Underground

Stepping past Roger, Lila approached the entrance.

Her head seemed to be on a swivel as she studied every inch of the interior, squinting in areas where the light was dim, and occasionally reaching out to touch the stone walls.

"I don't recognize any of these markings."

Roger also tried to interpret them, but it was impossible without some underlying knowledge of the language.

He traced his finger through some of the swooping carvings and felt himself mesmerized by their patterns. 

It felt natural to move with them, as if humans had been created to understand their meaning. Some of them seemed to purposefully showcase realistic translations, such as one looking like a man, but others seemed entirely abstract, like one that seemed to be multiple connected spirals.

'Why is it that they feel so familiar?'

Roger didn't know the language, but he couldn't avoid the faint sensation of recognition.

He shuddered at the strangeness of it.

Turning to the opening in the floor, he crouched down and peered into it, seeing nothing but darkness. He tried to squint to make things out but failed.

He rose to ask Lila what they should do when a clicking noise outside drew his attention. Whirling around to find her, he noticed she was the one making the noise.

Lila was outside the building while standing over a pile of kindling, two stones in hand. As Roger had seen her do countless times, she brought one down onto the other, causing a spark.

Once the fire was lit, she grabbed a stick near her feet and stuck it into the flame, causing it to become a makeshift torch.

'She moved fast, I didn't even hear her.'

He knit his eyebrows in confusion as he craned his head back to the carvings.

'Unless I spent much longer studying the symbols than I thought…'

Lila walked past him to the trapdoor, sparing him a glance.

"Are you coming?"

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and eagerly followed.

The ladder was made out of some kind of metal, contrasting the rest of the stone and wood structure, a fact Roger noticed instantly as he climbed down.

One hand held the rungs, while the other held the torch, illuminating just enough to see around himself.

The ladder shaft was tight, with little room to swing his arms out, but it did allow him to study more of the walls during his descent, which were covered in more strange engravings.

Some of the ones he passed looked almost like words he knew, but he couldn't put his tongue on which ones and didn't pause for long enough to properly investigate.

Reaching the floor, he stepped off the final metal rung and instantly felt his cloth shoe get soaked in frigid water.

Shaking his leg to try and get the cold liquid off, he found the water to be a few inches deep, leaving it an exercise in futility. 

Growling softly, he accepted his fate and planted both feet into the puddle.

'I hope I get some kind of fire ability next. Might make it easier to handle this cold!'

Roger couldn't stand the cold. Even back in the prison, the temperature was closely monitored, otherwise the more dangerous aspects of labor could turn lethal.

Dead prisoners served no purpose.

Lila followed close behind, but Roger was not cruel enough to leave her without a warning.

"Careful, it's full of water down here, and no one would make the mistake of calling it a hot tub.'

Lila wordlessly stepped off the ladder and into the pool with him but didn't seem to mind.

"I have spent many hours swimming, I'm not afraid of a little cold water."

She paused for a moment before continuing.

"Also was that a joke you were trying to make? A hot tub, really?"

Roger flushed at her calling out his unusual behavior.

"What? Am I not allowed to try and lighten the mood? And yes a hot tub! Not only rich girls hear of them, you know!"

Outwardly he tried to play it off as not a big deal, but inwardly he was mortified.

'Gods damn it, I thought that was a funny one! Does nothing make this woman laugh except my embarrassment?'

He trudged forward in the water, hoping to find something to distract them both from his attempt at humor.

The landing area had only one hallway connected to it and it seemed to go straight for many meters.

Taking the lead, Roger kept close to the right wall so he could defend himself if something leapt out, while also occasionally glancing at the writings.

'I bet they tell some kind of story.'

He didn't have much proof for his theory, but it seemed silly to spend so much time meticulously crafting each symbol if they didn't all intersect into something long and interesting.

What was longer and more interesting than a story?

The other reason was because of how often the craving of a man appeared. The more times Roger saw it, the more he noticed the details inlaid into that specific icon, and he began to wonder if it was a specific person being referenced.

'What would you have to do to have your name carved into a building so many times?'

He hadn't been counting, but so far he remembered seeing it at least a dozen times.

The light from the torch suddenly spread out further, and Roger realized the hallway was expanding. The walls, which were initially only a few feet apart, slowly became a few meters apart, until they were clearly in a large room.

He felt Lila tap his shoulder to draw his attention.

"I think I saw another doorway that way, but there could be more."

She was pointing to his left, her arm shaking ever so slightly, and her hands paler than usual.

'So much for all that time swimming, the cold must be getting to her.'

Believing they had to hurry up so they wouldn't get hypothermia, he pushed through the water to his right, reaching the wall quickly with Lila not far behind.

He then walked the circumference of the room, counting each doorway they passed, reaching a total of five, six if they included the one they came from, which was the doorway Roger was standing in front of.

"I think we should go straight, that way if we have to return we won't get lost."

Lila silently nodded to him, not sparing the energy for words. Roger couldn't help but notice her lips were losing color.

'We have to hurry.'

Picking up the pace, he half ran through the water and into the connected hallway. It stretched for an indeterminable distance, the torch not being powerful enough to show them the other end.

Minutes passed as they continued exploring the underground corridor, with the water level mercifully dropping with time. 

'We must be moving uphill'

It was the only reason Roger could think of that would explain the change, but it was a welcome one. As the top of his feet finally left the icy depths, he breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn't long before feeling returned to his frozen appendages. 

Lila also seemed to enjoy the development and kept close to Roger and the torch. 

Once they had fully left the water behind, she had them stop so she could hug the fire close, drying her soaked furs while she muttered under her breath.

"Mother will be so upset that I've learned to hate swimming."

Roger just shook his head, not feeling the cold to nearly the same extreme she was.

'Are all women so susceptible to temperature? It seems weird how much it affected her. It wasn't that cold was it?'

Turning back to the way they came from, he looked at the water line with a frown.

'Or maybe I've just grown more resistant to it?'

Lila broke him from his thoughts.

"Hey, let's keep going, it will be dark soon."

She was smiling wide, and her lips were back to their usual pink hue.

He flashed her a grin of his own as he retook the lead.

The hallway continued for only a couple hundred meters before opening out into another large room, but this one was different than the last. 

Roger quickly noticed that the shadows were less oppressive here, and knelt to confirm a theory.

Rubbing his hand on the ground, he brought the torch down and inspected it, before standing back up to share it with Lila.

"This room is made of a different material than the others. It's some kind of smooth white stone, with occasional gray dots."

She responded by leaning down near the light, studying the floor herself.

"It looks like marble, but why would a ruin be made with marble? In a damp underground like this, it shouldn't be as smooth."

Roger didn't know what marble was, but Lila seemed to think it was out of place here, which only made him more curious.

"Maybe there are more clues in other parts of the room."

She nodded her agreement and continued straight, reaching the base of a staircase. Ascending it, they found themselves on a flat podium with a strange rectangular box in the center.

Roger approached cautiously, one hand holding the torch while another rested on the pommel of his sword.

Reaching the side of it, he saw larger and more detailed markings on top of it. He quickly set to trying to decipher them, taking his hand off his weapon and tracing the grooves. 

He was interrupted by Lila gasping into her hand, taking a step away from the object.

"Roger, I think this is a tomb."