What is it to Unearth? We’re all buried neath its sky.

"Fine. Davis, take her up. The rest of us, let's make up time. Report back as soon as you can, Davis!" Reynolds oddly shifted his rugged demeanor into a quaint happy go lucky tom.

Davis nodded and blanketed the lost girl. "Very well, deeper into the earth we go."

As they parted ways, Reynolds's party seemed to loom heavily upon him. "This guy got issues, I mean first the boy now this?" whispered some of his companions. "Yeah, it's like he's got a bingo list for how many ages he can kill."

"Ugh, don't put it like that, it makes fighting a war a turn-off."

"You get turned on by war?"

"Relax, Reynolds just wants us to stop dying so much, you know how many funerals he needs to attend now? Last week it was seventy-two, half of which he dug graves for." "Yeah, it's a damn shame. Unless he's returning the favor, right?"

"We're his army, not them," Jackson replied.

Everyone rattled with an unsettled opinion that their paths of Reynolds diverged into two different realms. As they continued into the chasm, the world around them seemed to transform into a night sky filled with twinkling stones of assorted rays, painting the walls with brilliant hues of pear green, velvet cherry, and bluebonnets, casting back their light's aura creating an eerie mystical aurora around them as gems reflected their lights.

They encountered massive underground lakes, crystal-clear waters reflecting the delicate, shimmering formations above, Jackson and Lawson both went ahead, but Lawson leaned over the pool of water then delved his face into the water, spitting it out. "Bleh!", 

"Dumbass." said Jackson.

It was as though they had entered a realm untouched by time, a hidden sanctuary beneath the earth's surface.

"Yo, Lawson, check this out!" called Jackson.

"Woah, Captain got to see this! Captain!" yelled Lawson. "Come here, sir!" Lawson's voice echoed through the cavern.

The other men scoffed at Lawson, "Sir! He says.", snickering among themselves.

They all went to where Lawson stood, their lanterns casting an eerie light on the scene. There, amid the cavern, was an unexpected sight—a rusty bathtub stood incongruously against the rocky terrain. Beside it was a table holding a few vases, their surfaces dusty.

But what caught their attention the most was an old campsite. A rugged tent, its fabric torn and weather-beaten, flapped wildly in the breeze that flowed through the cave's passages. It created an odd spectacle as it billowed and danced to the rhythm of the wind.

Captain Reynolds's curiosity piqued, he approached the bizarre campsite tattered tent with an air of caution. The lantern in his hand cast flickering shadows on the uneven rock walls, adding to the eerie atmosphere, his lantern held high. He examined the area beneath the tent, where an old, tattered sleeping bag lay in disarray. Nearby, ceramic pots sat atop a small, makeshift table. He grabbed a corroded lantern placed next to them, its fuel canisters long depleted. Reynolds reached out and grabbed the fabric of the tent and with a swift, forceful pull, he tore the tent from its moorings, causing it to collapse onto the rocky floor with a rustling of old canvas.

The scouts exchanged puzzled glances. What could explain the presence of these seemingly abandoned belongings deep within the cave? Cpt Reynolds examined the items more closely, his expression thoughtful. There were no signs of recent human presence, except for the Babylonians but they couldn't have left this here long enough to rust; hell, they hardly use lanterns anyway.

The vase shared some of the force from Reynolds's pull and tumbled onto the ground. To everyone's surprise, as the pots crashed and broke open, they revealed an unexpected treasure trove. Copper coins spilled from one pot's broken belly, their dull surfaces catching the lantern's light. Within another were dark purple arrows, their fletching clean and fresh. Then, when one of the explorers went to grab them, his whole weight shifted onto the arrows! "By God, these are grabbing me!" His compatriots went to pull him away, but they flung back causing him to fall over, scattering among the coins.

"Help!" he cried, still unable to let loose of those unholy arrows.

"Hold on!" Another went and swung his Golden pick at it, and when he did, he launched them into the air. When they fell, they struck into the ground with enormous thuds, some going headfirst into the ground and becoming stuck. But one particular struck a pot that caught Captain Reynolds' eye. As he reached for it, he spotted a glimmer of gold within. His fingers closed around the pot's shards, and he gently brushed them away, allowing a single gold coin to tumble out.

With his eyes locked on the gold coin, Reynolds stepped forward, his gaze unwavering. He was drawn deeper into the cave, following the coin as it rolled, clinking along the rocky ground.

He reached out in a desperate attempt to snatch it from the precipice. With a heart-stopping silence, the gold coin slipped from his grasp and plummeted into the darkness below. Reynolds scooted back in shock, now on his ass, letting out an "AH!" His startled yell reverberated through the cave.

The scouts rushed to his side, shining their lanterns out the edge of the precipice. Their lanterns couldn't even reveal the sheer drop that had been concealed by pitch darkness. Amidst the tense atmosphere, one of the scouts couldn't help it. He walked to Reynolds, turned to the captain with a wry grin, and quipped, "Ah, too bad, Captain, cave diving for a coin! That was a good deal!"

Laughter rippled through the group, breaking the tension that had settled in the cave. Captain Reynolds lifted himself and replied, "Cave diving would be on my bucket list. But the last thing would be taking one of the Major's ex wives, but I'm not a philistine, am I right gentlemen?" The men roared in laughter. "No! No! Oh Lord, how many men wound up with that last wish!" jeered another! "By God, if there were a list, it'd be following all the way down to here, and not even finding its half yet!" Then another said, "Hey! Will someone toss the coin a torch so it can find us and read out the rest of the list down there!" They erupted again. "Alright, alright gentlemen, shall we?" Reynolds calmed the crowd.

The scouts chuckled some more, their spirits lightened, a brief moment of levity before they continued their journey deeper into the cave, their voices echoing off the rocky walls. As Captain Reynolds and his team watched their steps through the winding tunnels, their joviality began to fade. "God damn, is this the ladder to hell?"

"It must be, each pass from you smells like burning corpses."

"Me! Didn't you take a fat dump in the woods?"

"Is that a body?" yelled Lawson.

"Yeah, his ass."

"Shut up." yelled Reynolds.

"Captain, It's a skeleton! No, Skeletons!" yelled Reynolds.

"Does he have the coin?" yelled another.

They approached the group of skeletal remains. "They're tribal men, see the pelt clothing and lack of weaponry, must've been a tribe settled near here and went cave diving, for free." He earned some chuckles, but they quickly went away. "Shoot, we have pelts too though." "Yeah, but we just integrated this," said Jackson. "I like it, they're real waterproof," said another.

"From how long ago?"

"From what I learned about science, they must've been here since Noah's days being all decomposed," said a troop. "Imagine during those forty days?" said another. "Oh, don't say that! Being caught in the flood cave diving gives it a whole new meaning," said one shivering at the thought.

"That's a bad way to go," said a soldier.

"The way of dying by drowning is holding your breath, feeling that tight pressure of heat from needing to breathe until finally your body instinctively inhales tons of water, now unable to breathe, you're consciously aware of your body filling with liquid in every orifice, being unable to breathe."

Everyone turned to Jackson.

"Quickly succumbing to the overwhelming need to shut your eyes, accepting your fate, being unable to breathe, then you go to sleep, or so you think but how can you breathe?" poetically said Private Jackson. The soldiers nervously exchanged looks with one another. "Okay." said Reynolds. "That's a surprising amount of knowledge about drowning, Jackson," said Lawson.

"Overwhelming. Let's go back," continued Reynolds.

Immediately a sound hissed! Swift pattering along the cave's roof!

They all quickly turned and shone their lanterns each way revealing the bumpy cavern heights.

"They're." Lawson stared at the ceiling, not moving a muscle. "Up there." Lawson revealed his lantern to a vastness of reflections above from multiple large empty shining pits above them, revealing triangular heads poking out of the cave's crevasses.