Chapter 16: Down A Forgotten Tunnel

A spider skittered out of the torch's bright light, seeking darker comfort in a tiny crevice in the side of the tunnel's moldy walls. Ragnar paid it no head as he brushed a long abandoned cobweb in front of him. The webbing stuck to his fingers and the soldier brushed his hands on his red armor as if it was a common habit. Several strands of webbing already were clinging to his armor and he seemed to just get more on his hands than off. Without even thinking, he brushed his hand on the wall in an attempt to get rid of the excess webbing. A few insects and spiders skittered away, some actually jumped on his hand but Ragnar hardly noticed.

His thoughts were trained ahead on the sound of his mother's voice and to continue forward. Often, he would come to a fork in the path but the sound of his mother's voice always led him one way, continuously deeper into the old cave.

Had he been paying attention, Ragnar would have found it suspicious that he had not encountered any slimes or babbles, either. He would have found it curious that his mother's voice seemed to be always deeper and deeper into the cave. However, Ragnar could only think of the very few memories he had of his mother...

"Come this way, Ragnar," the woman said, dragging the young boy by the arm. "Your father wished you to see what he does."

"But I don't wanna go, mama!" the young boy whined, trying his hardest to resist the woman.

"It's not a question of whether you want to or not," she said, her eyes becoming very agitated. "You are going to see your father and that's final!"

"But-"

"Not another word, or else I'll have to give you a smacking."

The young boy immediately was quiet, fearing such a smacking. Both his mother and father on occasion would smack his bottom whenever he would refuse to do what they wanted him to do. Slowly, he had come to learn he should do what they asked of him.

They walked down the busy streets of the town that surrounded the massive castle where his father worked. The boy was never allowed to venture into the town without an adult with him. He would always play in the yard of his small house just on the outskirts of the city. Now that he was in town, he felt absolutely intimidated by the many people rushing to and fro. He could hear several angry people at many of the stands, many of them saying words he had never heard before.

"Just stay close to me," the woman said without looking and she held the young boy closer to her leg. The young boy looked up to her and her face seemed very worried now. What was there to be worried about? Sure, the streets were kind of busy but it wasn't as if someone was going to suddenly grab him and carry him away.

What seemed like forever finally passed when the road opened up and the castle gates loomed before him. The young boy had only seen the taller towers from his house, the rest of it hidden by the surrounding city. He tilted his head as far back as he could and still could hardly see the top of the walls. The gates in front of him seemed like giants guarding the massive castle. As they neared them, the young boy began to get nervous, thinking that the entire wall was going to suddenly collapse on him.

"No slouching now, Ragnar," the woman said. She stopped, knelt down, and straightened his clothes. She then ran her fingers through his hair. The young boy started to squirm but she seemed to be able to hold him still long enough to wipe his face clean of the dust he had picked up on their way through the city.

She put her hands on the young boy's shoulders and said, "Now, remember what I told you. Be polite, don't stare at anything, and don't touch anything. Understand?" The young boy nodded. It was pretty much the same rules he heard anywhere else.

"All right, then," she said, satisfied. She stood up, straightened her dress, and grabbed the young boy's hand. They then entered the massive castle together...

Ragnar smiled. That had been his first time ever going to the castle. His father had wanted Ragnar to see him in action as a royal soldier so he would follow him when he grew too old to be of any service to the castle. His actual visit there hadn't been all that remarkable. In fact, Ragnar couldn't really remember his first visit there at all, yet he could remember the walk to the castle with his mother as if it was only a day ago.

He had been so engrossed in the memory that Ragnar didn't even notice he had blindly walked forward again. Was this a part of the entrancing voice? Was it some sort of spell designed to distract while you daydreamed? Or were his memories just cropping up as a result of hearing a voice he had not heard since he was a very young boy?

Ragnar's thoughts were interrupted when he came to a fork in the path he was taking. He shined his torch down both tunnels but neither showed any sign of revealing their secrets. The voice that had been leading him for the most part seemed to have stopped. He was going to have to make a decision on his own.

He looked down one way, then the other. Neither seemed inviting but he was going to have to make a decision soon. It would not be a tempting situation for his torch to run out of kerosene while he was trying to make a decision. Heaving a sigh, Ragnar stepped towards the tunnel on his right.

"Not that way..." the voice that was his mother's warned. Ragnar stopped. What was he to do? Should he listen to the voice? It hadn't led him wrong yet, so why should he ignore it now? He took a step back and started to walk down the other tunnel. Sure enough, he started to hear the familiar, "Come this way..."

"Ragnar! Come quickly! Come this way!"

The young boy fluttered his eyes open. Why did he have to wake up? He had been having the most pleasant dream. He had been dreaming that he was swimming in a warm lake, and that the fish in the lake were swimming with him in little loop-de-loops. It was a very pleasant dream, a dream that he decided he would try to bring up again as he slowly closed his eyes again.

The young boy then noticed something strange. He was sweating profusely, as if he had been underneath his covers for the longest time. However, he wasn't under the covers now and the cold fall night should be cooling him off. It wasn't.

In fact, he was getting hotter by the second. The young boy looked up and saw what looked like black water floating on the ceiling. He found that breathing was near impossible, that his lungs were burning with each breath. He started to cough. What was going on? Was he dreaming? It seemed like a dream but the pain in his lungs was very real and very frightening.

"Ragnar!" he heard his mother cry. Where was she? He tried to look around but all he could see was a deep fog. The young boy stood up out of bed and tried to go to the door. The fog burned his lungs and seared his skin. It seemed to have an impossible weight, pushing him down to the floor. The floor itself was burning his naked feet.

The weight of the fog was more than he could bear and the young boy collapsed, the floor burning his hands as well. Just as he fell to the floor, something lifted him up. The young boy managed to lift his eyes but couldn't see who was there. "Mama?" he murmured without thinking.

"Yes, dear," the person said. "I'm here. Don't worry. We'll be all right. Just stick close to me."

The young boy didn't understand what his mother was saying. The weight of the fog seemed to crush the very life out of him. He felt an impossible blackness creep on him, the kind that fills that dark corner of the closet where beetle-men hid at night and waited for you to fall asleep.

"I have him!" the mother called out. She then left the young boy's room, keeping her head low. The young boy wasn't able to see much. Everything seemed so slow right now. His mother moving, the fog rolling along the ceiling, everything seemed like it was a dream. But it wasn't. The pain in his chest assured him that this was no dream.

He heard shouts from all over. He heard a crackling sound, like a fireplace in the dead of winter. He heard wood creaking and groaning. He felt intolerable heat bearing down on him as his mother carried him down the stairs to the bottom floor.

They made it downstairs and the young boy saw something he had never seen before. It was enormous, angry, and bright red. It had so many long tentacles that it was able to cover every corner of their home. The heat from its body was so intense that the young boy's eyes were squinting with tears and sweat covered his face.

A man was at one side of the huge, angry monster. The young boy couldn't see him clearly but it looked like his father. He seemed to be throwing wood and furniture out of his way, trying to get to the front entrance. The large, orange monster didn't seem to like that and it threw a large tentacle in front of the man. He gasped in shock and stepped back, nearly tripping over some broken wood.

"Not that way!" the mother cried. "The window in the kitchen!"

The young boy did not know how the man could hear over the crackling roar of the monster but somehow he understood and started to head to the kitchen behind the stairs.

The mother was closest and started to rush over there. The young boy then heard a loud crack from above. An instant later, his world erupted in white, hot pain as he was thrown from his mother's arms and landed face down on a sooty floor. The shocking pain soon disappeared and the agonizing heat returned.

The young boy coughed and looked up to see where he was. Behind him lay a pile of broken wood, the monster's tentacles dancing on top. In front of the young boy's face was a hand, followed by an arm buried underneath the pile of wood. The hand looked gentle, caring, the type of hand that could erase pain with a gentle stroke through the hair.

"Mama?" the young boy asked timidly. He no longer felt fear of the monster just a few feet beyond. He no longer felt fear of the dulling pain in his chest as the fog seeped through his lungs. He no longer felt the searing pain of the heat that seemed to bite into his skin like hundreds of needles.

Someone then lifted him up and he was rushed away from the dangerous monster. But the young boy never stopped looking back at a single outstretched hand from that pile of broken wood...

Ragnar's steps began to falter. It seemed like an impossible weight was pushing him down into the ground. His knees buckled underneath him and Ragnar slowly fell forward, the torch bouncing a few feet ahead.

The soldier's breathing became haggard, his chest having trouble forcing air in and out. He stood on all fours, trying his hardest to regain composure, but the painful memory seemed to have taken complete control over him. Hearing the voice say "not that way" had brought forth a deeply buried memory.

The fire that had destroyed his house had claimed his mother and he could do nothing except stare in confusion as his father carried him out to safety. His mother hadn't been the only one to be claimed by the fire that had raged through the outskirts of Burland Castle but all of the other deaths just seemed like statistics. The only one he had cared about, the only number on the death count that had mattered was the one that listed his mother.

Ragnar forced a couple of deep breaths down his chest. His head began to clear again and he slowly stood back up. His legs still felt a bit shaky but he could now walk. He picked up the torch and continued on, forcing the painful memory back down into his distant past.