by Marc Mulero
“Nah. I would’ve sensed it. Eyes on me or something,” he told himself as his face was covered by shade, only the faint glimmer of his amber irises showing. One hand felt around for stability, to cautiously trace his path forward, touching the spiny indents of crystal nearly sharp enough to prick. His unease was growing and he couldn’t quite explain why, but he did know that his reflexes would be faster if the time came. His other hand was held out behind him, impeller clutched tight, ready.
“Don’t trip,” he whispered for some reason. The cave was getting smaller overhead, to the point where he could reach up and touch it. He didn’t want to crawl again. “Oof.” He had to push through another tight space.
Where was he going? None of this felt traveled before, let alone useful. Still though, he tiptoed as if there could be something terrible waiting on the other side.
He then mistakenly kicked a rock, yelping and wincing at the same time.
“Damn it! Shh.”
Thrum.
A powerful wave of air smacked Eres in the face, as if something terrible had awoken and huffed a great gale of air.
“Who goes there?” A powerful female voice exclaimed.
Eres flattened against the wall, eyes wide, peeking at a source of light that was radiating from around the next corner.
“Just kidding. Oh, that Ramillion must be rubbing off on me.” The voice became considerably more pleasant. But it sounded weird, like an echo. Eres knew what was happening, and when he cautiously turned to look, he was right – an octor had come to life with the projection of some dainty Eplon Skrol-in-training sitting dejectedly in a corner.
“I know what you’re thinking young man or woman, or Dawn, or whatever else you kids want to call yourselves these days, heh. You’re thinking why, oh why did I agree to this?
“I know, me too. Me too. I’m not even going to tell you how long I’ve been down here, if I even know. Time is strange when there are no suns to count. It’s less measurable, less relevant. All weird. Going to be honest at this point… how do I say it? I don’t think we’re supposed to be here, you and I. We stumbled down into this cave by accident, I think. There’s only what, three other Skrol memories in this octor? There were nearly a hundred in that first room I came from.
“It is peaceful here though, right?”
Eres looked down at the poor soul. Tattered clothes, scratches all over her legs from crystal, and discolored skin from eating some bad grapes. Is this what he looked like?
“Lonely too.” The Eplon stole the words right from Eres’ mouth. “Well, let me save you some trouble. There’s no life here… none.” She waved her arms to emphasize this fact. “If you find my bones, well, that means I failed, right? But if you don’t, maybe I got out.” She smiled. “Let me help. The only evidence that this isn’t a pit of death is this octor. Ramillion, or whoever is in charge in your time, meant for this detour to be part of our training. So, take comfort in that, I guess.
“Also, I’ve checked many of the dark spots. All the crevices, uhh,” she was looking around to gauge her location, “west! All the crevices to the west – four or five of them – are all dead ends.”
Eres shrugged, having no idea which way was west down here, so he just made a mental note to count the caves.
“I think there are less of them to the east. I marked everything I found already, but I didn’t travel into them for fear of having to crawl for hours again. That was the worst. Even a year later I still…” she gasped and covered her mouth, “oops! Now you know how long I’ve been down here. Pathetic, I know.
“Well, the only other piece of advice I can offer is don’t be as cautious and fearful as me. Take charge of this place before you starve. These grapes suck.”
Eres laughed. She had a funny way about her.
“Umm, what else?” She tapped a finger to her chin, which is when Eres was pleased to notice that she had an esper of her own. “Oh, this old thing?” She smirked as if reading Eres’ mind. “I think I have the Elkar esper – you know, the one where people tend to hallucinate a lot? It’s true. I see some weird shit. Crowds of uemons in outdated clothing marching and shouting. Funny shaped buildings. Faces strapped around other people’s faces like living masks. I don’t know, whatever. But I’m beginning to think the guy, an old family friend who bequeathed this to me, didn’t like me very much. Hmph, can’t imagine what the Dumos esper is like. Scary.
“Let’s see… what else… what else? Clas Modon is a hack. I think the Third Scar is about someone who’s so scared of the Eternal that he just talks himself into delirium. He tip-toes around everything and that’s coming from a person who tip-toes. So, uh, take it from me. Arguar is the real shit. Read his tome, Efanie Boudai. I can almost drop some memories in the Eternal. I’m almost there because of him.
“Hey,” her tone spunked up a bit, “this has been fun! Therapeutic, like a diary or something. I should’ve gotten one of these things back when I had a chance in the Osa Sphere. Welp. Ressa Noe Donnus out! See ya, and good luck out there future Skrol, and wish me some luck even though you’re from the future, kay? Bye!”
Thrum.
Another vibration shook the ground around him, and just like that the light vanished and the image of Ressa evaporated like a fleeting mirage.
“Noe Donnus,” Eres said. “She’s related to Spera Noe Donnus? The Imperion? What the hell could they possibly have anything to do with the Skrols? Spera must hate this relative of hers. Wow… it could be her mother? Grandmother? I wish she said the year she lived in so I could make sense of this. Another piece of the puzzle.” Eres walked up to the octor sitting in the amplifying device and tried to switch it on by massaging its smooth surface.
The obsidian inside swirled to life like a miniature galaxy and then dispersed into a handprint with pixelated text that wrote:
Identify and record.
Eres backed up immediately. He didn’t want to be part of this… didn’t feel worthy like the others before him. He was too young of course, not attuned in Reach. Yes, that’s it. An imposter, here only as a last resort. It was a quick decision, a determination, to swipe down and shut the octor once more.
“I hope not to recover your bones Ressa Noe Donnus. Obviously the esper made it out, likely into Seren’s hands by now, right? Ilfrid said he’s only missing mine from the Alliance. That means either way she’s dead. Everyone’s dead. Except for me and Proctor Wudon.”
Here came that overwhelming darkness again, not the external kind, but the one that lingers inside – a reminder that existence can be bleak at times, overwhelming, constraining.
“I’m Eres Dawn, a sexless barren, a freak cast into a sphere of ice… a last resort for my fata, a Reachless child to my ooma, a loser meant to hide for the rest of my days. What’s my purpose, to find another loser worthy to do the same after me? Pfah, what a waste.”
His mind went back to Windel… that kiss. “What we could have been...”
Before he knew it, he was back out in the vast crystalized grotto, unconsciously counting the caves to his right – five – Don’t go that way, he thought, and then mindlessly meandered toward the left.
The first indent he came across was not very inviting – deep red, spiked crystals gave the impression of mandibles mid-meal, ready to clamp down as soon as Eres entered.
Nope. I can do without endless rows of teeth ripping into me, thanks.
He then began to reason away the prospect of even attempting it. There’d be snippets of cloth, or dried blood maybe? Something that indicated that there were travelers before him. But then again, there wasn’t much of that anywhere in here. Ressa had it right – this was some dejected area not meant for trespassing – or at least that’s what they were led to believe.
“She said to look for her ‘marks.’ Would’ve been helpful if she gave some sort of hint.”
Eres carried on to another indent near the end of the waterfall – Great, another crawl space. He got to his knees and peered into the bla
ck hole stretching deep. There was nothing to see but the obvious: a condensed area hardly big enough for him to fit through. He could make it though, sure, nothing foreboding protruding to stab him like in that other cave. But the tightness… the feeling of being trapped. Just the thought of it spiked his heart-rate to the point where he could feel it beating in his throat.
His panting was getting worse. Why? Was the prospect of slithering on his belly for hours getting to him? Probably. He couldn’t reason his way out of this one, though.
Next, he pressed his ear up to the hole. A steady sound echoed, an impression that there was running water on the other side, or was that just the waterfall rushing past? Either way, it didn’t matter, because as his head was tilted, he saw it – the mark. Ressa’s mark. He knew because he’d seen it before when watching the Imperions’ debate… it was always beside Spera’s name when she spoke. Another clue that the political and Skrol worlds were somehow deeply interconnected.
Unnerving, really. Eres always thought the Skrols to be far separated, far removed from anything else on the Osa Sphere. Well, it might not even matter that he was making these connections if he couldn’t muster the courage to get beyond this trauma of being trapped. He would just wither away here… all mysteries unsolved.
We can’t have that, now can we?
He pressed his bag close to him to measure how much room he’d have, and then swung his arm overhead to see what would happen if he’d done that while crawling. Easy. His skin would be serrated and scraped up in a second. There was barely any height to the hole, just some width to push forward by the elbows like crawling under barbed wire.
He snapped his tongue and backed up again.
“What am I doing? It’s obvious that this is the way. The mark is right there.”
But even as he said the words, he backed up further, turned to the vastness of his new home. A great quiet space was better than a cramped unknowing one, for sure. Temptation. He was tempted to stay.
Then he realized again what was happening. Another determination. I’m being tested. Ramillion created trauma for his trespassers – a deep fear, the real fire chambers - built for the mind. By making us travel using these means, he cultivated anxiety within us, made us feel trapped. Look at Ressa – an entire year stuck down here. She looked at the space every time and felt the same feeling I do now. Fear.
He wanted us to experience terror of every kind. Short-term shock from the Drigus. Long-term trauma from claustrophobia.
Even though I got passed it once, Ram knew the physiological effects. He bet on it. Something that would be almost impossible to overcome. Like leading a burn victim back to a fire.
“Skrols have to be fearless, huh? They have to be alone, right? A one-person army completely comfortable in their skin. That’s what it is to be a Skrol. And this is the only way to get there, isn’t it Ram? Isn’t it?”
He shouted but nothing moved, just the continuous waterfall in his new home. His lovely, quarantined home. And that’s when he realized, it was time to say goodbye.
Chapter 34
Something Lurks Beyond
Down Eres went, into the pitch-black crawl space that made him tremble in place. His jaw was clenched, body twitched when he felt the drip of what he hoped was water touch his neck and trickle down his back. Breathe, Eres. He used a simple method that worked in reducing his panic before – counting every alternation.
He felt like he was openly traveling inside the throat of some slithering serpent. Wet, slimy and coarse. Disgusting.
Uh oh. His elbow hit a rock on his next attempt forward. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Shadows usually meant open area, but slowly after his eyes adjusted further, he realized it wasn’t a roadblock, just a very sharp turn, one that he wasn’t completely sure he could wriggle through. Shit. Where was Ohndee when he needed her? She would’ve fit just fine. Now if he tried and failed, well…
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
He thought about it. What if he got stuck? Just the idea made him want to punch the low ceiling overhead as hard as he could. It wouldn’t do any good of course, but urges were seldom derived from logic. This was trauma.
So in that spirit, slowly, carefully, he pulled the bulk of his weight with one arm, nearly curling onto his side to awkwardly slink through. He was at the point of no return. Once his waist was past the threshold there was no way to back out. Thankfully he was a thin string of muscle and bone, because if he wasn’t, there would be no shot. Then he had a darker thought:
Maybe that was the point of starving anyone in training with those terrible grapes, to eventually get us to this point.
Guesswork. Just keep moving.
“Mph,” he groaned, feeling pinned near the hip section. “No!” He yelped, and then began wriggling harder to break free. “Why did I take the bait, why did I come here? Damn it!”
Every move seemed to make it worse, more compressed, like a finger trap but for his whole body. Then came the irrational urges - he tried to push up to somehow challenge the strength of immovable rock. Useless.
All in your head. All in your head, he repeated feverishly to himself. “How could this possibly be the right way? Stupid, Eres. Stupid.”
Then he stopped and remembered. “Ressa had a purpose. She crawled all the way back and marked it for anyone else who landed here. For me.” He smiled, calmness taking over. “It can’t be that far if she mustered the courage to come back.”
He relaxed and eventually squeezed out. Freedom, kind of, enough at least to move forward.
One, two. One, two.
He saw something… the cave around him was getting brighter, and his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him this time. The bend up ahead presented a flickering light next to a sharp turn. It’d only been about twenty minutes of crawling, he guessed. His smile was from ear to ear. It was a test. A practical joke even.
“Ramillion, I would strangle you if I could you Mustae-damn ass. Fire chambers indeed. You wanted me to conquer my fear by entering, that was all. Bastard!” His voice echoed in and out. He scurried, as if sprinting the last meter of a race.
“Almost there.” He could hear rushing water, realized the flickering light was the same as the vast cave, the waterfall, the same source of brightness. And when he curled past the last turn, there it was – freedom.
Eres pushed himself out, shook the murky water from his hair and got to his feet. Another grotto – small, with a pond of endlessly rushing water – light blue stone all around, or at least that’s how it appeared. Every couple of seconds he heard the scraping of metal against stone, making his teeth clench the same way as scratching a chalkboard would. He forgot about it quickly though when he saw Ressa’s sign on the wall again. Something underneath it read the following:
Follow the light… always.
“What the heck does that mean? Wait a second… the water. The light is coming from the water.”
He then knelt by the end of the stream and stared dumbly at it. “I’ve never been good at holding my breath. Mustae. Another trial?” He dipped his fingers in to test the temperature, and when he did, he was nearly pulled in.
“What the- what the hell was that?”
It wasn’t the normal temperament of cave springs. Not at all. It was more like a vacuum, because there was a heaviness to it, as if ten Swul warriors had suddenly grabbed onto his fingers and tried to yank him down with all of their might.
Now he was really losing it, eyes darting back and forth, staring into the depths, searching for the Swuls he’d just felt. They weren’t there, of course. It was in his mind.
He squinted in thought, sanity chipping back through to the surface. “An enchantment,” he said aloud. It’d been months since he’d experienced anything of the sort, since the vast cave truly was desolate of Sorcery or Reach. But the signature was there this time: the smell, the feel, the air. It was all tampered with. He was sure of it. Call it a hunch or a vibe, but he was almost certain this
was a gateway to the next step in his trials.
Then he heard a strange clang again, grating of metal or something. He got back to his feet and headed to the edge of where the waterfall met the springs, where there was some white foamy current. That’s when he saw it - a hilt uselessly bobbing up and down. His blade! Proctor Vasa’s blade. He’d been given a second chance.
Eres immediately swiped it without touching anything else and then swung it free of the glistening droplets. Beautiful, sleek crimson, just how he remembered it. And when he opened his grip to check the hilt, there was a full gauge of Crule swirling around inside. It reminded him of Dee for a second, when she’d artificed this blade for him, but then he focused on the overwhelming sensation of not being defenseless.
He was back, feeling complete with sword and impeller in hand. And as if the blade itself contained power, his confidence surged.
“Okay,” he sighed with relief, “now what?”
He’d eaten right before he began his crawl, which wasn’t even an hour prior, so no problem there. As for his bag, he had to be careful to not get it wet. The food, the tomes, everything was at stake. And if he was wrong about blindly following this goofy girl’s signs, he would lose everything he’d set off with. He pressed his fingers tightly against the seams to make sure it was sealed shut and turned the tiny knob over the flap again for good measure. Check.
Next was his mental state. Did he feel more like himself? Sure. However, he still had to wonder, had he really spent enough time in peace? He studied The Third Scar from cover to cover, but what about Ressa? She spoke about Aguar’s book being the true application. Learning how to transcend memories into the Eternal, to “decorate” his home with “lights,” as Clas Modon would put it, was supposed to be a great feat.
But that would mean suffering grapes for another few months, to wind up like Ressa. That did not sound appetizing. And so, he shook his head to weed out conflicting thoughts and prepped himself to take the plunge.
