The Journey by E A Bagby

Author:E A Bagby [Bagby, E A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2020-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

6

The Wind Cave

Where are we?

I could not stop looking through the window.

As I relay this now, I wonder whether my sleep before my friends snuck into my room had in fact been dreamless, or if my dreams had instead been overpowered by the fantasy I stepped into upon waking.

When we first entered the Wind Cave, I shouted to Erikal in protest, but the roar of the wind drowned me out. Only Alana’s screams and Meritus’s hooting rose slightly above the noise.

Those first several minutes, the Wind Cave twisted and branched like a rock maze—as I would expect of a cave. This, alone, had been a sight. But Erikal was not content with that. He fought against the Underworld’s howling breath. At each fork or chamber, he turned towards the passages the thundering air was coming from until we found ourselves in an unfamiliar world.

We rounded a final lightless corner and the view opened up. Suddenly, the rocky, noisy cave gave way to someplace else. Although we still glided underground, it was through a cave unlike any I could have dreamt of.

So overwhelmed, I disconnected from my body. Only my eyes and cerebral sensations remained, and nothing else—emotions, the Equis, home. A strange impression entered my mind: that I had never before opened my eyes, and yet was slipping ever deeper into an illusory state.

The sound of raging wind had gone, entirely, when we entered the colossal, grey, endless round tunnel. The place had such a scale that the Silver Dare must have looked like a small dragonfly in an infinite corridor.

My four friends fell as silent as I. The tapping of controls and my heart pounding were the only sounds. Were we all waiting to awaken from the dream?

In the grey place, my friends’ bright, colorful garments of swirling geometries shouted at me for attention. What an odd thing for me to notice.

What has Erikal done? Is this happening?

Erikal stood tall at the controls, assisted by Meritus. Cleo had stumbled, perhaps from shock, onto a soaked pillow next to Alana. I sat across from them. I wanted to ask her if she felt well, but the words would not come.

“I’m able to center the cab,” Erikal said to Meritus, breaking the silence. My head automatically spun towards them with the urgency of a lizard being stalked. Although I did not feel fear in my nerves, I must have been on extreme alert. “It’s stable,” he added, “but I needed to place the wings in an up position.”

Cleo looked over at me briefly. Shock had washed over her face as I imagine it did mine, but something else pulled at her soft features. Awe? Her eyes meandered to the view outside. My eyes followed hers.

Through the forward windows, the cave extended perfectly straight ahead to an endless vanishing point. Every surface had a planar, computer-designed appearance, in an unvarying grey color.

The unnaturally smooth passage looked like a cobweb. But that was an illusion of perspective due to the repeating structural rings; the further rings seemed smaller.

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