Crypt Quest: Rising Darkness
Vulcan's Forge
The long walk through the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, Italy, brought Reese to an exhausting peak of sweltering humidity. He took a rationed sip of his quench-teasing water and peered passed the Temple of Zeus to the Temple of Vulcan.
His contact in Rome saw no discernible signs at related Rome-centric temples and shrines, which meant he was going to have to do all the looking himself. The visage of hard, physical work led to remind him of his unfathomable employ as a landscaper, back home, droning the horrible, echoing sounds of a lawnmower through his mind's auditory recollection.
"On your left!" came the intruding loud uproar of a man of dwarfism riding a dirt bike. Its echoing motor, transcending lawn maintenance decibels.
ZZZZMMMM!!! Snapping out of it, Reese turned to watch the gritty competitor roar passed, and forward on into the distance toward the Temple of Vulcan. "That was my right!"
- - -
Running through a haze of trees and bush that stood between sites, Reese Hunter came to approach the worn-out, rubble-drenched, poorly survived Temple of Vulcan. Out of all the ruins in the valley, these were the most ruined.
"No luck in Rome, then?" Reese approached upon open. He had instantly forgotten his 12-hour joint ferry-to-train ride from Carthage, figuring the man had likely endured something similar.
Wiping the dust off one of the only two pillars standing, the 4-foot man replied, "That over-bloated fervour? An amateur's first stop, I'm sure."
"Oh, please," Reese replied, seeing right through the transparent façade, as the valley, in actuality, was 'on-the-way'. "You're the amateur, thief-mode!"
The receiver gritted his teeth and turned to Reese. "All you care about is some kind of feigned glory, while I'm trying to make a living! Before I kick your ass, the name's Malik."
"First of all, glory has its benefits: Reputation. Also, we don't even know what this find is. And, who even bothers to introduce themsel—"
But before he could finish his disregard, Malik came running toward Reese with a giant leap and a kick. Reese blocked the one leg, in mid-flight, but Malik was already rotating to have his other leg swing around, in force, to kick Reese across the face.
Malik landed, expertly, and watched a disoriented, kicked-Reese stumble and trip sideways, over nearby rubble, onto to the dry, dusty ground. "Remember it," Malik finished.
"Reese Hunter," the treasure seeker muttered, fixing his jaw and attempting to regain his focus, more shocked than pride-stricken. "I guess your lack of tracking has to compensate for something." He got up quickly, took a low stance, and began jabbing both his fists in succession, downward, at his target.
The dwarf man swiftly blocked and redirected each fist until Reese lowered his stance even more and powered a force-palm into Malik's chest. "I'llgetyouforthisyoujerrrrrrrrrr—" Malik skidded off the ground, went flying backward, and into one of the standing, ancient pillars.
BLAM! A piece of layered stone, that was, just seconds ago, moulded around the pillar, broke off from the impact of Malik's back. The short-stuff hit the dirt in a shake-up of sleep-deprived dust and dry rocks.
"—rrk," he coughed, in pain.
Reese ran over, quickly, to examine the situation. He, never in his life, ever thought he'd hit someone so hard as to send them flying. "Uh, dude, sorry. I mean, what do I do now?" Reese asked, confused as to the protocol in this particular situation. It was then he noticed that the inside layer of the pillar revealed an ancient engraved pictogram.
"You can admit... defeat," Malik replied, trying to recapture the wind into his lungs and the balance in his ears.
The artifact hunter turned his attention, swiftly, to the hidden design within the pillar. "Hold on a second. It looks like the Romans covered something up on these pole-giants?"
"It's... it's a little shield with a picture of a blacksmith's hammer," Malik observed as he got up and shook his pain away. He then began pulling and breaking off more of the outer-layered stone that wrapped the pillar.
Reese looked on in surprise as the removal revealed more shield engravings, laying out next to each other in a circle, around the pillar. Each shield contained an engraving with a different representation of the Roman god, Vulcan. "These are all about him! What does this say?"
"Oh, please, like I'm going to help you?" Malik responded, annoyed, before taking a look at the Latin written in a small strip above the shield engravings. "It talks about Vulcan and his life, specifically what he treasured most."
The taller man shook his head, before examining each shield engraving. "How are we supposed to know that? I mean, this looks like a hammer." Then, optimistically, he moved his finger to the next one. "Volcano fire." To the next, he said, "His wives, his sons, art and iron weapons."
"His wives," Malik answered. "Romantics like to say that love is the most important thing in life."
Reese shook his head. "The goddess Venus? It was she that caused volcano eruptions whenever he was unfaithful to her. That's not a tight marriage— though, it does relate behavioural familiarity."
"His sons?" Malik asked as Reese pushed the shield engraving representing Vulcan's sons.
Nodding, Reese replied. "Lineage was a big deal, especially if it meant you were a demigod. Vulcan had a lot of sons— as any guy with lots of power would."
The resulting mechanism caused the ground to rumble and a giant, triple-thick, multi-engraved, elaborate Roman pillar ejected from out of the rubble nearby. Encircling it were actual shields, connected, projected and circling the pillar at eye level. The two walked over in complete shock.
"Remind me to have demigod kids one day," Malik remarked.
Then, the sultry voice of a woman neither of them recognized cut through like a knife. "You'd be lucky enough to live through this one."
Turning around, Reese and Malik found themselves flanked by a group of men in long white and beige robes. The speaker, positioned as the leader of the others, wore dark, fitted and revealing clothing with gold-rimmed edging.
"The Followers of Ceasar," Reese said in expressed shock as he quickly put his thoughts together.
Malik looked at him, annoyed. "The ones mentioned at Carthage? Dude, clearly you've been sipping the local minestrone."
"No. The truth of the matter is, I've already encountered these people: Last, at a museum back home, and before that, Emir, a Turkish antiquities looter at Troy. He mentioned having 'orders' to monitor and investigate what people find within ancient sites."
Rolling his eyes, Malik replied, "Oh, please. You're just seeing coincidences as connections! Religious people do it all the time."
"I'm afraid your mystery-machine friend is right, oh stumpy one," the woman spoke in confidence. "The name is Decima Boerio, and I represent the true Rome. Not this half-wit shell of inanity its become. We have followers throughout the Middle East."
Reese turned to her. "Well, touring hours are over, wit-fest. We beat you to this rubble mound, so digging rights are ours."
"Hate to break your adorable crusade against the United Nations, but my men and I, here, are armed and lack the interest in the unspoken rules of gravediggers," Decima gestured to the robed individuals around her who suddenly aimed AK-47 rifles at the two.
Reese suddenly recognized the two fake security officer brothers from the Trinity Museum of Antiquities. "Great Ceasar's ghost! So you never worked for Ravenwood, after all?"
"Of course not! Also, you broke my brother's nose, you arrogant dirt man," the younger one stepped up.
The older one, wearing a nose cast, held the other back. "No hospital or jail cell from your decadent land of chub-heads will ever be enough to keep us from killing you."
"Everything I need to match your moronic stupor is right here," Reese challenged, clenching his fists and taking a fighting stance.
Overconfident and dismissive, Decima felt free enough to saunter over to the mystical, giant Roman pillar which spread several different types of warrior shields around itself. "Silence, you three! This magnificence is what our ancestors worked centuries to locate. It will lead us to power and our salvation."
"You have the worst friends," Malik criticized in Reese's general direction.
Snapping back at him, Reese replied, "Why do you always misconstrue the relationship of anyone standing near me??"
"I'm going to be honest, you tall-people all look the same to me," Malik deadpanned.
Suddenly, Decima began pulling on one of the shields. "Our ancient texts describe this monument as the protection of Vulcan's power. My grandfather surmised that the protectors, what we now see as these Gladiator types, would lead to us to facilitate Ceasar's great revenge."
SNGGG!! Suddenly, five spikes flew out of areas of the rubble-floor, spikes similar in design to what Reese and Malik observed at Carthage. Two of Decima's unspoken men were impaled through their chests and backs and killed immediately.
"Aaauuhhh!??" one of the other robed men dropped his gun and stepped back from the group in fear. The two lanced-men hung off the ground by both large spikes, soaking each ancient murder weapon with blood.
Decima snapped in anger at her squeamish, dim-witted lackeys, feeling no remorse or shock. "This is only a part of the test! We've come too far to falter now!" She turned back to the pillar and found she'd been forced to examine it. "A Gladiator protects Vulcan's power, but how is it released?" she asked herself, in frustration.
"Ugh??" Reese cringed in disgust and near-trauma as he force-locked part of his vision at the unwarranted deaths. Never having expected this level of blood, he began to freeze in utter distaste.
But the leader turned, walked over and grabbed Reese by his shirt and leather coat. She led the stone-cold man toward the odd Roman structure and pushed him forward at the articulate complexity. "Well, hot-stuff. You got this far. What were you going to do next?"
"Are you serious?" Reese snapped out of his daze in pure astonishment. "You spend entire generations getting here, and now you need me?"
Decima slammed Reese's head into the side of the pillar, nearly missing one of the shields. "What's the matter? Does seeing death make your stomach turn?" She moved in closer, huffing her maddening breath against his ear. "Perhaps if my ancestors were still alive, they'd have cut your throat at this point, but I've decided the afterlife is not for you quite just yet."
"Ggghh," the treasure hunter gritted his teeth in frustration as Decima smiled and liberated the pressure to his head. If it were any other circumstance, he'd think she was coming on to him. Reese stepped back and viewed the centuries-old contraption. "Vulcan's power can't be released," Reese answered what Decima was asking earlier.
Malik added to the observation, now following along. "Right. There's a letter on each of the shields. M, E, T, U, S." After some odd looks, he finished, "It means fear. It's why this pillar was erected."
"What would a god be afraid of?" Reese critiqued. "He has everything he needs. A giant iron hammer, for one."
Decima scrunched her brow and signalled to her men to let Malik go. Free, the short-stuff approached the massive confusion to make sense of it all. "Look at these shields," Malik continued. "Under each letter is a word connected to Vulcan's fear."
Reese began catching on and started circling the ancient contraption, translating each rusted, Latin description. "This one says death, this lost, then love, annnndddd... potestatem?"
"That one's power," Malik answered.
The fiery woman and the two, armed brothers walked around to match their perspectives on the final shield. "How about we pick up the pace, my loves," Decima smirked. "My men, here, are highly motivated and losing patience, and, you know, I quite like a man with drive."
"How about a man lost?" Reese dared. He pushed against the shield with that word, causing the entire stone floor beneath their feet to quake violently! Rubble all throughout the site went haywire and spikes flung up all around the outside of the parameter, clipping and impaling several armed Followers of Caesar.
The immediate stones circling the ancient pillar, where Reese, Malik, Decima and the two brothers stood, suddenly descended into the Earth, de-escalating as a staircase leading deep, down into a foreign darkness. "I'll take said loss," Malik reacted, impressed and out-of-sorts all at once.
"Vulcan's sons were depicted on the keying-pillar," Reese explained as he quickly double-punched for the second brother's stomach and then finished with a palmed-uppercut to his face. "It made sense he'd fear for the life of them, or, one of them."
Malik, delayed, caught on and leapt up a forced-kick into the first brother's chest. "Ah, so this is about him losing his next of kin, then?" he asked as he landed and then turned to follow Reese down the circling staircase.
Decima was still processing all the madness. The two brothers, with the wind knocked out of them, slowly got up.
"Look at these two little geniuses. How adorable. If only you two had their talents. —After them!!" she snapped them to, prompting the two men to get their weapons and attempt a hasty but ill-conceived descent through the ancient-mechanized earthquake. Decima followed and their world went completely black.
- - -
Entering into a long, underground hallway, with coffin after coffin embedded into the rock-wall, Reese hustled forward with a dim flashlight and Malik maintained himself closely behind. The reverberations of moving earth grew distant.
"You know, I didn't always go grave digging for ancient artifacts, clutched in the hands of two thousand year old skeletons," Malik defended, reacting to Reese's earlier misplaced criticism of his amateurism.
Reese rolled his eyes, with barely the patience or interest. "So, what were you before this, a grocer?"
"A teacher!" Malik snapped. "But you know what? Living a life I wasn't cut out for, driving me away from anything resembling a normal existence, nearly launched me off a cliff."
Reaching an end-cavity, the two were suddenly surrounded by piles of skeletons, unceremoniously dropped in without care. "Speaking of being launched somewhere, it looks like we found the Roman dumping ground."
"The floor!?" Malik pointed down to the edge of the room, at parts not covered in human remains. The room was shaped in an angular fashion. "It's one giant shield!"
The artifact hunter looked down at what appeared to be buried Roman designs at their footing. "I'm sensing a theme on this one?"
"That's not all you're sensing," came the angered and attempted-sly, nasally voice of the second brother, holding his now broken nose with one hand and pointing an AK-47 with the other.
Reese and Malik raised their arms at their entrance, instinctively not wanting to die. "What is this, a hold-up?" Reese remarked.
"You're lucky Namir and I didn't have these on us at the museum," the younger brother warned.
Shrugging, Reese replied. "Because you would've shot yourself?"
The younger brother growled in anger and neared a squeeze of his trigger, but Decima strolled in, casually, and pushed his AK-47 down. "Now, now, Seyyid. These kind, enthusiastic gentlemen were just scouting the crypt for traps. Weren't you, Reese Hunter?"
"I don't think so, sweetheart," Reese replied, as he and Malik dropped their arms. Reese figured she learned his name through Emir in Turkey. "Your group is nothing but a glorified remnant of an ancient culture, passing down unchecked values hidden in an incoherent, irrational belief system that's built to feed you power."
Malik threw up his arms in lost patience. "That could be anything!"
"Tell me something, Mr. Hunter," Decima replied as she moved in and placed her hand on his scruffy jaw. "On your journeys, do you even agree on anyone's principles at all? Even your little friend, here, appears to have similar goals and intents as you, but yet you dismiss him so fervently."
But before he could counter, her stepping onto the artfully designed floor amounted to just the right level of weight and pressure required to activate the end-cavity's ancient mechanized gears. The floor, here, now began rumbling like before and the shield-shaped floor split in half, causing a cave-in of the piled skeletons to a spiked pit below. A stone door suddenly closed off the entrance behind them.
"It's a homage to Dido! She helps Vulcan," Malik exclaimed as he and everyone were forced to grab onto protruding edges of the wall, spreading themselves out equally around the room. The floor was nearly gone, and the skeletons were suddenly dumped away as he pointed to a descending rock pillar from above.
On the pillar was a female pictograph with Latin writing underneath it, describing the Queen of Carthage. Five of 10-inch shield-shaped platforms stuck out and connected to the pillar by a movable mechanism. They circled the bottom of the pillar-like pedals on an upside-down flower.
"Vulcan met her?" Reese postulated. "For what?"
Malik looked up at the engravings on the dorsal surface of the pedal shields. "Who knows? But I see the Latin word for Earth on the one closest to me."
"Mine says Heaven," reported Decima. Then she looked to her two henchmen, challenging them to defy their inherent ignorance.
Seyyid glanced at his brother and then up at his pedal. "Lion's Den," he read.
"Dreams?" Namir cringed, recalling the Latin they were forced to learn.
Suppressing any hints of shock at their education, Reese looked at his and answered. "Underworld," he read. "That's it! Vulcan went into the Underworld to get his lost son back. He got help from the Queen of Carthage, because she had previously killed herself to end up there."
"It's either that, or we all join her," Malik quipped.
The artifact hunter leapt off his ledge and clung onto the shield-shaped pedal, where he hung off, dangerously, over the spikes below. The pedal shifted down, slightly, and the shield-floor began to re-emerge from the walls. Once it closed and covered the spike pit, the entrance re-opened and everyone leapt off their ledges to safety.
"Well, well, Mr. Hunter. You are quite good. I am poised to wonder what else you're good at?" she eyed him, impressed, as he dropped to his feet. She then turned her attention to the floor beneath them. On its now revealed surface were giant pictographs displaying a golden sword and beams of light coming off it. Ceasar's emblem and lions were decorated all over.
Reese looked down to take in the glory laid before them. "It's Yellow Death??"
Malik, jumping off his ledge to join them on the floor, asked, "Uh, you mind telling me what that is? Not all of us have morbid tastes in literature."
"Yellow Death was the name of a powerful sword, which, in legend, was forged by Vulcan himself," Reese explained. "Whoever wrote the Tablet of Troy beheld it as some kind of mystical power and intended on keeping any and all records of it a secret within Carthage, likely after its fall."
Decima smirked. "Like I said, my ancestors were destined to receive it as our power and salvation. The protectors of Rome could only have hidden it for us."
"But it was buried with its last user? Why didn't you just start there?" Reese asked.
She walked over and put her arms around Reese. "Oh, aren't you cute? We thought we were too, but there is so much more to this than anyone can comprehend." Then she leaned into him again and emphasized, "So. Much. More."
"She's right," Malik confirmed as he examined the floor inscriptions behind them. "According to this, the all-powerful sword can only be secured using Caesar's key. Then there's this graphic beneath it."
Reese turned and stepped away from Decima. He glanced at the pictograph and recognized it. "Venus' Chamber of Pains. It's here in Italy."
"Perfect!!" exclaimed Namir, sick to death with Latin, as he and Seyyid immediately brought up their weapons to open fire at Reese and Malik's general direction!
Reese was close enough to grab the barrel of Namir's gun and redirect it. He launched a palm-attack for Namir's face, but Namir titled his head back and launched a kick into Reese's side. "Tricky bunch, this lot," the world traveller regarded as he blocked the kick.
"Horrible shots too!" Malik replied, running at Seyyid, passed the chicken feed of fire, to launch a forced-skid of his foot into the attacker's own feet. Seyyid fell forward, as Malik intended, where Malik force-punched right into his incoming face.
Seyyid, the little brother, spun to the side of Malik, unconscious, but Namir kicked Reese back a few steps to give both some distance. Then Namir pulled up his AK-47 again and aimed to kill. "Avernus awaits, Mr. Hunter."
RATATATA— BANG!!
Reese was hit, but it was a small enough bite to his shoulder that he was able to turn and see Decima had shot her own man. Namir hit the ground to join the rest of her ignorant men. "He was a nuisance," she said. Then she turned to Reese. "Oh, I like you, Reese Hunter. If you die, it'll be of my choosing." Her off-kilter smile was mischievous and disturbing.
Unsure how to take that, Reese gave her a short, conflicted look before Malik pulled him out of it.
Reese and Malik ran out the now-open entrance and into the dark corridors. As they reacquainted themselves with the shaking section of underground, Reese poised to continue running, wondering about Decima's mortality rate.
- - -
At the end of the tunnel, where the staircase had deposited them in the first place, were giant chunks of rubble, blocking escape all but for a crack in its conglomeration of mass. The efforts of the first mechanized earthquake were successful in nearly trapping them forever.
"I can fit through that," Malik realized, forcing an appreciation of his stature now more than ever. He climbed through, leaving Reese behind to be slaughtered by the Ignoramuses of Ceasar.
The taller man scoffed in disapproval, whilst clutching his wounded shoulder. "You're a piece of work, Malik! You never appreciated the find for what it was, did you? Well, I hope the money is worth your conscience!"
"I appreciate it just fine, tall-face," the voice of Malik replied accompanied by kicking noises and large rock movement as the boulders began to shuffle free of each other.
A shocked Reese began assisting from his end, moving his quarry aside until he could fit through and squeez himself onto the vital Roman staircase. "Yeah, I knew that. Totally. Yup."
"Like the crazy woman said, our efforts aren't that dissimilar," Malik suggested after the saving of his life at the hands of Vulcan's greatest tomb. "Just don't think that this makes us allies."
Nodding quickly, Reese replied, "Of course not. If anything, we're colleagues of a post-educational education industry." Reese followed Malik to the surface, where they were suddenly surrounded by The Followers of Caesar.
- - -
Twenty men trained weapons on the two, stopping the intrepid renegades right in their tracks. They raised their arms for umpteenth time, and Reese smirked at that fact. She's indestructible.
Despite being ultimately caught, the idea the artifact in question was something as esoteric as Yellow Death was beyond appreciation. The overly judged mysticism surrounding such a sword fascinated its believers enough to hide it behind elaborate traps, and, for a moment, he chastised himself for not seeing through its prophesied 'danger' as a hand-held weapon to begin with. But, with this impressive and fascinating discovery, he knew he couldn't let Caesar's key fall into unwanted hands.
That artifact will be mine.