The Angkhora Warriors

Part 19: Skull Cave

The cave got colder as they walked further in. All three carried a torch, but the small flames provided no warmth. At first, the cave appeared to be a natural structure, but the further they walked in, the more the sides appeared to be carved out.

"Do you think they carved the entire tunnel out?" Uma asked as she ran her fingers along the wall.

"There may have already been a tunnel and they just smoothed the sides down," Arjana said. "It would be quite the feat to dig out an entire tunnel under a tree."

"Unless they had help from something," Oja said as she found a cut mark in the stone that was clearly one massive cut out. Like a Giant's carving tool.

As they moved deeper, they felt wind in the cave. Suddenly, Oja disappeared into the darkness. "Oja!!" Uma screamed.

She had slipped off an edge. Uma and Arjana looked down the cliff.

"I'm alright. Uuughh." Oja picked her torch up. She had fallen onto a pile of skulls and bones. And there was a large tunnel at the other end. "Hey. I see something. I think you guys need to come down here," Oja said.

Uma and Arjana jumped down and joined her. Uma shone her torch around, realizing that she was standing on top of a mountain of bones. Some human and some asura.

They climbed down the bone mountain, entered the tunnel, and followed the path, which led into a labyrinth. It zigzagged for some time, but it opened to a strange structure, as if someone had carved a large building out of the rock inside of the cave. Torches resided on either side of the entrance to the crafted structure.

They stepped into the structure, which started with a closed hallway. Arjana, leading the group, stopped when his foot stepped on a piece of rock which began to shift. The floor suddenly disappeared out from under him, but before falling, Uma reached out and pulled him back. Underneath the floor, there were more skeletons that had been spiked to death.

"Thanks, Uma," Arjana said.

Uma nodded as they continued on. The hallway split into two and either way led to wooden doors. They checked both sides and knocked on both doors, but nothing happened. Both were identical.

"This is another trap," Oja said.

"Which door should we choose?" Arjana asked.

Uma checked both doors closely, but from one of them, she noticed a strange odor. She brought herself closer to the door and could smell it coming through a small crack. It seemed familiar. She lifted her torch up to the small crack and the air leaking through burst into a small flame then vanished. "Not this one," Uma said. "There's gas on the other side. It's a trap. Probably poisonous too."

They took the other door, and nothing happened. It led to a room. The room had a door in the ceiling but no way to get to it. When Oja stepped forward, the room started making a clanking noise, and three platforms rose out of the ground. A foul green liquid started pouring out of holes in the walls, causing them to leap to the first platform.

The room started filling quickly, so they jumped to the tallest platform. The entrance to the next room was still high above their heads, so Arjana helped Uma and Oja up, then they pulled him up just as the green liquid reached the last platform. The new room was an open chamber with pegs hanging out of the wall. High up in the ceiling was the next way out.

"So, do we just climb up?" Oja asked. She lifted herself a few pegs then one suddenly gave way when she put her weight on it. "A bunch of them are fakes."

She started climbing, being agile and careful not to trust in a faulty peg. Arjana and Uma used their own ways up, being cautious. The higher up the walls they ascended, the more of the pegs came out of the wall. They reached a point where they all had to stop as it seemed that every one of the pegs would tear out of the wall like paper.

"Be swift," Uma said as she heaved herself up and sprinted up the pegs, each one broke off and tumbled to the ground. When she reached the top, she pushed off the wall and barely grabbed the ledge to the exit. "The wall is a little slick at the top." She pulled herself up and waited for the others.

Arjana and Oja copied Uma's way of getting up, but both anticipated the slippery wall and Uma helped them once they jumped. They stood on top of the rocky structure and looked at a tunnel hundreds of feet away. "That's quite the jump," Oja said.

"We've done much further," Uma said as she leaped to the other side. She landed with a lot of room to spare.

The others jumped, and they followed the path. Ahead, they saw light, so they sprinted toward it, anticipating that it was the outside. It wasn't but it led into an open area. A loud snort brought their eyes to the sleeping mongoose, which they'd all assumed was a boulder. Arjana lifted his torch and they saw all of them. A horde of boar-sized mongooses sleeping in the cave. All various sizes and colors. None had been disturbed, so they started walking lightly around them.

Every time one of the mongooses moved or snored, they stopped moving and looked to see if they'd been spotted. If one woke, they would all wake. One of the mongoose-bears at the back of the cave lifted its head and looked right at them, but it either took no threat of them or didn't comprehend what it saw. It laid back down and fell back to sleep.

They reached the other end where another tunnel stretched into further darkness, and they continued to go down quietly through the tunnel so that their echoes wouldn't wake up the sleeping beasts. The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but they finally saw some light ahead.

A foul smell greeted them near the exit of the cavern. Underneath their feet, something crackled and crunched. Their torched revealed skeletons and bones all around them. Closer to the entrance were freshly decaying bodies. Humans.

Oja and Uma looked to one another, then they inspected one of the bodies. It was one of the children from the Snake Clan village. When Oja realized who it was, she pulled herself away and failed to fight back the sobs which followed. Uma stared at the body with fire burning in her eyes.

"They took some of the Snake Clan children," Uma said.

"We were so caught up in the death of the village that we didn't look around to see if anyone had been missing among the dead," Oja said.

"That would've taken too long," Uma said.

Uma stood and stepped out of the tunnel. They stood on a plateau, but they noticed as the ledge sloped far below, lights twinkled in the distance. "Looks like a village," Uma said.

They made sure that no one was watching them, then descended toward the valley. Smoke came from the village and a warmth drifted up from the area. They found a small nook in the rocks covered with trees, from which they could look down on the village.

They reached a hall with a large skeleton on the pulpit, where hundreds of burnt candles surrounded it. It looked like it had been abandoned a long time ago. The skeleton was huge, and looked like those of a Giant's Child. There were bronze bowls with dried black blood in them. The shamans must have drank from them as part of their ritual.

"A sacrificial hall," Arjana said.

There were ancient shamanic writings and symbols all over the walls. Arjana recognized some verses, they looked like the writings from the Book of Light, but the shamans had perverted them with black magic and blood so that it would become their own book, the Book of Darkness.