The Abyss Beneath

The tunnel extended downward, its walls closing more and more as they delved deeper into the gullet of the ancient ravine. It was hard to know whether the smell was rust or decay, but it was mixed with the heaviness of centuries worth of silence. Kaiza carried the bit of obsidian close, its dim glow dancing shadows on the jagged stone walls. He still heard the battle with the serpentine guardian in his mind, but there was no time to think. "So..." They had only just begun to discover what lay hidden beneath this forgotten site.

Mina's cautious footfalls were barely audible behind him, but Kaiza could feel her gaze following him steadily. He cast a glance over his shoulder, locking eyes with her. She looked determined, yet there was a glimmer of worry in her eyes. She was worried about him, and he could hear it. He couldn't let her down now.

"Stay close," he said softly, hardly above a whisper. "Whatever's ahead, we tackle it together."

The gleaming light of her vials came as her hand moved to them before she even thought. She wasn't as experienced a fighter as Kaiza, but her ingenuity had saved them more than once. Yet he couldn't shake his concern. The dangers they encountered were ever more insidious with each step they took.

Oran, the one they relied on to shatter the quiet, muttered from the back. "It's too quiet," he muttered. "Where are all the other nasty surprises hiding? "

Kaiza did not answer, though his hand reflexively tightened on the obsidian shard. All that silence in the tunnel felt like a trap, and he was waiting for the next strike, sure that the worst was to come.

The tunnel expanded as they delved deeper into the labyrinth, the muttering they had initially dismissed as a figment of their imagination growing ever more pronounced. Vowels thinned, consonants thickened and slurred, and together they became voices warped by the passage of time, throaty and brimming with rock-age melancholy. Kaiza's unease grew. These weren't mere whispers; they were warnings. He could feel the power of their meaning piling on his chest, but he wasn't about to quit just now.

The symbols on the walls had grown more elaborate, the dim radiance of the silvery veins beating in time with the whispers. Mina's gaze skimmed them before her brow creased with focus. She was a daughter of the mermaids, and Kaiza could already feel that the specters of this place were resurrecting memories she'd buried long ago. Only she understood the import of these signs, but the information inside her head was a dangerous thing. For both of them.

"The mermaids…" she said, her voice a whisper of its own. These are their markings, but they don't belong here. This is something older. Much older."

Before Kaiza could reply, a tremor shook the tunnel and made the stone below their feet quake. The walls' silver-leaved veins ignited into tendrils of unnatural brilliance. Then he heard a distant rumble in the stone, the sound of earth shifting.

From the blackness before, a low growl reverberated through the earth and a sensation that made the hairs on the back of Kaiza's neck tingle.

"Oh, not again," said Oran, hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

Kaiza's heart raced. He felt the darkness closing in on them. The growl got louder, then a sudden screech; there in the shadows a figure appeared, a hulking twisted form, a mass of flesh and shadow. Its eyes blazed with a cavernous light, and its claws dragged on the stone and sent sparks flying across the floor.

It was like nothing Kaiza had ever seen before. Interrupted by interlacing veins of luminous silver, its body was covered in rough, stone-like armor. An enormous head with a drooling mouth of sharp teeth turned toward them, its breath stinking and foul.

Mina sucked in her breath, gripping the vial she kept on her belt. "What is that thing?"

Kaiza moved closer, his fingers clenching the obsidian shard. "It, whatever it is, is not our friend."

With an earsplitting roar, the creature charged at them from afar, the ground beneath their feet splitting apart as it propelled towards them at a horrifying blistering pace. Kaiza had hardly a moment to react, pulling his blade and slashing at the creature's armored hide. The strike was ineffective, the blade ricocheting off with a loud clunk.

"Dammit!" Kaiza growled, stepping back. "It's too strong. We can't fight it head-on."

Oran had stepped forward, sword raised, but Kaiza pushed him back. "No, it's too dangerous. We need a plan."

It swiped through the air again with its claws, a deadly growl escaping from its throat. Mina lobbed one of her vials of light toward the creature, the liquid bursting on impact, creating a blinding flash. The creature flinched, but the light hardly slowed it. It appeared immune to all that they tried.

Kaiza's mind raced. He had come across creatures like this before, beasts linked to ancient powers that drained the life force in their vicinity, but this was not the same. Stronger. More resilient.

He had to think fast.

"Oran!" Kaiza barked. "Distract it! Mina, you know what to do!"

Oran charged, and his sword rang against the creature's stone-like armor. He wore it out; his blows ricocheted off the beast's skin, and it made him an object of its concerted diabolic attention. Kaiza looked towards Mina, who had already begun to mix another vial. She threw it up high, and then, on its detonation in a blinding light, it pummeled back at the beast, whose form faltered briefly.

"Now, Kaiza!" Mina cried.

Kaiza charged forth, hand around a shard of obsidian. In one glorious moment he lifted it above his head, and this time the fragment glowed brighter than it ever had. It howled as the light engulfed it, twisting painfully. Kaiza thrust the shard into the beast's chest with a roar, the light inside it flaring so bright it nearly blinded them all.

The creature screamed, and its body thrashed forcefully before breaking into a flurry of smoke and ash. Its shape was blown all around like powder, and not even the howl it left in the air afterwards.

Kaiza got back on his feet, breathing hard, the aches of exertion still coursing through his body. He looked back to see Mina's face white, her hands shaking, steady to take a breath.

"Is it over?" Oran said, his voice tinged with disbelief and fatigue.

Kaiza nodded, staring intently into the darkness in front of him. "For now. But this place isn't done with us."

Mina advanced with her hand placed on Kaiza's arm. "You're right," she said gently. "Whatever's down here… it's not done yet."

Kaiza looked back at her, his heart heavy. The weight of their journey bore down on him. Entertainment industry coverage always makes the news seem like a circus, but people have become collateral damage all in the name of good docs.

But there was no way back.

"We will get through this," Kaiza said confidently. "Together."

Mina nodded, steel in her spine. "Together."

As the shades of the void whirled about her, they trudged forward, realizing that whatever lay at the center of this forsaken realm would challenge them in ways that had never crossed their mind. But they were prepared for each other, for their humanity, and for the hope waiting on the other side of the darkness.