The Devourer

The ancient ruins-1

The ancient ruins

Equipped with powerful flashlights, five people were patrolling the ancient ruins, which had been found in a large cave under the rock chain known as Giant’s Teeth, and which could prove to be an important discovery for all Esperia.

The air in the underground cave was still but cool, despite the slight stone and stale dust smell that was slightly irritating. Getting there had been relatively easy: there had been no need to crawl through narrow openings or to cross slippery overhangs, because there were already galleries and walkways built by the ancient inhabitants of that place. Of course, not all of them were in good condition and it had been necessary to strengthen them here and there, but the underground trip had been easy.

Althea Eburnis was standing before the remains of a ruined wall, and was staring at the strange rounded symbols on it. Her slender figure stood out in the light of the torch reflected from that incredibly white wall. She pulled her notebook out of her trouser pocket and sat on the ground, cross-legged. Holding the torch over her shoulder — which she raised to lock the flashlight at the base of her neck — she bowed her head to take a look at her notes and blew away a rebellious tuft from her forehead that had fallen before her brown eyes.

“If you really wanted to protect this place from outsiders, why on earth did you build galleries and walkways?” The twenty-seven-year-old woman murmured in her cheerful and ringing voice while browsing her notebook. “I’m sure the answer is somewhere here…”

One of the men with her came near and commented:

“I knew you would be more interested in your ruins than in me in the end!”

Althea looked up from her notes and saw Trevan Londis a few steps away. He was tall, had a wiry body and blue eyes, and featured short black bob hair.

“Jealous? You shouldn’t really worry: they can’t kiss as well as you do!”

He frowned:

“I’m not sure knowing that I’m better than a ruin can be considered as a compliment…”

She stood up and kissed him on his mouth:

“Are you surer now that it’s a real compliment?” She whispered languidly.

“Maybe you should try again and persuade me better!”

“You nut!” She exclaimed, patting him on the arm. Pretending to be somewhat more serious, she added: “Since you are a good chief engineer, shouldn’t you take care to check these ruins are not going to collapse on us?”

Trevan walked over to the wall Althea was studying, and hit it with his hand. Some dust rose in the air, but the structure held up:

“As you can see, my dear chief archaeologist, there is no risk of collapse.”

“Why were you behind me then?” Althea went on putting her hands on her hips. “Were you admiring my beautiful back?”

He smiled.

“I don’t deny I would be very happy to attend that show, but your brother has sent me to tell you there is something you should see.”

Althea immediately put her notebook back in her trousers pocket, grabbed Trevan’s hand, literally dragging him behind her.

“Come on!” She exclaimed. The news had excited her. “Let’s see what he has found!”

They almost ran halfway through the dark cave, risking to crash into a wall twice, heading towards the beam of light indicating the position of Althea’s brother, Abel, who was in charge of the security.

When they reached him, he was standing and pointing his flashlight at what looked like a door, although placed on the floor. Abel was tall and muscular, with amber eyes and brown, combed back hair; he was wearing the officer uniform of the special military corps; in his belt, he carried a g*n and a large combat knife.

“What have you found?” Althea asked upon approaching him.

“That. Do you think a stone door on the floor could be of any use?”

“Are you sure it’s really a door?” She went on asking, slowly going nearer to it. “I mean, are you sure it’s not just a fallen shutter?”

“I tried to move it, but it didn’t budge, nor could I lift it. Besides, the lock seems blocked.”

“You mean you touched it?” Althea went on, while kneeling beside that bizarre structure. She began to examine it carefully.

“Yes, sorry, I should have called you, but it didn’t look like it was something important…”

She was no longer listening to him, as she was completely absorbed by that strange stone artifact. At first glance, it looked like a door, although made of stone: it even featured a handle and a lock, made of stone as well. However, as it was lying on the ground, you could think about some kind of trap door placed there to close the access to another room on the lower floor. The whole thing was surely somewhat bizarre, especially what was traced on its surface. At one end, the disks of the two suns — Cianus and Aurus — were carved: you could recognize them because of the traces of the color of their light left inside them: blue for Cianus and yellow for Aurus. At the other end of the door, you could see the discs of the three moons, one inside the other: Gigas, the largest one, was more than double the other two put together; Faros was less than half the size of the previous one, but brighter; Parvis was much smaller than the other two and often visible in the sky as a shadow before Gigas. A circle was carved in the center of the door. It clearly stood for the world — inside it, there was a silver throne.

“The main celestial bodies have been represented on the surface of this door.” Althea stated more to herself than to the bystanders. “Cianus features the same diameter as Aurus, which happens at the winter solstice, when it is further away from us and its heat is less strong. Also the three moons are showed in a particular configuration, that is when they are facing each other, even if in reality Faros can’t be seen in the sky because it is behind Gigas. Finally, our world is at the center of everything… Of course it is a figurative representation, since we know that we are not truly at the center of the universe…”

Trevan interrupted her:

“Are you sure they knew that back then? It was at least five hundred years ago, according to your preliminary studies…”

“The concept that we are not at the center of the universe dates back over two thousand years ago to the mythical Golden Age, when our world was lush and splendid, and there were no arid deserts like the one where we currently are. There are numerous historical evidences of this, both in the archaeological finds and in the texts that tell of that distant past.” Althea turned abruptly towards him and scolded him: “You are an engineer and I am the historian: do you think your knowledge is superior to mine?”

Trevan immediately shook his head no, moving slightly away from her: he knew his girlfriend very well and was aware of the fact that she utterly disliked being contradicted in her work; she could be truly unmanageable if her ideas were questioned. He had not really thought that his question — totally innocent to him — would irritate her so much.

Althea went back to looking at the door, moving her torch in order to illuminate its surface from different points of view. Then she spoke quietly, as if she had never been interrupted:

“At the center of the circle a silver throne is engraved, representing the Silver City, from where legends say the Astrals’ benevolent fertility was radiated on our world once upon a time…”

She was suddenly interrupted by the voice of one of the two men under Abel’s command. He was calling the attention of his companions.

“What’s going on?” She yelled, anticipating both her brother and her boyfriend, and walking towards the soldier’s voice.

“Here is some kind of column with several celestial symbols…”

Althea sprinted towards him, taking Abel and Trevan by surprise: when they started to follow her, she had already arrived.

The archaeologist was literally ecstatic. What the soldier had called ‘column’ was actually a small obelisk, about two meters tall; each of its four faces featured many inscriptions and symbols of suns, moons, and stars. She had already begun to observe the side facing her with meticulous attention, when Abel and Trevan arrived.

The soldier, who was still standing with his torch facing the structure, looked at his superior, awaiting orders.

“Did you touch the column, Sergeant Devralis?” Abel asked him; before the other could reply, however, Althea intervened aloud, without taking her eyes off the inscriptions:

“It is not a column: it is an obelisk!”

Trevan rolled his eyes briefly: sometimes his girlfriend’s attention to details was nerve-racking.

Abel motioned for the soldier not to consider the interruption, so the latter answered:

“Sir, no sir! The co… obelisk was covered by a strange cloth that made it practically invisible. I removed it and when I saw what it was, I immediately called your attention.”

“Invisible?” Abel echoed, suddenly interested, looking around. “Where did you put that cloth, Sergeant?”

“Well, to be honest, it was not really invisible, but it was camouflaged with the surrounding environment. I noticed some dust that seemed to hover, so I went over to it, reached out, and touched something I couldn’t see. I felt the consistency of a fabric, but before I could grab it, it shrank to shreds and that structure appeared…”

Trevan stifled a curse, looking with regret at the dust on the ground that had been the cloth. Since Abel and the Sergeant had turned towards him, he coughed and explained with some embarrassment:

“It must have been a piece of lost technology that exploited who knows what property of the matter.” He sighed in regret: “It is a pity that we discover objects that we no longer have and that we can no longer make… and increasingly more often such objects are currently unusable… It is frustrating for an engineer to find that our civilization is slowly but surely declining…”

Althea turned to them and exclaimed:

“That’s why studying ancient history is increasingly more important!”

Trevan shook his head disconsolate:

“Unluckily, young people don’t think so nowadays…”

“Then let’s not complain if the world is getting worse.”

Abel decided that the discussion was useless for their purposes, so he intervened seriously:

“Have you found anything out, Althea?”

“I think so and I only need your knife!”

He looked down at his side and put a hand on the handle of his combat dagger.

“What do you need it for?” He asked visibly sorry to have to part with it, even if for a short time.

The archaeologist pointed to a spot in the center of the obelisk and replied:

“There must have been a lever or something like that once.” She turned to Trevan and joked: “Unluckily, the curse of technology continues to haunt us, doesn’t it?” Then she looked back at her brother and went on: “If I remember correctly the gift I gave you four years ago, the blade of that knife should fit perfectly into the c***k on the wall of the obelisk. If so, I know how to open that strange horizontal door!”

Abel reluctantly pulled the dagger from the case attached to his belt and handed it to her, holding its blade.

“Be careful, it’s very sharp.” He said caringly, perhaps more concerned about his knife than about his sister.

Althea paid no attention to him, took the dagger, went back to the obelisk and stopped before the side facing the door on the ground.

“Trevan, shed some light for me here, please. Abel, can you do the same on the face on the other side of the obelisk?” She pointed to it with the tip of the knife. He motioned for the Sergeant to follow her instructions, but she had not finished yet: “Can anyone check the door on the ground?”

A voice from the opposite side of the cave intervened:

“I’ll go there, sir!”

It was the other soldier under Abel’s orders.

“Very well, Sergeant Sevanis,” his superior agreed, “take position.” A beam of light — coming from the torch of the soldier who was at the other end of the cave — immediately moved towards the designated area.