I wonder what happened, what event or memory or experience that became the seed that grew into the Plan. So many experiences…

--

They exited the room with the boglin chief and moved back down the corridor, and Matt let out a relieved sigh when he found the shimmering portal still there.

He heard the others talking around him, but his attention was fixed on the glowing symbols that flowed over the shimmering doorway. As he inspected the mystery, a feeling of unease mixed with the spark of curiosity as he tried to memorise the repeating symbols. The symbols represented something fundamental, something central to the way the world worked, and he could not get over the fact that he had never seen anything like them before. He turned his attention inwards and recognised many of the same symbols flowing across the strange new place in his mind, creating patterns that existed for moments before disappearing and reforming into new symbols. Why have I never seen the threads before?

Mia startled him as she put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go.” He gave her a slow nod as his thoughts kept churning.

They stepped through to find themselves back in the circular room with the two stone doorways. When they were all back through the portal, the blue shimmer disappeared abruptly, leaving the room lit only by the flickering torch.

“I’m hungry. Does anyone have any food?” Vic asked.

“Not much.” Pete gestured to a pouch hanging from his belt.

“I also have some,” Thor said. “But let us check out the door downstairs first.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah, let’s look around for a bit longer. Also, at some point, we need to think about going back outside. The people chasing us can’t wait there forever.”

“I agree,” Mia said. “Pete, Matt, lead the way.”

Readying their weapons again, they moved back down the stairs until they reached the landing where a short, wide corridor led to a large double door. Matt noticed a pair of dull crystals embedded into the cornice above the lintel, and wanted to inspect them closer when Pete gestured for Thor and Matt to take up position on either side. “I will open the door. You guys be ready. Alright?”

They nodded, and as Pete pushed the door open, they stepped in together. In a smooth motion, the three men moved in, forming a box as they faced out, weapons held ready. Vic and Mia followed behind.

They entered what was obviously a much larger space, and the light from the torch struggled to reach the far walls. They held their formation as they slowly made their way around the room, but their postures relaxed with every step as nothing jumped out at them. When Pete eventually muttered, “Clear,” they had all already come to the same conclusion.

They found themselves in a large room, which was easily four or five times the size of the chamber with the statue and the patterned ceiling. Set up as a communal area, large wooden tables with chairs and benches were spread around the floor. Several doors exited the room in different directions, and it took Matt a moment to realise that… The ceiling is glowing! Tilting his head, he followed the thin lines set into the smooth stone, where threads of energy shone in faint repeating patterns.

Pete was walking over to one side of the room, and Matt joined him.

“This looks like a cooking area,” Pete said as they entered an alcove that was cut into the cave wall, extending in from the main room. A wood stove took up the entirety of one side of the alcove, with a range of metal pots and pans and other utensils hanging from pegs set into the stone wall. A large metal funnel was mounted above the stove, leading up to a chimney that was disappearing up into the mountain. The other side of the alcove held a wooden workbench, and a rack mounted on the wall held a range of knives and other tools.

“Is that…” Matt exclaimed as he saw something glimmer behind Pete. He walked in to take a closer look. “It’s water!” In the corner of the small alcove, a stream of water was pouring in from a hole in the wall, running into a small basin and out of a drain. Matt bent down and filled his hands, tasting it. He smiled back at the others. “It is great!”

“Awesome,” Pete grinned back as he joined Matt, filling his bottle from the stream. “We have a stove, we have water. All we need now is some food. We could…” He tilted his head as he thought. “We could live here.”

“Indeed,” Thor said, joining them in the kitchen alcove, excitement shining in his eyes. “We could. I wonder what kind of place this used to be.”

Matt was wondering the same. With each new room they explored, another understanding clicked into place in his mind. One thing was the strange symbols and the flowing patterns. People had lived here. Corridors, rooms, a common area, a kitchen… And it was all carved out of a mountain. Out of the Dagger Mountains. He couldn’t imagine the effort it would take to excavate the huge spaces, how long it would have taken. And then, they had made it all habitable–and more than just habitable. Everything they had seen spoke of a society with abilities that were lost to them today.

And why had they built this inside a mountain? The challenges they would have had to overcome to make a cave livable… Something struck Matt. What about food? Had they brought in all the food from outside? Why had they not just built their settlement outside. Why?

Wandering around, Matt found what must have been a storeroom next to the kitchen, with sturdy shelves from floor to ceiling. Debris and dust covered everything, but it would just take someone with a bucket of water and a rag to clean the place up. As he looked around, his imagination populated the place with people. Men and women and children, walking around. Someone standing in the kitchen preparing food. Others simply sitting at the tables; eating, drinking and talking.

“Come look, guys!” Vic shouted from the other side of the room, where he had opened a door. “Look at this room!”

Matt walked across the large room to where Vic was. Stepping through the door, he found himself in a small narrow room with weapon racks lining the walls, holding spears, hammers, maces and… Swords! Matt heard a sharp intake of breath as Pete joined him, looking at the array of weapons lined out in front of them and stepping forward to grab the handle of a sword.

Pulling it out of the rack, Pete’s face lit up in wonder as he held it up. “This is something else,” he whispered. “I’ve seen swords before. Crude things. Nothing like this. I don’t even think the Duke’s Guard has anything like this.” Holding it closer to his eyes, he squinted. “Look here, there’s a maker's mark. It almost looks like a bird.” He turned the weapon slowly in his hand. “And look where the tang meets the cross-guard. It’s always slightly loose, but here… It is–It’s practically seamless. And the metal, it is…”

Matt smiled at Pete as he followed Vic into the next room, gasping as he entered another large space. This one seemed even larger than the common room behind them, but it was difficult to tell in the darkness. Again, Matt noticed the faint glow of symbols rippling across the surface of the ceiling. He studied the glowing symbols for a little while before noticing how some of them converged in a thicker thread, which seemed to run down the side of the wall before ending in a small metal plaque at the side of the door.

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Maybe… Maybe I shouldn’t, he thought, but curiosity got the better of him as he reached his hand out to the metal plate. The instant his fingers touched the glowing pattern, light rushed up the line on the wall and initiated a cascade of bright light that flooded across the ceiling in a massive wave of illumination.

“Wow!” Pete exclaimed, walking into the room, sword still held in one hand as he looked around. “What did you do?”

“I…” Matt began. “I just touched the plate here.”

“Awesome,” Vic muttered as the three of them scanned the room.

The room was square with a very high ceiling. The centre of the room held a square podium that was raised above the floor and ringed with ropes fastened to supports at each corner, and Matt could see what looked like wooden dummies lining one wall. Another area of the room held more racks of weapons and armour.

One wall drew Matt’s attention. Several large circles were marked out on the floor, arranged before the wall in a line. As he walked closer, Matt counted twelve circles on the floor, and in front of each of the circles there was a corresponding circle of patterns etched into the wall. As he got close, Matt could see that the circle on the wall held a series of drawings of a human figure. Spaced around the circumference, the figures were going through a series of movements.

In one drawing; the top of the circle showed a man standing straight, a hammer held across his body. Then the next image in the circle portrayed the figure taking a step back and lowering his weight as he shifted his grip on the hammer, and in the next image the hammer came up in a block.

Matt moved down the wall, taking in the different drawings, registering how each of them showed figures with different weapons. Eventually, he arrived at a part of the wall showing a man with a spear, and as he looked at the ring of pictures, he felt a spark of recognition. The figure was standing, leaning slightly forward, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. One foot was extended in front, toes pointing in the same direction as the spear, which was held at half extension. That almost looks like… Yes! That is the basic guard stance, and that is the low block.

The next circle of drawings showed a man wielding a sword. As he looked at the etching, Pete joined him, and Matt noticed the slight movements and twitches in Pete’s body as he mirrored the postures and motions.

The last circle showed a man with no weapons, moving through a series of different motions. His mind roaming and taking it all in, something about the way the figure’s arm moved from one drawing to the next reminded him of something else.

Oh wow, Matt thought, as something crawled up his back and made his head tingle. That looks like… The way his arm moves in a half circle before doubling back - that is exactly the same shape as one of the common symbols. And then the leg swipe imitates the curve of…

“Look,” Matt said to Pete, and pointed at the wall. “That looks like–”

They heard a loud bang and whirled around. A sheepish-looking Vic was facing a metal plate and holding a large mace. “Ooops,” he said, grinning back at them.

“Let’s head back to Thor and Mia,” Pete said. Matt wanted to study the drawings on the wall further, but found it hard to ignore the emptiness in his stomach, and reluctantly agreed.

They moved back out into the large common room and told Mia and Thor about the room they had found.

“Interesting,” Thor said with a nod. “Then it sounds like we have finished exploring this part of the cave, at least what is easy to get to. There is an outhouse through that door,” he said and gestured, “and there is what looks like a spiral stairway back through that door,” he gestured in another direction, “but it’s blocked by rocks and debris. We should be able to clear it, but it will take some time.”

“Let’s get some rest. And some food,” Mia said. “It’s been an intense few hours, and something tells me it will not get better for a while.”

They sat down at one of the large tables, and Matt idly noted that this table alone could probably hold twenty people, and there were several other equally large tables scattered around the room. As Pete and Thor emptied their bags, Matt fetched mugs of water from the basin in the kitchen alcove. They passed cheese and bread around the table, and for a moment the room was quiet except for the sounds of people eating.

“This is just too weird,” Vic eventually said as he idly twirled the small gemstone between his fingers. “This place. How long has it been down here?”

“And it just seems so strange that we have not heard about it before,” Thor said. “Has nobody else found it? This place is just so different.”

“It is,” Pete answered, sitting with his legs straight out on the bench. “We would have heard. I don’t think anyone has been here for… a long time.”

“Maybe.” Vic was holding the crystal they had found in the dungeon, peering into it. “Or maybe they have just kept it a secret.” He closed his fist around the crystal and looked up at them. “Can we go back into that dungeon? Do you think there are more crystals in there? More gold statues?”

“Why do you care?” Pete looked up at Vic. “It’s not like you can eat them.”

“No, but… But they are pretty.”

“So, worthless in other words.” Pete stared down at his mug. “Pretty crystals don’t matter. I miss my wife.”

Matt just nodded. He was thinking about his sister. She should have a few more years, but if news of the disaster that the Duke’s campaign had turned into had gotten back to Keylor, she probably thought him dead. Would she find a man in time to have babies? Would she have enough years to raise the children, or would their farm simply be abandoned, as so many others? His gut started churning as recollection speared through Matt’s thoughts. A memory of a thought, halfway formed. An idea slowly took shape as he ran through the day's events in his mind.

“Well, it is how it is,” Vic said, back to peering into the gemstone, his voice uncharacteristically low. “My–” he stopped, swallowed, and continued. “You should get back to her while you still can.”

With a sudden spark, the thought finished forming in his mind, and Matt sprang to his feet, unable to sit still.

“What–” Pete started, but Matt interrupted him.

Matt paced as words poured out. “The ceiling. It must be the ceiling. The pattern there. I was dying. I was dead, really. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, I was… And then I looked at the ceiling, and the pattern. There was something about it. It reached down. The air was filled with…” Voice trailing off, he looked up at the straight lines of bright illumination covering the ceiling in this room.

“The space between me and the ceiling was filled with thousands of threads. Threads in all possible colours, weaving around. Streaming down from the ceiling… And the threads connected something in the ceiling. To me, to my mind. Just as I was dying.”

Matt saw the others look up, confusion in their eyes.

“Something about the patterns… It was almost like I recognised them. They spoke to me. Even if I’ve never seen them before in my life. Something familiar, something… Something drew my attention to them and my mind became focused on those patterns. The lines… And then they started reaching down towards me. Silvery threads, blue threads. The colours! Through the space between me and the ceiling, and they reached… Something connected inside my mind. Like… A river dam bursting, and the silver threads entered me and then. And then my hand suddenly got very warm, and then...”

He looked at Mia, at the stump of her hand resting on the table. “I am so sorry, Mia.”

“Yeah, you said,” she said slowly. But Matt couldn’t detect any resentment in those words. Just careful contemplation, and something else in her eyes. She was no longer paying attention to him, but staring off into the distance. Slowly, he saw a careful smile appearing on her face.

He continued. “And the absolute weirdest thing was. After it happened, it was like the pressure on my chest disappeared. Immediately, like it was never there. Like I could breathe again. It stopped hurting. Like the wasting never happened to me. And I could get back up - and walk!”

Under her breath, Mia said, “I have seen nothing like it. It should not be possible. It is not possible.” She took a deep breath before continuing, her voice stronger. “I have been there for hundreds of wasting deaths. I have seen the same process, over and over. Shortness of breath. Pain. The body collapsing. Then a last breath, then a death. It follows the same pattern every time, and at the end of that pattern, we carry a body out for burial.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and held their gazes.

“Matt took his last breath.” She continued and lowered her hand, looking straight at him. “Then you took another?”

“Yes,” he said, and grinned at them.

Wordlessly, they all rose and followed after Matt.