Chapter 76 - Venturing The Hidden Tunnel: Rifts
SUTA POV
Suta, Gio, and Verdi hastened through the dark tunnel, hundreds of scurrying, furry-backed spiders echoing behind them.
They fled deeper into the unknown. The cyan symbols etched into the walls pulsed with an eerie glow, casting a sickly light on the uneven ground. Suta's mind raced, trying to make sense of the ancient language he couldn't decipher whilst worrying if they could outrun the herd of spiders.
Gio lumbered alongside him, grunting in pain as he clutched his pincer, an arrow shaft protruding from the rigid shell. Verdi fluttered ahead, his golden light illuminating the path before them, but even his bravery seemed to waver in the face of the encroaching horde gaining on their shadows.
The spiders swarmed through the narrow passage, their chittering and clicking growing louder with each passing second. Suta risked a glance over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn't - the sight of so many glittering eyes and twitching mandibles was enough to send a fresh wave of terror coursing through his veins.
'Just keep running,' he told himself, pumping his legs faster, ignoring the burn in his lungs and the ache in his muscles.
'There has to be a way out, a place to hide, something...'
But the tunnel seemed to stretch forever, winding and twisting like the bowels of some great beast. The air grew thicker and more complicated to breathe, and Suta realized with a sinking feeling that they were heading deeper underground, farther away from any hope of escape.
Suddenly, Verdi cried out in panic, his light flickering as he swiftly darted to the side. Suta skidded to a halt, his eyes widening as he saw what had startled the little sprite. Approaching their run was a gaping chasm stretching across the tunnel ground. Just gazing into its belly, one could see its depths lost in shadow.
"W-what now?" Gio panted, stopping beside him, his reptilian eyes bulging with fear.
Suta looked from the chasm to the approaching spiders; the cogs in his mind started to move. His focus sharpened, and rows and rows of possibilities cycled throughout his thoughts. They could try to jump, but the gap looked too broad, and there was no telling what lay on the other side. Fighting was out of the question - they were vastly outnumbered, and even with Suta's skills and Gio's strength, they wouldn't last long against such a swarm.
That left only one option, one that filled Suta with a dread colder than the cave's chill air.
"We have to go down," he said, his voice trembling once he announced that. "Into the chasm. It's our only chance."
Gio and Verdi stared at him, their expressions mirroring the fear and uncertainty that gripped Suta's heart. But there was no time for hesitation, no room for doubt. The spiders were closing in, their hungry chittering filling the tunnel, drowning out the sound of their ragged breathing.
"On three," Suta said, placing Verdi against his shoulder.
"One...two...-"
"WA-aaa-ait!" Gio's outcry made him jump
"Wh-wh-what is it?"
"C-c-can you fly?" it asked Suta in a nervous tone
Suta almost wanted to beat the thing for stopping him to ask such a stupid thing.
"Are you insane? Of course not...can you?"
"Heavens, no, so what's the plan? We jump to our doom?"
"Yes! Or wait around for those things to get us. You can do whatever you want. I'm jumping."
They leapt together, plunging into the unknown depths of the chasm, leaving the horde of spiders behind. As they fell, Suta closed his eyes, praying to whatever gods might be listening that they would survive this and find a way out, a way back to the light.
The fall seemed to last an eternity, the chasm's darkness engulfing them. Suta's heart wouldn't stop racing, his mind filled with visions of jagged rocks and bottomless pits awaiting below. But just as he braced himself for impact, a strange sensation washed over his entire body. A tingling warmth spread from his toes to the top of his head.
"W-what's happening?" he gasped, his voice sounding muffled and distant to his ears.
Verdi's light pulsed, growing brighter and more intense until it filled the entire chasm. Suta squinted against the glare, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was as if they were floating, suspended in a void of shimmering gold.
At that moment, Suta saw something: a golden youth with long wheat golden locks flowing down its body. The youth wore a crown tilted against one side of its helm. Suta had no time to think and instinctively reached his hand out to touch the golden child.
Suddenly, everything turned to white.
Can you hear me, you can can't you,
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Forgive my rudeness. I thought you were part of my clan
Who are my clan, you ask?
We are the Clan of...well, outsiders called us Golden,
But to us, my kin and I. We were of the Pale and Black. Two opposing sides of the same sun.
Would you like to know a secret? I can't tell you where it is, but I left my precious thing in that place,
I always thought he would return here someday to claim it. That's why I left this piece of myself, the last goodness of me, here, where it all began.
Nevermind...I bid you a good fortune... trespasser.
Suta's eyes flashed open, and a wave of urgency spirited him upright into a seated position. His thoughts were fuzzy, but the bizarre change of scenery was more troubling than anything else clouding his mind. "Verdi," his mouth uttered; panic ran through his bones as he quickly tossed his gaze from side to side in a desperate search. But no one was there—only him, alone on a levelled white stoned ground. Surrounded by tall rocks enclosed around him. There was a small pool of water in the middle, with rushing waters falling from the mountainous ridge into the pit he found himself in.
"Where in the world am I now?" His voice moved his gaze further upwards. The crimson skies covered the still heavens, but what caught his gaze was a towering sandy-stoned monument rising away from the edge of the mountain. It was a striking figure of a strange humanoid creature with robust chiselled limbs and two curved horns protruding away from its helm. It stood as valour as a king, with a sizeable squared sword pressed beneath its hand.
Suta narrowed his gaze and took another look around. By now, he had understood neither Verdi nor the ugly blue carp were here.
"You've got to be kidding me. Another damn portal? W-w-wait?"
He turned over his palm and summoned his badge. Suta scanned the contents desperately until he arrived at the last line.
(Glitch Active: Cooldown Timer - 07:24:55:46)
A wave of nausea suddenly hit him. Suta was lucky to be sitting down; he was almost sure he might've collapsed after reading that his glitch skill had been activated again.
'I...I jumped again!'
***
It took Suta a short while to gather himself; after going through the mental tussle about the increased danger of unconsciously using this skill without truly knowing how It worked, he resigned himself to his fate and started searching for a way out. He approached a rising, jagged crack between the towering walls.
Staring at the crevice crackling between the firm wall drew a complicated feeling rousing in his stomach.
‘I’ can probably fit through such a tight space.’ He thought to himself after observing the size of the hole. Suta exhaled a deep breath, feeling exasperated by the turn of events. His palm caressed the dagger glued against his hip for good measure before he angled his body and began slipping between the cracks.
He continued shifting his body through the tight space, the two opposing walls gradually parting away to allow his limbs further room. A strange glossy sheen was encased against the rigid stone walls. When he observed closer, he felt as though there was a strange firmament trapped inside the glossy rock.
Suta arrived on the other side and dusted the stone chips away from his torso. He quickly scanned the cavernous air, focusing on the faraway tall walls rising above him and the dark ceiling partially shrouded in darkness. The cave was a spacious room. The walls were covered in strange symbols. Up ahead, he observed the one significant pathway ascending towards an upper floor, where he saw a gaping large hole awaiting him. No doubt that was the very doorway leading him into the madness that was sure to attempt to swallow him whole.
Suta wished nothing more than to jump back to the cave; his worries sat with the little fairy and the untold horrors that ugly blue carp creature could be showing.
He decided to ensure he took in everything within this place before moving on. Other than the jagged rocks Bove and the strange ceremonial feel this place gave him, there wasn’t much to see here. Moving his footsteps forward, he eventually stood at the foot of the glaring cave mouth.
A cold, dreary wind beckoned him into the hollow darkness. The lack of light was a little concerning, but Suta thankfully could see the fleshy blue rock aligned against the tunnelled walls. These instances very well reminded him of why Verdi was so important. Just a simple light to help disperse the darkness was more helpful than anything else.
Suta rubbed his palms together and straightened his back. ‘Let's do this.’ He breathed out and relaxed his nerves. Now, it was time to walk into the darkness.
The echoes of his footsteps trailed along the tunnel for what felt like an endless road within a shroud of thick night. He made sure his feet weren’t so far away from the wall. He felt less lost at sea when he stuck closer to the shimmering walls. Out of curiosity, Suta brushed his fingertips lightly against the strange blue rock. Unsurprisingly, the material's texture was glassy but smoother than he had first expected.
‘It’s like glass? But as firm as stone.’ He lightly knocked his knuckles, wondering if this entire cave was made of this same glass rock.
“Hm?” Suta heard something above him.
Out of instinct, his footsteps lessened as he peered above into the fold of shadows gathered by the ceiling. A small ball of fuzzy yellow light freckled into existence, joined by a second and a few more balls almost playfully ascending. Suta’s eyes narrowed. The ball of lights started to shake, then began to chirp and shuffle around one another. Suta looked closely and could vaguely make out a tiny leaf on the top of each one.
The tiny balls of light fell away from the ceiling, but rather than free-falling down as he expected, the little leaf on top began rotating like a windmill, allowing each ball of light to float down at a measured speed and seeing this naturally stunned Suta. Who was torn between indulging in his learned savagery of attacking first or stroking them tenderly. In the end, he chose none of the above. He simply watched them floating down until they reached his eye level. At which they started almost nudging him forward.
“Hehe, and where did you little things come from ey?”
Their warm, fuzzy light became a welcome reprieve from the shrill dark. The little balls of light surrounded him like little balled creatures, more curious than hostile. Their little leaf heads, whirring, continued to suspend them in the air beside him. Suta realised they weren't hostile, very strange, of course, but everything within this damned place was weird.
He tested his theory and made his way along the tunnel, feeling less anxious as the balls of light continued following him. Now that he had a newfound source of light guiding his way, the four balls of fuzzy light remained true to their design. Simply hovering around him was enough to help clear the fog surrounding him.
On more than one occasion, he attempted to see if these things were sentient enough to understand him, only to discover they were, in fact, not. It was almost as though they had one job, and one job alone, to show him the way.
“It’s strange there are four of these. I wonder what they are…” his back went a little stiff, remembering the unknown little oddities he discovered around this jungle that ended up being little horrors instead.
On more than one occasion, a gentle-looking flower turned into a crazed-eyed, sharp-tooth-looking thing.
“They better not be dangerous.” He chuckled with a slighter, more cautious look whenever he observed the floating balls of light.
Thankfully, the walk through the earthy-walled tunnel wasn’t as disastrous as he’d expected. Suta did notice the ceiling above moving further away the deeper he walked. His footsteps soon brought him to what felt like the end of the tunnel, or at least a midpoint, where his surroundings drastically changed.
He shuffled his feet cautiously to the edge and peered down into an abyss of darkness. Somehow, a gaping chasm was in the middle of the cave path. Suta grimaced, feeling a sense of deja vu.
'What's up with large holes in the middle of these caves?'
Suta swallowed his spit nervously and stared into what looked like a sea of darkness carved against the ground. The chasm was vast enough to fit at least two whales. Maybe a lot more, depending on how deep that thing was.
“How am I supposed to cross that? Tsk, better question. What on earth created such a deep hole?
He scanned the fleshy walls with intent. The jagged rocks to the side told him this wasn’t natural. But alas, he understood that trying to piece together the unknown would only give him a headache.
“Surely this isn’t the end of this road, wait-what’s that over there.”
He had missed it at first, probably because of the thick darkness partially blinding his view past the small radius of light wrapped around him.
An iron lever suspiciously sat on the edge of the chasm in the corner. Of course, the object and the environment had no correlation whatsoever, but Suta nonetheless approached the lever. He came from an angle with caution, glancing around his heavens to ensure there wasn’t some disastrous trap enforced above.
Nothing out of place caught his attention, so he proceeded closer and placed his hand against the rusted iron handle. The moment he applied the faintest pressure, the lever jerked forward and almost sent him tumbling over the edge. Suta swiftly caught his footing, just about managing to steady himself in time. At the same moment, the frigid, silent air was suddenly filled with sounds of mechanical whirring echoing from below.
The sounds of loud iron gears groaned through the walls. He felt the ground beneath him rumble and the clattering soft rattle of tiny stones rolling over the edge. Suta sensed something was happening from the dark abyss. He took a few steps away from the edge and braced himself reluctantly for combat. An almost-arriving sneering sound became apparent, drawing his attention to something he remembered from his old world.
“Wait a minute.” He said, relaxing his muscles. " That sounds like…a lift?”