Aston pulled the small book from his jacket, flicked through the pages. He looked at Sol. “Give us some time with this first.” He glanced at Reid. “Yeah? Just some time to maybe understand better what’s happening?”
Reid let out a grunt of annoyance and turned away. He barked at Tate to watch the two tunnels leading away from the far side of the lake, then went to stand by the tunnel leading back.
“Looks like you’ve got some time,” Sol said with a grim smile. “If you can figure out anything useful, we’d all be very grateful.”
Aston moved with Jen to sit on a rounded rock, and Slater sat on Jen’s other side.
“Let’s see what we can do,” Aston said, finding the first of Murray’s translations and holding the book open for the others to see.
Sol Griffin had moved to guard one of the tunnels on the far sides of the lake, Ronda Tate moving to stand at the mouth of the other. Terry Reid still watched intently down the only tunnel they knew would lead them out again.
Aston, Slater, Jen, Syed, and Marla sat in a tight group near the lake’s edge. The team muttered to each other, picked unenthusiastically at food and drink, biding their time, until eventually Aston, Slater, and Jen had done all they could.
“Okay,” Aston called out. “I think we have all we can get.”
“What does it tell us?” Sol asked.
Aston laughed darkly. “Not much and nothing good. As far as we can figure it, someone lived down here. No idea who or what they were, the pictograph in the journal is simply translated as ‘people’ or ‘the people’. They lived beneath the earth for an indeterminate length of time. But some of these people ate the ‘shining fish’, which we suspect, from the context, is some kind of taboo. There are lots of sections, great chunks of text, that we can’t translate. We’ve done our best to guess.”
“How confident are you that it’s right?” Sol asked.
Aston shrugged. “In broad strokes, I think we’ve got the gist of it. More people ate the fish and were either driven away or left on their own. Either way, they were outcasts from the people in general. Something happened, some event we can’t figure out, and the outcasts… awoke, we guess, something bad. Murray translated the bad thing as ‘overlord’. Murray suggested a number of different translations — Master, Ruler, Leader, and Overlord. But it’s overlord that he stuck with for the rest of the text after that.”
“Overlord of what?” Marla asked, looking around them. “The great lord of the dank green caverns?”
Aston smiled. “I guess so.”
“And what is this overlord?” Syed asked. “What manner of creature? A person or something else?” She didn’t seem too bothered by the revelation, Aston noted. If anything, she appeared eager to know more.
“No idea,” Aston said. “But it seems the overlord sent its minions after the people. Again, that’s the word Murray used. Minions.”
“Those nasty-ass creatures that took Gates,” Reid said bitterly from across the cavern.
Aston glanced over, but Reid still stared ahead, down into the blackness, keeping his distance from the group. Aston looked back to their notes. “Okay, so it seems that enemies came, who wanted to control the Overlord. They brought people with them and fed their heads to the overlord, or something like that.”
“They did what?” Syed said, eyes wide. Her eagerness seemed to wane.
“That’s the best we can figure,” Aston said. “Those victims then became like the creatures, the mantics we guess, and fought the people. It was a kind of civil war down here. The people were driven back, and they took up shelter in new caves, where there were none of the shining fish to be found.” He tapped the page with one forefinger. “This last bit is perhaps oddest of all, but our best guess is they come out from time to time to get what Lee called ‘bloodstone’.”
Slater held up the dagger they had taken from Murray’s chest. “We think it’s this stuff, the same stone as the blade that killed Lee. It’s like a kind of ruddy obsidian. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before. But I think maybe it’s the only weapon that might work effectively against the mantics.”
“Is that all we’ve learned from this?” Sol asked. “That crazy story and that our only chance might be hand to hand combat with stone age weapons? That’s not much use at all.”
“No, it’s not,” Aston said quietly.
“Too late to worry now,” Reid called out. “I see mantics down this tunnel. It seems like they don’t want to get too close right now, but they’re getting bolder by the minute.”
“The glow of the cavern hurts their eyes,” Slater said. “But I guess they’ll get over that soon if they want us badly enough.”
Aston handed the journal to Slater, hefted Gates’ rifle, and moved to join Reid. He caught glimpses of glistening black far away in the darkness.
“I’ve got movement too,” Tate called out.
Sol turned back to his tunnel, straining to see into it. After a moment, he nodded. “Yep. Me too.”
Reid turned to Aston, his eyes narrowed, haunted. “We’re surrounded.”
27
Aston pursed his lips in thought, his mind calm despite the dire circumstances. They had an option.
“They’re getting closer,” Tate called from across the cavern.
“Here too,” Sol said. “I think they’re moving slowly and letting their sensitive eyes adjust. They know they have us trapped, so they can take as long as they like.”
Aston was a little surprised by the high tremor in the otherwise unflappable man’s voice.
“We don’t have enough ammo for this,” Reid said quietly beside him. “We know their weak points, we can more effectively defend ourselves, but it’s only a matter of time. If there’s enough of them, we’re gonna run out of bullets before they run out of bodies.”
Aston remembered Gates, screaming in the creature’s mandibles as he was carried away into the darkness. “Okay,” he called out, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You need to listen to me and not ask questions.”
Aston walked away from him, back into the middle of the cave near the edge of the glimmering pool of clear water. Bright slashes of neon green darted around in its depths. “I didn’t mention this before because as soon as I came up from the water, everything got crazy and I agree that getting out is the best option. But there is another way.”
Slater walked over to him, brow furrowed. She looked from him down into the water and back again. “What’s down there?”
He wasn’t surprised she had immediately guessed the truth. She was sharp that way. “When I dove earlier, I found another door at the bottom of this pool. I went through it. There’s a short underwater passage, then it comes up in another cavern. I didn’t check it, but there’s a passage leading away from that cave.”
“You’re suggesting we go deeper?” Sol said.
“You think we stand a chance against those things?” Aston gestured towards the tunnels. “We know there’s more than one way in and out of these caves, if the other stories we’ve heard are to be believed. That door and the tunnel on the other side have to go somewhere.”
“Maybe just deeper in,” Tate said. “It doesn’t mean there’s a way out.”
Aston shrugged. “True. But there might be. And right now, there’s definitely no way out of here.”
“Getting closer!” Reid called out. “We’ll have no choice soon!”
“What if the creatures are waiting on the other side when we get there?” Syed asked.
“Then we’re no worse off than we are now. But they might not be.”
Sol turned away from the tunnel he was guarding. “He’s right. This is a nobrainer. We have to go through and take our chances.”