CHAPTER XIII: CRYPT'S DEPTHS
...excavations that revealed a large underground complex of catacombs and forgotten crypts.
Major Boyd looked at the scanner once again – unexpectedly, all activity within the underground crypts had ceased and it was perfectly quiet. Just half an hour ago, readings indicated lots of movement and energy anomalies in the depths. The unusual calm worried the Major, as he did not know what it could mean. The two men were all alone in the crypts, with limited supplies and no idea what perils could await them below.
Kyle, still feeling weary after the escape and the vision he had just had, tried to calm himself with the thought that something within the crypt could help them deal with the crisis. He was not sure whether he had to be calmed or worried by the invisible presence of the Gatekeeper, which seemed to persist, even though the demon was dead. Supposedly. He was also not sure about the demon's intentions.
Choosing the larger gate, the two men left the amphitheater and headed down the dark corridor. Again, they observed illumination without a visible light force. It was completely quiet, and a strange smell permeated the air, the acrid stench of something burned. The carvings on the walls caught their attention – there were many types of demons depicted, doing all sorts of activities. Some of them were battling; others were performing evil rituals; still others carried various objects back and forth. Kyle recognized the Unholy Cathedral and the Fortress of Mystery in two of the images. The face of Baphomet frequently appeared on the carvings, always positioned above everything else, watching over his servants and their work. Looking at the floor, Kyle noticed traces of something heavy that had been dragged down the corridor recently. The marine remembered about the missing Gatekeeper statue in the antechamber.
The hallway went on and on into the darkness, yet a door to the left led into a room lit by torches and chandeliers by the walls. The Major looked at the room and then at Kyle. He just nodded as confirmation. They would explore the room, find what they can and carry on.
It seemed to be a library. Numerous wooden shelves were filled with dust-covered, apparently old, and roughly made tomes. Major Boyd opened one of them but could not understand anything from the glyphs or the strange patterns drawn in them. There were hundreds of such books, and the two men were sure they were all filled with foul blasphemies. If they did not have to be quiet, the Major would have gladly burned each and every one of them. An aura of darkness and restlessness hung in the air – emanated by the dark tomes and the runic carvings on the walls. In the back of the hall stood a wooden table where several scrolls of parchment lay. Kyle decided to take a look at them... but then the Major raised his hand.
They were not alone in the room.
The memories of the past months were rekindled in Harlan's mind and his reflexes took over. He raised the shotgun and looked around in expectation. Seconds later a loud hissing filled the chamber, followed by vile snickering laughter. Something moved behind the shelves and the two marines fired their shotguns simultaneously. The hissing sounded more angrily than before and the creature swiftly moved closer to the humans – quietly, as if it did not even touch the floor. What Kyle saw next was an enormous crimson one-eyed head emerging from behind the shelves. Its grotesque smile could not be mistaken.
A cacodemon.
"Watch out, Major! Don't let it spit on you."
It did not spit. Instead, the demon charged towards the marines, eager to tear them apart with its enormous teeth. Knowing they would not have enough time to take it down with shotguns, Major Boyd pulled out the plasma rifle and fired a burst into the demon's twisted face. The hissing was replaced by a blood-chilling shriek of pain and anger, as the creature did not stop its attack. A moment later, Kyle emptied his shotgun right into the demon's eye, putting an end to the fight.
"Good work, marine," the Major commented, as the cacodemon's carcass was finally quiet and lying on the floor.
With the threat eliminated, Corporal Harlan turned his attention towards the table with the scrolls. Each of them was in a different color – red, yellow, green, blue, and black. The mystic runic writing on them seemed to constantly sparkle, and change its color, as if alive. Each of them had a seal of sophisticated figures, and the marines could only guess what their purpose could be. Seeing nothing else of interest in the library, they left, and went on through the underground corridor.
They came by several other doors that led into disused rooms, filled with dust-covered metal boxes or coffins. Some of these chambers were well lit; others were dark and appeared to have been deserted for a long time. Some of the chambers were completely empty; others were filled with scattered pieces of broken items, as if an unknown force had raged within them. A room that caught the marines' attention was a vast circular chamber, which appeared to be an extension of the corridor itself. Enormous stone blocks covered with mystic runes hung on stout chains from the ceiling. Ghostly fog shrouded the floor, and frequent discharges of energies flashed between adjacent blocks like miniature lightning bolts. Major Boyd thought that the room had the purpose of collecting and channeling energy of some kind. This could explain some of the anomalies that UAC scientists had discovered about Io. The stone blocks were most probably imbued with a spell of some sort, and their arrangement implied that the gathered energy was being transferred towards the other end of the corridor they walked.
A little further down the hallway, the marines came across another door, which led into what seemed to be an alchemical laboratory. Once inside, they looked at the tables and the shelves, covered with a large variety of items. The tools they saw were definitely not designed for human hands. The containers held substances they could not recognize. The ingredients that demons used for their concoctions were what truly disgusted the two men. Various human body pieces, greasy slime in various colors, dust that looked like ground bones, and a cacodemon's eye were among the items that were put in jars and arranged on one of the shelves. There were several blue flasks filled with clean water-like liquid, which Kyle recognized as the healing potions that he had encountered during his previous battles with the forces of Hell, so he took them in his backpack.
A bit further, the two marines had to stop once again – the chamber that they saw on one side was too interesting to be passed.
It appeared to be an armory and a treasury. There were piles of strangely shaped blades and spears arranged by the left wall, as well as many other weapons. Neither Kyle nor the Major had ever seen a demon use one of those, but they were probably remnants from a distant past. Close to the weapons lay other tools of destruction – small incendiary orbs, flasks filled with acid, and other containers that seemed to be filled with poisons. In the back of the room, Kyle saw three black containers, and a clear spot on the floor, which indicated that the fourth one had been taken away recently – and probably brought to the site where the marines were slaughtered in the ambush. Who used the artifact and for what reason still remained a mystery.
The other side of the room was filled with what seemed to be loot and treasure. The hoarded spoils were such as Corporal Harlan and Major Boyd had never seen in their lives. There were huge and heavy plates of a precious metal, but it was neither gold, nor silver. The metal was light green in color, and glowed faintly. The Major's scanner indicated that the metal emitted radio waves at a constant frequency and had a faint electro-magnetic field around it. Next to it were boxes filled with bars of another metal – colorless, yet the light reflected from its surface in hundreds of colors and nuances, creating an effect similar to the light refraction of a diamond. Other crates were filled with hundreds of small yellow crystals, which the scanner labeled as "unidentified stable mineral substance." There were also scrolls, tomes, flasks with various substances, and many other objects the two men could never recognize – all hoarded as loot from unknown wars of unknown ages.
"Just look at all this, Harlan," the Major uttered, "They are our worst enemies, yet demons seems to have a culture of their own, just like we do. Would it be interesting to study them, I wonder?"
"I am not sure, sir. Such research would always be dubious in terms of safety and ethics. I am sure there is much we can learn, but I fear for the price we would have to pay in order to reveal these secrets."
"What do you mean, Corporal?"
"I mean... well, suffice it to say that it would most probably be the UAC to perform that research."
"I see your point, Harlan. The UAC would inevitably try to bend it in a way that would earn them profit. They always do that. Tied to the military as they are, the UAC would see demons as a product to be developed. A biological weapon even."
"Exactly, sir. The desire for gain has never brought humanity anything but suffering."
"You see, Harlan, if the UAC had never started those experiments of theirs, probably all these catastrophes could have been avoided..."
Kyle did not reply. The Major was right, to an extent. Having heard the Gatekeeper's tale, the marine knew that not conducting the dimensional gateway research would have only delayed the invasion, but not prevented it. For a second, he thought about what it could have been, if the invasion happened fifty years later, when he would not be able to intervene. Would humanity have perished? Then, again, he remembered about the course of destiny that would not allow that. The marine had the feeling that many more dark events waited for him in the future. And all he wanted was some rest... for a few minutes, after defeating the Gatekeeper, he thought he would finally have it.
They had to carry on, time was one of the things they did not have. With any luck, the expedition would help them assume control over the situation. The two marines were also aware that Dr. Stalker held hostages in the base. Whatever they did, they had to be quick and discreet. And it seemed that the corridor would finally end. Apart from the cacodemon in the library, they did not encounter any living thing, and the total silence seemed to reign in the crypt.
The previous silence was now broken by a low humming, which intensified into a howling as they descended deeper into the crypts. The corridor ended at a bridge that spanned over a chasm – an enormous cavern, with a bottom of molten lava, as the reddish glow from below suggested. The huge underground chamber was filled with smoke, and various pieces of crystals, which flew and floated in all directions in the air, as if by their own accord. The bridge was encased in a force field, which appeared as a faint glow, as were several other bridges, at lower levels, all of them attached to a central column that rose from the bottom of the cavern. The howling from below was very strong, but it could not scare the marines, who knew they had gone too far to turn back. They crossed the bridge and entered the hollow recess of the central column. Inside they saw a metallic platform that looked like an elevator, two other entrances with bridges, which led to other areas of their current floor, and a green plaque on the wall, which bore a symbol that looked exactly like the seal of the green scroll they found in the library.
"Do you see that, Major? I suppose the floors are color-coded, and these scrolls we got are some kind of access keys for them."
"Probably, Corporal. But in this case, it is a bit worrying that we were allowed to take away these access keys so easily."
"I know, sir. I have the strange suspicion that someone... or something knows that we are here, and is trying to manipulate us."
"But here we have no choice, Corporal, we can't go back. We would either have to explore more of this floor, or go deeper... to a lower one."
Kyle started thinking again. Whatever the key to the mystery of the crypts was, it had to be somewhere in the lower levels. Besides, he did not want to risk running into more demons on this floor, and he had to keep in mind that he had to look for clues about the last major demonic outpost in this Universe.
"We are going down, sir. I am convinced that together we would be able to cripple the demonic force that inhabits this place, eliminate this threat, and probably find something to help us against Stalker and his abominations."
"Lead the way, Corporal Harlan. You have survived such situations before, I am sure you can do it once again."
Kyle stepped back and looked at the bridge once again. As he expected, there were green markings on it. Looking through the force field, he noticed that the lower floor was marked with blue. He had decided to check the floors one by one, and the Major agreed that it would be prudent. The marine looked at the green insignia on the wall once again, and touched the seal of the blue scroll to it. A rumbling sound was heard, and the platform slowly moved one level down.
The two men crossed the only bridge for that floor and prepared to enter the crypt ahead. Cold wind blew in their faces, and the Major noticed that the pale bluish walls were covered with ice. What could await them in this frozen catacomb?