A soft click, then the lines running across the stone beamed with light before fading. He backed up a healthy distance, expecting some form of explosion or another equally devastating event, and waited for a heart-pounding second.
“Well?!”
He crept towards the door and only then noticed it was moving. The slab was slowly sinking into the floor without a whisper. He waited for a few minutes and had almost come to the conclusion it was on some sort of treadmill when light pierced into the tunnel from the top of the slab. It took another minute before he could see over.
A domed room with blue fire ringing the exterior faced him. It was probably fifty feet across. He crawled over the still-descending entrance and tentatively stepped inside. Seven doors, smaller than the one he had just come through, were inset into the walls around the room. Blue lines streaked through each and through the walls and ceiling. The floor was bare of the smaller lines, instead having thicker, concentric rings of light spaced equally throughout the room. The floor also sloped downwards, towards the center which was dominated by a circular, stone bench, segmented into three parts, with a waist-high pillar in the center.
Dakota wandered to the center of the room, brushing his hands against the bench. A solid crystal line ran through the center of each bench segment, pulsing softly with blue light. Veins, like the one he had found in the lake on the mountain. These appeared more crystalline than membrane but the similarities were undeniable.
A circle in the middle of the bench segment he was looking at caught his eye. Placing his hand in the middle of it, he tried pushing with his mind as he had with the first door. The circle flashed red. Dakota snatched his hand away, scared he had triggered an intruder failsafe.
He waited a moment, the only sound coming from Jesus shnuffling his shirt. Nothing materialized.
“Whew.”
He wiped a bead of sweat away. Speaking of which, it was warm down here. Not roasting, but a comfortable, living-room temperature. Making his way to a wall, he inspected the fire. It rose from a crystal running along a short half-wall set into the edge of the room. It was…warm. But that was it. Only warm. Dakota gingerly inched his fingers closer and closer to the fire until they passed through the semi-ethereal flame.
He passed his hand through the flame again. No pain. Bunching up his sleeve, he edged it forwards. Smoke drifted from it as a tongue of fire licked it.
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“So it affects objects like a normal fire would…but doesn’t burn me.”
He wondered if this had anything to do with touching the vein of energy in the lake.
Pushing those thoughts aside, he walked to the nearest door. It, like the entrance he entered through, was arched. Unlike the one he entered through, it had geometric designs running up the sides and top. The number “7” stood prominently at the peak of the arch. This door also had a circle in the center. Dakota placed his hand on it and tried pushing. A flash of red.
He moved on to the next door. This one had the number “6”. Another flash of red. Doors “5” and “4” also denied him. An idea struck him.
He skipped to door “1” and placed his hand on the circle. A flash of blue. The door slid down revealing a small room. It looked like…an apartment. If an apartment could be made entirely from stone that is. There was a counter to the right of the door with a stone stool rising from the floor to sit on. The wall to the left of the door was dominated by square cubby holes.
Dakota realized the room was shaped like a T as he fully stepped inside. He peeked to the left and found another seat. It was low to the ground with an odd U shape. It almost looked like a… no, it couldn’t be.
He rushed over and looked into the bowl below the rim of the seat.
“Hallelujah.”
Never again would Dakota Kole be subjected to the whims of nature while taking a dump. He had found a toilet.
Undoing his belt, he turned around to give this thing a whirl, never mind that he didn’t have anything to wipe with.
Just as he was sitting, he froze. For his eyes had landed on the other side of the T. And it made his blood run cold.
A bed was carved into the stone which wasn’t the problem, it was the skeleton on it that made him suck everything back up as he redid his belt.
Pearly white bones arrayed in a perfect depiction of a person curled up in a ball.
Dakota cautiously approached. Whoever this was had passed a long time ago. No sign of flesh or clothing remained. Only bone.
He poked a shoulder blade. It collapsed in a cloud of dust. A long time.
As he turned to leave, something glinted in the skeleton’s ribcage. Gently pushing the bones aside, he found… a coin. It was big by modern standards, nearly two inches wide and had a bluish-grey tint. A sailing ship was engraved on it. The closer he looked, the more impressed he became. The ship was incredibly detailed. He could even tell the expressions of the tiny sailors. Alien, flowing text ran along the edge of the coin. The other side had a sceptre overlaid on top of a triangle with similar text running around the edge.