Unsure exactly what he was looking for, Jason went to the bin of large balls and started sorting through them one by one. Would he find his father’s face again? Perhaps it would be an image somehow connected with his father. Like what? His car? His dental office? A toothbrush?
After going through all the large balls, Jason had found no obvious candidate. He supposed a smaller ball could be placed in a large hole, so he moved down to the medium spheres. He stopped sorting through them when he found his mother’s face.
The image gave him chills. It was just as accurate as the picture of his father. This was no coincidence.
Jason looked around. Was he really still in Lyrian? This almost felt like an elaborate practical joke. He half expected friends to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” But no friends appeared. There were no hidden cameras either. Just torches and a gloomy old room. Gazing at the image of his mother, Jason thought about all that had happened to bring him to this place. It was no joke. No accident. He was supposed to be here.
Confident that he had found the correct match, Jason placed the medium ball into the hole under his father’s picture, then backed away. He could hear the ball rolling, followed by some clicks, and suddenly the floor of the room began to gradually descend.
Jason considered retreating to the hallway, but he opted instead to stay put. As the floor sank deeper, a passageway was revealed. When the floor rumbled to a halt, he could see down a long corridor lined with red torches. Apparently, he had made a decent choice.
The long corridor ended at a large square room with multiple circular tunnels in three of the walls. Four sconces held four more burning torches. Mystifying engravings decorated the fourth wall. Among them Jason found a brief message in English.
Proceed along the passage of your choice.
All the round tunnels were the same size—small enough that he would have to crawl. To reach some of the tunnels he would have to climb using the openings to lower tunnels. Tiny paintings wreathed the mouth of each tunnel.
Jason started studying the images, wondering if he would encounter another familiar face. To the side of one of the higher tunnels on the opposite wall from the entrance, Jason found a familiar logo—the profile of a white batter silhouetted against a blue and red background, a white ball coming his way. It was the logo for Major League Baseball!
That had to be for him, right? Baseball didn’t exist in Lyrian, and Jason loved both watching and playing the sport.
Just to be sure, he investigated the pictures around all the other tunnels. None of them resonated like the baseball logo. That had to be it.
Jason climbed back up to the baseball tunnel and started crawling down it. He had not gone far when a heavy gate clanged into place behind him, sealing off his retreat. Without his seaweed Jason would have been left in darkness.
The round tunnel curved, climbed, descended, and turned. His elbows and knees throbbed, still tender from crawling too rapidly in some of the tighter sections of the Scalding Caverns, but his only choice was to press onward.
At length, without ever forking, the tunnel emptied into the largest room yet. Against the walls eight brazen dragon heads were spaced around the room, each bigger than a pickup truck. In the center of the room three bronze bins held stone balls. Holes of three sizes pocked the floor around the bins. Elsewhere on the floor were engraved messages. Jason skimmed the spidery runes until he located the message in English.
Drop one ball down one hole.
“I could have probably figured that out on my own,” Jason said to nobody, his voice echoing gently.
Again pictures adorned the balls, and the holes in the floor had accompanying images as well. It took some time, but Jason eventually found a small ball with a tiny portrait of his sister, and a large hole beside the smiling face of his brother.
After dropping the ball down the hole, Jason heard it rolling, then rattling, followed by multiple noisy crunches. Hinges squealing, one of the dragon heads yawned open, revealing another corridor.
Jason trotted down the corridor until it delivered him to a vast hall. Torches hung high against the walls, leaving the middle of the chamber heavily shadowed. Containers of every description crowded the entire length of the floor, some resting on tables or platforms, others unsupported. The collection included trunks, chests, crates, baskets, coffers, cabinets, caskets, coffins, sarcophagi, barrels, kegs, strongboxes, jewelry boxes, and covered vessels. Exemplifying unlimited styles and sizes, the diverse containers were fashioned out of combinations of iron, bronze, copper, tin, stone, wood, ceramics, gold, silver, crystal, jade, ivory, enamel, and wicker. Wide varieties of craftsmanship were represented, from the ornate and the elaborate to the plain and even the shoddy.
At the far end of the room, illuminated by extra torches, rose a dais surmounted by a majestic throne. Plinths supported identical female statues at either side of the dais, and a broad altar rested upon a lower platform at the front.
This had to be the destination! He had made it! He could hardly believe his eyes.
“Hello?” Jason called, interrupting the silence of the cluttered hall. “Darian? Anybody?”
Lonely echoes formed the only response.
Weaving among the numberless containers, Jason made his way across the long chamber. As he neared the dais, he realized that what he had mistaken for an altar was actually a crystal-and-gold casket with a body inside. The casket rested atop a granite slab with abundant writing on the side. Among many unrecognizable glyphs Jason found the words “Darian the Seer.”
Jason jogged to the casket. Inside rested an old man, small, shriveled, a few wisps of white hair on his spotted head. He wore scarlet robes embroidered with golden designs. Matching slippers covered his bony feet. His eyelids were closed and sunken. His lips were sewn shut. There was a yellowish cast to his wrinkled skin. He had clearly been embalmed.
Shivering, Jason gazed at the cadaver. This was an eerie place to encounter a dead body on display. How long had it been here? People had warned him that Darian should be dead. Still, he could hardly believe that this long, hard road had led him to a corpse. Why had the oracle sent him here?
Just in case, Jason tapped on the glass. “Hello? Are you kidding me? Hello?”
The cadaver did not stir.
Jason looked around in disgust. A gaping, blackened fire pit was set into the stone dais between the throne and the casket. From his slightly elevated position, he surveyed the enormous hall. The disorderly profusion of strange containers made the room look like a flea market or some overgrown garage sale.
He was meant to be here. The oracle had insisted. The faces of his family proved it. He had reached the end of the path. He had found Darian the Seer. Well, sort of. The old guy was fairly well preserved, but no more alive than a mounted deer head.