Melchior’s Grand Tour: The Cyclops’ cave [5]
The group decided to go forward, venturing into the tunnel from where a faint droning hum was coming.
The alchemist detached some pieces of the traveling lab, designed with straps and belts to be carried on the back. Melchior took one of those wooden backpacks, trying to be of use. Sister Jezib went back to the convent, while the rest of the group marched on.
The artificer used the drill of his Rhino-shaped construct to open wide the crack of the tunnel. The noise of the metal grinding the stone was excruciating and loud but lasted just a few moments, as the obstacle soon crumbled.
Aminta, the ranger, led the way. She soon became worried. The layout of the tunnels always changes once beyond the grotto chapels: paths and caves open and close, due to small earthquakes and spontaneous shifts. But the situation was different, it was something sudden, not slow. She pointed at the mushrooms and how they were spread on the walls and ceiling: it looked like the tunnels spun around themselves in a torsion.
The path was uneven, full of small rocky steps going up or down, narrow passages, crevasses. The rhino drill moved very slowly: not all the obstacles could be just smashed away. The group encountered horizontal stalagmites, clear proof of some distortions of the caves. The sound became louder and louder but still on the level of the buzzing of bees: it seemed like pulsating, coming in waves. The air was dense and drenched in the smell of molds. The journey was long and exhausting.
They reached a dead end: the path was close by the rocks of a landslide, a faint blue light coming from behind them, spilling through the cracks. The artificer did his job and opened a passage with the drill.
When the dust settled, the group found an awe-inspiring scenario: embedded in a cave there was the gargantuan skull of a cyclops.
The environment was covered in blue light, pulsating along with the droning sound, now loud enough to force people to raise their voices.
It all seemed to be originating from the eye of the cyclops. The Dwarves' leader was almost crying with joy: they found a treasure! A portal, a real and functioning portal, a wonder out of myths and legends!
All the dwarves were excited: that discovery could make them famous and rich! Only the alchemist and the artificer called for caution: there could be other explanations, nothing they could think of at the moment, but that could be something else. Melchior started recording the sound with the audiomage tools, maybe there was a way to know more if they analyzed the frequency and pitch…
The group was shaken by the discovery and tired from the journey, but the Leader was too impatient: he immediately started to plan the climbing of the skull.
Aminta was tense and on guard: she saw something moving among the rocks, something she felt was alien, something that didn’t belong there.
She soon found out the “intruder”: a girl with three eyes.
No one had ever seen or heard of a human lineage with three eyes.
Only Melchior’s got a shiver down his spine: he once saw a skull with three eye holes. His family manors as a room with all the strange objects washed ashore from the Ocean, a wunderkammer of beached oddities.
His Brother used it to goad and entice undecided explorers, but no one in the family thought they were anything more than curiously shaped trash.
The girl didn’t speak an intelligible language, and the constant noise didn’t help either. She was afraid of something, something hiding in the rocks.
What will Melchior do?
He could STAY DOWN WITH THE THREE EYED GIRL, trying to understand her, see what she is so afraid about.
He could CLIMB THE SKULL AND LOOK AT THE PORTAL and see if it’s really a gate to somewhere else, and if so, where it leads to.
