Coincidence Draft 1, CH26 (Patreon)

The short hall ended in a stone door with what could be waves carved on it. Or at leat that was what Niel chose to believe the undulations were. It was locked, and even Wieland, with his strength, couldn’t force it open.

“So, magic?” Niel asked.

“Or old,” Dario offered.

“There is magic up there.” Isamu pointed up. “Why not down here?”

“How do we open it then?” Wieland asked Niel and the others looked at him.

“What?”

“You are Indiana Jones, Da?” Fedor smiled. “Love Michael as actor.”

“Philistine,” Niel said, which confused the pallas cat. “Ford is the only Indiana Jones. I guess the sarcasm didn’t make it through the language barrier.” He sighed. “Look for holes we can put our hands in. It might be made to look like a body part or something.”

He searched along the floor, using one of the flashlight they’d taken off the men tied and left in among the pedestal.

“I found something,” Dario called, shining his flashlight at a section of the wall. He rubbed some of the surface stone off once they were gathered and letters appeared. Quickly two phrases were revealed, with a polished space beneath each. One was in German, the other in English, and Wieland confirmed they asked roughly the same question.

Where did it begin?

“Antarctica,” Wieland said.

“Where what began?” Niel mused. “It is kind of vague. If it refer to the Survivors, then you’re right, but does it refer to the expedition? Or maybe the event that caused the expedition to start?”

“It is search for power,” Isamu stated. “It is always search for power.”

“The history told to me is that expedition is about research. Knowledge,” Dario said.

“Knowledge is always power,” Isamu stated.

“That is true,” Wieland agreed.

“Not know,” Fedor said. “Family not talk about Antarctica. Bad times.”

“How is it written?” Dario ran a hand over the polished stone.

“Carved?” Wieland offered.

“I hope not,” Niel said. “We don’t have anything to carve with. Unless you’re strong enough to scratch away stone.”

The german shepherd rang a finger over it. “Strong enough? Maybe. But I’m not resilient enough. I could use Dario.”

The string of insults the capybara replied with was clear, even if it was all in Spanish. Wielan and Fedor chuckled.

“This is made by Survivor,” Isamu said. “Then Survivor magic is needed.”

Niel looked back at the room the pedestals were in. He couldn’t deny Survivor blood had been used to unlock it, but the work seemed elaborate for five men to do. Maybe he had that part wrong and there had been more than five people to survive? That was the problem with oral history. No way to be sure.

Wieland cut himself and wrote Antarktis under the question in German. Niel did the same, writing Antarctica under the other question. They looked at the door.

“That is start,” Isamu stated.

“But it’s not the answer to the question,” Niel replied.

“Maybe Cum?” Fedor asked.

“The blood brought us down,” Dario replied. “And Blood is His. It is vitality and potency.”

“Yes,” Wieland said. “Blood will work.”

“So Antarctica isn’t the answer.” Niel rubbed the blood off with his shirt and it came off surprisingly easy. Almost as if the stone didn’t want it there. It didn’t want the blood or the words? Like stone could want anything. Except that magic was now involved, so it might very well have some say into what stuck or didn’t.

Again, Niel was annoyed that magic wasn’t making things simpler. It had always felt that way when watching the guys at the frat use it.

“If not Antarctica,” Isamu said, “where they leave?”

“How precise must it be?” Wieland asked. “Germany and England, or the cities, or maybe the ports?”

“What could the people who set this up expect those coming to unlock it to know?”

“Everything, if Survivor,” Isamu said.

“There’s four of you here. None of which knows anything about that time,” Niel replied.

“You are Survivor,” Dario stated.

“Only for a few weeks now, and it’s not like Jarod even expected me to come about. As far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t want anyone to follow in his footsteps.” Get used to losing people, the younger-older raccoon had basically told him on the subject of his mother dying of cancer. Wouldn’t that make him want to have others around him who wouldn’t age?

Did he make that decision back then, or after he started losing friends and family? The consensus, from what he’d been told, was that Jarod had taken himself away fairly quickly, so it might have made the decision right then. If, like the Nazis believed it needed to be his specific blood line that was part of unlocking this, Jarod had been present when this was made. If he’d already known he wouldn’t have a blood line, he’d expect to be the one to unlock this.

Or, he’d planned for the possibility someone else would be here and…what?

Fuck, he wished he knew the man better.

What would he do? Niel wondered. If he’d been the one here when this was made. He wouldn’t age, but that wasn’t a guarantee he wouldn’t die, right? If he went with the assumption he might not be able to be the one to unlock it. He’d want to make sure someone he believed in would be able to work it out. Niel would give them the tools, if not the direct knowledge.

Only Jarod hadn’t given him, or anyone else anything.

But Jarod had been an archeologist. Would he consider history? Someone willing to study the past? If so, it would be something that was part of the historical records. The countries felt too broad. Anyone would be able to guess that.

They others were watching him. “The city or the port.”

“Which are?” Wieland asked.

Niel looked at them. How did none of them—

“Norddeich,” Isamu said, “is where the Germans left from.” He shrugged at the look the german shepherd gave him. “I remember a story told to me.”

“Bournemouth is where the English expedition started from,” Niel said. “I read it in a book,” he added before anyone questioned how he knew.

He and Wieland wrote their respective location and waited. When nothing happened the german shepherd pushed on the door. Which didn’t move.

“The name of the ports themselves?” Wieland asked.

“Those are the ports, not just the cities names.” If not that, what else could it be? The historical records ended with them getting on their respective boats.

Would that be the actual start?

“Try Seeliger, Wieland, that’s the name of the boat they traveled on.” What had been the British boat? Right. Knight of the Water.

They each wrote theirs in fresh blood and immediately, something happened. The blood turned dark and pealed, then flaked off as if something vital had been taken from it. Grinding came from the door as it slowly opened. Wieland went to push on it, but it wouldn’t open any faster.

“What about them?” Dario asked, pointing to the tied men.

Isamu spit something in Japenese.

“Leave behind,” Fedor said. “Not trust them.”

“End,” Isamu said hatefully. Niel didn’t want to know what he’d been through to feel that way.

“Let’s just leave them there. Their friend up there are bound to find a way down here, so they’ll be fine. If not, once we get out of this…place—not calling it a tomb—we can send people back in for them.

Unlike the room the hallway was dark and damp; surprisingly so, considering the other room had felt dry. The flashlights illuminated a flat floor, and mostly flat walls where the undulating patterns were carved again.

Niel shone the light up, looking for vents explaining how the air wasn’t so stale at to be unbreathable. There were stories of tomb being opened for the first time and the first people in dying because the air had turn poisonous over time. This had a dustiness to it, but more that of an empty room, rather than a place unseen for nearly a century.

The next room lit with a soft glow and this time Niel made out the markings on the walls that emanated it. Definitely magic.

“Sigils?” Niel asked, and stared at his breath fogging before him. Was it that cold? He breathe out and more fog appeared. The other did the same. Fedor hugged himself and seemed to shiver. How sensitive was he to cold?

The room was large, circular with six columns around the center of the room. Maybe twenty feet from it, he guessed. Other then those, the only other thing was a rectangle block of stone next to a column. A grid was carved in the floor each corner touching a wall and the rest surrounded by more undulating lines. Someone really loved those.

On the other side was another door, and as he approached it, Niel realized the cold emanated from it. Wieland tried to push it, but like the previous one, it didn’t move.

Signing, Niel looked around. No obvious clues. “Look around for something telling us how to open the door.”

“Grid has numbers,” Fedor called. He poined to the edge, and each line of the grid ahd a number. Zero at the middle on, then going up or down be ten depending in which direction he looked.

“Cardinal grid,” Isamu said.

“Map,” Dario said, then looked around. “Six column, one altar. It is an hearth.”

Niel had to search through the memories the bat had given him to figure out why the word was familiar. “It’s the places of power for the Society, right?”

“And Survivors,” the capybara said. “We make pack in an Hearth. That is where we start.”

“Okay, how does that help us open the door?”

“The stone is light,” Wieland said raising one end of the alter. He considered something. “Lighter than I would expect, it is still too heavy for one of you to lift.”

Niel looked at the stone block, then the squares of the grid. It would fit in one of them. “Anyone know the coordinate of the Hearth the Survivors were in?”

“Antarctica,” Fedor said.

That was what Niel was afraid of. They had thirty-six box per line, he had no idea how many latitude the continent took.

“We try each one,” Isamu said, indicating the southern edge of the grid. “And we find the correct one.”

No one had a better idea. The four of them were needed on one side to lift it, while Wieland held the other on aloft and they moved it from squared to square. It was lighter than it looked, Wieland was right, but still far heavier than any of them. So there was no chance they could stand on the right one and use their weight. How many people would be needed, if Wieland hadn’t been there?

Forty-seventh was the one that opened the door, and Niel considered not continuing. What would the next one be like? Carrying a rock to the top of a mountain over and over again? The cold pushed him forward. Even if he was immused to pneumonia, which he had no idea if he was, the others might not be.

The tunnel was light, with a green-blue tinted light that reminded Niel of pictures of broken icebergs, or a winter snowfield right after a storm, and the sun high. When it started down, Niel realized that the undulating design hadn’t left the room with the grid. Like they were in a different place.

Like they were no longer on water.

Was that what this was? A representation of the journey the people who’d become the Survivors had taken? They’d gotten on the boats, traveled to Antarctica. That could be why it was so cold. Then they had… been stranded on the continent, had to seek shelter, ended up underground and going deeper until they finally found the Hearth and Him? Would that be the end? The exit, or something else. No one had told him anything about what had happened within the Hearth, or then they had encountered Him and made a pact. He didn’t expect a god to be waiting for them, but there had to be something right?

The angled became steeper, which made the ground being stone instead of ice fortunate. The light remained constant.

How had they built this?

It could have been there before the Survivors and they repurposed it, but the pedestal and that descent had been powered by their blood, or at least activated by it. Was there crafting magic the Original Survivors hadn’t passed along to their descendants?

Crafting.

What was it Grant had said? Practitioners had helped the Survivors with something. That was how he knew the existed it was part of the lore he’d been told. If he understood things correctly, crafting was what the Practitioners did. Was this what they had helped with?

Why?

And why would Nazis want to get in here if it was a Survivor thing? It couldn’t be because they wanted to have sex. Nazis and gay sex wasn’t a thing, or so they had claimed. Of course, he knew a few Neo-Nazis who were into it, so maybe?

Then what about the leader’s claim of canidae? Niel rubbed his temple. He was tryign to hard, he suspected. Fanatics would latch onto anything. It was probably all just a fantasy.

When the path leveled, Niel had no idea how deep they were. Miles, maybe? Then they were in a circular room with six pillar, an altar in the center and… a door slamming closed behind them. Well, a slab of stone dropping to block the one way out.

Indiana, fucking, Jones.

“Alright, lets look for the next clue to this fucking place.”

* * * * *

An hour later, or was it two, maybe a hundred? No closer to two. Niel hadn’t had sex in a while and didn’t feel about to keel over, so he was still in the hours range, not days.

He had nothing. There was no ceiling, or it was beyond the light provided by the room. The pillars ended at twenty feet with the ceiling nowhere in sight. There was a gap between the floor and the walls that led Niel to think this was like the dias, but he had no idea how to get it to go down.

Everyone dealt with the frustration differently. Isamu was throing pebbles, bouncing them off the walls in complex patterns, muttering under his breath until they landed back in his hand. That was some superhero level power, Niel thought. Wieland paced the edge of the room, kicking the slab in the door each time he passed by it. Maybe he could make a hole, in a century or two?

Fedor and Dario were screaming at each other. Again.

They animosity had taken a back seat to getting out of here, and now that they were at an impasse. Their tempers had flared. Twice befoe Niel thought they’d come to blows as insults in Spanish and Russian flew back and forth. Fedor understood Spanish, btu Dario not Russian, which infuriated him even more and made him scream louder.

“Will you to just fuck already!” Niel yelled. They probably all shouldm but he wasn’t in the mood, which should be blasphemy both because he was a Survivor and Niel Leslie. He was always in the mood for sex. “ We get it, you hate that he left his family and you hate that he’s doing everything hid family tells him. You’re Society, so fucking deal with this the way they do and fuck! So the rest of us can hear ourself think!”

Lo and behold, after glaring at him the two ripped their clothes off and were fighting for who’d be on top. Fedor won, and by the tone of the Russian he spewed while pounding the capybara’s ass, he was bragging about it.

Watching them, Niel found himself getting hard. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost. Isamu seemed either amused at their antics or insulted. Niel couldn’t tell. Wieland looked at them, then continued pacing.

Okay, so Niel was going to have to wait until those two were done before he got a turn. He could wait, a little while.

Fedor’s pounding became erratic and Niel got to his feet. They were going to—the pallas cat screamed his orgasm and the room shook.

“What the fuck?” Niel looked around and noticed the entrance had gone down a foot.

Isamu was looking at the same thing.

“Sex is the key?” the kishu asked.

“Okay course it’s the fucking key.” Niel could slap himself. He’d had it on the way down and just thrown it out. What had happened when the Survivors had made it to the Hearth and met Him?

They’d fucked.