The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1
Page 33
CHAPTER 26
The Descent
Alem shot out the door, immediately followed by Lael, Hazael and Jaala, who closed the door behind him. He ran like he had never run before. The sneakers stomping on the dark sidewalk were like thunder in the silence of the night.
Lael was right behind him; Alem could hear his breathing.
Jaala caught up with them quickly and led the race.
Alem jumped over garbage, rounded cars, dodged the light of lamps as if his life depended on it – and it probably did.
They stopped by a wall of the last building on the street, in the blackness, to look at the fountain of Jesus with the missing hand, in the midst of shadows in the middle of the square.
They were still catching their breath when a figure jumped out of a bush and ran to the fountain. It dove headfirst into the water, kicked and disappeared.
“What was that?” asked Jaala, but no one answered. “We have to follow that person!” He ran to the middle of the square.
The others followed him without thinking.
Jaala fumbled at the bottom of the fountain. He plunged his body in the water and made his way through the rocks. Something gold shined in the middle of the undulation, but he couldn’t make out what it was.
The fountain was covered from the light of the lamps surrounding the square and the buildings’ lights were off but still it seemed that at any time they would get caught.
Lael was trembling and asked with a look if they could leave.
“He went,” whispered Hazael. “He went down that way!”
“Go!” Alem told him. “We cannot stay here long.”
Hazael dove and splashed all around. When he disappeared, Alem practically pushed Lael into the fountain and forced him to follow the others.
“But I don’t know what to do!” Lael whispered before Alem pressed his head under the water.
When the water began to calm, Alem plunged and shifted the stones with his arms. After a few meters, there was a net covering a dark tunnel. Feeling like he was swimming to death, but without being able to retreat, Alem uncovered the net, crossed to the other side and swam through the tunnel. After an upward curve, he reached an indoor lake.
Jaala and Hazael were already out of the water and helping Lael out. The only light came from a flashlight that Jaala had found near the edge.
Everything around them was dark and filthy and stank.
“Let’s go,” said Jaala and ran through a tunnel.
“Ahh! This smell’s horrible!” complained Hazael.
“These are sewers. It’s just crap everywhere,” noted Alem.
“Of course they are sewers! Where did the winged man you saw disappear through? It’s all making sense,” said Jaala.
They heard a noise. Jaala turned off the flashlight. A light appeared a little farther ahead, a torch held by a woman in a black cloak.
“Come,” whispered Jaala in a barely audible volume.
Glued to the wall, they followed the woman. The torchlight was enough for them to be able to distinguish air from stone but little else. They rounded a corner, passed next to a sewage canal and moved on, always behind the black cloaked woman.
The black silhouette turned left into a hole in the wall. The sound of iron scraping echoed and then a thud, and the light disappeared.
The only sound they heard was from their disconcerting inhaling and exhaling and the soft rustle of water in the disgusting canal, as if there were animals swimming.
Jaala threw himself forward without a word, and the others followed. They stopped near the hole in the wall through where the woman had disappeared, and Jaala peered. His eyes were still getting used to the dark. He took a deep breath, trying to gather courage to advance through the darkness. It was then that he saw a faint, very faint glow in a horizontal line near the ground at the bottom of the pit.
“I think I see a door,” he whispered and stepped forward. He touched it with his fingers.
“Now what?” asked Lael.
“I don’t know,” said Jaala, looking around. “I think it’s better not to turn on the flashlight.”
Alem pushed the door in a distorted angle, following the direction that the soft yield of the iron suggested, and opened it to the side.
A light, albeit dim, immediately blinded them. They looked at each other, and Jaala took the initiative to enter.
They were in a huge cave full of cement columns scattered everywhere. Everything was painted orange, the same tone as Alem’s hair.
Lael let out a startled sound. In the front wall was a timeworn symbol painted in black ink: a horizontal line above a circle.
“The symbol that was in the dungeons,” muttered Alem, pointing to the wall with the symbol of Umbra.
“Now you’re sure it was Umbra who kidnapped you,” said Hazael.
“Let’s go home,” asked Lael.
“If you want to go, then go,” said Jaala.
Guilt filled Alem’s mind until it almost leaked from his eyes. Guilt for feeling that he was giving in to temptation he didn’t even understand.
“An orange room. What does this serve? What does this mean?” asked Hazael, finally.
“There’s nobody here,” said Lael.
“Of course there’s nobody here. This must just be a passage,” said Jaala.
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know, Hazael!” answered Jaala. “Aren’t you the one who always knows everything? The man wanted us to come here; we’ve come, now I don’t know.”
“We’ll have to explore,” said Alem.
He moved on, with the other three behind him. He went down two steps, crossed the room and entered a dark tunnel.
They could hear the noise of confusion in the distance, as if from another world.
“There’s something happening there.”
Lael grabbed his arm.
“We shouldn’t go….”
“We’ve come this far.”
Under Jaala’s flashlight, the tunnel was actually the same orange as the previous room. Two rats came crawling between them. More light appeared, but they couldn’t see from where it was coming.
A black wall appeared down the path. There was something drawn in orange.
They walked slowly, surrounded by the color that blended with Alem’s hair. In the midst of the black ink of that final wall was delineated the same symbol they had seen at the entrance, with a disturbing difference that only served to increase their discomfort: