by Kaden Reed
"Yeah, you are right," sounding somewhat crestfallen, she looked up at him briefly then glanced back at the hole, "it was probably just the wind or something, like you said. Let's go home. I imagine our families have already prepared a celebration."
"I think everyone will just be glad that it has finally happened," Clay laughed, "the elders almost gave up on us because you waited so long."
"Well I needed to train," she muttered, "I would only have one chance and you are one of our best hunters. I couldn't fail...”
Hearing her voice trail off at the end, Clay pulled her in close and whispered into her ear, "I have been yours for a very long time, Briar."
Smiling contentedly up at him, she ran her fingers along the Sorah around his neck, tracing the delicate scrollwork in the metal. Their people have used the Sorah to signify marriage for as long as history has existed. The women choose the man that they wish for a husband and proclaim their intentions by placing their Sorah on their cot. If the man accepts, he returns the Sorah to the woman and then the pursuit begins in earnest.
The interested woman must demonstrate her desire for her husband by hunting him as prey along the island. The hunt is to signify the strength of the man and woman. The longer the hunt lasts, the stronger the couple is said to be. Likewise, if the man is caught too soon or if the woman fails to catch him at all, the marriage will be refused by the elders.
Their hunt started the night previously and Clay had barely managed to keep ahead of her since. It wasn’t unheard of for the ritual to last multiple days, but it was rare. Most couples treat the rites with a token amount of respect and their hunts last no more than a handful of hours. However, the diligence Briar approached training for the hunt left no doubt to anyone in the village that she took the ritual with the utmost sincerity. She expected to earn the right to place the Sorah on Clay’s neck or lose him as a potential husband forever.
Looking down at his soon-to-be wife as they started making their way back to their village, Clay could make out the faint lines of fatigue around her eyes and the way she leaned against him. A wave of unimaginable pride overcame him, and he pulled her closer to his side, determined to be the kind of man she expected him to be.
Briar suddenly stiffened against his side after a dozen steps, concerned that she might be in pain he paused, "what is wrong? Are you hurt?"
"I heard it again Clay. I'm not crazy, I swear. Go find another rock. Make it a bigger one," she told him distractedly while staring down the hole.
Sighing quietly, he searched for a rock that satisfied her request and brought it to her. Finding Briar back on her knees next to the hole, he crawled up next to her and showed her the rock.
"Throw it in," she told him impatiently.
Holding his hand out with the rock near the center of the hole, he let go and they watched it fall into the depths. Staring into the inky blackness, they waited for something to happen. It felt like forever, but eventually, an echo of a faint crash from far below made its way up to them.
With his eyes wide in panic, Clay realized that this hole was far larger than he had thought and began pushing himself slowly away from it.
"Did you hear that?" Briar exclaimed in excitement. Turning to see the hunter inching away from the hole, she began to laugh, "so big and strong, you are."
"Hey, you know I don't like heights," he averted his eyes from hers in embarrassment, but he did manage to stop trying to crawl away.
Still laughing, Briar punched his shoulder, "toss your glow potion down there. Let’s see how deep this really goes!"
Sighing in resignation, Clay dropped his glow potion in, and they watched it fall. After falling a little way, the sides of the hole opened outward, beyond what could be seen from the opening. The potion fell so far that it became a faint light in the darkness before the bottle shattered on the ground, throwing the glowing contents around the impact area.
"I think this is a cavern," Briar exclaimed, her eyes wide in wonder, "this could be it! This could be the one we have been searching for!"
"Hand me my pack," Briar seemed to vibrate with excitement in the moonlight as she glanced up, gesturing for him to hand her the pack, "I think I have a long enough strand of rope to get most of the way down."
"Seriously Briar, why don't they mark this location and come back in a couple of days after we rest and get our strength back?" He asked while walking over to retrieve her discarded pack, "we could return with a few other hunters during the daytime. It will be safer then."
"You know the sunlight won't penetrate very far into this hole," she responded while gesturing for him to hurry up, "so it won't matter if it is daylight or not. I doubt the walls of this cavern have seen daylight in ages. Besides, I feel as strong as I ever have, but if you want to sit this one out…" Her voice trailed away teasingly.
Handing her pack to her, Clay glanced back down the hole into the suspected cavern, “you know that if this is the cavern we have been looking for, this will change everything. Our village will never be the same again. I’m not sure if I want that.” Having always been a quiet man, Clay valued the predictable life in their small village. Although the individual tasks may change from day to day, there was a certain kind of peace to be found in the steady rhythm in fighting against mortality.
“Yeah I get that, but it won’t change the fact that this would mean all of the legends are true,” she threw a half-eaten loaf of bread over her shoulder at him while she continued to rummage in her pack, “there should be unimaginable wealth down there, just waiting to be claimed. Think of all the magical artifacts! Our little village would never need to fear being raided by the nearby tribes again.”
He muttered to himself, “that’s great and I really want that for our village, but the legends also say that it is extremely dangerous. If this is the place, then the creatures from our nightmares might actually exist too.”
“What was that?” Briar looked over to him questioningly.
Knowing she would just argue with him some more, he sighed and gently pulled the rope out of her hands, “I will go first. If I find anything down there you can join me.”
Clay walked over and looped the length of rope twice around the tree he had huddled against recently. After he was satisfied that the rope was securely fastened, he pulled his own pack off his back and pulled out the harness he made using small strips of leather a while ago and began slipping into it.
Briar sat near the edge of the hole and watched him with a look of concern slowly growing on her face as she pondered the potential implications of this find, “Clay, promise me that you will be careful?”
He glanced down at her and smirked, “I promise that if I run into a situation that may be dangerous, I will just ask himself ‘what would Briar do?’ and then I will just do the opposite. No way will I be in any danger then.”
Laughing she bounced to her feet and poked him in his side, “you better!”
He checked over his harness one more time then ensured that his short blade was tied to his waist next to a small quiver of arrows, several glow potions and a pouch of herbs with healing properties. With his bow secured over his shoulder, he ran the rope through several loops in his harness and crawled to the edge of the hole.
“Wait,” he heard Briar call behind him and she came up to kneel next to him, “here, take this.”
She placed a small object in his hand. He glanced down at it confirming what he thought she had given him. A gleaming azure stone, about the size of an acorn, adorned with intricate angular designs was in the palm of his hand.
“I can’t take this, Briar. You remember what the elders said,” he tried to hand the stone back to her.
Holding up her hand in refusal, “the elders think it is an ancient rune stone that is supposed to protect the bearer. You know just like I do what the legends say may be down there. You have to keep it; it will protect you.”
Looking from the stone to her determined face, he gave up and put it in his pouch. He
would feel a lot more comfortable with her carrying it for protection but if she was letting her worry show like this, it costs him nothing to ease her obvious anxiety in this small way.
He bent down and touched his lips to the top of her head, “chances are there is nothing down there and I’ll be back up here before you fall asleep from boredom.” Then before she could respond, he leaned back over the hole and let himself begin descending.
After he moved past the lip of the hole and the walls started widening out, he had to pause and contort his body to slow the swaying motion of the rope before he began descending again. The walls quickly got lost in the darkness and no matter how he moved about with the glow potion, he couldn’t find them again. Far below him the glowing remnants of the glow potion that they dropped in here were barely visible.
He had to quell a moment of panic when the sensation that he was a small fly suspended in the middle of a huge web made of darkness came over him. Whenever his anxiety peaked, he glanced up to see the outline of Briar quietly looking down on him, holding a glow potion cupped in her hands. Seeing her watching over him helped him to calm the rising tide of fear and after a few moments of taking deep breaths, he was able to continue to descend again.
When he neared the bottom of the rope, he looked down and estimated that he was still suspended about six or seven yards off the floor. Pulling out two of his spare glow potions, he shook them until they were glowing brightly. When the additional light didn’t reveal any new features out of the surrounding darkness, he decided to throw them in opposite directions to try to reveal more details about this mysterious cavern.
One seemed to fly for over thirty yards before arcing down and breaking against the rock-strewn floor. Although it didn’t illuminate any new elements of this cavern, it did give him some perspective at the potential size of this place. He whistled softly to himself realizing that this hole in the ground was a lot larger than he had originally thought.
Swaying slightly from the force of his recent throw, he slowly rotated in place until he was facing the opposite direction. The warrior was determined that he was going to put everything he had in this next throw and try to find a wall, or at least, something other than just the floor.
Reaching back as far as he could, while dangling about fifty yards down into a dark abyss, he grunted as he let the glow potion fly. Then he screamed shrilly in terror as the potion broke open no more than two yards in front of him.
“Gaaaah,” he yelled as he flinched back from the yawning mouth that was briefly illuminated no more than a handful of yards in front of him. He quickly realized that he was nothing more than a piece of meat on a string and had nowhere to go while he was on this rope. Frantically he fumbled for the knots on his harness but in his terror his fingers couldn’t untie them quick enough. As panic gripped him, the warrior reached down to his waist and pulled out his short blade and was about to take a swing at the rope holding him six yards off the ground, when he realized that he was… still alive.
The realization made him pause for half a heartbeat and look around. Scanning what should have been the yawning mouth of some huge cave beast, Clay realized that it was a jagged piece of rock that jutted up from a much larger section of stone which looked like it was mostly flat. Some of the glow potion was still running down the rock and traced a path snaking all the way down to the bottom of the cavern. As he gazed at the revelation, it slowly became apparent that this flat area was some sort of ledge.
Getting himself under control, he could hear Briar calling from up above, “Clay, what was it? I’m going to start pulling you up!”
“No! No, everything is fine,” he called back at her while still breathing hard from screaming, “nothing scary down here, just some rocks. Definitely no huge cave beasts made of shadow that want to eat me. Everything is fine. How are you?” His voice went from a little higher pitch than normal to almost shrill by the time he managed to shut his mouth with an audible click.
There was a long pause above him before she said with disbelief evident in her voice, “seriously? I wonder if it is too late to take back my Sorah. So much for my fantasy of marrying a strong and fearless warrior. I bet I could talk to the elders…”
Chuckling, he could still hear her muttering to herself above him. He knew she brought humor to a stressful situation to try to calm them both down. As he listened to her, he felt his fears begin to dissipate and the knot between his shoulder blades loosened a bit.
Clay examined the newly discovered ledge that was right next to him. Taking out an additional glow potion he shook it alight and threw it beyond the jutting stone spike. It impacted about three yards passed and splattered potion over a wide surface. From what he could make out, the ledge appeared to be about three yards or so wide before it met the wall.
Making a somewhat rash decision he yelled back at Briar above, “I think I found a ledge next to me. I am going to swing over and try to lower myself down on it.”
“Be careful O’Fearless One,” she mockingly called back down to him.
Rolling his eyes in her direction, he started rocking back-and-forth to build up momentum until his legs were able to wrap themselves around the stone spike. Once he was able to grab it with his hands, the hunter started unfastening the rope from his harness and slowly let himself slide down to the stone floor of the ledge.
Crouching down on one knee he pulled out two glow potions and shook them alight. Holding one in each hand, he examined the area around him.
The light of the glow potions didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness as much as he thought they should have. Muttering to himself about the village alchemist cutting corners, Clay slowly got both feet under him and made his way over to where the wall should be. As he approached, he scanned the floor of the ledge, but the dust was so thick that he wasn’t able to make out the rock beneath.
As the warrior approached, the wall of the cavern was gradually illuminated by his glow potion. Noticing two parallel lines in the rock going horizontal in the wall, he reached out a hand with a glow potion and started following the lines to the right. As he followed them for a couple of yards, it became apparent that both lines were gradually arcing towards the floor. He traced a finger over the lines and started cleaning the dust off them. As he cleaned the area, the fact that these lines weren’t just a natural rock formation dawned on him as the parallel lines were revealed to be the two edges of an indentation in the rock about a hand’s width deep.
The indentation was so caked with dirt that he mistook them for just being lines in the rock. Following the indentation for a couple more yards, it intersected with a second indentation that appeared to be gradually curving up from the direction of the floor. Retracing his steps, he followed the indentation for several yards going in the opposite direction and encountered another indentation mirroring the first discovery.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he went back to where he estimated the middle of this thing was. With his hands trembling, the warrior slowly sank to his knees and stared at the area in between both indentations. Not seeing anything, he ran his hands over the area trying to find anything that stood out.
After futilely searching for a couple of minutes Clay started muttering in frustration, “come on! Don’t tell me I am imagining things! This is assuredly the proof that we have been looking for.”
When his fingers found a slight rise in an area near the middle of the wall he was searching, his heart began to race to the point that he thought it would jump out of his chest and start running back to the village without him. His hands were shaking so badly that they were nearly useless as he tried to clear the dust and packed dirt out of the way. Taking a break, he pulled out his water pouch and took a long slow swallow to calm his nerves.
Looking down at his water pouch, he realized that he had been going about this the wrong way. He emptied some of the water in his hand then transferred it to the area of the wall he had been working on. As the water soaked into the dirt on the wall
, additional details slowly became apparent. The stark contrast between dirt and rock became visible in the light of the glow potion.
Excitedly he started emptying his water pouch over large sections of the stone wall. Shortly later his pouch ran dry and the warrior stood back from the wall to take a look at what see what he discovered.
The indentations that arched from the floor and roof of the ledge became apparent as almost an oval shape with slight points at both ends where the indentations met. Near the middle was another, much smaller, oval. However, the smaller oval was a solid piece that was no larger than his head. Surrounding that oval was a raised circle with straight lines that radiated from it in all directions.
The sound of the empty water pouch impacting the stone floor, after it slipped out of his frozen hands, went completely unnoticed by him. In the stunned silence, he slowly lowered himself to his knees.
Time seemed to slip by in a haze as the warrior stared numbly at the depiction on the wall. His mind lost in his imaginings, he was startled when he felt something grab his shoulder and his body reacted instinctively in response to his warrior training.
Clay spun on his heels and threw his left shoulder into whatever was grabbing him from behind, with his right hand he pulled the short blade out of its scabbard in a reverse grip. With the blade pointed towards the floor of the cavern, the natural strike was to let the momentum of his turn position it for an eviscerating blow across the abdomen.
The sound of Briar gasping in shock, “Clay! It’s me you idiot,” managed to pierce the fog that gripped the warrior’s mind that was reacting purely on instinct.
Looking down at her terrified face, the warrior slowly realized that it must have been her that grabbed him. Shaking the last vestiges of the numb feeling in his head, he reached down and offered her his hand, “sorry.” He said shamefully, “I didn’t hear you. How did you get down here?”
“I’ve been calling your name for over ten minutes. You never responded,” she said while glaring at him, “I could still see your glow potions though, so I knew you were still down on this ledge. With you not responding, well I had to come down here and make sure my idiot of a future husband wasn’t in any trouble.”