The Cycles of Revelation Series

Artifact of the Dawn: Underground (A Queer Sci-Fi Adventure)

Episode 16: Jevan and Ardyn stumble upon a strange door in the ground that leads them into a surprisingly high-tech labyrinth.

“Jevan! Are you alright?” Ardyn cried out, running back to his side.

“I’m fine. You know how much of a clumsy oaf I am,” Jevan joked, feeling foolish for stumbling on another tree root.

Looking at where he’d tripped, he noticed a glint of metal. “Hey, look at this!”

Crawling over to where he’d seen the glimmer, Jevan cleared away the vines and foliage covering the forest floor, only to find what he’d tripped on wasn’t the root of a tree at all. It was a metal handle. As they cleared away more brush and dug the dirt away around it, they uncovered a circular metal plate with hinges on one side.

“Is that a… door?” Ardyn asked in wonder.

“I think so,” Jevan said. “Look, there’s another slot for that key of yours.”

Pulling the key out of his cloak, Ardyn inserted it. They heard a whirring sound followed by a loud metallic clang as the door came to life, lights and more of the glowing elven writing appearing on the small panel below the slot.

Jevan tugged on the handle and the door creaked open. Beyond the door was a dark tunnel and rungs of a ladder that disappeared into the darkness. “What do you think?”

Ardyn stared down into the tunnel for a moment. “We might as well see where it leads. What do we have to lose?”

“Good point,” Jevan agreed. “You go first. Everything in the Aria’una seems to like you more than me.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

As Ardyn made his way down the ladder, the tunnel illuminated, which no longer surprised either of them. Jevan followed, reaching up to lower the door over his head. He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the lock re-engage.

When they reached the end of the ladder, they found themselves in a wide corridor, all white with silver accents and a red stripe running the length of the walls. The corridor was slightly curved and stretched far in either direction.

Jevan noticed Ardyn’s ears moving back and forth, as if trying to catch some sound in the eerie silence. “Do you hear anything?”

Ardyn shook his head. “No,” he replied in a hushed tone. “That’s what worries me. I’ve never heard this much… silence.”

Looking up and down the corridor, Jevan wondered aloud. “Is this connected to the tower?”

“Then this place is larger than any settlement my people have ever built.”

“If it leads to the tower, then it’s even bigger than our largest city,” Jevan said.

“Where is your largest city?” Ardyn asked.

“It’s far to the south, built on the coast of Vestos. It’s called Tafaran. I’ve only traveled there once, a few years ago. It’s a thriving metropolis compared to the village of Yanen.”

“Do you think anyone actually lived here?” Ardyn asked, as they chose a direction, and made their way along the corridor.

Looking around at their sterile, pristine surroundings, Jevan wasn’t sure. “This doesn’t look very homey to me, but who knows? What I don’t understand is why this is underground. Did they build this because they needed a place to hide?”

“But then why build that tower?” Ardyn asked as they approached a junction.

Turning right at the junction, the new corridor was lined with doorways like those of the structures aboveground. Using his key, Ardyn randomly opened one, so they could explore what was inside. What they found was a storeroom stacked with metal crates.

Jevan approached the crates and tried to open one, but the lid wouldn’t budge. There was a button on the side and Jevan pressed it with no luck. “It looks like I’m not even allowed to open boxes around here,” he said with a sarcastic chuckle.

Ardyn pressed the button, and sure enough, the lid unlocked, and they were able to lift it away. Inside the crate were neatly arranged objects. Jevan couldn’t even guess their purpose. They each picked one up and Jevan half expected Ardyn’s to glow or do… something.

“Huh, that’s weird, that it’s not reacting like everything else has. I wonder what they’re for?”

“Don’t look at me,” Ardyn said with a laugh, putting the thing back into the crate.

After unlocking a couple more doors, all they found were more crates with indecipherable objects. “Okay, maybe this wasn’t for hiding. It looks like they built this entire place for storage,” Jevan speculated. “It doesn’t feel like a place anyone could live.”

At the end of the corridor, they found a ladder leading down to another level. “Does this go down as far as that tower stands tall?” Jevan asked, gesturing for Ardyn to go first.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ardyn replied, making his way down the ladder. “At least we lost that hunting party for a while.”

The new level they found themselves on had a blue stripe along the corridor walls, and the doors were smaller. Ardyn opened the first one near the ladder. Instead of stacks of crates, there were rows of small tables, each with its own chair, all facing the opposite end of the room, which held a larger table and chair.

Everything was pristine, with the same bright white and silver as they saw in the corridors. “See? No dust anywhere,” Ardyn pointed out. “Maybe there are people living here? How else is it all being kept so clean?”

“Yeah, I see that,” Jevan replied. “We’ll need to be on the lookout for anyone else around here.”

When Ardyn approached the larger table and touched it, it flared to life, with strange images and symbols seeming to hover in the air above the desk. Ardyn was so startled he jumped back, knocking into one of the smaller tables. “What was that?!”

“I don’t know, but touch it again,” Jevan encouraged. “Maybe there’s something here that can help us understand?”

This time Ardyn crept around the table and sat himself in the chair. Jevan noted the chair was the perfect size for an adult elf, and all the other tables and chairs in the room were much smaller, almost as if they were made for children.

“Hey, I think I know what they might have used this room for,” Jevan said, walking around to stand next to Ardyn. “Look how small those chairs are. I think this might be a place for children to learn.”

Looking over the room from his vantage point, Ardyn nodded. “I think you’re right. So that means this is where their teacher must have sat. I wonder if we can find a way to learn as well?”

Laying his hands back onto the table, the symbols and images came to life in mid-air once again. They couldn’t comprehend the symbols any more than they could any of the archaic elven script. The surface of the table itself glowed with an array of mystifying symbols and scripts as well. “Try touching something,” Jevan suggested.

One symbol on the table was shaped vaguely like a head. Ardyn reached out and touched it. Suddenly, the floating symbols and script dissolved. In their stead appeared the face of a female elf. Jevan and Ardyn looked at each other, and then back at the face when it spoke.

“Yaven utera’ior. Kers’nor Cytra.”

To Jevan, it sounded like the elven greeting, but in a strange dialect. “Did she say her name is Cytra?”

“I think you’re right,” Ardyn agreed. “But she’s speaking in a dialect I’ve never heard before.”

After Ardyn stopped speaking, Cytra continued, but Jevan couldn’t decipher it as easily. “Did you understand that?”

“I think she’s saying something about choosing what to teach. Half of it doesn’t make sense to me. There are words I’ve never heard before.”

“Ask her something,” Jevan suggested.

“What are you?” Ardyn asked in his language.

Cytra paused and turned her gaze toward Ardyn. She replied with more words Jevan didn’t understand. “Did any of that make sense to you?” Ardyn asked Jevan, switching back to the Medellan tongue.

Shrugging his shoulders, Jevan replied. “I think I’m understanding about as much as you are.”

Turning back, Ardyn tried a different question. “Cytra, where are we?”

This time the dialect was closer to Ardyn’s, but it still made little sense to Jevan. “You are on the rahn’naa, a pah’maala,” Cytra replied.

“What does that mean?” Jevan asked. “We’re on the first light, a flying settlement?”

Ardyn shook his head. “You’re translating that first one too literally. She used the word rahn’naa, which means first light of day, what you call dawn,” Ardyn explained. “But I don’t know what a pah’maala could be. Settlements can’t fly.”

Jevan laughed at the picture in his head. “Can you imagine my house sprouting wings like a bird?”

Ardyn laughed before he turned back to Cytra. “What does pah’maala mean?”

Cytra explained about traveling through vaara and Jevan was lost again. Ardyn looked at him, just as dumbfounded. “That didn’t help,” Jevan admitted

“Let me try something else,” Ardyn suggested. “Cytra, why are we underground?”

“Activating external sensors. Checking mechanical storage. Excavators missing,” Cytra said, as her eyes fluttered before focusing back on Ardyn. “You are correct, we are underground. It appears that someone buried the Rahn’naa after it crashed.”

Looking at each other, they both asked, “how does the dawn crash?”

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