Amashanae - Book 1

CHAPTER 5

  It was cold and quiet. There was a pungent stench around, and a sense of a closed space, devoid of the sounds of nature. Slowly the man opened his eyes, afraid of what he might see, and completely lost about his surroundings. At first he saw nothing but after a few blinks he begun to see a little something; there was enough ambient light seeping in from somewhere – greenish and sick – to allow some visibility. At first everything was a bit blurry and he felt a rush of blood in his head as he peered out into the semi-darkness, but quite quickly everything started to become clear to him. He heaved his head a bit and looked around him. It took him a minute before he realized that the shapes lying around him in random arrangements – everyone and everything around him were dead. Not a sound of a breath or a movement anywhere. Maimed orcs lay here and there in abnormal and awkward positions no living thing could ever achieve. He tried to sit up but one of his former chums lay dead on top of him, his mutilated visage seeming to mock his effort and staring at him with his single surviving eye. The man, startled, uttered a panicky whine and pushed the corpse away from him. Quickly he arose and stepped away from the gruesome sight, and with his eyes wide open and mouth ajar he turned his head around and realized he was the sole survivor – and alone in this expansive cave.

  His posture slouched when he begun to take it all in, his friends lying dead among the filthy and reeking orcs, took another step backward, and almost stumbled on another corpse. Trying to compose himself he looked around for a wall or a fixture, anything to lean on, for he did not want to stumble on in this pile of death before he had properly regained his wits. What happened, he thought and tried to make sense of his situation, realizing he had suffered some loss of memory. They had – he and his fellow captains and a horde of orcs in their command – been on an important mission, and…they had actually also accomplished it. Memories flooded his throbbing head like a tidal wave. They had found the grave that Raelia Elvenkiller, their supreme commander, had been desperately looking for. Yes, and little had they expected what they finally had found.

  What they had searched for certainly had been in this ample cave he was in, high up on the mountains, almost unreachable. A memory of freezing wind and biting cold made his flesh shiver. How they had lost two of their strongest orcs in a sudden avalanche, and how they had been cursing the mountain and swearing to end their quest very soon if they found nothing shortly. As if any would have dared to return to Raelia empty-handed and without a good explanation. And sure enough, all too busy bickering amongst themselves and concentrating on surviving the high altitude coldness their orc-platoon seemed to pay little attention to, they would have probably walked right past it, had they not have had that magical stone, given to them by Raelia, and which had started glowing when they had gotten near the grave.

  The entrance of the cave was thickly covered with very large stones welded in place by ice and snow, and they had been hard at work for almost two weeks to make their way inside, while uncomfortably dwelling in tents and makeshift huts and working in shifts until their hands had bled. And finally, when the final disc of stone was loosened, they had still had to wait a full day because of smell of death and decay within the cave, sealed there for thousands of years, had to be let out and fresh air let in, before even the orcs could enter. But then they had finally entered the cave, which was truly cavernous after they had descended a long passageway hewn into the rock and leading into the main chamber deep in the living rock of the mountain. After igniting their torches they had soon discovered the chamber to be very ascetic and plain. No gold, no decorations, nothing, at least for them to loot. Not even a stone gargoyle in sight. There was just a big stone altar in the middle of the cave, and a small cinerary urn on top of it.

  Disappointed and irritated about the lack of treasures to loot they had built a campfire in the cave and started to get drunk, rewarding themselves for the hardship of weeks of searching and digging on the frozen mountainside. At least there was no biting wind here, and the fire was enough to warm the men even in the huge cave. But then they had run into a problem. Singing and fighting, relaxing the way men of their kind usually do, and the orcs raising hell amongst their own as they always did, some of them had butted the little urn atop the altar just a little bit. But it had been enough. The lid had dropped, spinning in the air, onto the altar and then on to the floor of the cave. Everybody was immediately sobered and alert. Even the orcs quieted down. Raelia had especially made it very clear that if someone would touch the actual grave itself, she would personally make every single member of the team suffer and regret such a deed.

  For a while there was a complete silence, every man and creature held their breath, and nothing seemed to happen. But then, suddenly an abhorrent sound emanated from the urn and the altar beneath it burst to little pieces that exploded through the air and ricocheting from the walls, piercing a few unlucky orcs like arrowheads and ending the awaiting silence with a deafening roar. The sound and din in the cave reached ultimate levels – something beyond mere chaos that even made the timeless rock around them tremble. No one had ever heard anything so awful. Panic gripped the simple minds of orcs, spreading like wildfire to their captains as well, and the whole troop started dashing around in chaos, gripping their weapons and still trying to cover their ears. The remains of the floor under the altar cracked, something seemed to rise from somewhere in the depths beneath. The campfire had been spread and trampled by the feet rushing madly about, not capable of feeling any pain from the embers, but now a deep darkness swept over the cave and only a few dying embers here and there dimly glowed on the floor. Nothing could be seen and the only sounds seemed to be the rapid breathing of orcs and their captains. Then, as un-expectantly as it had ceased, the world again exploded into sounds of pain and battle, death-growls and the screams of dying ors bellowing in fright echoing as if endlessly from the walls of the cave, there had been a painful explosion in his head and everything had gone black.

  This had been not a long ago he understood. The body on top of him had still been warm. There was no time to be wasted pondering why had he survived while all the others had perished, for he realized that now he needed to get out of the cave, and make haste of it. He turned his head around and peered into the void to find the passageway out of the cave. There, a slightly darker patch of darkness. He quickly made his way up, stepping over the dead bodies and stumbling in the darkness, only wanting to get fresh air and a sense of air around him, to get away from this pit of death and darkness. He made it up the passageway, running like a bat out of hell, and made it to the top. But there was a strange humming sound at the cave entrance. He did not know what it was but he ran towards the entrance with all his available energy. The distance was not long but when he collided against something, some sort of an invisible seal over the entrance, he realized it was too late. He was trapped like a fly in a jar. He pounced at the barrier, making almost animal-like guttural sounds of anger and desperation, battering the invisible wall with his fists.

  On the other side of the barrier he could plainly see their equipment piled at the cave entrance, left there at camp when they had entered the cave, and the piles of stones they had lifted from the entrance. Wheezing, he ceased his pounding and drew in desperate breaths of air; staring out into the freedom and the frozen mountainside outside with wide eyes, sweat already drying into icy pearls on his forehead. He could not break the barrier, yet the freezing mountain wind had no trouble getting through it. Then something caught his eye – the orc guard they had left to watch their equipment was peering at him from behind a rock pile, scared shiftless at the sight of his bloodied captain in panic, soundlessly clawing at the air as if an invisible wall. The captain could only watch, as the orc turned its head, eyes wide and ears down slipped away, rather facing the cruel mountains alone than remaining at this incomprehensible scene. Desperately the captain again banged his head on the magic wall and heaved a deep, trembling sigh. Then, suddenly his eyes opened wide again and he froze
in his tracks. The sound – the din – it had returned, rising from the depths of the cave towards him. Feeling his blood freeze solid in his veins he managed to turn around and saw something unbelievable. A huge, immaterial claw approached him from the darkness, and even if the magical wall had not been soundproof, only the two mountain goats making their way across the snowy mountainside in search of hay nearby would have heard his cry of horror when he died. The cry of death echoed down the ravines and gorges, and to a distant listener it might have sounded like a huge stone wheel creaking forward.