"Is this the cave we're looking for? For Hagsbane?" Howlen's voice was clear in the silence, but whatever answer came was lost to the night. Vespasian looked up and saw his face as it pulled away from the opening some twenty feet above him. His thoughts were quiet, deadened. He had been repeating the word hopeless in his mind, but that last word, Hagsbane, overtook him. Vespasian strained to hear more.
Hope and Fenian burst from nothingness beside him on the floor of the cave. He startled at the sudden flush of air, then smiled a fleeting smile to himself because hope had arrived.
"Hey! Toss the light!" Hope clapped twice and a torch fell. She picked it up and held it to Vespasian. In the yellow light Vespasian thought her bony cheeks and bushy red-brown eyebrows looked almost beautiful.
"Geeze, man, quit looking at her like that! Get up." Fenian said with a laugh. Vespasian started to hang his head, expecting embarrassment or shame, but he felt nothing.
He got to his side without issue, but when he pressed against the cave floor with his left leg to stand, a sharp pain pulsed from his foot into the small of his back. He stumbled, but did not fall. Hope steadied him with her free hand.
"Are you alright?" She asked as she handed the torch to her brother.
Vespasian nodded his head to a small crack in the cave wall; the source of the glowing green light.
"I guess so." Hope patted Vespasian on the shoulder. Then she turned to Fenian. "What do you think it is?"
Fenian walked to the crack. Hope followed. Vespasian did not want to go. He did not care what the light was and wondered why he had even shown them. As the two went, however, he knew he had to move with them. He knew his choice in the moment was to sit and wait for death or go with these - he did not have a word for them.
Each step brought another shooting pain through his leg as Vespasian followed them to the wall to examine the crack. It was not a simple fracture in a solid stone wall, like Vespasian had thought. This section of the cave wall was made up of several rocks intentionally stacked atop each other from floor to ceiling. The hole was the only place they did not fit together perfectly. Hope knelt and pressed her eye to it. She rose and shook her head to her brother. Vespasian did not follow their silent conversation, and did not bother to ask.
Fenian rolled his eyes and turned to him. "Take this." He handed the torch to Vespasian before turning into the tiniest mouse Vespasian had ever seen. He scurried through the opening with ease.
Vespasian had almost put the gruesome mauling of the Alans out of his mind. Fenian's transformation brought it back. His fear was different than it had been in the past. Perhaps this is not fear at all.
Some silent moments passed before Fenian the mouse returned and once again became Fenian the man. He was bubbling with excitement. He began to move the rocks in an almost silent frenzy and whispered "Quick! Help! Help! Help!" Hope was slow to obey.
Vespasian did not want to move, but felt himself drawn in by the excitement. He moved a foot closer, not really a step, more of a brace to hold the rest of his body back. The memory of the young mother throwing herself on the fire struck Vespasian. He did not understand her then. Now, with these Druids, he felt he knew her. He played with words like bitterness and hopelessness, but they did not quite fit his feeling. Vespasian associated those words with a kind of fear, which he did not feel either. Vespasian thought of the difference between being hurt and being injured. If fear, as he knew it, was like being hurt, Vespasian knew at least a part of him was something more like being injured. Broken. Empty. That's probably closer.
The simple understanding brought a willingness to move. The Druids continued to pull at the rocks with varying degrees of effort and success. With the torch in one hand, Vespasian used his other to help pull the more stubborn rocks. He glanced up, thinking the wall would come down upon them. It did not. When the hole was large enough, Fenian stepped through first. Hope made a silent motion for Vespasian to follow next.
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Vespasian was not sure what he had expected to find, but with Fenian's excitement he did not think it would be just another corridor of the cave cast in a slightly more vivid green light.
Hope stepped through and expressed the same disappointment. "What-"
Fenian grabbed at her to be quiet.
The corridor stretched only a small distance. A handle full of steps brought them nearly to its end. The mysterious green light illuminated the walls, floor and ceiling so that Vespasian did not need the torch. The rocks are unnaturally smooth. Carved? Created?
Vespasian almost did not recognize the clarity of his thought. It was as if the thought was not his. He considered for a moment if one of the druids had possessed him, so he tested the possibility in the first way he could think of. With his empty hand he slapped the back of Fenian's head. Fenian turned to him. He threw his arms out to express his annoyance, trying not to make a sound.
Vespasian laughed, not at the Druid, but at himself. He felt an odd lightness. One he had seen in others and thought he would never experience. In his days with the Nu he had expected this sensation was reserved for those without the weight he carried. Vespasian thought then, and many times over the course of his life, this feeling would only be available to him after he solved his problems. Yet here it was. He had not solved a thing. Rather, he felt that when he picked himself off of the cave floor, he simply left his worries there. The Nu were coming. These Druids presented some otherworldly threat. Whatever cast the green light in this cave might bring his death. Vespasian knew, and he did not worry.
He followed Fenian to the sharp corner at the end of the corridor. Fenian held a hand up to stop them and motioned for them to press against the wall. Vespasian leaned around him to look.
What laid ahead was another long corridor that curved slightly, bathed in a brighter green hue. At its end, the sliver of a massive glowing orb shined bright, almost too intense for Vespasian to focus on. He looked back to Hope and shrugged. He turned to Fenian who was pointing to his eye with an almost boyish enthusiasm. Hope seemed to understand. She pointed to the source of the light. Fenian answered her with a stern face and a shake of his head. He used two fingers to demonstrate walking, then pointed further into the cave. Vespasian did not understand any of it.
He crooned his neck around the corner once again and looked for a while at the visible edge of the orb. His eyes adjusted and he saw in it a smokey texture, like clouds moving over its surface as if they were inside it. Vesapasian squinted to see the small, visible space next to the object. Next to the intense light of the orb it was hard to make out, but Vespasian could just see the silhouette of a creature crouched on two feet staring at the object. As he watched, the creature, slinked away in to the cave.
Vespasian turned to Fenian and Hope, but they were gone. He felt his familiar fear rise in him, then he cast it aside. Vespasian stepped from the corner and walked toward the object. He did not consider what it might be, and it did not matter to him. Each step was his attack on all the things he did not like about himself. He walked upright down the corridor until he reached its end.
The glowing green object was a perfectly smooth sphere clutched in twisted, black, talon-like spikes. It was twice the height of Vespasian, or more, and just as round. The cloudy smoke moved beneath its surface. A shrill cry erupted from behind him. Followed by another, then more until the noise was impossibly loud.
Vespasian was jerked backward and found himself being carried down the corridor. The smooth walls flew by him at an unnatural speed; faster than he had ever gone on a horse. He saw the creatures chasing him. Their long bone thin arms thrashed above their head as they ran on two bent legs. Their screams seemed desperate and afraid. Vespasian saw flashes of their hideous teeth and large dark green eyes, but whatever was carrying him moved too fast for the creatures to keep up.
He looked to see a hawk carrying him through the corridor. It dropped him, changed back to Fenian and shoved him through the hole. A second hawk flew him upward and out of the cave.
He raced to follow the Druids, cutting through the night without thinking until they were back at the fire. He had not perceived the darkness or the effort of running. The Druids frantically tried to explain what they had seen. But Vespasian did not listen. He saw the bow, taken from the dead Alan, strapped to Pax's horse. Without thinking to ask permission, Vespasian walked to it, undid the leather strap and took it. He turned to see Howlen eyeing him.
Again he noted the absence of fear and raised the bow to Howlen. Vespasian knew he did one thing well, if nothing else. Whatever problems lay ahead, I'll have at least one tool with which to face them.