Cascade Rock

Part 6

As the pool drained, the vines retreated with it, staying ever below the water line. A whirlpool formed as if the water were being pulled down by some invisible, subaquatic force. Before long an empty well gaped where the pool had been. A narrow stone staircase, no longer concealed by the water vines, emerged along the interior wall of the well. Fully revealed now was the thick-linked chain that ran some forty feet from the bottom of the raft-turned-hanging platform to a grated floor far below. The gore and bloody viscera of their late enemies had been swept down with the water and vines, like gutted and discarded fish.

"Shall we?" Adrestia said toeing the edge of the well. "Fortune awaits."

"How about a dagger or something?" Darl said, gesturing at Adrestia's belt of weapons. "In case more of those fishermen show up."

"How about you go first," Adrestia scoffed, then added with a sardonic smile. "So I can watch your back. Careful. It'll be slippery."

The moss lit their descent. Darl took the lead, Ven behind him and Adrestia in the rear. Ven palmed the face of the wall beside him and tried not to look down. His hands grazed figures carved in relief from the stone––the moss, strangely, did not grow upon these graven images. He focused on this artwork as he descended, studying it as intensely as he could to keep his mind off the drop to his other side. A narrative suggested itself to him; it must have captured his attention, slowing him down because Adrestia sighed impatiently behind him.

"Look," he tried to explain. "These five figures. I think they're gods."

In one segment of the engraving, two apparent females and three males sat on thrones, each with a ring radiating from her or his head.

"And then this...Dragon. He's not one of them...but he was at the beginning. Maybe before them? I don't know."

They shuffled on.

"What's that?" Adrestia said, interest taking hold of her voice.

"That's his––the Dragon's––lair or something. A vault. Here he's transforming into a man. And now he's locking the vault. Five keys. Five gods. One key for each. He gives them the keys. Now he's flying away. Into..."

"Is that a setting sun or a rising sun he's flying into?"

"I don't know."

"But here, this goddess becomes a spear...or a harpoon?"

"That'd be Raywen," he heard Darl say. "And runes don't parse, you smug little prick."

They neared the last bend in the stairwell.

"This god," Ven went on, ignoring his brother, "the one with the gusts of wind. He's pointing his lightning at her. They're fighting. Does he want her key? The harpoon? And then...what's happening here?"

He could feel Adrestia at his shoulder, studying the scene. "Some sort of great beasts. A serpent and a winged––it's not a bird. Have they transformed?"

"I don't think so. Look. This one came from her mouth. It's like a proxy battle."

"What happens next?"

But they had reached the bottom and nothing further of the tale could be read.

The broken and torn bodies of the fishmen lay strewn about the floor; their blood seeped into the grating and mingled with the standing water and swaying vines below. Older, fleshless bones lay with the recently fallen.

Across the gory floor, they could see the outline of a stone door with a wheel set in the middle of it. They tiptoed around the fishmen and huddled in front of the door.