Even on horseback, the dark tunnel seemed to go on forever. Virginia had guessed that she had been riding for about two hours since she left Gunner's Heaven. She had made a makeshift torch out of a railroad plank and some torn cloth from her dress. She lit it on fire with a spare set of matches that she found near a workstation towards the beginning of the tunnel, and was now thoroughly enveloped in darkness.
She had expected the underground tunnel to be cold; it had never seen the light of the sun. She did not expect it to be freezing. She held the torch close to her; her only source of heat. Her back and feet were trembling from the cold, her eyes burning from the smoke. Her horse's stride had slowed from the cold, and she knew that she still had a long way off to go.
The darkness seemed to span on forever, with no hope of relieve. And what if the "changes" caused cave-ins? Would she be crushed by falling rocks? Be smothered in the dunes? Or perhaps would she merely be trapped and slowly freeze to death?
Although the quiet offered her time to reflect more fully on what was going on in the world around her.
It seemed like ages ago, when it had only been months, that she and her comrades faced the Prophets. Leehalt, Malik and Melody. Three scientists, survivors of the Yggdrasil project, and those who followed the will of the Demon Lord Siegfried.
It was their plan to evolve Filgaia, and in order to do that, humans would either be forced to turn into Demons themselves, or disappear along with the rest of Filgaia. Terraforming, they called it. The said that the world would change.
Virginia knew this could not be the case. They had destroyed Yggdrasil and the Dream Demon Beatrice had ripped out its generator. They had killed the Demon Lord Siegfried and beaten Beatrice and her new Filgaia. So… what was this?
Perhaps it had been as her father spoke when they last met.
Jet Enduro was not just another drifter. He was created as a part machine, in order to be the test sample for a new Filgaia, much in the same way that Beatrice had tried to create her monster Filgaia. Her father had said that, when they restored the old Filgaia, Jet's memories would help bring about the Filgaia that had once been… a world of green and blue.
Of course, was memory the right word? Jet had no memories, he said so himself. But programmed inside him was the vision of those who had been alive during the prime days of Filgaia. There were vast oceans, green fields and forests. And there were no quicksand dunes.
Virginia was torn. This could simply be Jet's memories finally affecting the planet of Filgaia, or it could be something far darker, the will of the Prophets come to fruition at last.
She heard some sort of clanging up ahead. It couldn't be a train. This track hadn't been used in years. She lifted the torch up just enough to see ahead of her, and saw something that amazed her.
The train tunnel had disappeared. She was looking out over a massive underground cavern system. There were water-wheels collecting the rivers of water that ran through this cavern system. These wheels were connected to pulleys, which were running massive machines of half-organic design.
She couldn't tell exactly what they were doing, but did see something that gave her a new cause for alarm. The water level was rising. Her horse threw her from her saddle and turned running at the sight of the massive pool of water. She called vainly for it to return. As far as she had traveled she would never be able to make it back to Gunner's Heaven in time.
She looked around the caverns and realized something. She could see. Without use of the torch there was a source of light. She looked above her and saw a large hole from whence sprang daylight. If she could just reach the ceiling somehow. Eventually the water would lift her up, but she didn't want to risk being stuck in the currents that were now spiraling around the large basin of water beneath her.
She observed the pulleys and saw them go up, just a few feet below the hole. She would have to try and jump. Running over to the nearest pulley she felt the hard ground quake beneath her feet. The heavy machines seemed to be tearing into the very earth. Her hand reached out for the rope, but the cord was moving far to fast for her to grab a hold of. The rope burned through her gloves, leaving a bloody gash in her palm.
Virginia fell back and whimpered in pain. She looked around for any other way out. There was no tunnel leading upward, except the path that lead back to Gunner's Heaven. The water level was now mere feet below her and her only option out was too dangerous.
She lay back on the ground and just waited for the inevitable. There was no point anymore. Her friends had probably died, she was a wanted criminal for a crime she didn't commit and most of all, she was just tired.
She would just go to sleep, and when she woke up, maybe she would be back on the Sandcraft. Maybe all of this would end up being some horrible nightmare. However the pulsing gash on her left hand reminded her that this was not a likely scenario.
She felt the first trickle of the cold water, and it did nothing to her. She didn't move or even open her eyes. The water rose to her hips, her chest, and finally it overtook her. She lay in the water, just waiting for death to reach out its hand and take her. She floated upward with the rising water… and then something grabbed her. She felt a set of strong, muscular arms wrap around her waist and pull her up swiftly to the surface of the water. She gasped a breath of air and looked into the face of the man who had rescued her. It was the face of a dark, tall Baskar man.
"Gallows!" Virginia cried. "What are you doing here?"
"That's a fine question ask me!" Gallows shouted over the rushing waterfall. "I've been hiking for three days now with no food or water, I see something that looks like a lake and see you sitting in it looking like a fresh corpse!"
They drifted up to the large hole and when they became level with the ground, the water stopped rising. Virginia saw two rivers connecting with where the hole had been. Gallows set her down on the sand next to the newly formed lake and sat down beside her.
"Thank you," she said, breathing a sigh of relief.
"You're welcome," Gallows said, as he took a sip of water from the lake. "So. Do you have any idea what the hell is going on?"