Page 48 of Obsidian Dream
The GPS would be helpful, but she didn’t entirely trust it.In Egypt, somehow the wayfarers had blocked any transmissions to the surface and left them in the dark.
“Ten hours.”Dante handed Khalida a small black band and did the same for Talik.“And come back.The thieves need eighteen hours to refurbish the site back to its original condition.”
She looked at the analog watch, slightly surprised, before placing it on her other wrist, the watch face covered by her shirt.It appeared Dante trusted technology as much as she did.
“And if we don’t find what we are looking for?”Talik asked quietly.
“Return.We explore other options.The hunter records may have more information we can leverage off.”
“I will lead,” she told Talik.Out of the two of them, she had superior night vision.The rest of Talik’s senses were above most Atlanteans, except for his eyesight.It was only a little better than the average human.
Talik continued to get ready, putting on his fingerless gloves.Unlike her, he had settled for two blasters and one knife strapped to his thigh, and two in each of his boots.
“No Dorothy?”Dante asked as he looked at the blasters.
Khalida shook her head.She had forgotten about Talik’s tendency to name his weapons.
Rieka looked at him, confused.“You named your blasters?”
“Rose and Blanche.”Talik nodded to each of the blasters, pointing them out.“Better known asthe girls.”
She couldn’t work out if Rieka was impressed or horrified at the concept.
“Ask Khalida how many grenades she brought.”
This time, Rieka’s eyes widened.Talik was trying to deflect the conversation from his own idiosyncrasies.
Khalida placed a hand on the hilt of her sword.“How do you know I have any?”
“You like things that go boom and shiny silver-edged objects.The sharper the better.”
It was hard to argue with Talik when he had said nothing that was not true.
“Grenades in a catacomb?”Rieka slowly asked, as if that was the weirdest thing she had ever heard.“You will destroy the sarcophagi!And cause a cave-in.”
Talik smiled, his eyes dark with mirth, no doubt over Rieka’s priorities.He glanced at Khalida.“Let’s go.”
***
KHALIDA
The crunch of bonesunder Khalida’s boots echoed loudly.The dirt floor was littered with rocks, cloth, and fragments of skeletons.Two hours of walking through the catacombs, and she was well and truly over the novelty.She had no interest in or quarrels with the dead—she just didn’t want to be there.
Worse, the air tasted stale and musty, and she had swallowed enough bone dust to last three Atlantean lifetimes.It coated her mouth and throat—it was going to stay with her for a long time.
“If anyone says the word catacomb to me when we get out of here...I’m going to turn and walk in the opposite direction,” Talik whispered as he begrudgingly took another step.He angled his torch, the pale-blue light, out of the way to ensure that she wasn’t blinded but bright enough he could use it to navigate.Every so often, he swore softly as he tripped over something—a shard of bone, a piece of stiff cloth, or pieces of chunky sandstone and the occasional marble belonging to one of the oversized coffins.Objects that shouldn’t have been outside of the enclosed graves.
Disgust tinged his every word.Khalida would not disagree.
They had followed Dante’s directions down to the letter.The three hundred stairs had led them into a small passageway that forced both of them to hunch over as they walked through it.The walls had gotten closer as they had explored, until they only needed to reach out with their arms wide and their fingers brushed the stone.After another mile, they had entered a larger passageway.
Here the tunnel expanded until it was eight times the size of where they had come from.The walls were smooth, as if at some point water had run through the region.And the ceiling was easily twelve feet high.On either side of them were ten-foot-long coffins, no higher than her waist.Each of them had been covered with a heavy slab of rock that appeared unmovable.The sandstone ranged from dark brown to a pale white.Most had Atlantean inscriptions, a handful were Latin.Occasionally, they came across a vault with an Atlantean dialect she didn’t recognize.That wasn’t too disturbing.It was the open vaults that were far more worrying.Every so often, they would come across a half-broken lid.Considering the stone would have weighed at least a ton.Khalida did not want to know what had moved it.
She glanced at her watch, comparing both of them.“Just over two hours and we have barely covered a mile.”
It was a painstakingly long process as they reviewed each of the burial vaults, looking for any hint of the glyphs that matched the scroll.Or the relic...not that Sypha had given them a decent description of what they were looking for.
“Stop,” Talik softly called out.He flashed the light to a corner of the burial vault he had just walked by.“It’s not the symbol, but what does that remind you of?”
