Cautiously he felt his way along the ground in the darkness. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, but the shadow was so aggressively thick he felt that even if he had brought a flashlight the beam would have been smothered. Moving slowly, inch by inch, he realized that he heard nothing but his own progress.
Where had the others gone? No one answered his calls. Screaming out into the void. He was alone now, utterly so.
Slowly the air began to lighten, till at length he rounded a bend in the tunnel and came to a breathtaking sight. Phosphorescent lichens cast the corridor ahead into mysterious viridian luminescence, while beyond was a chamber lit still brighter, but by a pale blueish hue. Now he could see that he was in a hallway, not a natural tunnel; the ancient stonework bore elaborate carvings, but he could barely discern if they were decorative or meant to be writing.
Moving slowly but upright now, Elleriuv walked down the corridor towards the more brightly lit chamber beyond. He felt drawn to it somehow…not that he had much choice.
He was in so much trouble, he knew. Where-ever he was, he was not supposed to be. How was he going to get home? Now there were four of them lost, rather than just one. He felt so foolish. He had encouraged the others to endanger themselves, and now here they were, separated in the strangest possible place. He began to wonder if he hadn’t somehow ended up in one of those poisonous caves he’d read about, where gases from deep the earth caused people to pass out or worse. Maybe he was just dreaming.
The chamber beyond was almost certainly a dream. Bathed in the glow of hundreds of softly glowing lichen, an ancient temple lay nestled in an enormous cavern; its roof hundreds of feet above him. He must be under a mountain; how else could he be in such a massive cave?
Venturing onward through the eerie light, feeling as though he had little alternative, the young man went further and further down the tunnels. He came to many strange chambers, ancient temples long forgotten; he began to grow hungry and thirsty and tired, but the wonder of each new sight kept drawing him forward.
At times the cavern would open up, gloriously, to let in blazing streams of light from the sunny day above; but each time the hole was unreachable, and while the sight was stunning to behold, he remained stuck in the subterranean labyrinth.
Elleriuv came to a series of shrines, clearly ancient well beyond anything he’d known in his life. Each holy site, though long abandoned, was more beautiful than the last, till he he came to sight that finally made him pause, unable to go further. A great staircase wound upward from the cavern floor, all the way through a series of switchbacks to join with the heavenly light above. Finally he would be out of here.
Then he noticed that below, a chamber beckoned. More blue light, but different somehow this time, and with forms just visible that could be statues, men, or simply rocks. His curiosity was bursting, though he longed more than anything to be on the comfortable surface again, breathing fresh open air in the sunshine.