by Tom Rogal
He continued, “Don’t worry. We’re going to find the way out. I figure we’re halfway through the caverns by now . . . I think. We should arrive in Tartus by the next night . . . or two.”
“What time is it?”
“Probably close to morning. It’s hard to tell.”
“Seems like we’ve been in here forever.”
What struck Divi as odd was that even thought they had been walking the entire day, she wasn’t sleepy or tired at all. Even her sore leg muscles which had hurt the entire way up seemed to have relaxed the moment they began to explore the caverns. Another thing that Divi didn’t understand was the strange smells that became stronger the deeper they got. Levus said it was just mold from the moisture, but it couldn’t. She had seen many variations of mold in her travels with her dad, but she had never smelled this foul scent before.
Levus tossed a berry up in the air. He tried to catch it with his mouth, but it hit his chin and rolled off into one of the near paths. He jumped up to chase after it as the berry turned the corner and continued rolling. Levus finally captured the runaway fruit just as it was picking up speed. When he looked up, he froze.
All he could say was, “What the hell?”
CHAPTER 6
Mystery in the Darkness
“Levus, what’s the matter?”
Divi quickly got up. She thought she heard him say something under his breath. When she reached him, he was on his knees looking forward. She followed his gaze as he stood.. So, that is what he was looking at! About halfway down the corridor, the area was lit by torches in metal holders.
Divi suggested, “Perhaps there are more travelers in here.”
He shook his head. She wanted to comfort him, but she was surprised to feel Levus’ shoulder icy cold when she touched it.
“No. Travelers take torches with them. They don’t leave them on the wall. We’re not alone here.”
The idea made Divi shiver. For the whole trip, they thought they were alone. But what if the people down here were friendly? No, they couldn’t be. One doesn’t live in a cave for pleasure. One usually lives in a cave because they don’t want to be found.
Levus walked slowly down the lit corridor. How could they have missed this when they first arrived? He must have thought that the light was coming from their own torch. The more closely Divi examined them, the more she could see how the cave walls and ceiling had been altered to make a straight and smooth surface. The floor lacked the rock debris apparent throughout the rest of the caves.
Levus and Divi reached the end of the corridor, where he gasped. They stood on one of many stone bridges. These were not naturally made. Someone knocked the cave walls down and excavated everything else to create this chasm. None of the explorers chronicles Levus told her he read about the caves mentioned this, anyway. Something was living here for a very long time.
Levus started to cross the bridge and Divi reluctantly followed. Every footstep produced a loud echo throughout the entire room. She could only imagine what would happen if they tried to speak.
The ceiling was covered by what seemed to be hundreds of ventilation holes. Some of them were ragged, naturally occurring shapes, much like the others in the caves earlier. Yet most of them were finely made, perfect circles. Above the many bridges of different sizes leading across the gorge, all the stalactites had been carefully removed. When she looked down, which was about five hundred feet, she could see the entire floor covered with stalagmites. If anyone were to fall off, survival would be slim.
They finally made it over the bridge entering a darker hallway, where only a few torches were placed. At the end, three paths presented themselves.
“Great.”
“Now what?” asked Divi.
All paths appeared well-lit. Levus looked around, as if hopeful to spot clues that would tell them which way to go. Figures. Nothing was going to come easy for them. He glanced at Divi and then again at the passageways.
“Best way would be to split up. I’ll take the right path, you take middle. We’ll meet back here.”
She grabbed his arm and exclaimed, “Are you insane? Who knows what’s in here!”
Her voice echoed in the room and down the passageways. Levus put his finger in front of her mouth. “Whisper. It will be all right. If you see something you can’t handle, just walk away. If we stay together and choose wrong that potentially delay us for days. I won’t have enough food for that. We will meet back here.”
She still didn’t like his idea, but wouldn't have been able to plead her case any longer. Levus had already started down one of the paths. Divi took the center pathway, only hoping she would see nothing but the way out.
***
Levus walked with caution through yet another dim hallway. Most of the torches were burned out, and the ones still lit were growing weak. For the past thirty minutes, the only sound he had heard was his own heavy breathing. The cave seemed to be getting murkier and the air harder to breathe the deeper he walked. He did not think it was the altitude for he had been near the top of the highest cliffs on Dyyros without experiencing this trouble.
Strangely, his thoughts turned to Divi. He hoped everything was going all right for her. She was sometimes so fragile. He had not wanted to leave her alone at first, but knew they would be in here longer if they stayed together. It was the right thing to do. He continued to move down the hallway and entered a round room. Levus looked to the ceiling . . . another room without a ventilation hole. He was still surprised he could breathe with the thick moisture and the seemingly thinning air. Perhaps it was a bad idea to come here in the first place. Taking the plains would’ve been easier.
“Levus.”
Did he just hear his name? No, it couldn’t be. Divi was the only one who knew he was down here . . . and it was a man’s voice. His gaze finally fixed upon a wall with writing that for some reason he could read. It was odd as he never saw this language before. The words appeared to have been carved into the stone by a chisel.
“What does it say?”
There was that voice again whispering in his head. Perhaps the moisture made his ears throb with sounds that seemed like speech. Levus shuffled his feet parallel to the wall, advancing down it in a scurry. He began to read the foreign tongue as perfectly as he if he had known it his entire life. With every word, he clenched his hand tighter around the handle of the mysterious blade.
“You know what must be done.”
Levus finished reading. His thoughts shifted back to Divi. Yes, he knew what he would have to do. He leaned forward, on the wall, while giving an ominous laugh. He quickly changed it to a quiet snicker, so that it would not leave the circular room. He knew exactly what he had to do.
***
Divi moved cautiously into the next hallway. She had only gone through five rooms, and they all looked the same! She thought she was going in circles until she came upon the current space. It was smaller and more confined than the others. In the corner lay maces and hammers with a spike at one end. These caves housed something more sinister than a few lost travelers she thought.
She had a bad feeling about this place. The last time she felt this sensation was in the Dyyros Woods just moments before the Night Predators ruined her slumber. Yet it couldn’t be them. If what Levus said was true, they lived in the mountains to the north. From what she saw in Porsita, there was no reason why they would leave the forest.
She went through the maze of hallways, choosing the middle option each time to avoid getting lost. After three more rooms, she thought she heard voices . . . more like chanting. Accompanying the voices were what sounded like the hitting of metal with hammers. The next room was better lit than the rest.
Divi stepped through and stopped. By the gods! The room was a large chasm, even larger than the last one, but this one was full of activity. On the ground had to be thousands of those accursed Night Predators. They not only lived in the forest. And based off the construction of the room, they had been here a long time. F
ire pits blazed everywhere. The heat reached Divi even at her height, making her feel woozy.
She inched closer to the edge, hoping to get a better glimpse at what the Night Predators were doing. As she did, a loose stone hit her foot and fell off. She froze, wanting to run. Her legs refused to move from fear as the stone landed near one of the creatures. It looked up.
Divi began running back. She had to get out and warn Levus. When she reached the fifth room, it didn’t look the same. Damn, I made a wrong turn somewhere! She didn’t want to backtrack on the chance they investigated the hall she was in. She just had to keep moving. These had to lead to the other paths at some point.
Divi finally ran fully inside the next room. This one was very different. It was rectangular, a welcomed sight. Divi noticed that there were no ventilation holes on the ceiling. Large pillars extended from the ceiling to the floor. She had seen the style before. It was the architecture of Lozela, whose people used arches plentifully on the stony trunk of the pillar. Yet, she was baffled why they were here. She would have to ask Prince Thamalos the next time she saw him . . . if there was a next time.
She continued slowly through the room, refusing to walk in the center, which was well lit. In this place, ironically, the darkness was her ally. The only thing that gave her presence away was the echo of her footsteps. Divi hid behind each pillar she passed. She feared this place more than in the woods. In the woods, there at least was a place to go. Here, she felt trapped. Hard, solid walls replaced the lucidity and openness of the forest.
She ducked behind the nearest pillar. As she did, her left arm slammed into a metal torch holder, which fell with a metallic thud that echoed into the nearby rooms. Divi ran two pillars down and hugged the next one with her back, her knees trembling. She listened, frozen with terror. The echoing had ceased and all was quiet. The spitting fire was the only sound. Minutes passed. From time to time, she looked over her shoulder, as she thought she had heard something, only to realize her own breathing caused her monstrous fear. Divi closed her eyes and released a sigh of relief. She thought for sure someone would have heard the ruckus she had caused. She almost didn’t notice her knees trembling.
Boom.
Divi opened her eyes. Her trembling knees locked up violently. The sound grew closer and closer. She almost couldn’t get a breath out.
Boom!
They had to be footsteps, but in this place, she wasn’t sure about anything. She glanced toward the far wall ahead of her to her right, where she believed the source of the noise came from. Nothing. Even the sound came to a stop. She wanted to look over her shoulder again, but fear kept her facing forward. She tried to inhale and exhale slowly so as not to be heard, but that was easier said than done.
She realized that the breathing was not her own, but of something else. It was very heavy, almost like a grunt. Divi’s whole body quivered and her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest. What was in the room with her?
She finally got the courage to turn her head. The dark cloud of a hideous beast's shadow nearly blotted the torchlight from the wall. She couldn’t see any features except that one side of the creature had two arms. She could only imagine what the rest looked like. It walked slowly down the middle of the room, snorting loudly. Was it trying to smell her out?
Two different voices came from a few rooms down, muffled by the distance.
Her concentration on trying to identify the voices was disrupted when two large hands almost encircled the pillar she stood behind. Small debris fell on Divi’s head. She slowly lifted her gaze. The skin was between dark blue and green. The nails were a bright yellow and black toward the base. Light hair grew on the arms, which were gnarled up in knots. It must have never bathed, as the smell was awful.
She had to move or risk being discovered. Divi darted a pillar down and hid just as the creature turned its head to where she had previously stood. Out of the corner of her eye, the once-darkened section now shone with light. It must carry a torch in one of those hands. She had to see what she was up against.
She gave a silent gasp. The creature reached almost to the ceiling of the room, which was twenty feet tall. Its left eye was slightly higher than the other and its mouth contained only three teeth. It had no hair on its head or on its chest. The nose was the largest feature, overshadowing its small eyes.
She had to get out of this room. With the nose on that creature, it would easily be able to sniff her out. Divi turned her head and was shocked to see that it was not there anymore. Where did it go? She listened attentively. Nothing. Although confused, she wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass her by.
Divi stayed close to the pillars in the lighted section of the hall. She had to reach Levus. He said that if she ran into something she couldn’t handle, to walk away. That was precisely what she was doing. Sweat began to pour from her forehead. She only had three pillars to go before she was out of the room.
Suddenly, as she crossed between the next two pillars, the creature jumped out from the darkened space on the opposite side of the room. Divi fell hard onto her posterior. The pain was forgotten as the creature looked at her with its disfigured face. She crawled backward without ever taking her eyes off it. When it started advancing on her, Divi found the courage to run for the door. She wove between pillars so the creature would have difficulty keeping up with her. Still, it followed her through the door. Her scream echoed throughout the entire cavern.
She tried to backtrack to where Levus told her to meet. As she entered the third room, she no longer heard the footsteps trailing her. She turned back to see what was going on. The doorway was too small for the creature to fit through and the stone was still solid, not chipped away like the other doorways. There are gods! It tried punching at the rock, but it was too hard even for the brute. All the monster could do was stare at Divi. It gave up, returning the way it came. Divi sighed. That was close.
She sprinted through the remaining rooms until she finally saw the doorway that lead to her destination. As she reached the it, a figure walked across. Divi fell back on her rear again, and started inching herself away.
“Divi?”
She recognized that voice, relieved to hear it. Levus’ torch made him completely visible.
Divi hugged him around the waist, tighter than she ever had before. What an odd reaction, he figured, but he returned the gesture regardless. He couldn’t pass up a chance to feel her skin pressing against his . . . what was he thinking? It had to be the heat of the moment. Yeah, that's it. Heat of the moment.
“Hey, everything is okay. You’re safe.”
After a few seconds, Divi released her grip on Levus hesitantly. Levus wiped a stray tear from her face. Just looking into those beautiful blue eyes had him melting. He began to feel a passion building stronger in him, one that he tried to deny the first time he saw her in the pond after he rescued her from Kile. He had to control himself, for the moment. He had to find out what frightened her so much.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Divi opened her mouth, but no sound was coming out. Levus put his hand on her shoulder and began rubbing it gently, but firmly. This was a technique his good friend had taught him. It supposedly had a relaxing effect on the opposite sex, though Levus never got to try it out until now. Leeta was not one who lived with much stress in her life. Oh, how he hoped his friend hadn't told him a drunken bard’s remedy.
“Come on. Relax.”
She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing down. The massage soothed her tense muscles, calming everything but her heart. It felt good! Still, despite how relieved her body was, her mind remained in disarray. The image of the creature lingered in her memory. She reopened her eyes and faced Levus.
“Divi, what’s the matter?”
“Something’s after me! It was horrible! It was horrible!”
Levus put both his hands on her shoulders, once again giving her the security she desperately needed. He didn’t mind it. Whatever scared her was all
owing him to get closer to her. Plus, how bad could it be? He saw nothing threatening in his path.
Juuappa . . .
Exactly. Nothing.
As Divi looked in his eyes, she saw a certain softness in his gaze for the first time. Her heart thumped harder again.
Levus said, “It’s all right. Whatever you saw is gone now. If it comes back, I’ll take care of it.”
Just as he finished his sentence, the four-armed creature came crashing through the wall from the pathway Levus had originally exited. Divi screamed, not expecting to see it. So, eventually the paths would have crossed. The whole creature was not visible due to the dirt flying threw the air. It gave a blood-chilling moan as it stared at the two intruders.
The creature reached out to swipe at Levus, but he avoided it, taking notice of how it balanced itself on its thin long feet with three toes. He was surprised it could hold its own weight.
Divi clenched his arm tightly as they crept backward. “Now what?”
Levus replied, “Only one thing to do . . . run!”
Keeping his grip on each other’s arms, they rushed toward the left-hand pathway. With a trembling moan, the creature gave chase. Levus and Divi tried losing the monster by going through the closest doors, but it was not fooled. When they aimed for doorways too small for the creature, it crashed through them with its brute strength. In rooms where the rock was weaker, the mountain shook at the whims of this beast. Ahead of them, Levus sprinted, seeing a large hole in the wall ahead of them.
Divi came close to tripping many times, but Levus’ grasp helped her keep her balance. The creature was gaining on them.
The next room they entered held another chasm crossed by many skinny bridges. They kept running until they noticed the loud footsteps of their pursuer stopped. The creature couldn’t get through the doorway again. This was twice it saved them. After a few more moans, the creature finally turned around and left.
