Vagabond 508: Safety In Numbers

As Persephone and Winonah move towards the soft breeze, the air becomes warmer. The sound of the moving wind grows rhythmic, ebbing, waning, drawing in and out again like slow breath. Indeed, as they leave the main cave for the tunnel, it is easy to imagine the slumbering breathing of some great beast, the gentle living pulse of the rock around them.

The tunnel changes from craggy and natural rock to the smoothness of a river stone, and it becomes apparent that water had once moved through this place, wearing the walls slick. The stone lit by Winonah and Persephone's lanterns is pale but contains many colors, streaked with a washed-out spectrum of hues.

After a short length -- 30 feet or less, you'd guess, close enough to still see the lanterns of the group in the main cavern -- the tunnel becomes a cavern. The room is a vast dome with an uneven bottom, which slopes gently towards...

Towards...

You step closer to see, holding your lantern out, but can make out only blackness. A huge hole in the earth, massively wide and perfectly circular, waits for you in the center of the cavern. It is impossible to see the bottom. The air moves softly, gently, and you realize that this hole is the origin of the warm wind you felt. The whole room is dry and comfortably warm, hot even. The gaping hole at its center breathes steadily, in and out. When you come to stand at its edge, you'd swear that it sighs.

As Shiann is taken by the draw toward the unknown, her path becomes difficult. The thrall of curiosity is enough to make you pick through the sparse and uneven footing, your footsteps crunching as you descend a zigzagging path toward the distant light. Rynn leaves the river-worn smoothness of the first path for the bumpy terrain of the second, and the earth itself here looks different. The first tunnel was riddled with smooth craters by running water, entire vast scoops of earth gone to create wide passages, but this new path is narrower. It threatens the skin of your shoulders with rough porous edges.

Eventually, the path ends in a narrow crevasse. When you squeeze through, the light you had been following is apparent. A burning oil lantern hangs from a hook, stuck unnaturally into the unfinished stone wall. The sight of it brings you a wave of nostalgia and instinctual fear. A moth clings to the wall beside it, soaking in its light and heat, which strikes you as odd. You never see moths in the winter.

The room the lantern hangs in is wide, but the ceiling remains low. The most signficiant change is the floor. Here, the earth underfoot is perfectly smooth, as if cut by a mason, and full of carved lines. It is difficult to discern the pattern of the engravings in the limited light the lantern is giving off.






As Persephone descends into the hole in the earth, the wind becomes more intense. The deeper she goes, the harder it seems that the upward gusts of air are fighting gravity. At a certain depth, the blasting of the air becomes so intense that not even her weight can fight it; with every breath, the wind catches her wings, and forces her upward again.

After several attempts to descend, the room rumbles, as if laughing.


The voice doesn't make a noise. Persephone and Winonah don't hear the words, they simply know them. They can't attach any sound or character to the voice, only its meaning.


The air tosses Persephone up, playfully, almost joyously. With a flutter of wings, it expels her harmlessly to the safety of the solid earth above.

The room around Winonah and Persephone doesn't rumble again. The air sways rhythmically, gentle and warm, massaging the cold from the horses.


The words fill your head again. The voice seems to be pondering.


At Shiann's back, the lantern glows brighter. The field of its light expands, filling the room, illuminating the strange ground. After a moment of studying, you recognize a shape or two in the engraving. It is a map of Hireath, a map of your world, just like the ones you have seen crudely approximated all your life.

It has places you've never heard of (like ships in the northeast reaches of Onea), continents you've never seen (a vast land beyond the Isles of the Dead). The engraved lines sparkle dimly, and as you study them, the moth on the wall flutters to land on the ground. It settles on an engraving of a moth wings, a perfect outline of itself, somewhere in Sirith's Vastlands. Somewhere, you imagine, near this very cave.

Shiann's scream, her pain, causes a hot ripple of air from the hole in the ground. With a sharp gasp, the breathing in the cavern stops. The silence in its place is deafening.

Then, across this engraved map of the world, in the darkness outside the pool of the lantern's light, a gentle footfall is barely heard. If you squint, you can see the shape of a winged equine. They're small. They're afraid of the light.


The voice says. You can all hear it now. It appears in your mind softly, pleading.

The rock trapping Shiann softens in a ripple. The jagged stone making up the narrow passage turns suddenly to flower petals of a thousand kinds and colors, and flutters harmlessly away.