Chapter Three: The Absence of Light
Written by Jeff
The front of the skull seemed unnaturally bulbous, like there was a hardened notch right in the center of the forehead. The rear of the skull stretched back noticeably longer than it should have. The mouth was larger too, with huge teeth, and though he couldn’t be sure, Ja swore the nose bone was significantly broader and more pronounced.
The young man had seen plenty of skulls in his short life, burnt black by the fire in the center of the stone circle or bleached white by the sun when the guards didn’t bother to move the bodies away. Sometimes Ja had nothing else to do but stare at them, seeing what the bones looked like beneath someone he had lived with in the compound, imagining their face covering the skull once again.
But this skull wasn’t like any Ja had seen before. If this was a person like him, Ja couldn’t imagine what they must have looked like when they were alive. The roots and barnacle-covered vines that snaked throughout the crumbling ruins were littered with skeletons and not much else, and all of the skulls here looked like this one.
“Kaia,” Ja called out. “Do these bones look strange to you?”
The woman was pulling at overgrowth draped all over what looked like an entranceway, but it didn’t extend back into any structure. Past the threshold, the stacked stones simply tapered off to the ground. The entire thing was coated with unsettling flora and Kaia was busy prodding at it with her spear, wondering what the plants could possibly be.
“I haven’t seen many bones before,” she called back, not diverting her attention. “Not of people. Only animals. These just look like bones to me.”
Ja looked up and saw her shove some of the vines away with her spear tip. As she did, the vines seemed to retract on their own, and the entranceway ahead was revealed. It was large enough for them to walk through upright with arms outstretched. This hole had clearly been widened with tools. Kaia looked up at the sun and saw that it was positioned well to illuminate the descending passageway, then began to walk inside.
“You’re going in there?” yelped Ja.
“You’d rather stay out here? With the skeletons and living vines?”
Ja gave her a confused look.
“We need to see if there is anything useful inside,” she explained. “All we have is a knife and a spear and an empty basket. We don’t want to eat any of the fruit from this part of the jungle, which means we’re going to have to hunt. I spent a lot of time with the hunters in Orn; I think I know what to do. What I really want to find down here is some flint so we can make a fire. I’d like to cook our food…if I can catch anything.”
There wasn’t any reason for Ja to disagree, and he was already pretty hungry, so he hesitantly walked behind her, bringing out the dull stone knife from under his skirt. He had to walk faster down the passageway than he wanted: Kaia was accustomed to going underground and moved through the tunnel swiftly. Every time it seemed like the light was gone completely, a slanted shaft would open up overhead, stretching through immense amounts of rock to let the sun into the underground lair. Still, it was tough for Ja to see much of anything. His feet regularly brushed against what he knew were bones, emitting a telltale clattering sound whenever he disturbed them. The ground was stone, cold and dry on the bottom of his feet. In the jungle, he rarely felt anything that was cold. They were far enough underground that the blazing sun had no dominion here. He understood a little clearer now why people in the community would want to live underground, assuming they could see anything.
“Are the caves this dark in Orn?” Ja asked, his voice echoing softly down the corridor.
“No, not all of them,” said Kaia. “We used embers to bring light. There were many in the community who were tasked with keeping the fire. Once wood becomes an ember you can use it for light in the caverns without filling them up with smoke. The people of the community were very proud of their embers. There was always light if you needed it.” She sighed.
“Should we make some embers so we can see down here?” Ja asked. He couldn’t see the face she shot back at him in the dark.
“I don’t think the slimy vines here would make very good firewood.”
Almost as soon as she said it, the texture of the ground changed, and it was like they were walking around in the ruins again. They could feel the uniquely-squishy texture of the vines beneath their feet, pocked with hardened growths that still pinched through their calloused soles. Kaia went over the wall and felt around and it was covered in vines as well. They contracted at her touch and then relaxed a moment later. Ja and Kaia continued down the passageway, but slower now, more careful of where they stepped. Neither of them felt the need to verbalize the startling change in environment.
When they came upon a skylight in the ceiling that sent the sun beaming down a massive column through the earth, both felt the fundamental need to speak but simply didn’t have the words. They could see for certain now that the growth was covering everything down here, and individual, colossal vines stretched up through the gaping hole that had been blasted all the way to the surface. The vines swarmed completely around the opening, from the ceiling of the room in which they stood to the very top, and it looked as if they were flexing open the hole in the stone with brute strength. Ja and Kaia shielded their sensitive eyes as they looked up and saw the sun and sky again.
Ja started walking forward while still looking up at the light and felt a sharp whip across his chest that stopped him in his tracks. He let out a gasp and looked around to see what had happened: Kaia had slapped him across his shoulders with her spear. He looked at her resentfully and she motioned down to him with her head. Ja was one step from walking directly into an enormous pit that descended into utter darkness. Like the skylight above, there was also a gaping hole that descended below, and the sun that came through wasn’t bright enough to give them any clue how deep it went.
It was easy to see the vine-covered edge of the hole though, if you looked, so Ja and Kaia began to make their way around. Several corridors snaked away back into darkness in different directions, and the two chose one at random and went down. The first three paths ended in the same fashion, with a living wall blocking their way forward. The fourth continued in the same direction as the entrance to the cavern but descended much more quickly. Soon, this path was going down steeply and Ja and Kaia had to use their hands to make sure they didn’t fall. As they went deeper, moving through darkness, the vines seemed to thin, and then Ja and Kaia could feel stone beneath their feet again.
The way forward now was flat, but there were no more shafts of light coming through the stone above. Eventually, Kaia felt the shape of the wall change and realized she had reached a doorway. As she stepped inside, an unexpected source of light sparsely illuminated the area. In the back of the room, around the corner from the doorway, sat a hulking, jagged mineral that appeared to be made of the night sky itself. The stone was black like onyx, but within it were points of light that looked exactly like stars. They were actually emitting light; the room was softly brightened by the stars inside the stone, creating a glow like she was walking beneath a sea of constellations.
The star stone was perched like an egg in a nest, or perhaps a pedestal, carefully constructed from stacked femurs and tibia in a circular pattern. Ja entered the room behind Kaia and stared at the stone blankly. Aside from the pedestal, this room wasn’t scattered in loose bones like the ruins outside, but Ja did notice a shelf in the rock wall that held five skulls. He picked one up and examined it. This skull was not strange and long like those he had seen among the vines before but looked exactly like the ones he had seen in the compound. He placed the skull back on the shelf and gave it a curious look.
While Kaia marveled at the stone and circled around it, Ja walked over to a carved stone table that wasn’t so different from the one in the compound courtyard. On it lay dozens of shards of broken glass, some in large chunks and others splintered or ground into dust. He knew that this was the same material that the guards’ pendants were made of, so he was ready to see his reflection when he picked up a piece and held the glass to his face. But he wasn’t ready for the sharp edges of the broken shard and sliced his hand in two places as soon as he grabbed it. Ja winced and the glass went clinking down back onto the stone table, breaking off another edge in the process. Blood began to well on Ja’s hand and he sucked at it with a frown.
In the center of the table, Ja noticed several shards that were unlike the other pieces. These were surrounded on one side by material like a frame. As Ja much-more-carefully picked up those pieces and examined them, he realized that the material was one of the barnacle-covered vines, dried out and hard to the touch. The frame had snapped when the mirror was broken and Ja could intuitively see how a few of the pieces had originally fit together. He held the piece in his hand back down by the table with the others, adjusting its curve and broken edge so that it matched up with its mate. Without realizing it, Ja was solving his first visual puzzle. Next, he started re-positioning the other pieces so that the vine frame was whole again and he could see the mirror as it had once been before being destroyed. There was still a small piece missing though, and as his eyes searched the stone tabletop to find it, Ja noticed a bit of the frame. The glass it once held had been completely broken away and all that remained was a small stump of vine, thick in the middle like the severed base had devoured its own tip and then broken away on either side of the protrusion.
Ja set the final piece of frame in its place and examined the shape made by the missing shard of glass. As he searched for it among the detritus on the table, the vine frame began to pulsate lightly as color and texture gradually returned to its form. Each severed end became wet and then re-joined with the pieces around it until the vine was whole again. Ja finally spotted the final missing piece of the mirror and picked it up for inspection, grabbing it gingerly between the fingertips of his sliced, bloodied hand. As he did, the shattered glass inside of the frame began to liquefy and pool, emitting a dull purple light. He caught the glare in his periphery and glanced over, flinching away from the table when he saw the vine rejuvenated with a puddle of shiny liquid at its center. He would have dropped the glass shard he held back onto the table; his hand opened instinctively to let it go. But Ja heard no clink of glass hitting rock, and looked down in horror to see the glass dripping down his fingers and onto his palm, liquid and shimmering like a pool of mercury.
The yelp that he let out was loud and desperate enough to break Kaia’s concentration on the stone and she went to see what was the matter. But she hadn’t made it halfway across the room before an immense rumbling filled the cavern and everything began to violently shake. Ja saw the shards of glass on the stone table begin to dance with movement, accenting the thunderous growl of stone with a thousand high-pitched clinks.
“It’s an earthquake!” shouted Kaia. “We have to get out of the cave!”
The two of them bolted for the door and began to frantically ascend the steep stone path back to the surface. Ja was afraid to place the hand covered in liquid glass against anything as he climbed and ascended awkwardly without the use of all of his limbs. Soon, they could feel the vines beneath their feet again, but something was different. It was as if the vines were moving now in the opposite direction, forcing them to run three steps to move a single step forward. Light from the massive skylight eventually began to illuminate their path again, but it was dimmer, and they could see that there were either more vines clogging the passageway now, or the ones that were there had gotten bigger. The earth continued to shake and they could hear chunks of rock breaking away and connecting with a wet thud as they crushed the living vines.
When they reached the main chamber, there was no chance for Ja to accidentally fall into the massive hole a second time; there was no hole now. The chasm had been filled with a colossal beak, flat and fat and jagged, so big it could devour both of them in a single gulp. Ja and Kaia slid to a halt in the entranceway, and as they came into the light the creature spotted them with an enormous side-facing eye and let out an ear-splitting shriek. The tree trunk-sized vines that climbed up the skylight began to speedily retract. As they were sucked back down into the main chamber, the light source from above was snuffed out, and Ja and Kaia could see nothing at all. The beak emitted another terrifying scream. Wordlessly, Ja and Kaia turned around and started right back down the passageway they had just come.
The vines extended all the way down to the bottom of the corridor now, which surprisingly made it easier to descend the steep grade. Some of the growths reached up and brushed at Ja and Kaia’s legs as they ran, but it didn’t seem as if the vines were trying to grab them. It felt more like they were stretching after a long, deep sleep. But the writhing tentacles all stopped at the same point, unwilling or unable to proceed into the room with the star stone. When the two made it back inside, Ja was nearly hyperventilating, then he saw his hand again in the light and couldn’t breathe at all. He began flapping it in the air as if a huge insect was biting him and he was frantically trying to shake it away. Kaia approached with caution, holding her hands down and out, and Ja let her sidle up to him and see what was the problem.
“It’s my fault,” Ja whimpered. The creature let out another horrible wail in the distance. “I shouldn’t have been touching things in here. I don’t know anything. I woke it up.”
Kaia walked over to the table and saw the strange, glowing pool in the center surrounded by a circular vine. There were shards all over the table, and as she hovered over them, she noticed that while some were reflective, others seemed like windows into completely different rooms. Her eyes flitted across the scenes, then stopped when she saw a face and let out a gasp that brought Ja’s attention to the table as well. They both leaned over the shard, too terrified to touch it, and as they did the person on the other side began to shout in unmistakable anger. The top of the face was covered by a hood that obscured the eyes, but the teeth were visible and unsettling, each sharpened to an unnatural point. No sound accompanied the image, but they could see the man screaming with unhinged fury. He was screaming directly at them.
“Is that the Blood Summoner?” squeaked Ja, pulling his head away.
Kaia gave him a look that expressed a dozen emotions all at once, then replied matter-of-factly: “We need to get that thing off your hand.”
She took his hand into her own and looked at it inquisitively, seeing that the liquified glass was fused to his skin. A closer look revealed her own reflection staring back, wavy and warped by ripples on the surface. Everything was vibrating in the cavern and it was too dark to see properly how the thing was attached to Ja’s hand, so Kaia led him delicately over to the starlight for a better look. With their backs to the bone pedestal, she held his hand up above their heads, getting a look at the pool of glass from beneath and seeing if it would drip down like regular liquid. Ja looked off to the side with teeth and eyes clenched as Kaia inspected his hand, like a child having a thorn removed. Ja could feel the strangeness of the starlight coming from the stone and was amazed to spot the faintest outline of a shadow stretching out on the floor in front of him.
“Tilt your hand like this,” instructed Kaia, pressing at his wrist. “I’m going to see if I can use the spear to pry it off.”
Ja looked up to see what she meant, and Kaia saw his eyes reflected in the mirror pool on his palm. She tilted his hand down slowly, bringing the star stone into the reflection as well. The instant their eyes met the stone in the reflection, everything around Ja and Kaia shifted in a dark flash. The room was no longer illuminated with starlight but with a soft yellow glow. The crashing and rumbling of stone and the scream of the creature in the distance had ceased. It took several long, confused breaths before either realized they were no longer in the same room they had stood moments before.
Ja’s body tried to throw up, but there was nothing in his stomach so he simply coughed and retched. Kaia dropped her spear and did a slow 360, taking in her new surroundings. In general, this room was not so different from the last: they were still in a cave. There was a stone table with mirrors on it, but they weren’t smashed. There were no skulls adorning the walls as decoration, but there was a pedestal made of bones that looked similar to the last one. This pedestal held no stone. There was a place where something of a similar size should sit, but nothing was there.
“What do we do?” asked Ja, gasping and wiping his mouth with his forearm. “I don’t think we’re in the ruins anymore.”
“I don’t either. I don’t know if we’re still in the same caves, but we’re definitely in a different room. This one has a pedestal like the last one, but no stone. That has to mean something.”
“There are reflections on the table,” said Ja, holding out his palm. “Do you think one of them would take this reflection off of my hand?”
Kaia gave him an uneasy look.
“I don’t think we should touch those anymore. But if we are in a new cave, there might be someone here who can help you.”
“This might be the Blood Summoner’s room, for all we know,” Ja said indignantly. “If anyone understands magic like this, it would be him. Do you think he would help me?”
Ja made a valid point. Kaia glanced at his hand again and tried to stay supportive.
“We’ll just have to be careful getting out of here until we know where we are. We definitely shouldn’t be down here in this room. Let’s get back up to the surface. Move as quietly and quickly as you can.”
It didn’t take long into the passageway before Ja and Kaia really started to believe that they had been transported to a different cave system. The walls here were a completely different type of stone than in the ruins. This stone was much smoother to the touch, and these passageways were naturally formed, not widened with tools. The walls also felt damp to the touch, and much colder. The air was colder too, and Ja and Kaia shivered as they slunk low and quiet through the corridors. Embers were placed sporadically so one was never walking in darkness for too long. People were clearly living here, but there were no voices or any other sounds at all. Kaia peeked around entryways into rooms before they passed by, but no one was ever inside.
Ja watched Kaia poke her head around the threshold of another entryway, but instead of stealthily shooting past it, this time she swung herself inside. He wondered for a moment if he should follow before he heard her voice whisper softly but excitedly, “Get in here!”
Even if you have never seen a specific food before, your nose will let you know right away whether you want to eat it or not. A wave of new, appetizing scents hit Ja as he entered the room, and though he had no idea what any of the items were that hung from the walls or were stacked on the tables and in baskets, he didn’t need to be told that they were food. He knew.
“What is this place?” he whispered in amazement.
“A larder,” said Kaia, who was already poking around at the foodstuffs and smelling things more closely. “It’s where the community stores its food. I don’t know what a lot of this stuff is, but I know a larder when I see one.”
There was a deep, carved stone reservoir filled with water, and neither Ja nor Kaia realized how thirsty they were until they started to drink and then simply didn’t stop. A cooking fire made the room significantly brighter than the hallways, and once they stopped drinking, Kaia noticed a small stack of animal pelts in the corner and began to examine them, holding them up in the light.
“Perfect,” she said, more to herself than to Ja. “These are bags used by the hunters. We can keep supplies in them and strap them over our shoulders to keep our hands free, and we can carry more.” She held up a small pouch made from a dried and tanned animal organ. “And we can store water in this. We have no idea how long it will be until we find water again.” With that, she stood and filled the bladder and began to stuff the hide sack with roots and dried meat. She looked next to the fire and found a sizable piece of flint and shoved that in the bag as well.
“Should we be taking all of this stuff?” asked Ja. “This isn’t Orn, right? This is a new community. Maybe we should be trying to join them, not steal from them. They won’t want us if they think that we’re thieves.”
Kaia’s expression hardened and the face of the Blood Summoner screaming in the mirror shard shot into her mind. This was not Orn, but wherever it was, it was connected to Orn and the vine-covered ruins in some disconcerting ways. There was still a pedestal of bones in the chamber where they had appeared; still a table full of mirrors.
“We don’t know yet if this a place we would want to live,” she explained. “Let’s try to learn more about who these people are, without them knowing that we’re here. If they seem like a community we want to join, we’ll put everything back. If not...we’re ready to move on.”
Ja nodded, then went to a basket to look for something to eat. He didn’t recognize anything in the larder. He hadn’t eaten meat since he was a child with his parents, and seeing it now, the idea of consuming flesh seemed wholly unappetizing. All he had known in the compound was tamfruit and occasionally some sour, pulpy fruits during the colder months of which he had never learned the name. He picked one of the items from a basket at random - a roundish, green fruit bigger than his palm - and took a bite. It was sweet and crisp and juicy and it made his whole mouth salivate the moment he tasted it. Ja devoured the fruit in a few big bites, then ate three more in quick succession.
When he finished, Ja licked the leftover juice on his fingers and then noticed his other hand, still covered with the strange, reflective surface. Kaia had watched the young man eat, noticing how he kept the afflicted arm dead at his side, afraid to let it touch anything. She went to the table and found a small piece of thin, dried hide used to wrap up food and brought it over to him. Without asking, Kaia grabbed his hand and quickly wrapped the hide around the mirror before Ja had time to object. When she tied off the knot, Ja looked at the covering and felt a sense of relief. He gave Kaia a thankful nod.
Kaia loaded up supply bags for both of them and showed Ja how to sling it over his shoulder so that the bulk of the pack sat against the base of his back. Right as they were about to leave, Ja finally spotted something in the larder that he recognized: a whetstone. It was virtually the same as the one Pall had smuggled into the compound so they could each make a knife. Ja’s blade was terribly dull now from cutting through the jungle the night before, so he had Kaia wait for a moment while he sharpened it back up.
They crept out of the larder, moving even more carefully through the corridors now that they had stolen from this community, but still there was no one else inside the caves. Each room was empty and all was silent, yet there were still fresh embers illuminating the way forward. They could tell now from the airflow that they weren’t too far from the surface, but the frigid temperature in the caves still wasn’t rising. Kaia directed them into some sleeping chambers where they found animal furs, soft and fuzzy and warm, and wrapped them around their shoulders.
Before long, the two began to hear a sound in the distance that grew in intensity as they continued down the corridor. It was a rhythmic thumping and what sounded like people chanting - a lot of people - though their song was deep and subdued. Kaia could make out the edges of the exit to the tunnel now, but she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing. Somehow, the world outside of the cave was darker than inside. As the faint light of the embers reached the end of the stone walls, the world beyond was not a new source of light, but impenetrable blackness. Hesitantly, Kaia and Ja inched towards the entranceway to see what awaited outside.
Though it was evident they had reached fresh air, there was no light at all being emitted by the night sky, and it was so dark the trees were nothing but faint, shapeless silhouettes. There was a row of stone pillars leading to a larger area, and on top of each pillar was a brazier that held a lit fire, but the flames were not orange and illuminating. These fires were a dull purple, doing little to add light to the larger scene. At the end of the pillars, there were more than a hundred robed figures, many on their knees in supplication, the rest with arms outstretched to the vacant sky. The bodies spread up an incline resulting in rows upon rows of chanting parishioners. To the side, a singular darkened figure stood on a raised stone stage, arms moving in rhythmic circular patterns.
The figure stepped down off of the stage, and as he moved, Kaia could see a pedestal that had been positioned behind him. This was another circular stack of bones, and nested inside was another stone that held the light of the night sky. It shone in the darkness like a beacon. Both Ja and Kaia found themselves fundamentally drawn to it, though they dared not move any farther out of the entranceway. The leader of the ritual plucked a robed figure from the crowd and led them up to the stage. The chanting swelled as the chosen one was brought to the pedestal. After a deep, steadying breath, they reached out their arms and grabbed tightly onto the stone.
It was as if the body beneath the robe simply faded into the darkness, and once it had disappeared completely the robe they had been wearing simply fell to the ground. The fires in the braziers lurched upwards, flames intensifying for only a moment, bringing a little more light to the surroundings. The rows of bodies never broke from their chanting and prayerful movements, and the leader walked back over to them to choose the next participant. They came unquestioningly, emerging from the congregation with a sense of giddiness as if they had been selected to receive a prize.
Again and again, the leader brought members of the chanting crowd onto the stage and they willingly placed their hands on the star stone and were dissolved into the darkness. The braziers roared a little brighter after each sacrifice, bringing more definition to the scene, while the star stone seemed to dim with each congregant it consumed. In one of the fire flashes, Ja and Kaia saw that the trees surrounding them were nothing like the wide-leafed ones around Orn and the compound. These trees had no leaves at all - the branches were completely covered in tiny quills. As another body was taken by the darkness, Ja placed his hand on Kaia’s shoulder and whispered to her.
“We should go while we can. There is only one more sacrifice.”
“How do know?” she asked.
“Just a feeling. The next is number thirteen.”
The two crept out of the safety of the cave entrance and away from the ritual, but Ja only made it a few steps before he stopped and let out a pained gasp. Kaia looked back and he was holding the wrist of his bandaged hand like it had been freshly injured. Tears streamed from the sides of Ja’s eyes and he began to furiously rip away at the bandage, not knowing how to properly untie the wrapping and not in a position to learn. The hide wrap flew away and Ja looked at his hand in disbelief. Kaia could see it too: The liquefied glass did not reflect the dark forest around them but instead displayed a green, growth-covered vine pressing forcefully against the other side of the glass.
The braziers roared and the surrounding forest was illuminated. But this time, it stayed illuminated. Kaia looked up and the sky was full of stars again, returning a soft glow to the night. Then she realized the chanting had stopped and her eyes shot to the stage. She could see that the stone on the bone pedestal was completely black now, its stars returned to the sky. Oblivious to the change in his surroundings, Ja whimpered and wrestled with his wrist as the vine on the other side tried to violently force its way through. Kaia spoke Ja’s name with an urgency that stole his attention, and her gaze brought his to the stage.
The leader of the ritual stood silently, alone on the platform in front of a pile of robes. The fires in the braziers burned with orange flames now and the scene was brightly illuminated. Even so, the head, arms, and feet that protruded from the leader’s ceremonial clothing were not the color or texture of bare skin. They were an unfathomable black, just like the stone that sat perched behind. Ja looked into the face and saw the complete absence of light. Startled, he looked away to the congregation, and a small part of him was strangely relieved that at least one minor mystery of the day had been solved.
He had wondered what the faces that belonged to the abnormal skulls in the vine ruins had looked like, and now he had his answer. These people were like none Ja had ever seen, with huge, long heads and bulbous brows that completely shadowed their eyes. But their faces were plain to see: They were angry, and they were all looking directly at Ja and Kaia.
FATE INDEX:
1. Nothing happens when something is supposed to happen
2. Character loses one of their senses
3. Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
4. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
5. People begin to question their belief system
6. Charismatic megafauna
7. A great artifact of the past is found, calling to a new owner
8. Social faux pas has serious consequences
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
10. A member of the community who was heavily relied upon disappears
11. Discovery of higher technology
12. Monotony is broken
13. Religious indoctrination
14. Body swap
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Bodily functions begin to cause eerie physical changes
17. A tenuous bond is formed
18. Life is too good
19. Something is awakened
20. A new adventure begins
Outcomes Used:
13. Religious indoctrination
19. Something is awakened
Added outcomes:
Character has portentous visions of a world they don’t recognize
(thanks to John)
A dam breaks creating massive flooding
(thanks to Rebecca)
