"The amulet says to press it into that hollow beside the door. Do it gently! You don't want to chip anything!" Prue said, wringing her hands. The younger woman's voice squeaked. Whether in excitement or apprehension, Erza didn't know.

Erza took a deep breath. Following Prue's instructions exactly, she placed the amulet into a depression in the cave wall. The grey stone slab beside her shuddered. Gears clanked and stone grated as the slab receded into the floor. She passed the amulet back to Prue as she stepped back to watch the stone's slow descent.

"That's interesting. Most doors like this would slide to the side or up into the ceiling. Few people would build one like this," Zeke said.

"Why's that?" Faolan asked, for once no hint of sarcasm in his tone.

"Well, for one thing, doors like this mostly exist in Hollywood. Most doors were open arches or used some form of hinge. The closest the ancients would get to this would be a drawbridge or portcullis. This is amazing work," Zeke muttered.

"I can see the benefits to this as compared to one that retreated into the ceiling," Roderick said. "Intruders can duck or roll under a lowering gate. This door they would have to leap over or climb as it closes- a far more difficult and deadly endeavor."

Oh, Lord. It's like modern human men standing around a car, holding a beer, and admiring a suped-up engine, Erza thought, rolling her eyes.

Aren't men strange in any age? Rin's voice whispered in her head.

"You've got that right, sister," Erza muttered.

"Eh? Did you say something, My Lady?" Vladimir asked.

"Nope, just thinking men never change; no matter the race or circumstances," she said grinning. She heard feminine snickers behind her. The women must have understood her quip. Vladimir, however, did not, judging by his quirked brow and confused expression. Rin's laughter pealed like a bell in her mind. It was all Erza could not to chortle with mirth.

A grinding crunch halted the door inches from full retraction. Erza stepped over the remaining bit of door, cocked her head sideways, and listened to the rebounding echo of her footsteps.

The light from Faolan's small flashlight only penetrated a couple of feet into the blackness. When the beam wasn't directed at her, Erza couldn't see the hand she held inches away from her face. Trepidation flooded her, freezing her veins and trapping the air in her lungs. She searched the darkness for a cause to her sudden apprehension and saw nothing but Faolan's weak beam of light. Why was she afraid?

Okay, we came. We saw. Nothing’s here. Can we leave now? Rin's voice trembled in her mind.

Rin--are you scared? Erza asked, astonished. Darkness had never bothered Erza before. Why would her sister be afraid, and why could Erza feel it? Why had she never felt Rin's emotions so strongly before?

I'm terrified! Nothing but evil ever comes out of the darkness. When light flees, Death conquers all. You know that as well as I; we learned it first hand, Rin whimpered. Erza saw an image of herself. The eyes were wrong, however. The colors were right, but they were in the opposite eyes. The woman sat curled into ball, rocking in a corner. Could that be Rin? She imagined taking the woman--her mirror image--into her arms and sang her a long forgotten lullaby. The ice in her veins slowly melted as peace warmed her heart. Erza wiped at the sweat beading her brow. Having a little sister was hard work.

I'll see what can be done about the darkness, she thought, gently brushing the raven hair away from Rin's eyes before returning to her own world.

"Yo, Faolan, got anything that actually produces light in that magic bag of yours?" Erza called. Her voice bouncing around them as it echoed through the cave.

A rustling sound preceded a glaring beam of light.

"Ow! Male, you already blinded us once without warning, but twice? Come on! Use your brain for once!" Jo scolded.

"Yeah, whatever, do you want a light or not? I don't have to share with you, you know. Technically, I only have to share with Erza and the other Warriors. You and the other baggage can just follow along silently," Faolan barked back.

"Faolan! Didn't we just have a talk about respect the other day? You're not two, so start sharing your toys nicely! If you have enough, give a light to each of those who aren't fighters. We don't know what's in here, and the Warriors may need their hands free." Erza instructed the high-strung Colt. She snatched the large yellow spotlight out of his hand, and strode away.

A few yards from the still-arguing pair, Erza's white beam rose up a smooth, glossy black surface. It wasn't the cave wall. She could clearly see the cave's jagged rock to her right. She followed the straight lines of the satiny object, making sure to never lose sight of the others. Judging by the three sides she could safely inspect, it was an enormous cube.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Any idea what this is, Mr. Archeologist?" Erza asked, gesturing with the spotlight in her hand.

Zeke studied the structure, his light shimmering along the ebony surface. The little noises of interest and concentration emanating from his throat were easily heard in the stone room.

Erza smiled. Those sounds he makes are rather cute, she thought, as Rin chuckled in the background of her mind.

"Look here! There's a wolf carved into the stone," Zeke said after several long moments of silence. He turned, sweeping the strong light around the room. He stopped several times as the beam revealed more of the shadowy structures. Erza saw animals etched into each one: more wolves, deer, foxes, bears, eagles- even some she couldn't identify.

"It's a house. Judging by the carvings, this one is a house belonging to the Cano clan. We've found where the Qikan lived," he said stepping through a rectangular hole in the cube that she'd missed before.

"A house...you mean someone actually lived here?" Faolan asked incredulously. "There's no sunlight, no grass, nor trees. How could anyone live here?"

Erza just shook her head. For a man who'd lived through the Civil War and the Wild West, the boy knew nothing of history. If it didn't go 'boom,' he wasn't interested.

"Plenty of ancient civilizations utilized mountains and built their homes inside. The Anasazi tribe, who once inhabited Colorado, is still famous for their cliff dwellings," Zeke's low baritone floated through the doorway.

"Books!" Zeke called; his voice tinged with excitement.

"Dibs!" three feminine voices roared back; the echoes deafening as the sisters raced over to the building. Erza barely heard Zeke's reply.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law," Zeke snickered, emerging from the building with a stack of thick tomes in his arms. With his arms at his waist, the pile fit snugly beneath his chin.

Erza shook her head. Feelings of exasperation and affection for the nerdy quartet combated for superiority. Scholars...they never changed.

"I won't say you can't keep them," she said, feeling like she spoke to a child who'd just had a puppy follow him home. "They might hold the answers we seek. We don't have a good way to carry them, though, so look for something we can use."

"I can carry the books, E. Just hand them to me one at a time, so I can organize it properly," Faolan said, slinging his bag off his shoulder.

Erza eyed the mound of books, then the small bag. Even empty, it couldn't possibly hold that many tomes.

"Don't question it, just trust me," Faolan said, grabbing the first book and stuffing it inside the bag's narrow opening.

"I'm surprised they're in such pristine condition after all this time," Jo said, gently running her fingers over a dusty cover.

"This place isn't exposed to the elements. It’s temperature controlled, since it's always cold up here, and the air is dry. It's the perfect environment to preserve something so fragile," Zeke replied, sighing in relief with each weighted book Faolan took from his arms.

Duh, holding that many books at once is going to be heavy! Rin lectured in their mind.

Yeah, well, what do you expect from a book nerd? Good grief, we haven't been in here more than twenty minutes, and he's sniffed out a library of books to play with! How on earth did his parents ever keep track of him during so many digs? Erza wondered as she slowly turned a circle to gauge their surroundings.

They stood between two lines of the dark cube-houses. Their shapes reminded her of the Pueblos in the southwest United States. Zeke had just exited the largest of the surrounding houses, but she glimpsed the tops of grander buildings beyond this first set of rows.

They hadn't discovered a few houses. They'd stumbled upon an entire civilization under the mountain.

Suddenly, Erza stilled, unable to believe her eyes.

"See, E? I told you they'd all fit! Hey, what are you... Oh shit," Faolan said as his jubilant tone became strangled. He must have noticed the object of her horrified gaze.

In front of a nearby house, a pair of glimmering skeletons lay on their stomachs on the ground. Their right arms stretched out, reaching for... the skeletal remains of two small children. Slowly panning her light, Erza saw more remains, of all ages, scattered in various poses along the street. Some sat hunched over in doorways; others hung half their bodies out pane-less windows. Many lay in front of the houses, reaching for others.

"Even the children didn't survive the Cataclysm," she whispered. "Why would my grandfather and his friends live through it but not these children?"

"Proximity," Zeke replied, joining them. His deep baritone remained unaffected by the evidence of so much death.

Of course, being an archeologist, he must see things like this all the time, Erza thought. We've lived through centuries of wars, but this seems so much worse. They had no chance, no hope of living through whatever happened to them.

"This must be the 'ground zero' of your Cataclysm. Those further away from this place had a greater chance of survival," Zeke explained, continuing down the lane.

They trekked through the city, searching for anything that could tell them what had happened. Zeke and Roderick were the only ones comfortable with entering houses containing the dead. The rest of the group observed the layout of the streets and tried to glean clues from the small artifacts they found lying around. Erza noticed that the farther into the cave they traveled, the lighter the buildings looked. Indeed, on a closer inspection, she saw thin veins of color in their black covering. She didn't understand the change in pigment.

After a while, Erza spotted a building far larger than the rest. The cube rose straight up merging with the cavern ceiling. If it weren't for the door and window holes, she would have thought it merely a column to hold up the massive cave roof.

"That one looks promising. Let's take a look," she called.

Something drew her to the massive stone steps. As she ascended, her flashlight beam caught on an enormous crystal. As wide as one of her broad Warriors, the transparent stone spear turned a smoky color at the edge. A quick check showed similar crystals every few feet along the steps.

Movement caught her eye…