Halls of Darkness

Chapter Five

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She woke to the cold and darkness of the cave on the same night that she had died, and her brother and sister were taken from her. The half-man lay dead off to the side as a reminder of the skirmish that had taken place. Only now, Aliya could move her limbs. She threw the blanket off herself and stepped out into the open for the first time in presumably days.

She had not realized before the implication of the heights of the cleft. She turned and looked up at the slope which steepened as it rose high above the evergreen trees. It went up for miles until it pierced the clouds and entered a realm of eternal snow and ice.

Inanna had left her on the very slope of the Mountain.

She saw figures in the distance, too large to be human, marching up and down the sides of the mount, disappearing and emerging out of tunnels among the crevices of the slope.

If I'm to find my way to the top, I'll have to follow them, she thought nervously.

With no other indicators for direction, she climbed over the lip of the cave, scrambling through loosening boulders and briers reaching over her head until she came to a line of evergreen trees.

What she found when she crept through the forest walls was a wilderness glowing eerily with green light. The moon, the stars, the night sky—all were obscured by the canopy, underneath which a whole city could dwell, and its inhabitants might not discover the reality of the moon or even sunlight.

She continued to venture through the maze of colossal trees, realizing through sharp sounds cutting through the greenery that perhaps a city did live here. A city of frightful things, masked in trees and bushes that no one could see through.

Aliya saw one thing—a monster leaping from one hiding spot to another several yards away. It was the size of a large house. In its single stride across the clearing, she saw four legs whose limbs twisted in ways unnatural to any animal she knew of. Despite its immense size, it made no sound as it emerged or as it disappeared again into the maze of forest.

Her inclination not to die dissuaded her from going any further in that direction. But if I waste my time looking for paths without danger, I'll never reach Sarah and Michael in time.

If she cleared this forest, she would need to follow the throng of royal subjects who knew where the Palace was. Presumably that was where her siblings were being held.

The thought of them kept her on her way. She had expected the forest to rise steadily, indicating her ascent on the Mountain slope, yet the opposite came true. The ground on which she walked steepened into a ravine until she could no longer walk on her feet.

With her next step, a rock came loose beneath her, and she toppled headlong into the ravine. She rolled several times, each one she reached for something to stop her fall but missed as her speed accelerated. Lacerations formed on her skin through spiny branches and the jutted end of rocks. Her fear increased that something large and sharp was waiting at the bottom for her to impale herself on, making an abrupt end to her.

What she landed in was worse. It was soft and had the appearance and texture of moss, but upon impact, she sank waist deep beneath its surface. Her toes broke through the apparent bottom and submerged in ice cold water.

The moss was a layer of coating over a slimy pool of water with depths unknown to her.

Aliya struggled to tread and maintain herself above the surface and searched her surroundings for ground to safely walk on. What she found was the trunk of a fallen tree half-sunken in the marsh.

Perhaps the giant slug glaring at her from on top it would be willing to share.

She grabbed ono the lowest branch protruding from the side of the log and hoisted herself up. Her feet slipped against the bark, shaking the trunk slightly, and startling the creature that made its home on it. She caught herself from falling back into the marsh with one dry hand clasped onto the branch. She swung one leg up over the top, and by some miracle managed to sit upright, facing the ugly thing.