Beyond The Wall by Pwyll Duggan

Author:Pwyll Duggan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-03-07T22:00:00+00:00

My doll puts out more light as water rushes around me. The blackness of the sinkhole is below me in the clear water, rocks along its edge. The sacks in front of me block some of the view as we sink past the edge. The sides are coarse, rock and lake debris scattered on short ledges or atop of the odd rock. Shiny arrow heads and daggers sweep past in the darkness as I am now deeper than anyone else has been. Looking up the lake surface, its dim and far away. The pressure pops in my ears, starting the pain. My breath is fine, but the strain is building.

I feel the rope go slack as the rocks hit the bottom. The hole I entered is barely more than a pin prick of light. My doll flares a little and I can see the debris on the sinkhole floor. Small rocks, sand, a dagger and the skeletal remains of two small gobbers.

As I watch, the skull of one rolls over to look at me. I tense, but it continues to roll away, very slowly. A thin tendril of blackness is dragging it into the cliff face. Air forces itself out of my lungs as I reach my limit. I swim up into an air pack and gulp a few breathes of air and dive back under.

The tendril leads me to a tiny cave. As my light nears the blackness it pulls back in spurts. I loop the elven daggers new cord around my wrist and draw it. I kick forward and head into the cave. The darkness goes to all the corners of the cave. Corners? It's a passage, hewn out of the rocks, the rubble covering the bottom of the new tunnel.

Two body lengths in I can make out a soft purple light ahead, flickering off water and onto walls. I stand on the bottom of the tunnel and try to slowly break the water surface. As my head rises I don't get stabbed, so it may have worked. I come out into a small stone room full of stale musty air. A small ladder leads up over the edge of the brickwork around me. Climbing up, past the tendrils going over the edge into the water, puts me in the room. I came out of a well, like a moon pool. Dust and debris all around. I look around, taking of the flippers and the waterskins of air.

A pathway thru the debris follow the tendrils out the only exit and onto some stairs leading up. Slowly I head up, past tunnels full of debris, doorways to collapsed rooms and into a corridor. The tendrils turn left and to a rubble pile. Someone, or thing, has moved it aside to make a small passage thru it to the other side. I climb up and over slowly, trying not to make noise.

I can hear the noise of something being dragged in front of me. Creeping forward I spot another tendril, slowly dragging a small bone, dagger sized.

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