They would detest their future. They would throw themselves from a cliff, if they knew. I wonder, at what point in that journey through life, could the me-that-was learn what the…
--
Afterwards, Matt moved away from her. Mia’s screams were still reverberating in his head, refusing to fade out and the smell of burned flesh was still wafting through the chamber. Wrapped in self-loathing, he sat with his back against a wall, as far away from her as he could get, barely registering the others. Mia was back asleep, her body twitching as she fought demons in her dreams, while Thor gently stroked her hair. Matt was so full of intense emotions, he did not know what to do with himself. A medley of shame at what he had done–even if he did not know what–and elation and confusion at being alive. A constant pressure of curiosity threatened to wash away the despair, and he had to fight to keep his mood down. To stop his brain from exploring down the pathways of all the mysteries. He did not deserve the comfort of wonder.
At the same time, his head was pulsing with a strange sensation of pain that was coming from somewhere deep inside him. Regular beats of heat that washed out from his mind to his limbs, before rushing back to start over.
Despite himself, his eyes were idly tracking the others. Pete had returned to wiping off an area of the floor in the corner with his palm. His voice was low as he mumbled, mostly to himself. “I’ve not seen stonework like this before, not even in Gamut. The slabs are so large, and the way they fit together… And they are so smooth.”
“What’s that?” Vic was pointing to an area being revealed. “There’s a pattern there. See this?”
Pete peered closer. “Yeah… And it’s not paint. It’s made up of smaller, coloured stones, packed tightly together.”
Curiosity stirred in Matt as he registered the matte tendrils of colour on the floor where Pete was pointing. Coloured symbols and abstract shapes. It was wonderful and beautiful, and as Matt watched Pete pour water from his bottle on the cleared area, vivid colours sprang to life. The small mosaic pieces echoed with the silver of the patterned ceiling.
Slowly, Pete rose and turned in a circle, looking down. “We need to clear this entire floor.”
Just then, Mia stirred from her sleep. “Later,” Thor said.
As she woke up, Thor was already holding the bottle of water ready. Seeing her reach for it with the stump on her left harm, Matt turned away. The regret burned within him as he squeezed his eyes shut. Saying “sorry” again was futile, and he silently vowed to make it up to her. Somehow.
He heard sounds as Mia tried to get to her feet. “Steady, there.” Thor supported her as she rose up. “Are you sure you should be walk-”
“Yes,” she said, stumbling forward on unsteady legs. Her words were strained and clipped. “My mind is a fog right now, and I can’t afford that. Moving around clears the essence out of the bloodstream quicker.” She leaned on Thor and winced. “Let’s just walk around. Explore this place. Without the essence, I need something else to block out the pain. I need to get my mind on something else.”
Thor led her around the room as she inspected it. Twenty paces wide and fifty paces long, the only door being the one they had entered through. The statue in the middle and the patterned ceiling above took centre stage, and they wondered about the small indents in the floor radiating in circles out from the statue. Each indent was the size of a person.
“It looks like body-shaped hollows,” Thor said as Pete traced the edge of an indentation with a finger. “But why?”
Looking up at the ceiling, an idea was forming in Matt’s mind. Maybe…
“I think I know–” he began.
“Hey! Look here.” Vic was standing in the doorway, waving them over. Matt remained still for a moment, watching the magical threads reach down from the ceiling, an idea forming into conviction. At the same time, a pressure was building in his head with tension pulsing rhythmically, and he struggled to think clearly. Later, he decided and followed after the others.
“What is it?” Mia asked.
“Look, there.” Vic pointed. “Behind the stone rubble where we fell down. The passage… It continues inwards.”
Pete moved forward and grabbed the torch from Vic. He stepped closer to the rocks covering the floor and peered past them.
“You are right. There’s a corridor here. We should be able to shift some of these rocks.”
Matt stepped up, and together with Thor and Pete, they moved the rocks that blocked the corridor. Finding a broken spear shaft, Matt grabbed it and used it as leverage to shift a particularly large rock out of the way. Soon the way through was clear, and they moved in together, Pete and Matt taking point with their hands holding weapons ready.
“Oh wow,” Pete said in a reverent voice as the torchlight spread into the corridor ahead. Small niches were inset at regular intervals, each holding a small statue. The statues were a foot tall, made from a shining, golden metal.
Pete rushed forward to a statue, reaching out for it. “This is exquisite.” Matt could see Pete fumbling for a moment as he picked up the statue; it was obviously heavier than it looked. Pete held it, turning it around in his hands and peering down to inspect it. “The craftsmanship…” His voice trailed off. “I think this is gold. Pure gold! I can’t believe it… Look at the face, at the details on the features. And the shape of the body, the definition of the muscles. Look! The toes and the fingers are just perfectly shaped.” Pete looked back at them, wide eyed and with his mouth open. “Who made this? Nobody can craft like this. This should not be possible.”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Softly, Thor said, “Impossible, yet not. Yet another question we find in this place.”
Matt looked up and counted another thirteen statues. A sense of wonder filled him as his head prickled with excitement. And something else. The weight of something very significant and ancient settled on his mind, adding to the pressure pulsing in his mind.
Vic had moved up to another statue and picked it up, a small grin on his face. He was about to put it in his pouch when Mia spoke.
“Put it back.” Mia’s voice was quiet. “Let’s keep going. Even if we were thieves, it’s too heavy to carry around.”
“Thieves? But this doesn’t belong to anyone. Whoever built this has died a long… a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mia said in a firm voice. “It belongs to this place.”
Matt silently agreed with her as Vic put the statue back with a pouting expression. They continued to move down the passage and soon came to a set of stairs going up. Thick slabs of stone that made Matt take two steps forward for every step up soon came to a small landing, with a large double door ahead and another set of stairs continuing up.
“Let’s keep going up,” Pete said. “We will come back here later.”
The stairs ended in another corridor, much like the one below, even with more statues lining the walls. This time, the small figures were crafted from a light stone and depicted scenes of fighting. In some, people were fighting other people, some were fighting animals, or even strange creatures, nothing like anything Matt had ever seen.
The corridor ended in a large circular room with a high ceiling. The room was simple, built from the same stone as the rest of the place, and two massive archways were carved into the wall; tall pillars, ending in an arched lintel. Strangely, where Matt would have expected there to be a doorway, the doorway just led into a solid wall.
Matt walked over to the archway on the left and let his hand trace over the carved stone. As he got closer, Matt’s eyes opened wider when he recognised the pattern running up the pillars. It was the same symbols as the ones on the ceiling below, running from the floor all the way up to the arch and around to the other pillar. As he leaned in closer, he could see a faint glow as small sparks of coloured light ran up and down through the symbols.
“Guys, come here, look at this,” he waved to the others, who joined him. “Do you see the symbols?”
“Yes…?” Vic asked, his eyes drawn together as he looked first at the symbols, then up at Matt.
“And the glow–the light?” Matt asked.
“What glow?” Vic said. “Where?”
“On the symbols…” Matt’s voice trailed off, and he looked back at the others. “You can’t see it?”
They all shook their heads, but then Thor tilted his head back and looked at the top of the arch before pointing up. “There is writing up there.”
Matt looked up and saw it; as the glowing symbols traced around the arch, a section below the top held a small metal plaque with a different type of symbols he recognised as letters.
“What does it say?”
Thor peered at the writing, squinting in the dim light. “It makes no sense.” He looked back at Matt. “Initiate’s Dungeon. What’s a dungeon?”
“And there, what is that?” Mia was pointing to a circle in the middle of the stone doorway. When Matt looked closer, he could see a single, circular symbol glowing with a light blue light.
“I don’t know, but it glows. In a different light, though,” Matt answered.
“That’s… curious,” Vic said. “What happens if you touch it? Can I touch it? I should touch it, right?”
Before anyone had a chance to react, Vic had reached out to place his fingers against the glowing symbol. Everyone tensed, their hands gripping their weapons tightly as they waited.
Mia blew up her cheeks and breathed slowly out. “Vic…”
Nothing happened, and Vic grinned back at them. “Sorry about that. Perhaps if you touch it, Matt?”
Matt hesitated, looking at the others. Vic just kept grinning at him with a strange expression, and Pete’s eyebrows were drawn together in a tight line. Mia looked at Thor, then at him, and gave a small nod. “Ok, do it. Nothing will happen. Probably….”
Slowly, Matt extended his hand towards the symbol in the middle of the doorway, feeling a warm buzz in the tips of his fingers as he got closer. A silver tendril reached out to meet his fingers, and the pulsing pressure in his head intensified. The tendril reached into his hand, and he felt it crawl up the inside of his arm. The same strange sensation as before, when he could see the threads moving inside if he turned his attention inwards. Silver moving up through a pathway in his body, reaching, questing… His attention followed the thread until it reached his mind, where he saw something strange and magical. A cloud of coloured threads was floating around, spinning and twirling in ever-changing patterns. As he watched, the cloud constricted into a ball before expanding again. Like it was breathing. He sensed the temporary compression as a sharp pressure, and understanding dawned. So that is where the strange pain in my head is coming from. This cloud of energy in my head!
He saw the tendril that had travelled through his body connect with the cloud in his mind, and suddenly, a shimmer of intensely glowing blue flashed in the middle of the doorway before fading.
“What the fuck?” Pete exclaimed as they all took a step back from the portal.
Where before there had just been a simple stone wall, now a dull blue surface was shimmering with glowing blue threads of energy. Matt tried to peer through it, but saw nothing. Hesitantly, he reached a hand out, noticing the thin, blue filaments that reached out towards his fingers as he pushed it through the surface of the doorway.
“What is going on here?” Vic asked, moving up next to Matt and mirroring his gesture with his good arm. “Weird. It feels… Like nothing special. Like there is nothing there.”
Matt nodded, taking another step forward and turning back to the others. “I will check it out.”
“No,” Mia said. “Who knows what’s in there? We will check it out. Let’s all move in together. On three.”
Matt looked at her with concern. “Mia, are you sure that–”
She simply nodded at him. “One, two…” and with a look at the men, she said “three” and stepped forward.