The End of Nowhere
May 8, 2008, 7:30 a.m.
He was hiking back towards his cabin, having jogged to his
cache of dry goods and water he kept hidden in one of the burrows. As soon as she was ready, they would be
taking a look inside the cave that she had discovered over the previous
weekend. Without knowing the size of the
cave, he wasn’t sure as to the amount of supplies he would need to bring. After looking through his stash, he settled
on enough for one day, to start. If they
needed more, he could always stock up and they would go from there.
She had gone out and purchased high-powered flashlights,
several long lengths of brightly-colored string, and a couple books of graph
paper for making maps if necessary. All
in all, he thought that they would be ready for a quick foray into the unknown,
but just was not sure how vast this unexplored area was.
He reached the cabin in short order, and sat on his rock,
thinking in the early morning fog. His
mind drifted to the next Uprising, and his tag team encounter. Having watched for a while, he knew that the
tandem of Kevin Heat and Black Phoenix would be likely one of the toughest
tasks he had faced to date in NLW, and it did not help matters any that they
had teamed before and so had a bit of chemistry.
On the other side of the ring, the only chemistry he had
with his partner is that she beat him for the NLW Championship several weeks
ago. Not the best thing in the world to
have when there was so much on the line in this bout. However, he knew Aphrodisia to be a
professional and knew that, even if only for one night, they would find a way
to co-exist to face their opponents. He
had no beef with Aph; after all, she beat him fairly in the ring, and he could
not fault anyone but himself. He would
be better off to focus on his opponents in just over a week’s time.
Any further thought he may have had about the situation
quickly vanished as he saw the cabin door open and Elyssa step out, already
prepared to go. He rose from the rock,
shouldering the provision-filled knapsack.
“You must be excited to be up this early.”
“Nah, I’m finally getting used to the time zone. So, are we going, or not?”
He shook his head, grinning all the while. “Anxious to meet our impending doom,
huh? So be it. Let’s go.”
They divided the supplies in as even a manner as they
could and set out for the fifteen-minute hike to the rock formation. The rising sun was trying to burn the fog
away, but the remainder had a crimson tint to it, almost as if blood was
floating on the winds. There was an
eerie silence, save for the footfalls of the two people, as they walked
along. No words needed to be said
between them at this point...each knew the other’s excitement and anxiety at
what was to come.
A short time later, they reached their destination. Elyssa ducked under the overhang and moved to
the back, and he saw for the first time that there was a sloping pathway
descending into the earth. He took a
slow, deep breath and released it just as slowly. While by no means was he claustrophobic, he
was still a bit apprehensive about going in.
He looked over at Elyssa, who was getting her flashlight ready, and
sighed. It was too late to turn back
now.
\___(^)___/
The sloping path met the cave floor, and the two found
themselves in a cavern about 75 feet wide, with the only direction of travel
permitted being straight ahead of them.
The air was markedly cooler, and from what they could see, the area
itself seemed to be artificially smoothed out.
“It’s almost as if people once lived in this cave,
Will.” Elyssa said softly as they shone
their lights around the room.
Will was marking down on the graph paper the approximate
size of the room, wanting to keep a good record as they went. When he had finished, he glanced over at
Elyssa. “Ready to see what else is in
here?”
He could see her nod in the residual light, and so laying
out some string behind him as a precautionary measure, they looked into the
next room. This room was bigger than the
first one, probably 100 feet at its’ widest point and extending several hundred
feet in front of them. There were
several openings at various points along the wall on both sides, and at the far
end of the room was a raised dais. As
they began to walk forward, they noticed that several rings of stones were laid
out on the floor, almost as if....
“Fire pits,” he whispered.
“Elyssa, I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m almost ready to
think we should leave this to some professionals.”
“What, and miss out on the adventure? Fat chance, Will. Let’s keep going!”
He knew that a discussion would be a pointless
endeavor. When Elyssa had her mind made
up, nothing was going to dissuade her.
He let her take lead as he continued to add to the map he was
making. Most of the rooms off the big
chamber were smaller, almost as if families had once lived there. He could actually envision such a scenario
happening in his mind as he dutifully mapped out the smaller rooms.
By the time they had reached the end of the chamber, they
saw that the only thing of note on the dais was a small pedestal. There was a rather small indentation on the
center of the pedestal, as if something normally belonged there. It was then that he noticed a partially
closed door beyond the dais, as he pointed it out to Elyssa.
Nodding, she walked to the blocked opening, and slipped
through, her smaller size a greater asset in this instance. Will remained, trying to push the offending
slab of stone out of the way before succeeding several minutes later. As he walked inside, he let out a soft
whistle to alert Elyssa that he was coming.
She was by his side in a moment, pointing to something on
the floor of the room. Her face looked
deathly pale as he asked, “You all right?”
“Will...there’s a skull over there....”
“Shh. I’ll go look
at it. Calm down, Elyssa.”
Slowly, he walked over to where she had been standing, and
knelt down. To an extent, she had been
right...there really was a skull laying on the ground. But the last time he checked, most skulls
were not made of stone. Carefully, he
reached out and picked up the stone skull, examining it more closely.
It was polished stone, slate-gray in color with a dim
shine when light hit it. It seemed to
fit the pedestal, and figured that it was some sort of religious relic. Knowing that none of the churches in
existence today would use something like this for a totem, he tried to figure
where it would fall in the theological discussion. At first glance, he could see where it would
look like a skull...but given the inadequate lighting, he wanted to take the
thing topside and get a better look at it.
Turning back to Elyssa, he said, “Let’s get back. I want to look at this in better light.”
“A...are you sure we should take it? I mean, isn’t this the part where the cave
starts to collapse and a giant boulder tries to crush us?”
“Elyssa...you’ve been watching far too much Indiana
Jones. We’ll be fine. Trust me.”
They made it out of the cave with little difficulty, and
as they emerged into the afternoon sun, Will turned to her and smiled. “See?
No giant boulders, no undead tomb guards, no creepy monster. It’s all Hollywood anyway. Come on.
Let’s get back home.”
They turned to walk back to the cabin, the stone “skull”
tucked away safely in his knapsack. Some
research would be necessary to find out if they had a true treasure on their
hands.
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