97mg
Explorer
The Kalarian Precipice - Chapter Three
With bold steps down the wider of the passageways, our explorers continue to wind and turn through the claustrophobic darkness. Perhaps they begin to pity the ancient folk who once worked here, smashing away to create tunnels, carting off rocky waste to an unknown dumping ground, chipping at walls in the hope of a random life-changing discovery.
The evidence of sampling continues as you move on, small areas in the walls where black basalt has been levered or chiseled at. You pass another small passageway then, to your right, and finally another as you are stopped in your tracks.
The walls begin to part ahead of you as the tunnel expands in width and height. Finally, a little extra personal space perhaps? Your light sources and viewing angle leave sections of the upcoming area concealed from the eye, until you proceed further. Certainly, the path opens into the beginnings of a cavern some thirty feet wide and equally high. And it ends there. Directly ahead a great pile of rock blocks the way ahead. It is a random mess of broken stone, fragments and grit. Looking upwards, one might even suspect that it was born of a rockfall of some kind.
"The base rock isn't meant to do that," Annit whispers pointing to the top of the distant obstacle. "That is why we haven't seen any bracing or supporting timber for a while. I... don't like it."
Then Dain sees something else alarming. The slightest movement of a shadow in the dim light, cast upon the stoney blockage ahead. A mischievous flicker of the torch? Surely the dark is getting to you. Or something else?