The Elder Lands

Chapter 40: Falling Up

In front of Lucan’s frozen party, the passage opened up into a circular cavern, lit green by the sparse moss on its ceiling. The cavern was bowl-shaped, its floor unlike the rest of the Labyrinth, for it wasn’t made of rock and packed gravel. Instead, the bowl shape was mostly made of fine, gray dust, packed into a smooth, inclined surface and converging on the central attraction of the cavern, a gigantic hole, the shaft. Beyond the shaft and on the other side of the cavern, there was an opening that led into another passage.

Aside from its perfectly circular shape, the hole in the middle of the cavern looked ordinary. Though when Lucan gazed upon it for a prolonged amount of time, it was like he could feel the unimaginable depths its other end reached. A certain level of awe couldn’t help but slip into his heart at the sight. Barely any light could reach the insides of the hole to divulge its secrets since there was a suspiciously circular patch of bald ceiling above it.

The thumps of the lizard chasing them never stopped, gradually drawing closer, yet none of them dared move forward. There was no doubt that the packed dust surrounding the hole would easily surrender any trespassers to the endless depths of the shaft, which prevented them from treading carelessly into the cavern.

Ryder poked his head in for a moment then pulled back. “The edges seem solid enough.”

Clifton wriggled his way through their packed bodies to poke his head in and take a look too. “Not very reliable. But more reliable than that.” He pointed at the packed, gray dust around the shaft.

Lucan got his own glance inside and saw that at the edges of the cavern, there were some broken-up bits of rock and gravel that constituted a ledge. “We have no choice.”

They all exchanged resigned looks only interrupted by a question.

“Who will go first?” Thorley said.

Again, they exchanged looks, and Lucan saw that Cordell was about to volunteer. Yet, his father wouldn’t have hesitated had he been here. So Lucan grit his teeth and spoke. “I will.” And before any of his men-at-arms could protest, he stepped onto the ledge, sticking to the wall that had been on his right. He heard cursing from behind him but ignored it and continued, “Discard all that’s not immediately necessary and follow me. Thorley and Ryder, look after Heath.”

Soon, all of them began discarding their backpacks, taking only the most essential supplies from them. Then slowly, one by one, they streamed in after him, inching sideways against the wall of the cavern, the tips of their feet overlooking certain doom.

They circled the edge of the cavern slowly but with much urgency as they moved towards their destination on the other side, the looming noise of the approaching beast providing ample motivation for them to hasten their crawling pace.

Thorley and Ryder each had an arm held out against Heath’s chest, who was looking even worse for wear now, barely keeping his eyes open. Midway through their crossing, Lilian’s dress pushed some air into blowing dust from under their feet into the air, uncovering a glint of metal buried in a sea gray.

Suddenly, Thorley gasped and mouthed a word. “Mythril!” Then he let go of Heath and dove for treasure.

Ryder had to throw himself against heath to keep him from falling forward, while Thorley plunged his hand into the dust, retracting it with something Lucan couldn’t quite see, or rather he didn’t have time to see, as the packed dust Thorley abused decided to seek its fortune elsewhere, its smooth shape collapsing and cascading down towards the shaft. Much of the dust stirred into the air, darkening the cavern and driving them all into a coughing fit.

As the dust settled again, Lucan saw that the slice of the bowl of dust in front of them had lost its shape and collapsed entirely into the shaft, leaving behind a mess of rock and gravel that had apparently been hidden beneath it. Worse yet, the ledge under their feet was noticeably loosening.

“Damn you,” Ryder growled at Thorley, struggling to hold Heath steady.

“Not now,” Lucan shouted. “Move!”

They complied, following his hastened pace as he trod the ledge. Lucan was no longer inching forward. Instead, he was eating up as much distance as he could while moving sideways. The thumps of the beast’s feet were getting so close that even the dust in the cavern was beginning to shake at its approach.

It took them a while. But once they reached the other side of the cavern, they hopped into the passage one by one.

As they did, some of them collapsed on the ground panting, while Lucan and the rest turned to look stare back at the predatory pair of eyes watching them from the passage across the cavern. The beast had arrived.

Something instinctive seemed to deter it from entering the cavern, but its eyes were locked onto them still.

Ryder got up from the ground, where he’d been kneeling beside Heath and gasping for air. “Could we lure it into the shaft?”

“It depends on how intelligent it is,” Lucan said. “If it’s intelligent enough to know what the shaft is, then it’s unlikely. If, however, only instinct is warning it from stepping into the cavern, then perhaps an adequate amount of fury can overwhelm that instinct.”

Lilian, who’d also been on the ground gulping air, forced herself up and said, “I may be able to help with that.”

Lucan nodded at her, then she stepped forward, whispering a chant. The form of her spell materialized into familiar spikes of ice floating in the air. The spikes threw themselves forward across the deceptively wide cavern and collided with the beast’s scales with the rings of tinkling bells. The lizard didn’t seem hurt from the effort, but it shook its head irritably when some of the spikes hit it near the eyes.

Catching on to the same thing Lucan did, Lilian summoned her spell again and guided all her spikes towards the beast’s head and as close as she could to its eyes.

This time, the lizard saw where the spell was coming from and leveled a hostile gaze at Lilian before the spikes collided with its head. When they did, it shook its head aggressively, hitting the walls of the passage, then it stepped forward with a promise of violence. Its front foot landed on the packed dust, collapsing its side of the bowl. The dust cascaded down that side and into the shaft, closely followed by the beast as it tumbled down the edge of the passage.

The shaft swallowed the dust like water into the gullet of a Leviathan. Then the large lizard followed, sliding over the gravel while struggling and failing to hold on to something with its claws. Eventually, it reached the shaft and some manner of force acted upon its humongous body, pushing the panicked creature down into the abyss. The force first plunged its head down into the darkness as soon as it came above the opening, forcing the rest of its body to quickly follow, which ended with the beast smoothly sliding into the shaft with barely any resistance.

It was the first time Lucan noticed that there was some kind of unnatural power acting on whatever sunk into the shaft. Perhaps the beast’s attempts to resist made it more apparent, but he hadn’t noticed the same phenomenon with the inanimate dust.

“Good riddance,” Thorley’s irritating voice rose beside him. Lucan turned to see the young man opening his waterskin for a drink but not before continuing, “The damn thing has be–”

With his gauntlet, Lucan backhanded him across the face with a loud crack, forcing him to the ground. Lilian yelped and the open waterskin flew out of Thorley’s hand, coincidentally, in the direction of the cavern. It hit their side of the bowl, spilling water on the dry grains of dust and tumbling down towards the shaft. Once it reached the hole in the middle of the cavern, the skin was dragged down to the abyss. Surprisingly, though, the water that had spilled out of it while it was falling into the shaft floated, as though the force acting to drag things down was pushing the water up. It floated above the open path to the abyss peacefully, slowly being pushed outwards toward the packed dust around it. Lucan couldn’t watch it anymore, however, as Thorley was picking himself up off the ground with a growl, mouth bloody and face contorted with rage.

Before he could retaliate though, Clifton stepped between them, his axe sheathed but his hand kept prominently on its head. Cordell stepped up beside him while Ryder kept Heath company.

“Please,” Lilian said, leaning on the wall and her eyes shifting between all of them with an abundant amount of panic. “Please, don’t,” she repeated, apparently unable to mouth any more words in her fear, but her meaning was clear.

Thorley’s tense body relaxed as he eyed his opponents and the reasonable part of his mind realized that he was heavily outnumbered.

Lucan stepped around his men-at-arms and faced him, eying the blood seeping from his split lips to flow over and cover his chin. He extended his hand towards him. “Hand it to me.”

“What?” Thorley said.

“Hand it.”

“Thorley,” Lilian said as she saw him hesitating. “Please. Enough has happened already.”

Visibly grinding his teeth after skimming Lucan’s men with his eyes, Thorley palmed his pouch and delicately pulled something out of it, then he reached over and put it in Lucan’s extended hand.

Lucan put the grain of mythril between his thumb and forefinger and brought it closer to his face, eying it curiously. It was silver-colored but with a milky, bluish depth that silver didn’t have. It was also perfectly round as though made to be so by human hands. However, Lucan knew that all the literature agreed that the metal was always found in this shape, and always in the Labyrinth. The round grain in his hand was smaller than the nail on his smallest finger, which made him wonder if it was enough to forge a goldsteel sword. After observing it for a while, he gingerly put it into his own pouch. He glanced at the cavern where the water had been floating above the shaft and found that it had already fallen on the dust around it, having been pushed away from the round hole by the invisible force.

He turned to Lilian. “Did you see that?”

She was unmoving for a moment, looking at him quizzically, then she glanced at the hole, shaking her head slowly. “S-See what?”

“The water,” Lucan said with a moderate amount of exasperation. “It was floating.”

She shook her head with more certainty this time.

Lucan sighed and turned to the most troublesome member of their party, who was still bleeding from the mouth. His face hardened as he remembered Heath nearly falling into oblivion because of him. “From this moment on, you will follow my commands to the letter. You will not foolishly endanger others. And you will be as cautious as a newly-blooded maiden in a court of snakes.”

After Thorley begrudgingly acquiesced, Lucan took a quick look at this Blessing.

You have slain a lv9 Archsal’awa and absorbed part of its Vital Essence.

You have slain a lv10 Archsal’awa and absorbed part of its Vital Essence.

You have slain a lv10 Archsal’awa and absorbed part of its Vital Essence.

7-Point Star Dance has leveled up.

He dismissed his Blessing swiftly after a brief glance, raising his eyes and gazing at his men. “Let’s find our way up.”

It took them two days to reach the earthen tunnel that led to the surface. Two insufferable days. Having discarded their supplies in favor of surviving a rampaging lizard back near the shaft, they had to bear with rough sleep among other grating conditions that made them all peevish. They also had to contend with a variety of, thankfully, weaker beasts, including more Kewmer Wyrms, on their way up. By the time they reached the tunnel that led to the surface, they were all as exhausted as each other.

As their surroundings turned from stale black to deep brown, Lucan could somehow begin to smell the surface from this deep in the Elder Root’s tunnel. They climbed the relatively steep slope and he couldn’t help but feel a deep-seated longing to see and feel the sunlight on his skin. He smiled as they walked the final stretch of their return journey. The moss stopped looming above them and its light was replaced by a sparse amount of torches up the earthen tunnel.

Ryder was still helping Heath along on his right, though the latter had surprisingly gotten better in the past two days, his wounds closing and his complexion improving. He was still weak, but Lucan had thankfully stopped fearing the worst more than a day ago.

On the other side, the rest of the party walked beside Lucan. Lilian’s dress was worse for wear, and the armors of Cordell, Clifton, and Thorley weren’t faring much better.

Suddenly, Clifton’s head snapped to the right with alarm, his sharp eyes honing in on something across the tunnel.

For less than a moment, Lucan was perplexed, thinking that it was impossible for a beast to make it this close to the surface with the Elder Root in place. But as he turned to the torchless, shaded edge of the tunnel towards which Clifton glared with a focus that could cut flesh, he realized that it wasn’t a beast he needed to fear.

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