Chapters (42)
- BENEATH THE DARK ICE
- Table of Contents
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Epilogue
- One
- Two
- Three
Matt reached out to touch her arm. “To us, yes. But to the Aztlan culture who saw the world as being upside down and this creature as being a god, definitely not. Heaven was below ground in an underworld of caves, guarded by fantastic beasts and gods. The caves themselves were very holy and would have been considered to be a portal of communication with their deities. I guess to them it was proof of their beliefs when they encountered this fantastic creature reaching up from the depths. It would have been a great honour to be chosen to ‘join’ with him. For all we know they may have volunteered.”
“They didn’t realise that they were creating a feeding pattern. To the orthocones they were just an easy and abundant food source.” Aimee was examining the stains on the pillars.
Monica, Alex and Aimee sat down with their backs against one of the walls and followed Matt with their torch beams to give him extra light. They drank sparingly of the little remaining water, and finished the last dusty crumbs of their dark chocolate. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
“Look!” Matt pointed to some rings embedded up on the walls and a similar one high up on the giant stone door they had recently come through. “I bet they had some form of system rigged up so they could open and shut this door from up there, probably from behind the other broken door. They lashed their sacrificial victims to the pillars and then retreated behind their own door so they could open the gateway to the underworld in safety.”
Monica brought her torch beam back down to the crude half-built wall at the base of the ramp. “They were going to seal it off but never finished. Hmm, wonder why?” Monica posed the question and then answered it herself. “Oh, shit. It must have found another way in.”
Alex pushed his hands up through his hair and expelled a long breath between his teeth. The implications of this were horrifying—they could be ambushed and now there was no going back. Best not to have them dwelling too much on it. “Perhaps. But even if that were true it was a long time ago. We’re not home just yet, but we’ll make it now.”
“I agree with Alex. There haven’t been people here for thousands and thousands of years. This would have disrupted the normal feeding patterns of the creatures and I doubt they could remember how to get into the city after all those centuries.” Aimee was doing her best to support Alex and offer some good news to the exhausted group.