Down To The Rabbit Hole

"Well, Captain Val is the team leader, I'm only her vice-captain," he corrected himself and smiled widely again.

Dasheniel Shepard offered his hand to Levi. Both of his hands were covered in black leather gloves. Like the Viking from Dorthmayer, this guy also wore a modified exos.

But his exos didn't have a protector shield like the normal ones. Inside of his simple exos he wore a pristine white shirt and a black tie. A small Shanorak gold badge was pinned into his tie.

This guy looked like he was about to go to the office, not to the war.

Levi shook his hand gingerly and nodded. "I'm the porter."

"Yes! You're Levi right?" He nodded to himself a few times, his dark blonde bangs flopped into his forehead. He pulled his hand before brushing his hair aside. "Can you fight, Levi?"

"No... Not really. But they said I only need to carry things for the team."

'They didn't even let me carry a weapon,' Levi added to himself. But this guy must have known that.

Dasheniel pulled a cigarette from his pocket. "That's true. But I need to know if you're going to be a dead weight to the team."

Placing the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his fingers then searched the pocket again and finally emerged with a match.

"I can't be sure about being a dead weight, but I won't make any trouble for the team," Levi replied quietly.

"Good." Dasheniel nodded and patted Levi's exos a few times. "Don't worry, kid, I'll protect you if anything happens inside the monolith."

Levi raised his eyebrows as he stared at Dasheniel's smug yet friendly smile.

'Kid? He looks like he's the same age as me, though?'

***

Only Dasheniel Shepard took the time to introduce himself to Levi, his other teammates ignored him because he was just a porter.

Levi stood in the back row while waiting. He did not feel the least bit offended by the treatment of the other team members to him.

They all had their own goals, and so did he. In fact, the less interested his teammates the better it would be for him.

"Next expedition team! You can go in now." Staff from the Union shouted from the door of the last layer in this fortress.

"And that's us," Dasheniel announced before walking to the back of his team line and stood right behind Levi.

They walked together into the last door that headed to where the monolith stood.

The atmosphere around them immediately changed drastically the moment they set foot at the deepest part of the fortress.

It was dark and cold, much colder than the other part of the fortress.

There were no weapons inside of this slightly damp room, but lots of red danger signs were installed all over the place.

DANGER! EXPLOSIVE GAS!

Hundreds of small red pipes were planted on this room stone wall.

But that's not what got their attention. It was the monolith.

That shiny massive slab of metal was split into two like an opened lift door. Only wisps of black smoke came out from the inside, unlike the other monoliths that released billows of black smoke.

Almost everyone in Levi's team stared at the metal slab in awe. The tension and suspense atmosphere intensified tremendulously now that they saw the real thing in front of them.

Only Dasheniel Shepard looked unimpressed because this was his third trip into the monolith.

'The third time is the charm,' Dasheniel thought as he pulled a cigarette from inside his pocket, but then he caught the expedition staff glared viciously at him.

He put his cigarette back and gave the staff a sheepish smile.

Captain Val, the leader of the team suddenly stop and turned her back to her teammates.

"We can't communicate when we get inside the monolith. So just walk in straight line until we see the exit door. I'll lead the way."

Of course they all knew about the basic rules and regulations before entering the monolith. They got every bit of information about the monolith when they went through mandatory military training.

"Please enter as soon as possible, the other teams are waiting for their turn," said another expedition staff with a stern tone.

Captain Val took a long, deep breath before stepping into the darkness. Her body immediately got swallowed by the black smoke and vanished.

'It's like entering another world.' For a second Captain Val wondered if she could get out from this place and get back to the human world when the expedition was over. Her heart was pounding hard inside of her chest.

She gripped the hilt of her sword tightly to preserve her courage.

This was Captain Val's first expedition, but for the past five years she had been prepared and educated by The Union military academy for this day.

All of the team members walked into the total darkness one by one.

Sound couldn't travel at all inside the monolith. Not even the sound of their own heartbeats.

They can't talk or communicate because it was also pitch dark inside. Not even night vision goggles could penetrate the darkness of this place.

It's like walking in outer space, the silence was deafening.

The combination of being blind and deaf while walking aimlessly for God knows how long would make even the most prepared soldier like Captain Val wavered a little.

Everyone felt tense and edgy.

Levi was the only person who noticed that the path was getting lower and lower over time. Even though it was only a few degrees, with the weight on his back Levi could feel the slight change of the structure of this place.

They were descending slowly into wherever the hell this monolith took them.

This was one of the little things that the participants had missed over the years.

The team continued walking for nearly five kilometers away, but the end of this dark path was still not visible yet.

Over the next kilometer they began to felt the path vibrating like a mild earthquake.

One of the soldiers who walked right behind Captain Val almost opened his mouth to ask, but he shut his mouth when his eyes caught a speck of light from the end of this long path.

Levi was almost out of breath when they finally passed through the other end of the monolith. They came out and immediately greeted by a very bright light.

Everybody groaned and stopped for a moment. It took them a while to adjust their eyes after walking in total darkness for almost an entire hour.

The fresh air smelled of honeysuckle and pulsed with the sound of insects.

Levi turned his back and stared behind him. The place where they just came out looked like the mouth of a cave.

But from where he stood the cave looked a little shaky. At glance, it almost looked like a moving hologram.

Not far from the cave were the ruins of a large building that had collapsed almost completely. Levi tried to remember the shape and every little detail of the ruin and cave. He planned to hide near this place when the time of his runaway came.

The entire team was staring at all directions around them with wary eyes.

Captain Val was the first to open her mouth after a few minutes had passed. "God, this place is so weird."

They were standing on tall hills and right in front of them there was a vast expanse of dense forest welcoming the expedition's participants who had just exited the cave.

Several giant rectangular stones stood right in the middle of this dense lush forest, the size of those stones was almost as big as tall buildings or skyscrapers in the human world.

On the stones' smooth surface were written some sentences in foreign symbols. They were so big that the team could read the symbols clearly even from the distance they were standing right now.

Dasheniel stared at those giant stone monuments with a dark expression while the others tried to take in the new world that had just appeared in front of them.

"Fuck," he muttered softly to himself. For Dasheniel, those monuments were the signs of civilization and intelligence. It meant trouble.

This world looked somewhat familiar to the human world, but when they looked closely everything was different.

The trees were enormous. A few had shapes like gigantic white mushrooms that emitted white powder substances like snow, some had huge roots like octopus' feet.

The animals that inhabit this place were also of unusual shapes.

Levi saw one of the flying insects passing near his face. It looked like a dragonfly, but the insects here have human-like anatomy with a pair of weird arms and legs, and an insect head with eight eyes.

The insect's colorful wings flapped around Levi's ear, it was buzzing and cricketing noisily before flying away and dove into a thick bush.

"Our team will be walking to the north. We'd better move now before night falls," announced Captain Val suddenly.

She started to walk and the team followed her one by one with the same formation. Captain Val led their way and Dasheniel Shepard walked on the rear, right behind Levi.

No one spoke while walking into the forest. Most of them were trained soldiers or mercenary so they knew when to shut their mouth and when to open them.

About ten kilometers from where Levi and his team were walking towards the north, another team was assigned to explore the west. They arrived right before Levi's team.

But they were quite unlucky.

They were ambushed not even an hour after they came to this world. Slaughtered mercilessly in under five minutes by the beings that ruled this world.

Organs, bits of flesh, and severed body parts were scattered among the tall weeds that grew in this forest.

It was impossible to identify who died in that brief battle because among those leftover corpses remains, we couldn't see a single head.