Deep Sea One

Chapter 23

Calisto kept watching their rear, as was her habit of hypervigilance when in an unfamiliar or perilous environment. Perhaps she was paranoid or maybe the altitude illness had spun her imagination into a full-force carnival, but she could have sworn she heard movement behind them. On the winding path up she did the same, taking stock of any followers, but there was no one on the higher path they were on. All the people they encountered were using the lower, broader gravel road, so there was a very slim chance that they were being trailed. Then again, she was the only one who noticed the shrine's face moving while the others remained oblivious and blamed it on her less-than-sharp perceptions. Her training and her innate distrust for everything made her an excellent sentinel.

Suddenly the group ahead of her stopped and she almost walked into Gary's heel.

"What's going on?" she asked Nina, as quietly as she could.

"Drop," Nina whispered from the mouth of the tunnel.

Below the sudden absence of floor, a vast and deep grotto rested in the bowels of the mighty mountain. So enormous was it, that the beams from their torches vanished midway through the air without falling on any object. It made it impossible for them to determine the nature of their environment.

"It's like standing in the middle of a black hole," Sam remarked, as he looked around in the pitch darkness, hoping to hone in on anything solid.

"Yes. Just reach out in front of you. It is as if the dark is solid, as if you can touch it with your fingertips," Nina added.

"As if it is alive," Purdue unsettled them, his voice seeping with wonderment. "Come, we have to make more light. Where are the flares, Gary?"

"Hang on," Gary said, and placed one of the smaller duffle bags on the ground to retrieve a flare for both of them. Purdue volunteered to descend the drop of the wall face first and Gary agreed to follow close behind him.

"My God, this place is colossal," Gary remarked, as he helped Sam tie the rip cord to a jutting stalagmite farther back in the tunnel. Nina shivered from a chill that stung her as she still dealt with the enclosed space they were in. She watched Purdue and Gary disappear over the edge of the tunnel. It was not far, but the step down was deep enough for them to use climbing equipment to abseil to the floor of the Godwomb. Sam passed the remaining flares to the two women and took one for himself. They cracked the flares almost simultaneously. With blinding colored light the cavern lit up. It had a strange moving shimmer to its surfaces, which reminded Nina of liquid phosphorus. One by one they climbed down to the floor a few meters under the tunnel mouth.

"Nothing," Purdue scoffed as he turned to light the place and seek out anything that resembled the object he was looking for. He grimaced with defeat, the disappointment overwhelming him, but he did not show it.

"Calisto wants to stay up there," Sam told the others when he came down. "She says someone should guard the tunnel."

"Good idea," Gary said to himself. Even though Purdue's bodyguard was female, and ill, he had seen her in action and felt assured that she could hold her own and warn them if anything suspicious happened. Purdue kept spinning around, looking in every crevice and crater for a chest or some sort of antique containment device that could possibly hold the Spear of Destiny.

"Okay, I'll just say it," Nina whispered, as her light yielded nothing but rock formation and bat shit, "I don't think there is anything here. How do we know it had not been discovered by someone else before us and removed?"

"We would have heard of such a discovery, Nina. No, it has got to be here somewhere," Sam said.

"Great, why don't you go first?" she snapped at him, pointing at a huge heap of waste behind him. Gary walked from one side of the great hall to the other side, just to measure how big the cave really was. Counting his steps he reached the other side halfway between one hundred and sixty-two and one hundred and sixty-three approximate meters. From where he stood, the rest of the party was barely visible were it not for their handheld lights and the occasional pitch of voice echoing through the watery chamber. He waved his light from side to side to get their attention.

"What the hell is he doing way over there?" Nina asked.

"Well, we cannot shout to him, can we? Just keep looking for anything unusual," Purdue urged them, trying not to sound his frustration.

"Ummm…" Nina said, but refrained from anything more. Her eyes traveled somewhere in the air ahead, her countenance frozen in deep scrutiny. She saw something glimmer in a cavity formed by a collection of stalactites hanging from the high ceiling of the cavern.

It had not been there before. Moving slowly toward Gary, Nina kept her eyes fixed on the ethereal sheen above them, only occasionally darting her eyes to Gary to keep track of his position.

"Gary," her whisper echoed loudly across the floor of craters and mounds, "move toward me with your flare above your head."

"What?" he asked, unable to hear what she was saying.

"Shit. Come to me with your flare up like this," she mouthed her words for him to lip read and gestured what she wanted him to do. As the two of them approached each other, Sam and Purdue's attention was drawn to them. The two men abandoned their own seeking to join Nina with their lights and, looking up, they all beheld what looked like a star lodged in the rock.

"What on earth is that?" Purdue marveled.

"A piece of the sun, I venture to guess. Nothing on earth is that bright," Sam replied. They had no idea that the clouds had dissipated somewhat after the showers, so his theory was apt. Anyone who regarded what he did might very well have agreed without hesitation. As they gathered together under the remarkably radiant glare emanating through the rocks, they noticed that it was in fact a large drawing, concealed behind layers of residue accumulated over many years in isolation.

For a while they discussed how to reach the drawing in the rock to rid it of its moldy, layered captor in order to see what it depicted. Sam would also shoot a few frames of the drawing for their records. But suddenly the glare began to wane, abandoning the cave to shadow until finally it was drowned by the swelling clouds. With the powerful light gone the cavern became pitch dark once more.