Overlord

24

Digby O’Donnell stood staring in mesmerized wonder. Galicia had not been lying about the shrine. It stood in a small cavern, gently lit by more of the glowing vines and deposits of greenium. The cavern floor was concave, gently falling to a low center, and in the middle of that space stood an arch of rock. It seemed to have been carved from the very stuff of the cavern itself. No, Dig corrected himself. Not carved. Grown. As if two stalagmites, thicker at their base than a grown man’s waist, had formed straight up like normal, but had then slowly curved over to meet each other and form the arch some eight or nine feet above the ground. Was that even possible? It didn’t matter, here it was. Standing under the high bow of strange rock was a pile of stones, each perfectly flat, every next one smaller than the one below, like a stack of ever-reducing pancakes. A complicated sigil of many intersecting lines was carved into the top surface of the uppermost, smallest flat stone, about the size of a dinner plate. Dig reached out one trembling hand and gently ran his fingers over the lines, felt an electric thrill that seemed more than mere excitement.

But more interesting than all of this were the pictographs carved around the arch itself, covering both back and front, a high curve of text from the ground on one side right over to the ground on the other, on both sides. He imagined the front as one long passage, then the back of the arch as another. And more than that, behind the strange monument, the entire rear wall of the cave was flattened and bore a huge body of text, hundreds of small pictographs in a square at least six feet on each side. So much information.

Was pictographs the right word, he wondered, or should he say hieroglyphics? That term was usually reserved for ancient Egyptian script, but could he be certain this wasn’t from a concurrent culture? The symbology was incredibly similar, though subtly different in key ways. Might this be a dialect of ancient Egyptian? A precursor? It thrilled him to consider it might be something older. Too many questions, he simply wanted to read it. He desperately ached to glean whatever knowledge it offered. But that would normally take many hours of conscientious study.

And still that whispering voice cajoled him, sibilant in his ears, tickling his hindbrain. Visions flickered in his mind’s eye, snatches of the caverns, of tunnels and caves. Some he knew, some he had never seen, and he thought perhaps he was seeing what others before him had seen down here. Or perhaps, what others were seeing now. But none of it helped him understand the knowledge written all around him. “Tell me!” Dig demanded of it. “These words, they must be the key to understanding. To understanding everything! Explain them to me!”

But no revelation came. Just the ongoing soft whispering of his name and a strange, dragging sensation exhorting him to go deeper, to keep moving. With a hiss of frustration, he pulled a small digital camera from his jacket and carefully snapped photographs. First from afar, capturing the whole arch front and back, the wall of text as a whole, then close-ups of all the pictographs, of the pancake stack of stones, of the strange design atop them.

“I’ll study these,” he muttered to himself. “When there’s more time. I can work them out, I can learn their secrets. Time. I just need time.” He giggled, tucked his camera away. For now, he could no longer resist the pull drawing him on.

He moved around the arch one more time, intending to return along the narrow passage that had led to the shrine and this time take the right fork, deeper into the caves, when he spotted something else. A small cairn stood between himself and the pictograph-covered arch, dozens of small stones piled into a fake stalagmite about two feet tall. As he leaned down for a closer look, he sensed power in there, a buzz almost like a live electricity source. He shoved at the pile with one palm and a flash of pain nearly blinded him.

He staggered back, letting out a cry of surprise and shock. He blinked, shook his head, but the light didn’t go away, shining bright green. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and looked at the mess of stones he had scattered. An idol of some kind, seemingly carved from pure, unblemished greenium, lay on its side, revealed by his push. He crouched, his eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the new brightness.

The idol was of a figure, weirdly proportioned, head too large, eyes too big. It had thin arms raised in supplication and around its body looped many coils of… something. Vines? Ropes? Dig stared in wonder, trying to understand. The figure gave the impression it was ecstatic to be so bound, not scared or restricted, like it reveled in the embrace of whatever held it. And it was beautiful, the execution of the carving exquisite. Who would bury this treasure and why? Why not display it?

Dig reached out, picked the idol up and gasped as energy rushed through him. At the same time, the skin of his hands burned like the thing was hot, but the sensation was distant, like the memory of someone else burning. His thoughts dissolved at the pure ecstasy that surged into the rest of his body and mind as he held it. He imagined the purest cocaine and thought it would not hold a candle to this rush of pure joy. And yet, below the pleasure, entwined with it like whatever arms entwined the figure of greenium, was a sensation of joyous malice, of desperate need. His own need, certainly, but also the avarice of something else. Something whose wishes he simply had to fulfill. Blurred, inconsistent visions flickered before his eyes, a rapid, detailed slide show of tunnels and caverns he had seen already and others he didn’t recognize. He saw more arches, more carved doorways, more pictographs. He saw a dark place with flashes of fire and his friends screaming and running. He saw a large pool, crystal clear, and something caused the surface to boil and thrash. He saw hints of chittering mantics and slowly walking hominids with ash-gray flesh, watching, seeking, hunting.

With a sob of ecstatic need, Dig held the idol close to his chest and staggered back down the dark passage, his way lit by the glowing treasure. When he reached the fork, he turned, almost running to get deeper into the caves as quickly as he could.