CHAPTER#94

"How do you know where to go?" Mike asked.

"Easy. I listen to my instinct, and then do the opposite."

"How does that work?"

"You try." Ratu stopped in the tunnel, holding up one of the discs. "Use your gut. Which way do you think we should go?"

Mike frowned, looking left then right. He felt a strong urge to go right. "That way." He pointed at the ice.

"Then we go the opposite." Ratu tossed the disk up, and the beam carved left. "The artifact is a perversion of the natural world. Every fiber in your being wants to avoid it. When we get closer, you will probably begin to feel sick."

"Yikes." Mike wiped sweat off his brow, wondering if Ratu was right. His body was hot and cold, a result of the beams heat and the cool ice around them, causing him to feel feverish. Yet the feeling of unease increased the farther they went, a nauseous feeling in his gut that spread out across his body. Placing a hand on the wall to steady himself, Mike's balance suddenly shifted, and he slipped on the ice.

"Fuck!" Mike slid several feet, putting his arms and legs out to steady himself. Finally coming to a halt, he sat up, expecting to see Ratu right in front of him. His eyes widened when he realized that Ratu was farther down the tunnel then she had been when he slipped. Somehow, he had slid uphill.

"We are very close." Ratu told him, a frown on her face. "The effects are fairly strong. Now I worry I might accidentally damage the case it is in."

"Could the beam destroy it?" Mike asked.

"No," she said. "Put the goggles on. Just in case."

"On it." Mike held the goggles up. He hadn't put them on yet because they limited his peripheral vision quite a bit. The goggles themselves looked like they had walked out of a steampunk wet dream. Several lenses could easily be flipped into place, revealing untold secrets to the wearer. Sliding the band over his head, he took a deep breath before sliding them into place.

The frozen lake around him unfolded in his eyes, bright yellow lines criss-crossing through the ice. Staring in awe, Mike looked all around him. He was seeing flaws in the ice, lines that bent and adjusted to account for the hole they had tunneled. He could see the bedrock at the end of their tunnel, a vein of quartz buried several feet within. Looking at his hands, he saw the blood flowing gently through the veins on the back. There was a spot on one of his shoes where the stitches had come loose, and would eventually become a hole.

"Mike."

Shaking his head, he adjusted the lenses. Through trial and error, he was able to eliminate most of the distractions, though now he was able to see pockets of warm air floating along the ceiling above them like giant bubbles. Walking just past Ratu, he tapped the ice at a slight upward angle.

"If you hit here, you'll miss the object but get us close enough," he explained. He had seen it through the ice, a dark block of nothingness that refused to yield its secrets to him. Nodding, Ratu used another golden disc to tunnel even farther. Following close behind, Mike noticed that Ratu's kimono clung tightly to her body revealing a pair of shapely shoulder blades beneath her hair. Her slim figure swayed gently side to side while she walked, the beam casting thin shadows on the ice beside her.

"There it is," Ratu said. Fidgeting with the crystal in her kimono, the beam of light disappeared, casting the lake into darkness. Waiting patiently in the dark, Mike heard the silent dripping of water, liquid that was flowing downhill and refereeing at the bottom somewhere.

"What now?" Mike asked. He was answered by a giant ball of fire, summoned into Ratu's hand.

"We widen the room," she said. "We need some space."

"Sounds good." Mike waited while Ratu cast the ball of fire out. She summoned several more, and water flowed freely around his feet while she created a circular room with a domed roof around them. In the middle of the floor was an object wrapped in a cloth. She walked toward it, her hands slipping in to her kimono. She withdrew a pair of sticks that unfolded themselves into a small table. Lifting the object, she set it on the table and let out a small grunt.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

"Naga are somewhere between divinity and humanity," she explained. "This thing makes the human side of me sick in a physical sense, and it makes the divine part of me sick in a spiritual sense. The sheer act of its existence is a stain on reality, and it deserves to be destroyed."

"What does it do?" Mike asked.

"Nothing," Ratu answered. "It has no purpose. A hole was opened into the other side, the place where the Ancient Ones were sealed away. It was poor luck that one of the Ancient Ones was slumbering near the portal. It was only open for a fraction of a second here, but time doesn't exist on their side. When the portal closed itself, it ripped away a small piece of flesh, leaving it behind."

"How was the portal opened?" Mike asked.

"Men of science who made a mistake. They paid for their lack of caution." Ratu slowly uncovered the box. It had strange lettering on the outside and looked extremely old.

"Is that... Russian?" Mike asked.

"It is. When mankind entered the nuclear age, they tried to find a way to surpass the power of the atomic bomb. The Soviets found this, and got the crazy idea to try and use it as a power source sometime in the eighties. They had no idea what they were messing with, and many of them died. There was a huge cover up, and I hear that the land is uninhabitable."