Out in the hallway, Robert looked up the
hallway to where it turned down to the left – nothing out of the ordinary. He then looked back towards the staircase,
and to his surprise, there was now a hole in the wall of the landing leading
out into the cavern. Robert's mouth
dropped open, and Tribbon's did the same as he saw the hole.
They slowly made their way towards the hole,
and once through the windowed doors leading into the stairwell, they could see
the hole more clearly. It was perfectly
rectangular suggesting that the noise they had heard wasn't the hole's formation. On the other side of the hole was a ledge
that seamed to run for a good portion of the cavern's wall.
Robert stepped through the hole only to have
to stop as he noticed the head of a snake not to far from where he stood. The snake itself was stretched up from the
ledge to a ledge above, and Robert could see that there were several ledges and
several snakes stretching from the ledges. Oddly, there were a number of ladders around the cavern wall as
well. "Hello," called a familiar voice.
There, standing on the ledge above Robert,
was Angenog in his usual white clothing. "I'll be with you in a second," he said as he shook his hand about and
tossed two cubes onto the surface of the ledge. "Rats," he cried as he stepped forward two steps and stepped on
the tail of a snake.
The snake was shocked by this and Angenog
was suddenly lifted along the snake towards it's head, which was right in front
of Robert. Angenog stopped sliding on
the snake when he reached Robert and cried out, "Your turn."
The ground seemed to grumble a bit as the
two cubes that Angenog had dropped began to bounce without any indication of
force acting upon them. A small boulder
on the same ledge began to roll freely for a moment and stopped just before
touching the same snake's tail. Robert
looked shocked for a moment, but when the man in white began to speak, the
shock dissipated. "So, how goes the
search?" he asked.
"Actually, I just found the information I
was looking for," reported Robert, "but how did this hole get here? It wasn't
here before and I heard no sound of it's creation."
Angenog chuckled, "Are you still trying to
make sense of these things?" he asked, "When are you going to realize that
things don't always make sense, that sometimes things happen out of convenience
rather than logic, especially when it becomes necessary to incorporate the
nonsense. The hole appeared there
simply because it doesn't make sense for the hole to be there."
"That doesn't make sense," said Robert.
"Exactly," exclaimed Angenog, "Now, you said
that you found the answer, right?"
Robert nodded. "Great," exclaimed the man again, "I can tell Mother Earth that
you've succeeded and that she should expect you to relay the information to you
shortly."
"Why can't I tell her myself right now?"
asked Robert.
"Well, you see, here's the thing. We've known for a long time about this place
and that the answer to her question would be found here, but she can't enter
into this cave to find it, and I only now managed to sneak in."
"What do you mean?" asked Robert, still confused
by the hole in the wall, but trying to manage.
"It's the oil," said Angenog as he pointed
into the darkness.
"That pool below the building?" asked Robert
for clarification.
"Yes. It is still infected by some strange radiation that inhibits Mother
Earth, and the power that is wielded by Cloud people comes from her. If she can't get it, neither can we unless
we can find a way. This particular
section of the cavern is strangely unaffected as greatly as the rest of it is."
"The virus is a mutation," said Robert, "it
causes things to change into terrible creatures that are full of evil."
Angenog thought for a moment, "We can never
let this mutation affect anyone, then. The results would be disastrous, I'm sure," he paused, "Wait, what's
that?"
Angenog pointed towards the floor of the cavern. It was a burning torch approaching from the distance; two figures could be seen in the light. "I don't know who they are," said Robert with a sudden worried tone, "but they're headed straight for the oil pool."
