by Robert Cole
They crawled and slid for a long time before reaching a place large enough to stand up. By this time their arms and legs were covered with scratches and bruises and their clothes were filthy from the wet, muddy ground. But they were safe - there were no complaints. They found themselves in a small cavern, only dimly lit by glow-worms. Chris took a few deep breaths. The air smelt stale and rotten. It should have been fresh, and there was no sign of the usual accompanying insect and bat life.
Susie and Joe walked around the cavern, gingerly stretching their muscles and inspecting their surroundings with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. A small stream fed into a murky pool of water, along one side of the cavern. Chris knelt down and tried to wash some of the mud and grime from his hands and face. To his annoyance, he had lost his crystal weapon in the mad scramble to find the entrance to the Nethral tunnel.
Joe joined him and began washing some mud from his weapon.
“You alright?” Chris asked.
Joe nodded as he looked around the cavern, sampling the air with a series of long sniffs. “You sure there’s a way out of here?”
Chris pushed his doubts to the back of his mind. “There are heaps of tunnels down here. We’ll find a way out,” he said confidently.
A short distance away the cavern narrowed again to a dark tunnel, barely high enough for them to avoid crouching as they walked. Susie had been peering down it. She came back and washed her face in the pool.
“Does your key show any signs of feeling warm?” she asked Chris.
Chris checked the key - nothing.
“Mine neither,” she sighed. “We can’t be in range of the portal.”
“Once we find the Nethral, I’m sure they’ll lead us to the portal,” Chris said, rising to his feet.
After everyone had drunk enough water, they set off down the tunnel with Chris in the lead. The going was hard. In some places it narrowed, so they had to crawl on their hands and knees and, in others, there were so few glow-worm colonies that they had to feel their way forward, often over protruding rocks and down sharp inclines. Chris was becoming less confident of finding the underworld the further they went, as it was becoming clear that the huge caverns and forests he had been promising were not materialising. Instead the air was becoming increasingly warm and putrid and the colonies of glow-worms smaller and fewer, further reducing the light. There was much more water, too. At times they were forced to wade for long periods in knee-deep pools that were unusually warm and stank of rotten-egg gas. Chris also noticed white or yellow-coloured deposits on many of the rocks they passed. Joe touched one of these deposits and then licked his finger. Many swear words later, and after thoroughly washing out his mouth, he concluded the deposits were toxic.
After several hours of walking it was clear the situation was getting worse. The air was so hot they became drenched in sweat, and so rancid that every breath felt as if they were breathing acid. Despite their growing thirst, they had long since stopped drinking from the warm, smelly water that flowed along the tunnel floor. Chris took to monitoring any cracks or holes in the walls for a slight breeze, anything that would indicate there was another tunnel they could try, but there was nothing. The tunnel seemed to be diving into the bowels of the planet, probably right underneath Mount Caporel. Although no one said anything, Chris knew Joe and Susie were half expecting to see pools of boiling lava around the next bend. The final straw was the appearance of hot vents of scalding gas, which seeped through cracks in the tunnel floor. By now, the glow-worm colonies had almost disappeared, and with them, the last remnants of light. In the near total darkness, crawling along on their hands and knees, Joe nearly fell into one of these vents. It was only the quick action of Susie that saved him. After this incident, Chris called a stop to their descent. Painstakingly, they retraced their steps until the light improved and the air became less rancid. When they reached a small cavern they stopped for a rest. No one spoke for some time, the reality of their situation almost too awful to contemplate.
“Maybe we could dig our way back to the surface?” Susie suggested, breaking the sullen mood.
“Nah… wouldn’t work. Those creatures probably caved in the whole top section of the tunnel. It would take weeks to clear a path,” Joe said, now lying flat on his back and staring up at the dimly lit clusters of glow-worms.
Chris crouched next to a pool and scooped up a mouthful of water. It tasted like a combination of mud and rotten eggs, but at least it was drinkable. “We may have no other choice,” he said, glancing across at the others.
Joe let out a loud burst of laughter. “So what happened to all those beautiful forests and happy Nethral just waiting to meet us?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said, feeling irritated at the mention of the Nethral. “We must have come the wrong way.”
“Not according to that crystal thing you got,” Joe replied.
Chris didn’t care for Joe’s tone. “We must have missed a side tunnel, or something. We’ll just have to retrace our steps.”
“Well I didn’t see any tunnel but this one,” Joe said, flicking mud onto the roof of the cavern and dimming a section of the glow-worms.
“Well what do you suggest?” Chris flared. “Just sit here and whinge until we starve to death?”
“Stop it, you two,” Susie hissed. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Whose idea was it to come down here in the first place?” Joe continued. “I just wanted to get the hell away from those Zentor, not crawl down the nearest rat hole.”
“If we had listened to you, we would all be charred corpses by now,” Chris replied harshly, not bothering to conceal his anger.
You’re right, of course,” Joe continued casually. “Now we have a choice of deaths; starvation, choking, poisoning, being buried or burned alive.” He marked off the choices with his fingers.
“Please stop it,” Susie pleaded. “Arguing isn’t going to solve anything.”
Joe was going to say something, but thought better of it. Instead he crawled over to a corner of the cavern and curled up into a ball, cradling his weapon like a small child hugging his favourite toy. Susie and Chris also fell into a dejected silence.
After a while, because he could think of nothing better to do, Chris pulled out the Nethral crystal. Susie watched him flick it from hand to hand. “Can’t you use the crystal to contact your Nethral friends? I mean use your abilities to tell them where we are?” she continued when Chris looked at her blankly.
“I can try,” Chris said, sitting up and examining the crystal with new interest.
“Try!” Joe said, lifting up his head.
Chris, as before, held the crystal in his hand and cleared his mind. But this time he only received vague, fleeting images of Nethral that disappeared before he could focus his thoughts.
“Nothing,” he said, after several minutes of determined effort. “I don’t think my powers are developed enough.”
Joe groaned, then dropped his head back onto the ground.
Chris was about to put the crystal away when he noticed the colour had changed. Although still green, it now looked duller, like when he ran into the wrong cave in the surface. He sat up and held the crystal against the light of the glow-worms.
“What’s up?” Susie asked.
“The crystal was bright green, now it’s a dull green.”
“Huh...so it changed while we walked.” She moved up to Chris and looked over his shoulder. “Maybe, as well as showing you where the Nethral tunnels are on the surface, the crystal also acts like some kind of homing beacon that guides you through the right tunnels to the underworld.”
“You mean we can still use the crystal?” Joe asked.
Susie nodded.
They started back along the tunnel and it wasn’t long before Chris could detect a difference in the crystal’s colour, it was turning greener as they climbed. After retracing their steps for some distance, Chris estimated the colour was close to the colour he had seen near the tunnel entr
ance, although it was difficult to judge in the reduced light. At this point, they slowed their progress and began examining the tunnel walls for any signs of an intersecting tunnel. When Chris couldn’t detect any further change in the crystal, they turned around and retraced their steps again. Eventually, they narrowed down the area from where the crystal started to change from bright green to a straight stretch of tunnel about hundred metres long. The tunnel through this region was narrow and poorly lit. They examined this area very carefully but couldn’t find any obvious side tunnels. There was one place, however, where rubble and boulders had spilled across the tunnel floor from a cave-in. Chris climbed up to the top of the rubble and examined the glow-worm colonies on the roof. They appeared to disappear into the rubble. He pulled away some of the loose rocks. Dead glow-worm colonies were on parts of the roof he had just exposed. He dug further and found the newly exposed roof was thick with them. The rest of the roof, however, had collapsed, so the more he dug, the more rocks fell down from above.
Joe and Susie joined in the digging and soon recovered more rocks from the original roof that were also covered in glow-worm colonies. They continued to claw and drag more rubble away, but for every piece of rubble they removed, more fell down from above. Finally, tired and exhausted, they were forced to stop.
“Maybe I could blast a hole through the rubble,” Joe suggested, after staring earnestly at his crystal weapon for some time.
Susie looked doubtful. “Won’t you cave-in the rest of the roof?”
“Umm… maybe,” Joe conceded. “But I could also blast a hole clean through.”
“Or you could kill us all,” Susie said.
“Nah, there can’t be much more rubble to come down,” Joe said, leaning over to peer up through the hole they had dug.
Susie turned to Chris for support, but he just shrugged, feeling Joe had a valid point. Surely all the loose rubble should have fallen down by now.
Susie crossed her arms. “You both have no idea what will happen if you fire that thing in here. You’re playing with our lives.”
“Nah, it’ll be good,” Joe said confidently.
“At least we should try digging a bit longer,” Susie suggested, looking hopefully at Chris.
Chris just stared blankly back at her.
“Well, I’m not going to be anywhere near here when you cave in the tunnel,” she said, stalking up the tunnel a safe distance.
Joe grinned at Chris and then aimed his weapon directly at the rubble.
“You sure you know how to work this thing?” Chris asked, now feeling less certain, after watching Joe behave as if he was in a shoot-out in a cheap western.
“What do you think I was doing to those Zentor?”
“Yeah, I know, but there’s not much space and these weapons are pretty powerful.”
“I’ll just give it a short burst,” Joe said. “Just to see what it does.”
Joe took a few steps back and aimed his weapon at a large boulder protruding from the rubble. The weapon fired, lighting up the whole tunnel and spraying rock fragments everywhere. Chris and Joe rushed forward to inspect the damage, but were disappointed to find only a small hole.
“A longer burst should do it,” Joe said confidently.
They stood back again, and this time Joe delivered a sustained blast. The whole boulder exploded, sending rock fragments smashing into the roof. Immediately more of the roof started collapsing. Chris and Joe had to scramble up the tunnel to avoid being engulfed by falling rubble. When the glow-worm light came back on and the dust had cleared, they found the tunnel had been completely sealed by the collapsed roof.
“Yep, that did it.”
Chris looked up at Susie, who was shaking her head in that determinedly disgusted fashion she used only when something truly appalled her. “You just had to play with guns, didn’t you?’
Even in the subdued light of the tunnel, Chris could see her face was turning pink. Chris slowly picked himself off the floor and brushed off the dirt.
“It might have worked,” Joe said, also picking himself off the ground.
“Now we’ll never get out.” Susie glared at the two of them.
“Well, at least I tried,” Joe said, in rather an uncharacteristically subdued voice.
“Well, congratulations!” Susie shouted, pointing toward the cave-in. “You tried and you succeeded in caving in the whole tunnel!”
Chris and Joe said nothing. She had every right to be furious. The new cave-in had not only sealed the tunnel; it had brought down tonnes of rubble. The task to dig through to the other tunnel now seemed almost impossible. Susie stormed off further up the tunnel and sat down, periodically shooting venomous looks at them. Chris and Joe, lacking the energy or will to resume digging, sat down despondently on the tunnel floor.
Joe examined his weapon for a while, as though somehow it was the weapon’s fault, not the fact that he couldn’t take his finger off the trigger.
Chris leaned back against the tunnel wall and closed his eyes. He could feel the dampness of the tunnel wall seeping into his shirt and soaking his back. He didn’t care. There had to be a way out of this, but the more he tried to think the more he felt like falling asleep. He heard a noise and opened his eyes. Joe’s head had fallen forward and he had dropped his crystal weapon onto the tunnel floor beside him. He began making soft snoring sounds.
Susie, despite her fury, was also beginning to nod off.
Chris closed his eyes and began to drift off to sleep. Then he remembered. “I can’t fall asleep!” he almost shouted. You’ve got to keep me awake, or at least tie me to something.”
Joe jolted awake. “You don’t really want us to tie you up?”
“Yeah, I do,” Chris insisted.
“But you can’t go anywhere,” Susie said.
“I could kill myself with a rock, or kill you with a rock…or strangle you.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Joe said, climbing to his feet.
“But just the legs, so I can’t go running off,” Chris said.
Joe wearily came over and tired Chris’s legs together using a thin cord that had been used to hold up Chris’s pants, then curled up around his weapon again and quickly fell asleep. Susie, feeling somewhat calmer, came over and sat down closer to Chris.
“Come to check his handy-work?” Chris asked, hoping her temper had cooled.
Susie just grunted.
Chris manoeuvred himself into a more comfortable position.
“Remember Kaloc’s advice,” she lectured. “The last thing you should think of before you to go to sleep is that you can control your dreams.”
Chris nodded solemnly.
Susie began clearing away rocks and digging out a bed for herself from the surrounding dirt. “I will be next to you if you need me,” she said, sounding a bit like an angry schoolteacher.
Chris smiled at her and she managed a weak grimace. Much of the determination he usually saw in her eyes was gone. Instead, her eyes were moist, red and rimmed with deepening shadows of exhaustion. Like Joe, her face was also thinner, her lips cracked, and lines of dirt trailed down her cheeks. She pushed back some dirty strands of hair behind her ear. She was a mess. But he couldn’t find any comforting words. Not knowing what to say, or what to do, he looked away.
Joe was snoring lightly a little distance away with the weapon on the ground next to him. Chris cleared away any rocks and lay back. When he looked back at Susie, she was leaning back against the wall of the tunnel with her head lolling forward. He stared up at the tunnel roof until the points of glow-worm light began to fade and his eyelids became too heavy to hold open. His last thought was not to let Batarr and Zelnoff control his dreams.
Chris woke up and found he couldn’t feel his feet. The cord that Joe had tied his legs with was digging into him. Joe and Susie were still asleep. He sat up and tried to untie the cord, but the knot had tightened. He was looking for something sharp to prise open the knot when some movement up the tunnel caugh
t his eye. The shape was unmistakable; a Zentor was scuttling toward him. Its huge insect head and red eyes flicking back and forth as it scanned the tunnel ahead.
For a few moments Chris froze, but this time he snapped out of it. Joe was just across the tunnel, fast asleep. Chris slowly dragged himself toward Joe until he drew level with him. He prayed Joe wouldn’t roll over or start snoring. Without making a sound, he carefully lifted up Joe’s weapon. The Zentor had moved closer, and was now no more than thirty metres away. Chris took aim at the creature’s hideous head. Something wasn’t right. The Zentor should have seen him by now. Then he realised. This wasn’t real. He focused all his thought on the Zentor. Slowly the vision started to blur, then transformed into the sleeping figure of Susie, just across the tunnel.
He quickly pulled the weapon away and threw out his senses beyond Susie. There was at least one other presence further down the tunnel. As he concentrated he began to see its shape. Other strange visions came into his thoughts, but he knew these were false. He re-doubled his efforts to unmask whoever was there. The shape started to come into focus. Batarr appeared, his face strained with effort, but Chris had him now. He locked the Guardian in a battle of wills, trying to break through the mental barrier Batarr had thrown up. Batarr’s face began to contort with extreme effort. Shadows of his thoughts were beginning to emerge. Still the visions flew at Chris, but he brushed them away easily. Slowly he began to extract isolated thoughts.
Then there was nothing, as if another, much stronger barrier, had been brought down. There was a second presence; more powerful, impenetrable. Chris refocused. He felt this entity’s enormous mental power, its will, its purpose.
Suddenly something hit hard him in the side and knocked the wind out of him. It was Joe.
“Get off me!” he screamed.
“You had my weapon,” Joe said indignantly.
“I wasn’t going to use it,” Chris yelled.
“Well, what were you doing then?”
Chris managed to free his legs enough to give Joe a kick that sent him careering across the tunnel and almost into Susie.
“I was dreaming, except I had control of the dream. I almost had Batarr too, then a second presence intervened.”
“Zelnoff?” Susie asked, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“I guess so. Anyway, there was no way I could read his thoughts.”
“So you did it.” Susie leaned forward excitedly. “You managed to control your dreams.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Chris decided not to tell Susie that he had almost shot her.
“So what were you doing with my weapon?” Joe asked.
“Well… at first I didn’t realise it was a dream,” Chris said. “They managed to convince me that a Zentor was coming down the tunnel, so I crept across and got your weapon.”
“And you could actually see Batarr?” Susie asked.
“Yeah, I saw him alright, and I could also feel Zelnoff.”
“But you couldn’t see him?”
“No, he was too strong, I couldn’t force him to do anything,” Chris said, still remembering the enormous power that seemed to radiate from Zelnoff.
“So does that mean they know we’re here?” Joe asked.
“Maybe…Yeah I suppose,” Chris said, feeling a sudden unease at the memory of the Zentor attack soon after his last dream.
Joe came across and, after considerable difficulty, managed to untie Chris. With little other options, they decided to continue digging in the hope that they could reach the Nethral before Zelnoff found them. After a drink from a foul-smelling pool of water, the digging resumed. It wasn’t long, however, before Susie signalled for Chris and Joe to be quiet. She brushed away her hair and placed her ear against a rock.
“What do you hear?” Joe asked.
“There are sounds coming from somewhere behind the rubble,” she said.
“I hope it’s not Batarr and his buddy Zelnoff,” Joe said, picking up his weapon and pointed it toward the rubble.
“Maybe we should hide further up the tunnel,” Susie suggested.
“There’s nowhere to hide,” Chris replied, after a quick shake of his head. “At least here, if it’s Zelnoff, we can shoot them as they come out.”
Susie went back to monitoring the rubble. “I can hear scraping sounds. I don’t think they’re removing the rubble at the other end.” She repositioned her ear over a large, deeply buried boulder. “It sounds like they are burrowing a separate tunnel around the cave-in.”
“The Nethral,” Chris shouted, as he rushed forward and pressed his ear against the rubble. “Surely only the Nethral could dig a new tunnel.”
The sounds of digging quickly increased. Joe aimed his weapon in the direction of the sounds. The wait proved short. The mound of rubble soon began to vibrate, and rocks and gravel slid down to the tunnel floor. Then, in a shower of dirt and rocks, a small, furry creature with shovel-like hands and a long snout burst through the rubble.
Chris leaped into the air. “Duss!” he screamed, then rushed forward and dragged the funny creature into the centre of the tunnel and embraced him.
The creature looked a little confused, but was clearly also delighted to see Chris. He gave a low and very formal bow, which made everyone laugh. Then a second creature burst through the tunnel, widening it further.
“Cass!” Chris rushed over and embraced her just as warmly. Cass also bowed low, while Chris introduced Joe and Susie.
“How did you find us?” Chris asked.
“We were told how you esscaped the Zentor by finding one of our tunnelsss,” Cass replied.
“We apologisse,” Duss added quickly.
“Yess, yess, we apologisse,” Cass continued. “Not all of our tunnelss are in good repair.”
“No, not all are in good repair,” Duss repeated. “We immediately followed thiss one up and found it wass blocked.”
“So who told you how we escaped from the Zentor?” Chris asked.
At this question Duss and Cass looked briefly at each other before Cass spoke. “We were sssummoned by our high council and told who you really were. And how important it wass to find you.”
“We were assked to help in the ssearch,” Duss added.
“Yees, yess, we were very excited to help them ssearch,” Cass said, her voice rising an octave. “We knew there wass ssomething sstrange about you, but we had no idea.”
“No, no idea,” Duss continued.
“But who told the council?” Chris asked.
As if in answer to this question more sounds came from the newly dug tunnel and several soldiers climbed out, followed by Kaloc. Susie rushed forward and flung her arms around him.
“We thought you may have been killed,” Susie explained, looking slightly embarrassed.
Kaloc nodded reassuringly. “Yes, it did get a bit dangerous there for a while,” he agreed. “But I fear you were in much more danger than I was. The Zentor were sent after the three of you. They broke off their assault when they realised you had run into the forest.”
“Is that when you sent the Prower to protect us?” Susie asked.
“Yes, and they told me how you escaped.”
He looked them over carefully. “I would imagine,” he said with a growing smile, “that food and a wash would be among your highest priorities at the moment.”
For the first time Chris noticed how dirty the three of them were.
“Come on,” Kaloc said. “We must return quickly to the safety of the underworld.”
Chapter 11: The Portal