles closest to the entrance collapsed inwards and several light flickered in the chamber a head.

Ersel gasped as I let her down. She seemed surprised somehow, all that lay in front of us was a chamber of grey rocks- no they were bones. A sea of bones. Still, that was nothing to lose breath over. Or at least I thought not. Regardless, I could tell that bones were not yellow rocks.

“Hmpf. I guess what you seek is not here.”

Ersel shook her head. “Impossible! It said a thousand treasures! Was that a trick to? Are we even here right now? Where is the treasure?”

I narrowed my eyes and stared at her at the edge of my eye, “You said heavens didn’t you? Besides some other human may have taken it. Mind we leave now?”

Ersel steamed and shot through the door to the earlier chamber. I saw her standing in the water pool when I got there. The hall that was normally there nothing but black abyss.

I decided to break the silence, “Perhaps this, wherever this is, is a pocket world.” Something occurred to me, something simple but also so possible, “What if there were more?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“What do you mean?”

“Wherever we saw reflections there could be other places such as these.”

Ersel’s eyes went wide, excited once more as she had several times today. Why were humans so excitable?

She jumped in one moment, the next she was gone. I sighed and leapt as she did, holding my breath all the while.

I opened my eyes to the world as it was. Ersel running ahead of me. She really had no patience.

Instead of running blindly, I took my time. By the time I reached the initial hall, Esrel was already there reading the symbols on the other side. I quickly studied both halves of the hall. They were indeed different. Slowly I approached the wall as Ersel silently mouthed some words.

I touched the mirror wall and a small wave rippled across it.

--“The boy watches over cliff ye high in lake of maiden’s tears.

Follow the merchant to nearest gate and await the servant’s fears.(22)

If struck of luck, pass the gate, for watery treasures a man must wait

Or meet his fate.“—

I would have asked her what she said. What it meant. Though before I could, new shadows entered the room. We stared at the new-comers.

“Blood scarves.” Swore Ersel under her breath.

I glanced at them. Just as their name implied they wore redden scarves, each in different fashions. One had the scarf tied to his head, the other had it over his mouth, while the third had it around his arm. All three seemed to be the perfect depiction of bandits. One tall and skinny, one fat and short, and the last the typical burly.

Ersel interrupted my evaluation. “This is no time to stare!”

That seemed odd, they were staring, they had time.

Ersel grabbed my arm and leapt into the wall, taking me tumbling with her.

In the split second that we had, I saw the brigands flinch as they saw us. Waves soon cluttered around my eyesight, then as quickly as it arrived, vanished. We were here again. The same world as before, just slightly different.

Ersel did not stop to think, she never did. Instead she tugged at my arm even harder pulling me to another exit. Or simply, a hole in the ground.

I could see what lay in the hole from where I ran, though I doubt Ersel could given her stature. A dark drop, a rocky rim.

“Ersel.” I managed, “Let’s not run into this. If we jump, there may be no way to come back.”

She glanced back, though not at me. I followed her skewed sight and spotted what seemed to be three confounded blood scarves stumbling through a water wall. Of course they followed us.

I faced Ersel again. She jumped. Or better put, we jumped.

That said, jumping was never the hard part.

Air swooped over me.

Falling was.

I grabbed a rock before we fell too far. Ersel dangled from my other wrist. I swear she was about to rip it off.

“I’m sorry.” She started, “When I get near the bloodscarves I just...” She looked at me, “You know.”

I didn’t. If this was a result of fear, that was still new to me. “Best we get down.” I answered, scanning what looked like a giant chasm just ahead of us.

For a moment I was speechless. Directly below us and all around sat a lake of fluorescent blue. Flowers and fungi blooming at its corners, even climbing the craggy walls. Oddly there was a small statue of what seemed to be a merchant on one side of the lake. Perpetually pointing towards the lakes far end.

I did not have long to study it as a collection of pebbles tumbled past us. My eyes darted to the top of the pit. Blood scarves. At least they had the sense to stop.

There were whispers from where they stood. It was too hushed for me to hear, though they were no doubt planning their descent.

“What are they saying?” boomed Ersel.

I rolled my eyes at the parasite, making me work. The nerve. “I can’t hear.”

What I did hear was the swish of a rope as it flew in beside us. I stared up. Our pursuers had begun climbing down the rope. Only seconds separated us from them.

“Ersel.” I said without looking at her, “Grab the rope.” I glanced at her, she was already a good distance away from me, sliding down the rope like a caterpillar.

A drop of dew rolled down my temple. The coward…

“She should be afraid.” Entered another voice. I regarded the source. It was scarf head, the tall one. The first to climb down “There are no walls to save you here, noble.”

I cocked my head, “She can’t hear you.” I shouted back.

“What?” echoed Ersel’s retreating voice.

“I was not talking to you.” I snapped. The nerve, she probably thought the world revolved around her.

Scarf head, now a little ways away from me, continued, “Surrender the girl and we’ll let you go.”

I scoffed, “I cannot. She owes me.”

“Then you are in our way.” The man slid down to my location. He stopped to stare, these bandits loved to stare.

“Stars.” He hushed. His companions halted. “You’re not human.”

“No.” I reached out and grabbed him by the collar. “Glad you noticed.”

I pulled him off the rope and threw him to the depths below. With my hand free, I leapt onto the rope. I could hear the man’s companions calling after him, followed by the eventual splash and the fervent complaints of the imp below me.

“Stars! You damned tree, how do I get down now?” cried her cracking voice.

To be honest. I really did not care, instead I took the momentary shock to climb down the rope. Climbing was quite the experience. A couple paces in I noted that staring down did not help my speed. Instead I stared at the rocky wall, then at the bandits above me. The gleam of steel met my eye, then the grin of the bandits, and finally the subtle scratching sound of a rope being cut.

I flinched. “Ersel” I echoed, “jump!”

“What?”

“Just do it!”

Perhaps I had to lead by example. I glanced down and clenched the ropes harder. No! Not good, I’m a god. I had to do this. I closed my eyes, my grip loosened.

It was times such as these that the world froze. A frozen specter in my pearl eyes. I felt air whizz past me.

I opened my eyes a second before I hit the water. The image of Ersel looking at me the last I saw. Splash, and aside from the water that blurred my view nothing remained the same. White. White all around. A white nothingness which seemed endless. I was not in water, I knew that much. Should have expected that. After all, not even the water was real here.

I floated through it for a while. Was this fear? Or was I just lost? I floated a little forwards and finally something came to view. A black blur. I floated towards it. Somewhat a clutch of feathers, a small white spec among it.

Closer. It was staring at me. Strange black eyes on a face of white. Closer. Lips of red, a long crooked mouth. Nose less. Closer. It cocked its head me. Everything froze.

“Will you be my familiar?” It said with the voice of a child, “No? You belong to someone else? A pity.”

I was just an arm’s length away, everything felt numb. I could not move, then I felt a tug at my back, almost as if I were a fish caught on a hook.

The splash of water broke my trance and soon I was back in the cavern.

“Stars, you’re heavy.” Cursed a familiar voice.

I sat up against the rocky shore. My legs well submerged in the fluorescent water. I snapped backwards, crawling with my arms until my legs were out of the water.

I could barely hear Ersel over the sound of my own heart.

“What did you see? What happened?” She urged.

I examined the rest of the lake quickly. Scarf head floating across it. His eyes closed as if he were sleeping. His friends anxiously following his path on the other side. “Nothing.” I answered.

“I don’t believe you.” She walked towards the water and before I could stop her, she knelt in. I stumbled to get her out, but a second later she left the water. “Hmpf, you weren’t lying, nothing but white.” She glanced at the bandits and visibly shivered. “We should go.”

For once I agreed. It seemed they had almost dragged the poor fool out of the water.

I glanced behind me and found my cloak soaking beside me. I picked it up, but as I did I noticed the statue I had seen before. Though up close it had detail. It was of a human, one bearded and in fine clothing, pointing towards the end of the cavern. As if guiding us in some strange fashion. I ringed my cloak.

We followed the stony shore, eyeing our pursuers all the while. The bandits had followed their companion to the edge of the cavern, the full width of the lake between us. The lake on the other hand met both sides with an entrance. Luckily it was our side which led to that entrance. The bandits had to go back around. Good. We had time.

Ersel ogled at the height of the entrance. Even I stared at its monolithic size. It reminded me almost of Southmarch, but without all the yellow rocks. A large two columned doorway which led into darkness, not even the glow of fluorescent water able to light it. No wonder I had not seen it from afar.

I squinted at the far cliff where we came. How long was I in that water for? Moreover, what was with me? Ersel lingered in front of me. At least now she was more cautious.

Another step and torch lights flickered down the pathway. Again two at a time, revealing a long canal of bright turquoise water.

More and more lights flickered on and like moths we drifted towards each new flame. Driven to find what lurked beneath the shade, helpless to what lay next.

“My mother always said move forwards otherwise you’ll trip.” Quirked Ersel. “For a noble women that’s the most practical advice I’ve ever heard.”

I stared forwards, “The most practical advice I’ve ever heard is ‘don’t light a fire near the idol, it’ll burn!’” Ersel snickered at that. Odd, I could not understand why. “That said if practicality is your concern. How do we get out of here?”

“Future concerns.” She shrugged.

I glared at her. Suddenly her notion of the most practical advice did not seem very practical at all.

“Remind me never to do this again.” I puffed.

Ersel stepped in front of me. Staring at me with concern stained to her face. “No! I need you.”

“Of course you do, I’m a god. You’d be nothing without me.”

“That’s not tru- that’s not the point. If you weren’t here I would be dead!”

I rose one brow. She had a habit of stating the obvious. Though I did appreciate praise.

“And you” she continued “would have lost your guide.”

I waved her off, “I am a god, I do not require a guide.”

Silence and I noticed a dumb smile across her face, “Hold off a moment. Back at the entrance. You were there. You followed me down here!” I flinched. She turned and let out a bellowing laugh. Laughing until she had to lean to the side to catch her breath.

“You’re as old as time” she huffed “and yet you cling to me like a lamb to its mother!”

I looked away. To think, dependent on a human? Oh, I had fallen so far. Thinking back, for once she was right. In that moment I had lost all direction. I, a force as great as the wind, enthralled to this human. Perhaps I did need her. Especially now that I had fallen for her false promises.

Ersel was about to boast even more, I saw it on her face, then the last lights flickered on. We both froze. My eyes instantly glued to what lay ahead, Ersel no doubt following that sight. That was it. One large door, two halves. The caricature of an apple traced on its wooden midst.

On either side of the door the statue of an armored man towered over it. Each man with great sword held towards the ground. We approached the statues, perhaps the guards of the crypt. They were monumental, almost as high as the ceiling itself. Four times my height.

Ersel moved forward, seemingly unswayed. I followed her. Each step a hollow echo across the hall.

We moved closer and closer, the silence a cold burn upon wooden ears. Burning and burning until it smoldered.

“You” cried a long distant voice. I spun in every direction to find it’s owner.

“Are not”

I shivered. The voice was low and menacing.

“The master.”

I stopped moving. I looked up.

A giant stone sword swung directly overhead. I picked up Ersel and ducked in the opposite direction. There was a loud crunch as it hit the side. Another voice entered the room, “You. Are not. The master.”

I stared at the second statue. Another swing, another duck.

“Ersel.” I stuttered, “Are you ok?”

“Fine.” She grunted, “Let me down.”

I glanced at the giants. They were moving like humans, breaking free from the rocks, one limb after the other. I let Ersel down, “We have to go.”

“No.” She took two steps towards the giants.

“This is no time to be stubborn!”

Ersel shrugged off my warning and reached for her arm. There was a blue flash and she pulled out a dagger. The same one she had when she escaped the witch’s bonds. Her eyes and head drifted quickly up to the giants.

“I was not expecting them to be so close to home.” She said coolly. How was she not fazed by this? Not even in the slightest?

“Find a way to get them low.” She shot, “I need to reach their heads.” Her tone had completely shifted.

“You’re mad human.”

She smiled, “Only slightly.” The goliaths stood before us, now completely free of their bonds, “Do you trust me?”

I sighed. Humans. I really didn’t have a choice.