The freezing water feels like icy needles being jabbed into my flesh, and the air is choked out of my lungs in a shocked exhale. I’m sent tumbling, crashing into rocks this way and that, only catching a hurried sip of breath before being thrust back under the surface.
I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping in vain this isn’t where I die today. This isn’t what I wanted! I scream out inside my head, fists clenching. Why do you have to take everything from me?
And then my lungs are expanding painfully as I’m spit out onto the freezing ground, coughing so hard my ribs ache. I can’t feel anything past my pounding heart, body completely numb. I can hardly think past the roaring in my mind, annoyingly similar to the pounding river still beside me.
I scramble back on the chilled ground, taking stock of my surroundings for the first time. I’m outside again, the sun just descending from it’s highest point in the sky. The ground all around me is soaked and cold, similar to how I’m feeling at this moment. Just beyond the small hill I’ve found myself on is another cave, this one shallow and with something sitting clearly in the center. Managing to pull my heavy body up off the ground, I slowly tread over to the shelter and see that the case on the ground is a small chest, no bigger than my torso if I were to lay down completely. The latch isn’t locked, and I sit down labouriously before it and flick it once, twice, the lid creaking back and revealing it’s contents.
Paper. Lots, and lots of paper. Important papers, from the looks of it. Handwriting, not printed, covers every patch of white and cream.
Really? I came all this way, almost died, for this? Really?
Rifling through the sheets, I find a common factor in all of them: They look old. It’s not odd to find paper documents laying around, especially ones as formal as these. But this isn’t just paper, it’s weighted, rough and frayed around the edges. These look handmade, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t even made of the materials used to produce modern day pages. Some of them even have holes on the edges for binding: strands of thread still stick out from between the punctures. The writing itself seems to consist mainly of English, though even then it’s old, formal, and several of the sheets are in different dialects and languages. Even more have smudged ink or blot marks covering information, and I’m careful to keep it under the cave’s cover at risk of the mist that’s starting to creep up over the ground outside.
Pulling the chest back into the furthest corner of the hollow, I settle down and pick up the top piece of paper. It’s in English, and fairly understandable, but the cursive is so thick I’m forced to hold it just inches away from my face, squinting as I work to decipher the code of loops and unnecessary swirls.
And oh, oh my gosh.
They’re logs of the Deities. I rifle through more of them, scanning the ones with clear enough writing quickly. All of them mention each Deity at least once, recounting their roles and stances on a subject. It’s referred to in almost every document, someone they name only as “The 7th Deity,” as well as the word “Fear,” over and over. One of the most hurried looking sheets details the disciple count and might of each entity, another lists what seem to be phobias, and the word “Dark” is circled over and over until it’s hardly visible through the hastily scribbled outline.
And then the references just… stop. The mysteriously named person – Deity? – stops appearing in any notes, not a single word detailing fear, or a missing figure. All other census’s including the Deities look the same as they do today, but when compared to one that seems to’ve been taken in the past, is missing an entire Deity and their disciples.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Their disciples.
I’ve never known anything past the world I was born into, a world with six Deities, with disciples and attributes and never being a part of it because as hard as I tried I could never seem to find my own Connection, could never seem to find that brilliant spark my classmates came to school raving about day after day, watching them form groups and explain how prayer worked and what it felt like praying to their Deity knowing they had a connection. Even the ones not quite sure of their Connection were included, because at least they could tell they had one, just hadn’t narrowed it down yet. But this paper, these strange documents upheave all that, because there’s another one, a Deity I’ve never heard of before today, who might have disciples somewhere, disciples who must still live in the current world, who may even be-
No. No, I can’t let myself go down that train of thought, can’t even entertain it for a moment because if I do I open Pandora’s Box and give myself some sort of twisted hope, believing in strange writings I didn’t know existed until today, that I found sitting in an unprotected box in the middle of nowhere and for all I know could be totally fake. What I need to be focusing on now is how I’m getting out of this place, find a way to escape from the pinnacle of isolation and get warm, then go into work tomorrow with some lame excuse about what I was doing that got in the way and lead to me being MIA for an entire day.
Taking a deep breath of the clean air, I stare at the contents scattered around me one last time. I should leave them here, I know that, but the temptation to gather as many as I can and shove them in my jacket is strong, to carry them with me and try to examine them more at my own house. But even if these aren’t guarded too heavily, isn’t a bit of a warning sign when they’ve been kept a secret so hidden someone only finds them when a Deity tells them about it? There must be powerful forces behind it, ones I don’t want to mess with.
Begrudgingly, I shuffle them back together as cleanly as I can, brushing off small flecks of dirt and rock before closing the case again and savouring my last moment in relative comfort. Then I step back into the mist, microscopic droplets frizzing my hair and dampening my already chilled clothing. Great.
Ascending the small incline behind me, I try to gather my surroundings as best I can. All I can see for miles is grass and rock, but it flattens off the same direction the river runs. I figure following the river downstream is my best bet, and start my slow slog downhill, grass and mug sticking to my inadequate footwear of plain running shoes, slowly staining the waterlogged navy blue fabric to a slimy blue-brown-black.
Kierra would be so disappointed, I chuckle, an old acquaintance coming to mind for the first time in ages. She always loved clothing, obsessed over keeping away stains. Mother could’ve learned so much from her. She always laughed more with her, back then.
She still smiled.
Another chuckle frees itself from my mouth, but this one is wry, filled with the irony of my stupid situation, the giant, cosmic joke of a situation.
“Wow, Enna,” I mutter, rolling my own eyes at myself. “Empty plains really seem to bring out the pessimist in you, don’t they?”
I’m not sure how long I spend wandering along the bank of the river, talking to myself and reflecting on how un-normal today has been, finding secret passages and rivers and possibly even unknown Deities when I finally see the lights of Kannora in the distance. I breathe out a sigh I wasn’t even aware I was holding, parting from the winding river that heads in the opposite direction and towards the split where grass and dirt transforms into concrete and metal. I’m not sure I’ve ever needed a shower more in my life, feeling more like a weary sac of bones than a person by the time I reach the front door of my apartment building.
But there’s something on my counter.
A candle, a Deital candle, like the ones we have at the Temple, lit and flickering. There’s no note, no information, just the flame dripping wax onto my counter. Blue wax, white and periwinkle and navy and royal.
Vast.