The Idol of Eriam
The humidity was unbearable, sweat dripped down his face onto the dusty floor of the cave. For hours he searched, looking for some sort of clue, something that stood out more than anything else. He was beginning to lose all hope.
“Come on Scott, get it together.” He waved his open flame closer to the wall of the cave, squinting at the markings and drawings that made no sense. “You’ve worked your whole life on this. You can’t let them see you fail.” “You have come too far to qu…” He dropped his torch and grabbed on to the wall.
“This is it.” Scott rubbed his hand on the wall, removing dust, with every wipe. He looked around the cave, for the landmarks that matches the drawings, on the wall, ‘There’. He couldn’t believe he didn’t notice it before. This piece of stalagmite, is crudely misshapen, it couldn’t be natural. As he grabbed it, it crumbled into pieces. Scott knocked away chunk by chunk, piece by piece, till the once three foot structure was reduced to a pile of rubble.
“I don’t understand. It was supposed to be here.” He picked the rubble up and as it fell through his hands something heavy hit the ground. Scott looked around and there it was the Idol of Eiram. “No this is all wrong, this is no bigger than a raven’s egg. I can’t believe I wasted my life on this.” He tossed the idol onto the floor it clunked and bang with every bounce. Scott watched as it slide to a stop. Inching it’s way to a hole in cave. Scott dove for the idol, out of pure instinct. “I should have just let you fall.” Scott rested on the floor of the cave with his head lying near the hole. A slight breeze crept through, a sigh of relief and comfort escaped his mouth. He raised the idol above his head and stared at it. “This is what I’ve been searching for my entire life. This tiny little glass…” A miist start rising up from the hole. Everything started getting hazy, Scott could barely keep it his eyes open. His arms got weak, and the idol fell to the ground as the misit knocked him out.
Scott awoke with the cave rumbling underneath him. “Uh? What’s going on?” Huge cracks grew on the floor and walls of the cave. He looked around in horror. “I have to get out of here.” He jumped up and headed for the exit. He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘The idol’. He looked around the floor of the cave. ‘Come on, where are you? There!’ He ran for the idol just as a huge stalactite was about to crush it. “You might be what I was expecting but I did spend my life looking for you. And I won’t let some cave have you.” Scott sprinted for the exit putting the idol in his satchel. He reached a ledge on the side of the cave with a fall that ended with rushing water and sharp rocks. ‘Here goes nothing.” He jumped catching his leg on one of the sharp rocks. Scott swam as best he could to shore, as his leg bled out. Dragging himself out of the water he found a piece of wood to splint his leg. He used the tree he was leaning on to pull himself up. “Alright Scott where to now?” He made his way inland, in hopes to find someone from his crew. Hours he limbed about holding on to anything to keep him balanced.
“You there.” He stopped and look around for the voice. He saw no one for miles. “You better stop walking on that leg, you might make it worse.”
“Alright, who said that?” Scott said in a panic.
“It was me, who else?” Said the voice.
Scott looking around again, nothing. His heart started pounding as he reached his hand into his satchel and removed the idol. “Are you the one talking?” He asked.
“No you idiot. I am talking to you, look down.”
Scott looked down and at the insulting brownie.
“You humans are so dumb. Now tell me where did you find my idol?” The brownie demanded.
“You’re idol? Ha! I’m the one that found it, so it is mine.” Scott stuff the idol back into his satchel.
“Thank you for finding it, I’ve been searching for an awfully long time. It’ll bring my people a great deal of relief to bring it back home.” The brownie held his hand out, gesturing for Scott to give him the idol.
“No way. I’ve been searching for this my entire life, I am not about to just hand it over.” Scott proclaimed.
The brownie exhaled heavily. “Let’s see, you’re around 25-30 years old, about mid life for humans right?” Scott nodded his head. “You see us brownies, we live for a very long time, you have been looking for the idol for at most 15 years. Where my people and I have been searching for our idol, for more than a century. Do you see how misguided you are? Now I’m going to ask nicely only once more, hand over the idol.”
“Or what?” Scott stared at the brownie, intensely.
“I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice.” The brownie walked away.
“That was weird.” Scott continued on walking deeper into the forest, clenching onto the idol, as he moved on. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in his broken leg, something had hit it. Scott fell to the ground in agony. The brownie came walking up for the shadows, carrying a rock over his head. “It was you!”
The brownie nodded his head. “Blame yourself for happens next next.” Scott screamed no, as the brownie threw the rock at his head, knocking him out. He opened his eyes to a blinding light..
“Ugh, where am I?” He tried moving but was strapped down to a table.
“You are with me.” Said the brownie.
“Uhh, ok where are we?” Scott asked.
“We are here.” The brownie replied.
“Are you not going to give me a straight answer?” Scott asked.
“Relax, we are in one of the many tunnels, that run underneath the cave, where my people call home.”
“And what am I doing here? And why am I strapped to a table?” Scott asked puzzled.
“So you don’t thrash around so much.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” Scott asked.
“I don’t know yet, it depends on you.” Said the brownie.
“Depends on me how?”
“Well, are you willingly going to tell how you came upon this place, or am I going to have to force it out of you?”
“What do you mean this place? I came by boat?”
“No boat can get you here.”
“Well that’s how I got here!”
“You humans and your lies!” The brownie exhaled deeply. “Fine the hard way it is.”
“No, no, no, what do you mean hard way?”
“This is going to hurt.” The brownie grabbed a switch and slammed it down. “A lot!”
Pumps started moving up and down, a loud humming noise filled the air.
“What’s happening? Tell me!” Scott plead.
“You’ll find out soon enough… Probably.” The brownie jumped onto the table and placed strapped a headband to his head. The humming became louder, the sound of electricity filled the air. Scott started convulsing, his eyes turned blood red, veins protruding over his entire body. His chest lift off the table as knees locked into place, a white foam bubbled out the side of his mouth. Blood dripped from his eyes, ears and nose.
“Well that’s never a good sign.” The brownie stared.
The brownie attached a device to his own head, his eyes widen and turned blacked. There was a silence, the room went completely still. Scott’s now lifeless body, collapsed to the table, the brownie’s eyes slow returned to normal.
“No…” The brownie snatched the device from his head grabbed the idol and ran out the room. Turn after turn, never slowing, pathway after pathway, until finally, he reached a pair of giant doors. He burst through the doors yelling.
“It’s here!” Yelled the brownie. Every brownie sitting at the table stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Shouted a brownie from the the head of the large table. “Onda, come here at once!”
“Right away your majesty.”
The brownie made his way to the head of the table and whispered in his ear. The king’s face went white.
“Surely, you have some kind of proof?” Onda nodded and pulled out the Idol of Eiram. The room gasped as the idol started to glow.
“Do you know what this means?” Shouted a noblebrown. The room quickly filled with chatter. The king stared off with a blank expression.
“Um, your majesty?” The king looked at Onda.
“Quiet!” The king shouted as the room grew silent again. He looked over the room, he took a deep breath. “Onda, you know what to do.”
Onda nodded, he took the the idol and smashed it on the floor. The room filled with a purple smoke, that kept growing and growing.
“Just a matter of time now.”
To be continued…?
