New World

By Aryan Singh Nagar

Adult

Science Fantasy

***

Secile barely avoided the falling rocks, scraping her arm on the cavern wall in the process. So much for being good at navigating labyrinths.

The cavern would be pitch black if not for the light from the luminescent moss spreading along the roof and walls. A part of her wanted to stop there, the moss tempting her with an easier escape.

No, never again.

She steeled her resolve and began attempting to climb back up the sheer slope in front of her. Light seeped down across the jagged wall from a hole up high in the cavern roof.

A pathway out, everything they had fought for, within her reach, yet just far enough to test her resolve. They had finally won, and here she was, stuck climbing a rocky wall.

After all she had been through, scaling this wall should be a minor challenge. That is, if she still had access to Ardor, or even... Bael. She tried to reach out into the vast emptiness of the Void, slowly letting go of herself. She could detect traces of that infinite power still, if only she could drink in its essence one last time-

The cavern trembled with the fury of a raging calamity. Secile snapped out of her reverie and grabbed a hold of a nearby piece of rock jutting out of the cavern floor like the teeth of some malformed beast worn down and rounded at the tip from ages of use. Rocks fell around her, occasionally managing to hit her. She did her best to avoid as much damage as she could. Stalactites, tipped a fluorescent green from the moss, broke away from the roof and crashed into the cavern floor at many places. She shuddered at the thought of being impaled by one.

Her body was slowly getting covered in scrapes and bruises, her coat and breeches torn in many places and colored a reddish black with congealed blood. She had lost track of how long she had been trying to get out of this place. Sometimes it felt like an eternity had passed since she departed from the shelter.

The people taking refuge in the shelter were depending on her, she could not give up now. If only she could still utilize an Ardoric order. Had they really been right about this. What if Quibe failed? The mere idea of facing everything out there just with her Energic self terrified her.

The lurching of the cavern subsided. Secile let go of the rocky tooth and scanned her surroundings. Some of the paths leading away from this exit had caved in. The path she had taken to get here stood blocked to the brim with rocks, with boulders the size of her head down to pebbles & dust.

Another problem to deal with, the Impaler’s own luck.

She often forgot that the devil was actually a decent guy. It was hard to change a lifetime of religious beliefs. The sight outside this cavern was the only thing that could tell her wether she will have the opportunity to do that or not. It was a funny thing really, not too long ago she had fought alongside gods, and now she had met her greatest adversary, a wall.

Her body ached all over from her many failed attempts to scale this barrier. Her hands were blistered and bleeding, she had not expected a climb like this or she would have brought chalk powder.

She looked over to the cramped cove where she had shoved her jute backpack. Luckily, it had survived the quake without being buried in rocks. That was why she had chosen it. The quakes had been coming on and off irregularly for several years now. You could never take too many precautions.

She hobbled back to the cove, every step making her wounds and bruises hurt anew. The cove had a low ceiling, low enough that her head brushed it even when she was on all fours. It had been a nest of a rattler when she had arrived here. Good thing she had brought a spear and her tinderbox. Wood for burning was readily available from the tree roots growing down from the ceiling of the cave. Being close to the surface had its advantages.

She had lost track of how long she had been trying to climb that Arbiter’s bane of a barrier. The glow of the moss had grown stronger, it was night again. She had wasted another day. Three days spent trying with nothing to show for them. Her rations were starting to run low, her canteen had run dry earlier today.

She grabbed her bag and left the cove, entering back into the cavern proper. The moss had grown even brighter. It was definitely nighttime. She walked back towards the cavern mouth that opened into the path to the shelter. It had been completely blocked after the last quake. She tried pushing and nudging the wall of discrete shards but it had been locked into a stable arrangement and refused to budge.

She turned away from it and started walking away but not back towards that sheer slope that challenged her every day. She turned right at the first intersection taking a different path from the one she had used to get here. She hoped the stream was intact.

She made her way through the cavern passages, the surroundings slowly growing damper. That and the increasing amount of luminescent moss. A rattler slithered away into a hole a few paces ahead of her. Strange, there were few things that could scare a rattler, fewer that could make it flee. Humans were neither.

She stepped cautiously as the passageway opened into a large chamber awash with a blue-green glow. Secile stared at the sight in front of her. She could never get used to how beautiful it was. The cavern walls were covered in a rarer, more potent variety of the moss. The stalactites growing from the roof shone like stars dotting a dark sky. The stream running through the cavern reflected the light and created shimmering patterns all over the chamber.

She walked slowly towards the stream and put her bag down beside the edge. Opening it, she removed her canteen and proceeded to fill it up with the clear streamwater. Except for the gently flowing stream, the chamber was completely silent. Eerie. The cavern was always a quiet place but she had been able to hear the chirping of critters most of the times. Today, there was simply no sound. She felt uneasy, sweat beading on her forehead.

She hurriedly put the lid back on her canteen and reached for her backpack-

She rolled backwards as a sharp, glowing fang of rock crashed into the place she had been kneeling at. Slowly the cavern started trembling again. This was not supposed to be, there were never two quakes in this quick a succession.

Stalactites crashed all around her, the stream sploshed violently. The quake slowly grew in intensity, mirroring the turmoil in her. Her bag still sat where she had put it, besides the stream. All of her things were in it, all except the canteen she carried.

She broke into a run towards the stream edge, her sights set on the bag and it alone. Glowing stones rained all around her, some cracking the floor, others making loud splashes into the stream.

Secile skidded to a halt and leaped back towards the exit as strongly as she could. Her canteen was tossed away in a moment of carelessness but that was all it took. She was only able to watch as it was crushed beneath a large rock, making a metallic crunch as it gave way beneath the weight. That was the least of her worries at this instant.

She ran back towards the entrance as the ceiling of the cavern slowly collapsed upon itself, the structure slowly giving away and breaking down in a clatter of stones. Secile barely made it out of the cavern, before the falling rocks closed off its mouth to the passageway she had come from.

The quaking continued to grow stronger and stronger as she ran all the way back to the cove where she had been lodging.

The cove had given into the intensity of the quakes and was now buried in rocks and dirt. She was running out of time. The rain of rocks around her kept on growing at a steady rate as she accumulated bruises and scrapes more rapidly than all her time spent trying to scale the wall.

Her thoughts ran empty, she could see no solution to this disaster. She was going to die here. A part of her felt a strange sense of satisfaction at the thought. She stopped hopping around as the quake slowly started growing weaker until it was eventually gone.

Her surroundings were a garden of scattered rocks and moss glowing a sickening green. It would not be bad if she could have one last euphoric experience. She picked up a rock heavily covered in moss and raised it to her nose. The scent alone relieved her of the many pains that plagued her, physical and otherwise.

I will show you how amazing the world can be, the words sounded in her head. They were like a distant memory, like something she had heard ages ago. She knew that was not the truth. No matter how long it might have felt, she knew that Quibe will not say something he did not mean.

The moss was right in front of her. Just one taste could not hurt, right. She had earned that much, hadn’t she. Then why did a strange sorrow hold her. She reached out into the vast emptiness of thought to locate the source, and what she found was hope.

She found it there. It was not Energy, Ardor or Bael. It was all of them and yet with its own identity. Tears welled in her eyes as she let herself breathe in, the essence of gods once incomplete but now whole suffused her being. Her wounds healed themselves as she dropped the moss-covered rock.

Brilliant white light surged around her, her body repaired and strengthened itself. Her problems seemed so small now. No, they had always been that small. All she had to do was continue believing. She had nearly failed, nearly given in. But now it was finally over.

She walked over to where the opening in the cavern roof was and leaped with all her strength and grabbed a hold of the lip of the opening to the world above. She pulled herself up with every ounce of strength she had, her eyes closed in anticipation of seeing the world they had created.

She slowly opened her eyes and found herself standing in a sea of verdant green as far as she could see on one side, and a vast expanse of water on the other. The sun glowed a brilliant white in the clear sky overhead. They had done it at the end. They had saved the world. This was the end of many adventures, trials and stories. But to her, it was a new beginning. Tears of joy glistened down her cheek as the breeze carried her joyous laughter all across the land.

By Aryan Singh Nagar