The Pearl Fox

The Halls

Hanzak walked through the darkness. These were the great casting shadows in the Cavistan Range of mountains. For long slow days, he heaved upwards along the narrow canyon that swallowed deep within the giant mountain walls. Sometimes it was so dark that no light from a flame could help him see. Hanzak often cut himself on sharp stones, during the most shadowy and darkest journeys he made through the endless range. He was drowned in chasms of darkness because the great Cavistan mountains were so high that they reached the stratosphere, and the mountain peaks were narrower further up, that some of them curved downwards or stacked against other peaks. These peaks created darker looking cold shadows against shades gorges. Daylight inside the Cavistan Range was slender and starved, with just a few beams that whizzed down like golden ribbons.     

Hanzak dislodged a couple of fingers and had to pull them back into place with terrible cracks. He fell so many times that his body was torn and bleeding, with unknown wounds that blistered and bled all over again on further accidents. He often slipped and fell down tumbling stones that sent him downwards into more darkness. Hanzak saw absolutely nothing. He lost the path and he couldn't find where it was in the dark. No daylight rays penetrated the silent nothingness. He was sorry that he'd escaped from the quarry, despite it's cruelty, atleast he could see there. 

For days he travelled, crawling like a spider, and sometimes limping as his leg bones were in pain. He felt with his hands along the surfaces of the rocks, and he found tufts of cold damp grass that he fed on.  Without sunlight, it was the plants that thrives in deep darkness and underground that didn't glow or make sounds like other plants in the further north of Diaphry where it gets little sunlight. He missed the light, and he missed seeing colours. 

The dark canyons of the Cavistan Range were silent and full of just the eerie howls of wind that sped through the channels and fissures, creating sinister tunes. Hanzak listened to the winds and shuddered. More sounds of cracking as falling rocks hit the ground further away. Now his own ears popped. He went into a slumber, then woke up in darkest darkness, finding it a struggle almost to breathe. Beneath him, he felt his way blind and crawling over jagged rocks. Above, the natural high vaulted ceiling of the mountains pressed together and closed a lot of the sky, with only a few dim grey beacons entering through fissures. The tops of the mountains were high up into the clouds, and today or tonight, he wasn't sure, there were clouds masking the sky. The path sloped downwards into a wide cave mouth, that he was now able to see the outline to. Tiny flakes of snow coming from the high altitude peaks fell down like feathers and touched his face. The coldness of the gentle soft flakes were welcoming as they helped him breathe slightly better in the stuffy dark insides of the monstrous mountain range. 

He went into the cave, and he found some cool droplets of water that dripped down from an invisible stalactite. He opened his mouth and drank some of the water drops. Everywhere was pitch black, and he couldn't see where he was, and he contemplated turning back, then facing severe punishment at the quarry when the officials find him. He felt angry and bitter. "I'm being punished! You gods are laughing at me! Yes I stole from that temple and I'll do it again if I was given the chance! Give me light please. PLEASE! Get me out of this damned place! Please!" His yelling created echoes within the cave and down tunnels and passages. 

He sobbed then, feeling so ashamed for it but no one was there to hear him. He fell into sleep, then woke up, and was confronted by stars shining. There was an ache in his guts and he retched on the floor. He could see that the bile was pale coloured with streaks of blood. It was still dark around him but he saw colours here and there. He was able to see his own hands. "I CAN SEE!" He cried out in glee. 

Now he stood, and found that there were several openings, and one of them was clearly leading to outside of the cavern. Stars shone there in the open sky, and he walked to it, and came to the outside world. All around were the mountains but the peaks were smaller and the sky was cleared. Just ahead of him was the prehistoric ruins of an ancient long lost palace, that fell into the hills during an earthquake so long ago when the ground level was higher, and the mountains were not yet pushed upwards to the sky. Shattered and broken dark stone pillars and steps that was once white and gleaming. He stepped across the rubble and walked into the opening that had been a great arched door, and arrived to a roofless hall where the ground was full of dust and rocks. Ancient mosaics that were very much faded and didn't matter anymore twinkled in the starlit night and he was able to see as much as he could during the day. 

Sounds of water trickled along a rivulet that poured down the side of the rocks, into the ruined palace and over the boulders, down into cracks. He climbed a solid staircase, and came to a wide room without walls and no ceiling. He could see that there was a shining wall that the waters had made into a mirror. He saw himself, with eyes that were aglow and as bright green as the eyes of a predator. He was shocked, and made a yell. It took him moments to come to terms with his eyes that had opened their ability to see in the dark. He turned to his left, and found an unusual sight there, with shining pale lillies over pillars and debris.