“For god’s sake man! Put it back before you get us both killed!” I have a horrible feeling wallowing in my gut – meanwhile my self-righteous twin brother hasn’t the foggiest idea as to what he’s getting us into. This entire ordeal was a bad idea from the beginning.
We were located now in a small cavern belonging to a larger system of sewerage tunnels that intersected beneath the ancient city. The air is dark and fowl, and I felt this ghastly stench clinging to my very being. My eyes dart from side to side, in fear, and I feel as though this place is riddled with spirits or… or ancient wraiths. They come in the form of droplets of water, echoing loudly far away down the tunnel; or sudden terrible drafts sweeping through.
“My god! Are you seeing this, Beryn? It’s beautiful! As though I am holding the stars in my own two hands!” My brother Daryen did not in fact possess the stars, but rather a sacred gem from a very ancient and powerful king. I fear whatever power it did possess might have overwhelmed him. He was always greedy.
As I had said before, we were exploring the ruins of an ancient city, once known by its people as ‘Ahlanvar’ when we happened upon a shaft that led us inevitably to this tomb. Our only concern right now was that we appeared to have lost the shaft, and I doubted we’d have the resources to survive very long, especially if Daryen kept touching everything.
I will admit, however, that the tomb we found was quite extraordinary. It appeared first as a distant light in the eternal darkness; feint indeed, but bright enough to draw us forward with mild curiosity. I believed it at first to have been a lantern, and that we were not alone down here at all. As we neared it, however, we discovered that it was only the flame of my own torch reflected upon incredible golden doors.
My brother and I took to it like children to candy, but the real wonder, we realised, was beyond the golden doors. It was a room filled with magic; illuminated by powers beyond our comprehension. We saw crystals as large as a man’s head, mounted upon 12 pillars that lined the walls of the tomb. The walls themselves were mysteriously shrouded by darkness, but the rest – by god, it was something out of a dream.
Each crystal we looked upon shone brightly a different colour to the last, and therefore my brother and I stood within a rainbow; a magnificent bloody rainbow. I saw the orange of the setting sun amongst the bitter red of a dying man, the deep blue of the ocean coupled with the earthly green of a thousand plains of grass, purple of lavender and bright yellow sand, and many many more.
In the middle lay a whited stone sepulchre painted with splashes of this colour and that, and upon it was carved the statue of a kingly sort of man. A crown rested upon his head, and in his hands he bore a sceptre upon his chest. That’s where my brother found the gem.
I believe it was a sapphire, based on the dense evening blue of it, but it was perhaps the size of my fist. As we moved about it we saw tiny angels of light dance around the magical gem, urging us to come closer. I guess they convinced Daryen, because he wedged it from the sceptre using his knife and suddenly all the lights went out.
That’s how we ended up in the dark, with me telling my brother to put the gem back. But alas, he couldn’t be convinced, so now we press on through the darkness.
The air down here became chilling and I begin to feel goosebumps on my arms. That horrible feeling remains, as if the walls are slowly closing in around us. Our footsteps become echoes that join the other spirits that haunt this place. We seek desperately for a way out.
In front of me I can faintly see Daryen staring at the gem. “Hey Beryn,” he says, “This gem has magical properties, right, so perhaps we can use it to escape this infernal place.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think it works like that, besides, we don’t even know what it is.” The conversation ended there, until about an hour later, when I say Daryen say “Beryn, why are you touching my shoulder.”
I stare at my hands for a moment. “I’m not,” I reply. Our hearts quicken and we notice the sound of something scurrying around in the dark. We are not alone.
“Daryen, maybe you should just put the gem down and leave it.”
He replies in a shimmering voice. “I normally would have resented that idea, brother, but now I’m generally afraid.” I listen as he places the gem onto the wet stone floor, and a light appears above us.
Illuminated by this strange light, I find myself face to face with a creature, a fiend, so vile a ghastly that I scream and jump with fright. It stares at me, its eyes like bottomless pits within a green and rotting skull, and then it howls ferociously.
Daryen and I scramble away from the creature and its friends who are equally fowl, but on tall bony legs they pursue us with great speed, howling and screeching in the darkness. One of them raises its arms, exposing a set of broken ribs from which spawns a grotesque mass of tentacles. Another one, also with tentacles flickering about, digs its claws into the walls and pursues us upon the ceiling.
We find the entrance that we came through before, fearing only that it would be too late. The screaming monsters are almost upon us and I can feel tentacles licking my back as I run. We scurry up the ladder like rats as they grab and tear at our legs, but bursting into the wonderful sunlight above, the creatures retreat into the depths of darkness. We have cheated death, and now we lay upon the ground breathless and short of words.
I turn to my brother, relieved that I am alive, only thinking to say, “I told you not to pick it up.”
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