1 The Cave

"Come on Amanda! It's just ahead" David laughed as he climbed the steep, vine-covered mountainside. His hiking partner and wife, Amanda shook her head with a smirk at his childlike enthusiasm.

"Right behind you!" She called up.

They had been climbing for hours and it seemed like in vain, but David always cried down 'almost there!' and kept going.

"Amanda..."

"David if we have just met another dead end I'll have to..." she stopped short at the sight of the cave mouth looming silently in front of her. "David" she whispered "this is it...the cave of"

"Arkala" David finished with a smile bigger than seemed able to fit on his face.

To some, that name meant nothing or less than nothing, but to David and Amanda, it meant four years of chasing theories, dead-ends, false news, ridicule, and dashed hopes. Arkala was a ruler of an ancient race of people deep in the Andes mountains region of South America. According to legend and myth (the only sources for information on him), he was an amazing, if not stern, a ruler who was very benevolent to his subjects...less so to his enemies. Legend told that invading, or invaded, peoples would be pitched into a cave carved in the mountainside where they would not be seen for years and years, only to reappear looking the same as the day they went in (if they reappeared at all.) It was said this cave was outside of time and was able to give eternal life but that inside was Hell on earth.

But there was no mistaking the looming figures of half eagle-half man on either side of the cave entrance, or the inscriptions on the top.

"the cave of wonderssss" David hissed out.

Amanda shoved him with a laugh "come on let's set up camp, it's getting dark."

While David set up home base Amanda inspected the entrance. The silent guardians seeming to follow her with their gaze.

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