Wings of Fire: Shattered Soul

Chapter VIII: Notes From Underground

They continued to ride until the sun had completely set. The normal things were done setting up camp. The dinner still food from the feasts, so it was still delicious, albeit some sand included. After eating, Fidius pulled the huge gem out of his bag.

"This is big," he commented. Moore signaled to give it to him.

"Yes. This is definitely one of the largest I've ever seen." Moore drew his finger on it. "I've noticed one thing though. Look here." He pointed to a flat edge of it. "On top is a design. And it looks like it's been cut in half; which means..."

"NOOO! AAUUGGHH!" Fidus stood up and in frustration raised his arms to the sky. "WHHHYYY?!" And then presently sat back down.

"You know..." Moore started.

"Just don't! Not right now please!" Fidius put his face in his hands. Then he stared at Moore. "Is this an impossible task? Seriously, how long is this going to take? Oh, brother... you said there were seven pieces? Are they also like this one, where they're in separate parts to the piece? This is going to drag on forever." He wanted that to echo: forever, forever...

"It's only been three days."

"Oh." Fidius stopped. "I must've been overreacting."

"Just a little," Moore said as he sipped his water.

"Well, does the riddle give us a clue to where the second half of this thing is?" Asked Fidius.

Moore put the cup down and rummaged through the stuff. He pulled out the box, unlocked it, and took out the riddle to hand it to Fidius.

"Okay, so we 'traversed across the waterless sea, though the Pit of Vipers'. So the next thing is 'to the crown of cactus'." A crown of cactus? Where could that be? He grabbed his map. At least I'm a good cartographer, he thought to himself. He could have made a career out of it perhaps. His main map, for now, consisted of a precise representation of the desert, where he had spent all his life. This journey was an opportunity for him to enlarge the borders of his map. Even so, what he found very curious was the large map inside the cave of Moore, back in Sans. It seemed to be a complete depiction of the entire continent. Had anyone really traveled that far? It wouldn't be surprising if Moore did, but did he sketch all of that? Fidius thought no since there were a lot of weird and foreign writings of it that looked very old, even older than Moore. When he asked similar questions last time, Moore avoided them. He had to focus on the task at hand, however. Looking back to his own map, he tried to had made his map highly detailed, but he needed cactus, which thankfully he had a few marked. But a crown of it? The finger still trailed the paper.

"So we're here, on the east side of the desert." Moore peered over his shoulder.

"How about there?" he pointed out just above the Desert Dragon Palace. Lo and behold, Fidius had written a note there: Unusual perfect circle of cactus. Sixteen of them, every one eight meters* apart, and as tall as four meters**.

"Was it that obvious?" Fidius asked more for himself.

"No, it's whether it will be obvious or not. We haven't gotten there yet."

"Well, what are we waiting for then?"

"Are you scared of the Desert Dragon Palace, hm?"

"Well, after what happened, I don't think so," he said as he laughed, "and I've actually been close to the place myself. Shouldn't be a problem. Remember, I've been all over the desert, except for the Pit of course, 'cause nobody goes there."

"Except yesterday."

"Yep."

"You're actually excited for something now?"

"Yep."

"Alright, alright, alright."

And with that, they both fell asleep. For Fidius weirdly, the nightmare didn't come. But still, something was nagging at him in his head.

They traveled for two days. Fidius was drawing and mapping out the Pit as best he could from memory as they went along. He planned to get everything down, so humans would not fear where they currently did, and to pave way for more human expansion. And he couldn't get the thought of Moore's map out of his mind.

They eventually saw on the horizon the trapezoid-shaped Desert Dragon Palace. They came close to it around midday. Hopefully out luck hasn't run out. Fidius was grateful there had been no dragons to come their way the last few days.

"How do you propose we get past, desert-man?" Moore asked, grinning.

"We have a secret tunnel that..."

Moore's face turned to concern. "We have a patrol of four desert dragons coming from behind us!"

"...we need to get to as quickly as we can. GO!" Fidius finished speaking and urged his horse on.

"Why are we heading toward the palace?" Moore shouted.

"You'll see!" Fidius was heading for the front-right corner of the humungous building. One, two, three... he urged his horse to halt, quickly got off, and counted the mounds of sand. One, two...three! There it is! Running over, he went to one of the dunes and pulled a sand-covered hidden latch, opening up a trapdoor. "Come on!"

They both urgently brought their horses in, and the door was slammed by Fidius. Inside was a tunnel that had fire running down both sides. Slumping to the ground, Fidius said: "That was close," he paused for breath, "but it always is."

Moore had a look of minor surprise on his face. "How long has this been here?"

"I thought you knew. Didn't you steal from the palace with my dad?"

"Yes. I think I remember some rumors about something like this. But we did it the old-fashioned way of hooks, ropes, and muscle."

"Wow. You guys scaled the entire thing? That's unbelievable. Well, this tunnel is one connected to many. I heard it was made around thirty years ago. Not a lot of people knew about it, though. But those who did know used it quite often to steal treasure from the palace. After a few years, however, they suspected the dragons were knowing something was amiss, so they stopped. But as you can see, it's still here. And..." he went into one of his bags and pulled out a notebook, "here are the original blueprints for all the tunnels." The brown notebook consisted of one large paper that was folded continually to make it fit into the book.

"Welcome to Underground."

*8m~24ft
**4m~13ft