“Barometric pressure, eighty-one,” Eva flatly stated.
“Confirmed,” Wade nodded while writing it down.
The librarian handed the mechanic her atmospheric measurement tool, and he gave her a different one in exchange.
“Wind speed, Six. No, wait… seven?”
“Let’s call it a six-point-five.”
“Right. Next, humidity.”
Instruments were traded once more, both scholar and technician moving with practiced ease.
“Thirty-six percent.”
“Confirmed.”
It was only natural considering how many times they’ve done this over the past few days.
“Temperature, sixty-one degrees? That can’t be right.”
“You’re holding that one upside down again.”
The process wasn’t without hiccups, of course, hence why the League employed these seemingly trivial procedures.
“Oh, darn. So, nineteen?”
“Mhm.”
“And lastly… Kleiner particle saturation, zero point five.”
“Confirmed.”
“Great. That should be everything, right?”
“Double-checking the list now, but yes, that should be everything. Good work, Miss Applebee.”
“You too, Wade. And thanks for catching that. I can’t seem to focus right now.”
“No worries, ma’am,” the mechanic smiled while packing up the equipment. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah… and it isn’t even over yet.”
It was now two in the afternoon of the fourth day since they stepped foot on this mountain. The team of Ozzy, Wade, Angela, and Eva had more or less made a full lap around Forchill Hill and were currently at the thirteenth and final site they had to take readings and samples from. Much like the others, it was a reasonably wide and flat clearing with a standing stone in the middle. Those sun-bleached pillars of rock had come in handy in making sure they were in the right place, and more or less ran a circle around the peak. It was no surprise the League chose to use these as target sites for their routine surveys of the area, given how conveniently placed the landmarks were.
Their altitude, however, was somewhat problematic. The first batch of sites were quite low on the mountain, but the rest were all over the place in terms of verticality. Having to go up and down the mountain meant travelling between those took two to three times longer due to the terrain that had to be scaled. There weren’t any perilous cliffs or treacherous climbs, just a whole bunch of walking along steep paths that snaked up and down the mountain slopes. So, even though this was the final site and the team wasn’t terribly far from their truck, their presently elevated position meant it would still take them several hours before they made it back to the starting point. It would already be dusk by then, and common sense dictated that it was a bad idea to drive around at night. That went double for these rural areas that turned pitch-black once the sun had gone down. Last but not least, the next train from Sharnwick to Last Flag wasn’t due until tomorrow evening, so hurrying back to the village was pointless to begin with.
“Guess we’re camping out one more time, then?” Wade suggested.
All things considered, it was the best course of action.
“Seems like it,” Eva agreed. “I think Ozzy already figured this would happen.”
“He did wander off the instant we got here, now that you mention it. Wait, where’d Angela go?”
“She’s taking a nap over there, behind that tree.”
“Oh, okay.”
The mechanic might’ve considered that behavior terribly irresponsible a few days ago, but now he understood where it was coming from. The expedition was coming along so swimmingly that any excitement or wanderlust Wade felt at the start had subsided, leaving little but boredom and drudgery in its wake. As a city-boy that grew up on steam engines and clockwork assemblies, he couldn’t help but find these quiet woods exceptionally dull. The technician now had a better understanding of why Angela would go out of her way to stir up the local wildlife. Still, being bored from a lack of trouble was a good problem to have, so Wade didn’t mind it too much. Neither did Eva. If anything, the librarian seemed to be enjoying the fresh air and relaxing atmosphere. As for Ozzy, he was clearly quite proficient in making his own fun out there, given the odd enthusiasm he had about him over the last two days. It was almost… infectious.
“Say, Miss Applebee,” Wade had an idea, “do you think it’s too late to catch up to Ozzy?”
“What do you mean?” the librarian asked.
“I was thinking of tagging along with him. Just for a change of pace, you know?”
Trudging along the beaten path was the safest and quickest way to complete their expedition’s objectives, but that was already over with. Following in the big man’s footsteps would surely prove more interesting than putting up camp and lazing about for half a day, not to mention educational. After all, what sort of explorer would Wade be if he had no idea how to actually explore things?
“I’d advise against it,” said Eva. “It’s already been, what, fifteen minutes? Twenty? He’s probably quite far from here. You’d just get lost if you go looking.”
“Angela can probably find him. Or her bird.”
The librarian scowled in the redhead’s general direction before replying.
“… Probably, indeed.”
“Is something the matter, Miss Applebee? If you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve been giving her the mean-eye all day.”
“Oh, no. Nothing important. Just a… mild disagreement between us girls.”
Needless to say, Eva wasn’t exactly thrilled when Angela told her about her ‘foolproof pig detector test.’ The feralian meant well, but her methods left a lot to be desired. No woman wanted to hear that her friend had made a move on the guy she had her eye on, regardless of her reasons. Still, both Angela and Ozzy seemed mature enough to not dwell on it, so the librarian decided it was about time she dropped her petty grudge. Besides, even if she was outwardly upset, a tiny part of her was indeed happy to hear that the tall and handsome beefcake wasn’t the playboy type.
“But enough about that,” she forced a smile. “I think that’s an excellent idea, Wade. Let’s go see what our intrepid tracker is up to, shall we?”
“Uhm, okay? What about our gear?”
The group had yet to set up camp, but they were still carrying a fair bit of equipment. Wade was intending to leave his share of the luggage with Miss Applebee, but that was under the assumption that she would stay here. And yet, it seemed as though she intended for all of them to go look for Ozzy, which meant Wade had to either leave the equipment unattended or to continue carrying it around. Neither of those were pleasant options, if he had to be honest.
“Just bring it along,” she stated one of them.
“But… I’ve been carrying it around all morning,” the mechanic complained.
“Come now, Mr. Cunningham. You’re a strong young lad, you can manage for a while longer. If it gets too much, I’ll ask Ozzy to carry it for you once we find him. I dare say it’s the least he could do after he ran off so suddenly.”
“Uh… If you say so, miss.”
Wade wasn’t very good with people, but even he could tell something was up. Miss Applebee was usually far more reasonable than this. However, she was also quite right. The technician had gotten used to carrying his hefty backpack around by now and was more than capable of doing some extra hiking with it. Furthermore, he’d been the one to suggest joining the tracker on his nature walk and it would be extremely awkward for him to back out now. So, the two of them woke Angela and explained their intentions. The redhead confirmed that she and Marcello would be able to track down Ozzy easily enough. He was big and heavy, and had no choice but to leave an obvious trail behind.
Well, obvious for Angela. She wasn’t a fully fledged tracker, but she had picked up a lot of tips and tricks over the years. She also didn’t ask a lot of questions as to why Eva and Wade were trying to find him all of a sudden. It seemed like a welcome distraction from the survey job’s drudgery, so the gunslinger was more than eager to lend a hand. Curiously enough, picking up Ozzy’s trail proved much harder than Angela anticipated. The broken branches and deep footprints she expected to find were missing, betraying that the big man knew how to keep a low profile despite his mountainous proportions. Her pet hawk couldn’t spot the man from a bird-eye view, either. Thankfully Angela noticed a series of chalk markings he left on the trees, likely so he could easily retrace his steps if he got lost. Seeing that made the redhead appreciate Ozzy’s skills even more. Even though he clearly knew what he was doing, he also wasn’t proud enough to assume he’d never get turned around in a forest he was unfamiliar with.
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Following the proverbial trail of crumbs led the group down the mountain slope for about half an hour before they wound up at a cave entrance. It didn’t seem all that impressive at first glance, just a hole in the side of a cliff that was barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side.
“You’re sure Ozzy went in there?” Wade raised an eyebrow.
Angela rolled her eyes while wordlessly pointing to the chalky circle just outside the small cavern.
“Yes, but what’s some tiny cave got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Ozzy was looking for a place-a to hibernate?” she said jokingly.
“I… wouldn’t be surprised, to be honest.”
It was impossible to not get the ‘bear in human skin’ impression from the guy, especially after seeing him manhandle that wolf for sport.
“I’m a bit-a curious about these, though,” Angela pointed to some carvings just inside the entrance. “Libby, is this one of those heritage sites?”
“… Hold on, let me check.”
A pinch of worry appeared on Eva’s face as she adjusted her glasses and went to take a closer look at the markings. They looked like letters that had been carved into the rock by hand, and Ozzy definitely wasn’t the one to leave them there. They were far too old and weathered for that. Furthermore, they resembled letters from the Gorkamorka alphabet - the old tongue of goblins and orcs. The scholar then rifled through her sparse luggage until she found a reference book she had brought especially for this trip. It was a tome on Ostorian history and culture that also had a list of the sites Angela asked about. A few minutes and several pages later, she was able to confirm her friend’s suspicions.
“Crap. It is a heritage site. Forchill’s Fall, specifically.”
“Porca puttana!” Angela hissed.
“And that’s… bad?” Wade asked.
“Very,” Eva sternly replied. “If Ozzy does anything that could be considered vandalism, we’d all be in deep trouble.”
“The League, they always butt-a heads with the government over these things.”
The technician wasn’t familiar with the issue, but he could imagine how a bunch of nosy explorers might not be welcome at a place the state had designated as culturally and historically significant. It also explained why the redhead was wiping away the chalk mark while also looking over her shoulder, though Wade thought she was overreacting.
“It’ll be fine. Ozzy’s a reasonable sort. I doubt he’ll-”
The technician’s words were interrupted by an avalanche of rumbling and cracking noises that echoed from deep inside the cave.
“-do… any… damage…” he quietly finished.
There was a brief moment of silence while Angela and Eva took deep breaths.
“My, what an awful racket that was,” the librarian said flatly.
“Si. A most curious and unexpected development,” the gunslinger echoed her tone.
“We should investigate to make sure that this freak accident did not have any casualties.”
“This is a good, moral, and responsible course of action.”
“Uhm, are you two okay?” Wade asked, more than a little creeped out.
“We’re fine, but oh no, our tracker who is not familiar with the region has gone missing.”
“Libby is correct. We need-a to make sure he didn’t unwillingly and unknowingly walk into that terrible accident we just heard by coincidence.”
The uncanny ferocity in Angela’s eyes and voice helped Wade finally get the memo.
“Ah. Uhm, yes. Let’s… do that.”
It would appear this wasn’t either of these two ladies’ first time trespassing onto a heritage site, so the young man followed their example. Indeed, it was probably in everyone’s best interest to just play dumb should the authorities get involved. Something about plausible deniability and probable cause, no doubt. That aside, their concern that Ozzy might be hurt was not entirely for show, so they wasted no time entering the cave in search of the big dummy. The interior was completely dark, but that was nothing that a trio of standard-issue explorer’s lanterns couldn’t fix. Getting lost wasn’t going to be a concern, either. Judging from the few paragraphs in Eva’s book, Forchill’s Fall was deep, but linear. It was literally impossible to get turned around in it.
The cavern gradually widened the deeper into the mountain it went, its walls adorned with an increasing number of wall carvings and cave paintings of the ancient goblin variety. Other signs of the greenskins’ primitive civilization could be found in the shape of child-sized stone beds and crude staircases hewn out of the floors and walls. All of this had already been researched and documented to the point of exhaustion by New Ostor’s finest archeologists, yet the trio of Wade, Eva, and Angela couldn’t help but feel excited. This was their first time seeing this place, and it had the exact same atmosphere of mystery one might imagine when they thought of explorers delving into the ruins of a long-forgotten civilization. Because that was exactly what they were doing, technically speaking. Legal consequences aside, this was definitely the high point of the expedition so far.
Any adventurous fantasies the group might’ve had were crushed the moment they reached Ozzy. They turned a corner to find the big lummox standing next to a huge hole in the wall. One that he was responsible for, judging by the dust in the air and the rocky rubble scattered around him. The culprit was currently standing in the middle of this mess, right hand on his hip and left one nervously stroking the back of his neck. He was far too focused on what was presumably his handiwork to notice he had visitors.
“Great,” he mumbled. “How am I going to explain this?”
Hearing that snapped Eva out of her stunned stupor, at which point she, understandably, went ballistic.
“Ozzy!” she shouted, startling the man.
“Ack! Uhm, oh, hey Eva. Erm… Fuh… Fancy meeting you here?”
“Don’t ‘fancy’ me, you dolt! What did you do?!”
“Okay, listen,” he raised his hands slightly. “Before you say anything, this was not my fault.”
“Like hell it isn’t!”
“It wasn’t!”
“What! Did! You! Do?!”
“I just stumbled upon this place. Had a look around, curious and explorer-y and stuff. I saw that wall and thought to myself, ‘Hey, that looks like a good spot for a secret tunnel.’ And, I was right! See?”
He pointed to the recently opened passage with a goofy grin on his lips. He’d never have found it without the knowledge the ancient spirit of the mountain had shared with him. It had still taken him an embarrassingly long time to locate and open the tunnel, but he was nevertheless thrilled about his eventual success. His inability or unwillingness to keep that glee from showing on his face wasn’t exactly helping his case in Eva’s eyes.
“So how is this damage not your fault?!” she waved at the rubble scattered across the floor.
“I didn’t know the wall would fall down. Who cares, anyway. It’s just some lifeless rock.”
The woman pinched her nose in frustration and took a deep breath.
“You realize this is a state-protected heritage site?”
“Uh…”
“No. Of course, you don’t.”
That much was to be expected. Ozzy was, by his own admission, a total stranger to how things worked in New Ostor, or with the League of Explorers. There’s no way he could have known about something as specific and niche as cultural heritage sites when even Wade was in the dark about them. Unfortunately, ignorance of the law did not exempt one from the consequences of violating it. This was sure to turn into a huge headache that would, at best, result in the entire team’s expulsion from the League. It would take a while for someone to notice the damage, of course, but it was inevitable that a ranger or one of the locals would stumble upon this scene. And the first thing the authorities would do once it was reported was to contact the League and look into which explorers had visited the area last.
“We’ll talk about it later. And just where are you going, exactly?”
The librarian was so busy worrying about legal repercussions that she only just now noticed that a certain someone already had one foot inside Ozzy’s ‘discovery.’
“Uhm, secret tunnel,” Angela pointed down the passage.
“Really? Really?!”
“What?”
“We’re already neck deep in trouble!”
“So? It’s not like we can get into any more trouble, right?”
“She… has a point,” Wade chimed in. “Might as well see what’s in there.”
“You can’t be serious,” the brunette crossed her arms.
“Come now, Eva,” Ozzy spoke up. “Does this not rouse your explorer’s spirit? Adventure calls, and I intend to answer.”
The other two nodded vigorously in agreement. Though each of them had different reasons for signing up with the League, it was impossible to not get sucked into the ideals the organization preached. What sort of explorer would hesitate to delve into the unknown and discover its mysteries? That dark and foreboding tunnel could hold all kinds of wonders. It was difficult for these four to resist its allure, and Angela didn’t even attempt to do so. She saw the potential for excitement and renown and leapt at it without any hesitation, much as she always did. Wade’s motivations were far more basic. He just hoped whatever was in there would be enough to make up for the steep fines that would surely find him once this was all over. Ozzy’s intentions were the most selfless, as the passage led down to the ‘leech’ that plagued the great mountain spirit. As for Eva, as much as she wanted to pack up and go home right this instant, she found herself getting swept up in the others’ excitement.
“I… suppose this place might… have some ancient writings and such,” she mumbled.
Indeed, now that she thought about it, Forchill’s Fall was estimated to have been here since the Age of Darkness. It was a period of time more than three thousand years ago that predated recorded history, and this primitive goblin settlement was one of the few links that the modern world had to its long-forgotten past. That alone was why New Ostor had deemed this place a site of cultural significance. It was also why the scholars and historians that had previously examined it did so very carefully. No archeologist worth their tiny shovel would have resorted to the heavy-handed approach Ozzy had no doubt taken to expose that hidden passage. It was therefore safe to assume that nobody had set foot in that corridor for millenia. Its presence was no accident either, given the unnaturally square shape of it. As an amateur historian and a purveyor of knowledge besides, the mere thought of being among the first to explore it made Eva’s heart race something fierce.
And in the end, it was only human to follow one’s heart.
“Alright,” she decided. “Let’s see what- Huh?!”
There was just one minor issue.
“Hey! Wait for me!”
The librarian had taken so long to make up her mind that the rest of her team had ventured forth without her.