Hunter of Legends

Prologue

Taylor watched as his wife Neesha rappelled down the dark, narrow vertical shaft, a natural extension of the cave far above. Plunging over a hundred feet into the earth, the shaft ended in a small cavern below. He was standing at the bottom of it, having gone down first. He made sure to shine his flashlight just below her, so that she could see where she was going.

"You okay?" he asked as she continued downward. At a faster pace than he had, he noted with dismay. She smirked at him.

"Better than you were," she replied. Five foot one, with chocolate-colored skin and big, beautiful eyes, she was a sight to behold. He'd been damn lucky to find her — and even luckier that she'd said "yes" so many years ago.

"Show-off," he grumbled. Neesha reached the bottom, disconnecting her harness from the rope. She brushed past him, checking him with her shoulder as he steadied himself. He caught her smirking as she strode forward through the small cavern beyond. Lanterns had already been lit along the walls, casting a warm orange glow over the rough stone floor.

"Dirty boy," she murmured. But the way she said it, he could tell she was smiling.

They continued down the tunnel, using their flashlights to illuminate the way ahead. After a few minutes, the tunnel opened up into another small cavern. Lanterns lit the cavern as before, and two men were standing by the far wall, talking to each other. They stopped in mid-conversation, turning to face Taylor and Neesha.

"Oh, hey professors," one of the men greeted. It was Marc; tall and lanky, he was the best archaeology grad student Neesha had ever had. The shorter, beefier man beside Marc was Corey, a linguistics grad student.

"What you got?" Neesha asked, stopping before the two men. Marc turned to the wall before them. It was mostly composed of rough granite. But in the far-left side of the wall was a thick black stripe of rock extending from the floor to the ceiling, its surface perfectly smooth save for small symbols carved into its surface. The stripe curved slightly as it went upward, vanishing into the cavern's ceiling.

"We've been mapping the symbols along the entire vein," Marc said, pointing his flashlight along the stripe. "It runs for nearly two hundred meters — all the way back through the tunnels we came from, and probably further."

"Can you read it?" Taylor asked, looking at Corey.

Corey hesitated. "Parts of it. The symbols share some structural similarities with pre-Columbian Mesoamerican script, but they're also" completely unlike anything I've seen. Like someone took the base logic and built an entirely different language on top of it." He pointed to a cluster of carved figures. "This section here reads — as far as I can tell — something like 'the great absorbing.' And this one"" He moved his finger to a different section. " — 'what is given cannot be taken back.'"

Taylor and Neesha exchanged a look.

"How old is this site?" Neesha asked.

"That's the part I can't explain," Marc said quietly. "The geological dating on the vein of black rock puts it at roughly twelve thousand years. But the carvings are fresh. Geologically fresh — within the last few centuries, maybe less." He paused. "Someone came back here. Someone who knew exactly where to find this."

The cavern fell silent except for the distant drip of water somewhere deeper in the earth.

Taylor reached out and touched the smooth black surface of the stripe. It was cool under his fingers — unnaturally cool, colder than the surrounding stone. And as his hand rested against it, he felt something he couldn't quite name: a low vibration, almost below the threshold of sensation. Like the rock itself was breathing.

"Taylor." Neesha's voice was quiet. Careful.

He pulled his hand away. The sensation stopped immediately.

"We need to document everything," he said. "Every symbol, every measurement. And we need to get a materials analysis on that vein." He looked at Marc and Corey. "Nobody talks about this until we know what we're dealing with. Understood?"

Both men nodded.

Taylor turned back to the stripe of black rock. In the flickering lantern light, the carved symbols seemed to shift — the way distant figures look like they're moving when you stare at them too long. He blinked, and they were still again.

"What is given cannot be taken back," he murmured to himself.