The bottom of the hole

All four of them fell into the abyss of darkness. Amon found himself sprawled on the ground, utterly immobilized. Lying on his back, he fixed his gaze on a faint glimmer of light at the beginning of the tunnel he had descended.

Amon chased the Qi circulating in his body at high speed through his body to understand how severe the damage was. His organs were torn and bled, and his bones shattered and crumpled. His brain and heart were, to his luck, not much damaged. But he was sure to die anyway.

He tried to regenerate himself, however this last hope still remained meaningless. He gave up and saw the faint image of a person who covered its face with a hood as it approached him out of the deep black nothingness.

He was stunned when suddenly the image of the person disappeared, and he felt how his bones and organs slowly flicked themselves together. When he realized that he had begun to regenerate, he chased the Qi in his body. He really regenerated. Some force was patching his body back together piece by piece. He straightened up and looked around to see who it could be. It was not Qi that healed him. It had to be some kind of magic or blessing.

As he looked around, he saw the silhouettes of Gunnar and Leif slowly rising to their feet. Jeanne was nowhere to be seen; it was so dark he couldn't make out much. He didn't know if her body was lying next to him or if she was in a hole somewhere being healed like he was.

He had to get up; this was still a battle. If the Ork brothers were the first to stand up. He would be done for; he ignored every kind of pain and slowly stood up. His spine and feet flicked together again, and so he saw how Jeanne's faint figure in the distance approached him step by step.

With every second, he could see better in the darkness until he finally saw Jeanne in color. Leif and Gunnar showed no interest in them. Their priority was to get up and inspect their bodies for wounds.

Suddenly the bottom of the cave lit up, and a voice appeared in everybody's heads.

"Young warriors who are here to get my mighty feather, prove yourself and earn it. You are two groups of two people. You will fight, and the group that survives gets the feather. Look around and choose a path."

The voice faded away, and silence filled the room. The two groups now felt no hostility toward each other. They were not only confused but also prepared for battle. Amon has already started to band the Qi into the shape he wants when a stone tabel slowly protrudes from the ground. Amon looked at the tablet and could see that something was written on it. But he did not know what.

Everyone in this room was completely different. Different guilds, different lives, and different ways of thinking still merged in that one particular moment, and they all understood that they had to figure out what was written on that stone tablet.

Amon saw Gunnar in his eyes. Gunnar nodded, and everybody got out of their fighting positions and walked towards the stone tabel. Jeanne took an extra step towards it and read what stood on it out loud.

"Push."

Jeanne looked around; she managed to understand what everybody wanted without talking more. Gunnar, Leif, and Amon gave her their approval. Jeanne wasted no more time pushing the stone tabel. The walls of the hole started to shake. The walls broke apart, and two tunnels opened next to each other behind all of them.

The text on the stone table changed, and Jeanne began to read it out loud again without asking or showing a trace of hesitation.

"Young warriors. Each group chooses a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel, a test personalized to you awaits you. The group that masters the test first and returns to this room gets the power feather. If you arrive at the same time, a surprise awaits you.

Good luck in the battle, my young warriors.

Signed by the bird of the gods."

Amon walked closer to Gunnar and Leif and started to talk. "Gunnar, Leif, I am not here to shed any unnecessary blood. We may have our stories, but we still only want to get them out. So tell me, Do you want to fight until one dies or play this game?"

Amon found one thing out of these two. Both of them had only two things in their lives. Number one is their strength, and number two is their brotherhood. He had nothing against them and wouldn't want to destroy something he would love to have.

Gunnar and Leif looked at each other, and then Leif answered for both of them.

"Only one group of us is going to die anyway. We are all warriors, and as such, I would like to fight with you until death. But this is a whole other situation; let's play this fucked-up game, and the loser simply has to accept his fate."

"He is right. I never had anything against you in the first place. I just wanted to fight with you. But I also don't want to lose my brother. Let's play fair and honest in this one and last game."

Amon showed a little smile and walked to Jeanne, who heard this but could not believe it. She was sure they wanted to fight.

'It seems like the saying is true. Never judge a book by its cover.'

Amon walked past her and straight to the tunnels. He looked at them to see if something was different about them, but they were the same. The one was a perfect copy of the other once.

"Which do you want to pick?" Jeanne asked.

"How about the right one? I don't know why, but somehow I like this one more." Amon had no clue why he thought that. Somehow, he felt as if something wanted to tell him that he should take this path.

With a proud chest and a smile on his face, Gunnar turned to the left path and took a good look at it.

"Well, the left one looks better to me either way. Right brother." Gunnar asked his brother.

"You're right, brother, and hey, Amon, I want a real competition. So put some effort into it."

Leif switched his gaze from Gunnar to Amon; he didn't know why. But he sensed a kind of sameness in him. It was as if he were fighting for the same cause as they were. For his brother's sake.

"Good, and if you should fail here, I will make sure to make a grave for you guys." Amon hated the fact that he had started to like both of them. He thought that if the circumstances had been different, they would have become good friends.

"Thanks; the same counts for you two." Gunnar gave Amon a thump up and walked into the long and dark tunnel. Amon grinned and did the same. Jeanne could not follow how the three of them now became friends, but she understood it in the end.

And so all four of them entered the tunnel for the test that would ask far more than they could have imagined in the first place.