Chapter 35
“Look there,” Gnaria said suddenly, pointing at a glowing rectangle the size of a door that had appeared on one of the walls.
The stone slabs inside the glowing rectangle disappeared, leading to some kind of a tunnel that further led to a different chamber.
We entered the tunnel, because staying in the first chamber was pointless. We moved the length of the tunnel, but it was when we arrived towards its end that we saw what the next chamber contained.
I had seen quite a few strange creatures ever since I had embarked on the quest for the treasure of the goat king, but the creature in the chamber was the strangest of them all.
The creature it most strongly resembled was an octopus. But unlike an octopus with eight arms, this one had at least twenty. There were also no suckers on the arms of the creature, instead the tips and the edges of the arms were lined with what looked like razor sharp teeth at best.
Then there was the strange head of the creature.
It had at least five mouths, none of which had any teeth, reminding me of the mouths of really old toothless cats.
Then there were the eyes. The eyes were at the tips of tube-like extensions on the head of the creature. There were five tubes containing eyes.
It took me a minute to digest the looks of this creature.
“It’s shrinking!” Julia suddenly said, so that I had to force my eyes away from the creature and look at her instead.
“What’s shrinking?” I asked her. There was only one thing that could be shrinking— the creature, and it definitely was not shrinking.
“The tunnel!” Julia said, pointing at the walls of the tunnel. My first thought was to run back to the other chamber, but I calculated that I would never be able to reach it before the tunnel shrank enough to squeeze the life out of me. The other option was to go into the chamber with the monster because we were very near to its opening. But I did not at all wish to face the creature. I was very much ready to get squashed by the walls of the ever shrinking tunnel.
“What do we do?” I said to the two women.
“Go there of course,” Gnaria said. She grabbed my paw and pulled me to the chamber that contained the monster.
Barely did we get into the chamber that the tunnel behind us shrank to the size of a small hole that stretched all the way to the previous chamber.
The eye tubes of the monster turned towards the three of us.
The mouths of the creature let out a blood curling roar, and then it began to throw its tentacles at the three of us one by one.
There was no door in the chamber through which we could escape so if we needed to survive we had to kill the monster. I wanted to use the Rage Barbarian spell for I knew that once I was seized by the spell I would become invincible and instinctively find some way to kill the creature. At the same time I knew that if I used the spell I might end up hurting Gnaria or Julia, which I didn’t want to do at all.
Gnaria and Julia meanwhile began using their spells. Gnaria turned her paws into knives and slashed the tip off one of the arms of the creature. As the creature cried out in pain, white blood leaking out of the wound as the cut tip twitched on the floor, Julia threw a ball of light at the creature. The moment the ball hit its head that the creature fell backward and was dazed for a moment.
But it was soon back up, once again throwing its tentacles at us.
“If it can’t see us it can’t harm us,” I said to Gnaria and Julia, even as they did their best to fight the beast, while I just stood back and observed everything.
“What do you mean?” Gnaria said, as she slashed the tip of yet another arm of the creature.
“Its eyes, we need to chop them off,” I said.
Gnaria seemed to get my point, but there was still a frown on her face.
“But it won’t be easy to go near its eyes because of the arms,” she said.
“I can make it a bit easier,” Julia said as she threw another ball of light at the monster, this time an even bigger ball that the previous ones. The effort to create the bigger ball was clear on her sweaty face.
The ball hit the creature’s head. The tubes that contained the eyes went limp for a few moments, but life returned to them soon enough.
I pointed my paws at the tubes and threw a rope spell, putting considerable mana into it. That I had not used any spell in the past few hours helped considerably in throwing stronger ropes.
I was able to bind all the eye tubes together with the rope, except one.
“Go chop off its eyes,” I said to Gnaria. “But be careful,” I added, for the monster had begun to swing its arms even more wildly in an attempt to protect itself. I meanwhile aimed my paw at the eye that was still free, and fired another spell. But the creature moved the tube at the precise moment, and I missed it again.
Julia prepared another ball of light to shoot at the creature.
“Don’t shoot at the head, shoot at the arms,” I said to Julia. “The ones nearest to Gnaria.” For Gnaria was now making her way towards the head of the beast, chopping off any arm that the beast threw at her. But the creature might throw an arm at her from behind and she might miss it.
Julia shot her light ball.
Just as I had feared one of the arms of the creature snuck up from behind Gnaria, with the aim of embedding its sharp teeth onto her back, even as Gnaria made a final run for the head of the beast. Thankfully, as the arm was only inches behind Gnaria, the ball of light hit it and the arm went limp, unable to follow Gnaria anymore.
Gnaria used her knives to dig into the head of the beast to maintain a hold and she climbed up the head and reached the top, from where the eye tubes grew.
One by one Gnaria cut down the eye tubes of the beast, such that the entire top of the head of the beast was flooded with its own white blood. Gnaria was even able to cut down the eye tube that I hadn’t been able to bind with my rope spell, even though it tried to move away from her as she approached it. But ultimately the base of the eye tube was attached to the head of the beast and she was able to cut it at the base.
In a final attempt for vengeance at Gnaria, the beast threw one of its teeth-lined arms towards its own head. Gnaria leapt to the floor just in time as the teeth of the arm pierced into the head of the beast.
The beast cried out, for the teeth had sunk deep into the head. The cries of the beast were some of the most disturbing that I had ever heard in my life. And then the beast stopped crying as it went limp, having brought about its own destruction.
Julia and I made our way to where Gnaria was kneeling on the floor that was covered in white blood, catching her breath.
“You did it,” I said to her, placing a paw on her shoulder.
Gnaria nodded.
“I wonder what awaits us next,” she said.
“That?” Julia said, pointing at what looked like a trap door on the floor near the great carcass of the beast. Even the trap door was covered with the white blood. It was no less a miracle that Julia had been able to spot it. The three of us exchanged looks.
“Well,” I said with a shrug. “We can only go into it and see where it leads to.”
Opening the trap door was easy, and once the door was open we saw that it led downwards to some chamber below that was well lit. Gnaria was the one to go first. She said that if either Julia or I slipped and fell, then she could be able to activate her flying spell and save us. The climb down was strenuous at best.
When we arrived at the chamber below, we saw that it was actually a hall of sorts, and we were at one end of it, while the other end had a massive doorway that seemed to have steps that led further down.
But what were in the walls on either sides of the hall terrified us.
Skeletons inside cages.
It was clear that the people had died of thirst and starvation. In several of the cages I could see mud like substance that I knew to be the excreta of the unfortunate individuals. Thankfully it was ages old and we were not exposed to unpleasant smells.<
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But how did the skeletons get inside the cages in the first place?
It didn’t make much sense for the cages didn’t have any doors through which the individuals could have been forced inside. We were scared and seeing the fates of those who had been to this place before us we didn’t know what to do next. Even though there were no monsters here that we could battle, I had a feeling inside me that said that there was something very sinister about the hall and we better be careful regarding what we did next.
“We better get out of here fast,” Gnaria said, “this place is creepy.”
And she took a step forwards, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“What?” she said to me with a frown.
“Wait,” I told her.
“Whatever we need to face in this place is invisible,” Julia said, “we need to be very careful. Those skeletons must have made the mistake of thinking nothing harmless existed in this hall.”
“We can’t just stand and wait here,” Gnaria said. To an extent she was right. If only we did something would we know what we were truly up against, but by then we might also be inside one of the cages. And then my eyes fell at one of the cages further along the hall. The clothes of the skeleton in that cage hadn’t rotted unlike the other cages.
Wait a minute, was that a skeleton at all?
Chapter 36
My jaws fell down. There was a living, breathing cat in the cage, except the cat seemed like they had been trapped in the cage for days. They looked to be very weak and I reckoned they hadn’t even realised our presence so far.
“There is a living cat in that cage,” I said to Gnaria and Julia.
Once again Gnaria took an instinctive step forwards, as though she wanted to run to the cage and wanted to ask its occupant how they had gotten inside it. But I caught her and pulled her back.
“Wait,” I said to her. Gnaria frowned at me rather severely. I wondered if she was beginning to feel invincible now since she had killed the monster mostly on her own. “Better safe than in a cage.” I said to Gnaria, and then I yelled aloud to the cat in the cage.
“Hey!” I cried, “Are you alive?”
I had thought the cat had been breathing, but it was still possible that my eyes were mistaken.
No response.
I cried to the cat again. A small movement resulted from the pile of clothes that the cat was. This time I knew that my eyes were not mistaken. The cat turned their head towards us and it was evident that doing so required a lot of effort. It was a male cat, probably only a few years older than me, but he seemed very much aged because of the difficulties he had been through recently. The cat frowned at us, as though unsure if we were real or if we were a hallucination of his.
I waved at the male cat.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Suddenly the cat’s eyes twinkled as he realised that we were no hallucination of his. He somehow sat up inside the cage. I thought that behind the cat, there was a baby cat inside the cage as well. But I wasn’t very sure of this since the cage was a considerable distance away.
The cat began to say something. I strained my ears to listen to him for his voice was coming small and broken.
“… Do not come towards me,” the cat was saying, “do not come towards me, or you will be trapped in a cage.”
“But how?” I asked back.
Ultimately we would have to go forward if we wanted to get to the other end of the hall.
“Some of the stone slabs on the floor have been jinxed,” the cat replied. Then he pursed his lips as though taking in a breath for the talking was very demanding to him. And then, having rested thus for a few seconds, he spoke again, “if you step on the wrong stone slab, then you will magically get transported into one of the cages.”
Okay, that sure sounded frightening as hell. So moving forward was not an option?
And then, suddenly, Gnaria activated her flying spell and she began to hover above the floor. She smiled at me.
“Okay, your spell sure is coming to good use today,” I said to her.
So it happened that Julia acquired her wind form while Gnaria took me toward the cage that had the male cat. Since we were not actually stepping over any of the stone slabs that formed the floor, there was no chance of us getting transported to one of the cages.
Finally we reached the cage inside which the cat was. Our noses were immediately hit by a strong odour. It was clear that the cat had shit and pissed in his pants.
“I have been here for nearly three days,” the cat explained though he did look abashed at the same time.
“We understand,” I said to the cat, “Did you open the entrance—?”
My eyes had fallen on the small bundle of clothes that I had previously thought was a baby cat. It was not a baby cat. It was a small man.
The same one I had seen in the library so long ago bringing the map to Minnata—Zunzu! He seemed to be presently asleep.
Zunzu must have given up all hope on me and gone to his master. So did it mean that the male cat was…?
“Are you Minnata’s brother?” I asked the male cat.
His eyes widened.
“Yes,” the male cat replied. “Gulor is my name. How do you know of my late brother?”
“I am Timmy, prince of Abhaya,” I said to him.
“Zunzu said to me you said you would not come on the quest,” Gulor said. “But you did.”
“I am sorry for what happened to your brother,” I said to Gulor.
“I think we should first get you out of here,” Julia's voice said for she was still in her wind form, “I can heal you to some extent though I doubt I can heal you completely so far away from my island.”
“Who said that?” Gulor said, suddenly frightful.
“It’s an invisible friend of ours,” I reassured Gulor. “But how do we get you out?” I asked him.
“There is a lever on top of all the cages,” Gulor said, “I believe mine has one as well. I wonder if pulling it down might release me.”
I looked up the wall and saw that there was indeed a lever at a point near the ceiling of the hall. The lever looked like it had been pulled up.
“I can do that,” Julia said. I could feel her wind form rushing up and the next moment the lever was pulled down. Immediately the bars of the cage were pulled upwards.
Gulor grabbed the sleeping Zunzu and immediately came out of the cage, but he kept his feet gingerly on the stone slab immediately outside the cage and was frightened to step onto any other stone slab.
“You can, uh, hold my hand so I can take you to the other end of the hall,” Gnaria said to Gulor.
Gulor however hesitated to touch Gnaria, who was a lady at the end of the day, in the dirty condition he was in. So I lowered my own paw which was still in the form of a human’s hand and he grabbed it after strapping Zunzu to his back. Somehow Gnaria was able to take us to the other end of the hall where the door was. I let go of Gulor, my arm aching. Even Gnaria fell down from the floor in a heap, obviously exhausted from having used too much of mana and from carrying our weight. Julia acquired her human form and Gulor let out a gasp seeing her.
And then something strange happened. A yellow light appeared around Gulor. The light danced about him. Any smell that was coming from him went away and was replaced by the smell of roses. What more, any dirt that was sticking to his clothes or to Zunzu disappeared on its own accord.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Gulor said once the light had disappeared and with it all the dirt as well. Gulor looked like a transformed cat, who seemed to have lost considerable age in the few seconds in which the light had appeared around him. His face was now bright as thought he had recently had a bath with the best soap in the world of Arun.
“Well, if the wife is indeed inside the pyramid,” Julia said, “and if after passing all the tests we are at the end allowed to meet her, then the pyramid would obviously want us to meet her clean and tidy. Maybe that’s why you got cleaned.”
“I still feel hungry though,” Gulor said, “though not as much thirsty as I drank the last drops of water I had with me only a short while before you all arrived.”
“How did you find your way to the pyramid?” I asked Gulor, “And it was you right, who removed the stone slab from the entrance?”
And then Gulor began to tell us everything from the start.
“I am an adventurer,” he said, “I am very different from my late brother and I frequently search the world of Arun for new quests. Zunzu is my fast companion and he accompanies me wherever I go. Some time ago, I came across the quest of the goat king after finding a map inside a small chest atop a tree stump in a forest. But only did I open the chest and was looking at the map when a hooded female cat and her companions appeared at the scene and demanded that I give them the map. I did not want to give away the map for the tale of the goat king was something that had caught my imagination ever since I had been a child.
“I gave the map to Zunzu and asked him to flee and I myself ran in a different direction in order to distract the hooded female and her followers. But some of the followers saw Zunzu take off and they stopped chasing me and went after Zunzu instead.
“Before giving Zunzu the map, I had asked him to give the map to my brother Minnata as he was one of the very few people I trusted, even though Minnata was not of the adventuring kind of people. This became the greatest mistake of my life and cost me my brother’s life.
“Zunzu returned to me after many days with the news that Minnata was no more and I swore that I would complete the quest because of which my brother had lost his life. But Zunzu had lost the map and I could recall only one location on it: Cragor. So in a journey that took countless days I came here. I searched about the desert for anything that would seem to have some relation with the quest and I chose to explore the pyramid when I came across it three days ago.
“I used a one-time-only spell that I had received after completing a quest in the past to remove the stone slab blocking the entrance to the pyramid. When I entered, I faced the chamber with the black liquid and I could have died there. But Zunzu who can fly was somehow able to save me, flapping his little wings as hard as he could while pulling my entire weight with the muscles of his tiny arm.
The Goat King's Wives Online Page 16