Pierre shouted from on top a boulder on the left side of the room. “Over here! I think I found something.”
Between the boulder and the wall was a very small opening. There was a piece of torn red fabric hanging from the top of the opening. Lewis examined the fabric closer. “I think you found a piece of Stonewood’s shirt,” Lewis said as he looked up to where Pierre still stood atop the boulder.
Samantha shuddered as she looked at the small hole. “Stonewood couldn’t fit through there.” It was a statement, but there was some skepticism to her voice as she said it.
Lewis shrugged, tilting his head to the side as he examined the hole. Laying down on his belly in front of the small opening, he responded, “It would be tight, but I think he could get through if he worked at it.” Inching forward, Lewis worked into a position where he could attempt to wedge himself through. The shape of the opening required Lewis to tilt his shoulders a bit, placing his right side slightly higher than his left. He had to turn his head to the side so he wouldn’t smash his face on the floor. With his arms stretched out in front of him to make his shoulders narrower, Lewis used his legs to force his body into the opening. He had to fight for every inch. Soon, his arms were pinned to his head by the tightening of the hole, making it harder to breath and impossible to see. Going by feel, Lewis inched his way further, concentrating on keeping his breathing under control as the rock walls restricted the expansion of his chest. He was just about to ask the others to pull him back out by his feet when the short passage finally opened up.
Lewis took a couple deep breaths and sat up. Not claustrophobic in normal situations, Lewis did not like being squeezed by rocks like that. He gingerly probed the new scrapes and bruises that the crawl had given him before looking on with his headlamp. There were three tunnels leading away. Lewis called back to the others. “There are multiple choices in here. They all look bigger than that last spot.”
“I’m coming in.” Pierre’s accented voice rang out from behind him.
As Lewis waited, he noticed something in one of the passages. At first he thought it was a blurry spot in his vision but he gradually realized there was a light coming from one of the tunnels. Shutting off his own headlamp, he confirmed there was a light in the leftmost passage, and it was moving towards him. “Stonewood!” he yelled.
“Did you find him?” came the voice behind the light. It was Miller. “We found an easier way to get in here.” He grinned, shining his light back on the others, who were lined up behind him.
“Your timing could have been better,” Lewis said with a grimace as he rubbed his bruised ribs again.
“Our way was just fine,” Pierre said from behind Lewis. “Not really elephant material, I suppose,” he joked while slapping the much larger Lewis on the back. Lewis laughed, giving Pierre a fake glare.
“What about Stonewood?” Samantha asked worriedly.
Lewis looked at the others before answering. “We need to conduct a search; hopefully he hasn’t gone too far. One of us should stay in the treasure chamber in case Stonewood comes back while the searchers are out looking.”
Miller volunteered immediately, saying, “I found some mysterious runes I’d like to work on some more — they may help us get out of here.”
“I’ll stay too,” Samantha said as she raised her hand. “I think we just passed the site of the old waterfall entrance described by Stonewood’s uncle. I may be able to find a way through.”
It was decided. Samantha and Miller would stay behind while the others worked their way through the newly found passages. They would search for an hour, then return — one way or another.
Having learned that the left tunnel looped back to the main cavern, Lewis led the way down the middle tunnel with Gonzalez, Pierre, and then Craig following behind. It was decided that the third person in line would be the only one to use their light when they were traveling down a simple pathway, so Pierre lit the way for everyone as they walked. The passage was mostly tall enough that even Lewis could have stood upright but the closeness of the ceiling caused everyone to walk in a slight crouch, just to be careful. Lewis called out to Stonewood every few minutes, but received nothing but echoes in response.
The makeshift search and rescue group followed the winding tunnel for fifteen minutes before it terminated at a large round boulder. The boulder appeared to be just the right size to fit into the tunnel. Further inspection revealed tooling marks at the edges, indicating that this huge rock had in fact been placed here on purpose. Lewis scratched his head at the new mystery. “I don’t know who put this boulder here, but it looks to have been here for quite a while.” Turning his back to the road block, he added, “At least we know Stonewood didn’t come this way.”
There was no reason to shout for Stonewood, or stop to listen for a response, on the return trip, allowing the group to make better time. They went all the way back to where Samantha was examining a rock pile, just before the passage joined the treasure chamber. “Any sign of Stonewood?” she asked.
“Not behind the first door,” Lewis responded. “I assume that means he didn’t make it back here either.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Miller was just here asking if I’d heard anything, so he hasn’t seen him either.”
Lewis looked to the pile of rocks. “Any luck with this?” he asked.
Samantha smiled. “Maybe. I think I may have found something. I’ll know more in an hour.” With that, she turned and got back to work. Lewis and the others did the same, heading back for the last unexplored passage.
Pierre took the lead into the final tunnel. Gonzalez lit the way in the third position with Craig in front of her and Lewis behind. This passage was different than the others: it was a tight oval, much like the doorways on a submarine. The ceiling was low enough to require everyone to walk hunched over. Lewis found the walls to be just close enough to be annoying, requiring him to walk a little sideways, or repeatedly bump his arms and shoulders.
Craig took over calling out to Stonewood at regular intervals as they moved along. Lewis took to counting the calls as a strange way of tracking their progress. After eleven calls, the passage’s shape began to flatten out and widen. By the thirteenth, everyone was crawling on their bellies with less than six inches of clearance. Pierre and Craig turned their headlamps on as well, scanning back and forth along the now 50-foot wide passage, which was now more of a horizontal crack, each looking for a taller path or any possible offshoots. Craig made only one more call to Stonewood before the passage entered a large, dramatic chamber.
This chamber was over a hundred feet across and unlike anything they had seen so far. The most obvious trait was that the room was nearly spherical, even the floor was rounded. The walls were shiny and smooth like glass — probably obsidian, Lewis guessed. The final oddity was a trio of pits near the center of the room, 70 feet below. Lewis felt that the pits combined with the round shape and glossy walls gave the chamber the feeling of a huge bowling ball that had been turned inside out.
The passage they had come through opened near the center line of the giant sphere, meaning it was essentially a vertical drop for the first fifteen feet or so before the wall gradually rounded into more of a floor. The four members of the search party were now lying shoulder to shoulder with their heads protruding into the ball-shaped cavern, while the rest of their bodies remained inside the crack they had been crawling through. Lewis slowly worked their salvaged stretch of rope off his shoulders. “We don’t have any actual rappelling gear, but this rope should be enough to get somebody down to those three holes to check them out,” Lewis said.