Page 44 of Katya and the Young God

“Okay, vague,” Katya says, and he focuses just enough to give her an irritated glance. “But we’ll keep our eyes open for it.”

“The room...the room with whatever it is, there’s too much for me to tell,” he says, tentative. “Closer, maybe, but not from here.”

“The end of the tunnel?” Feketer asks, as more people slowly step into the hallway with them. At Katya’s look, he shrugs. “I saw the ultrasound maps of this place, there’s only one real place where it could be.”

“Seeing those maps would have been good,” she snaps, and gets an even more surprised look from Pieter.

“They didn’t even give you those?” He asks, and his voice is rough, like the brief scan of magic used more of him than the breaking of the seal, which, again, doesn’t make sense. “How much did they want you to die?”

Feketer coughs to disguise obvious surprise at how blatant Pieter asks the question, but Katya just gives him her sharpest smile.

* * *

In the end,two people stay behind. The ghoul, saying he can’t cross a barrier of such death, and the wiry man Feketer had to restrain, who just sits next to the body of his dead friend and refuses to move onwards.

Katya can’t say she would have chosen different, if it was one of her friends laying there, but it leaves them with just Rory the Vampire, Pieter, Feketer, the Magician, and only two experienced cavers, who huddle together and keep themselves separate from the group.

Katya can’t say she blames them.

The hallway of black stone slopes gradually downward, as smooth as any cut tile, but the black stone absorbs their headlamps instead of reflecting it back, leaving the length of the hallway a mystery.

Which, you know, if she had been given a map, it wouldn’t be, but she keeps that bitter thought stuffed as deep as she can.

After a few hours, the tunnel twists to the left, then opens up, revealing a large cavern.

Ornate designs, swirling around their feet, are carved into the floor, just enough to be cast into a relief with their headlamps but not enough to trip them.

Huge columns of rock drape along the room, bulbous and translucent, each one lined with skulls at their bases, skulls with crystals in their eyes.

One of the cavers, Charlotte, who had exchanged knowing glances with Katya about Nathan just minutes before he died, stops, her mouth forming a small ‘o’ at the sights.

“I know what to do with these,” she says, her voice breathy, even despite the tears that still stain her face.

Out of respect or curiosity, the group waits as she breaks open one of the glow sticks, approaching a giant column.

In her hand, the glow stick shines yellow, but…

With a quick bit of athletic tape, she fixes it onto the column, fiddling with it for exactly the right spot, and…

And the light of the glow stick catches in the translucent column, lighting it up and refracting it, casting the room in a low glow, illuminating it.

The cavern is...gigantic. Gargantuan in size. The ceiling arcs over it all, like a stadium cover, covered in imbedded bones of every shape and size, and the swirls in the floor make up an even larger picture, one of swirling muscle and knots of sinew.

An early drawing of the human body, blood vessels and bones and all.

“Oh wow,” Rory says, under their breath, echoing what they’re all thinking. “Oh.”

There are columns on each of the hands, the feet, and over the heart of where the giant body is sketched into the floor, as if holding it down. Skulls adorn the bottom of each column and, illuminated by the glow of the glow stick, at the top, hundreds of feet in the air.

The caver lets her hand fall away from the column in shock.

“Well,” Feketer says, breaking the awed silence around them, “someone spent a lot of time on this.”

“These bones are ancient,” Charlotte says, stepping away from the column and looking at the base. “There’s no way someone could have made this without modern tools.”

“They say that about the pyramids, too,” Pieter points out, and the woman immediately turns away from him with a flash, giving him the coldest of shoulders. “They say that about anything they can’t explain.”

His voice echoes, almost, in the grand tavern, like it was made for him. Like it was made for creatures like him, Demigods and those so miraculous humans can’t comprehend.

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