The Last Portal (18 page)

‘Maybe we
should wait for nightfall,’ Susie suggested.

‘I told you
they can see just as well at night,’ Chris argued. ‘Trying to cross
in the dark would be more dangerous. We couldn’t see anything but
the Zentors could see us perfectly.’

‘Are you sure
they see that well at night?’ Susie asked.

‘When I looked
into that Zentor’s mind I saw that they attacked mainly at night
while their intended victims were asleep. That massacre at night by
the lake was done by the Zentors. Attacking in the middle of the
night is just what they do.’

Chris slung is
weapon over his shoulder. ‘I’m going. The longer we stay here the
more chance there is that a passing Zentor will spot us. If I find
something, I will signal and you can come across.’

With neither
Joe nor Susie raising any further objections, Chris started
creeping toward the caves. The first part was easy. A series of
small trees and bushes provided cover. He crept into the last bush
and peered out. Ahead was a clearing the size of a football pitch
with little more than knee-high grass for concealment. This was the
first time Chris could see a large portion of the sky, and he was
dismayed to find the black shapes of Zentor still gliding high over
the forest. Holding the crystal in front of him, he crept on his
hands and knees across the grass, periodically looking up for signs
of Zentor. Then he heard it, a hideous screech that sent shudders
through his body and made his skin creep. He rolled on to his side
and unslung his weapon. A Zentor, circling high above, had seen
him. It threw back its head and spewed out its repulsive call. As
he watched, other Zentor appeared, and an answering chorus of
shrieks quickly filled the air. The first Zentor folded its wings
and looped into a dive, but as it reached tree-height a beam of
blue light cut through one of the wings, sending it spinning into
the ground a short distance away. Joe and Susie came running toward
him. He climbed to his feet and together they sprinted for the
nearest cave.

When they
reached the cave, Chris began wildly pushing and flinging all the
boulders and rocks around, but there was no sign of the entrance.
Several Zentor were now circling over the spot where the first
Zentor had fallen. Chris, finding nothing, ran out of the cave and
along the rock ledge to the next cave. The Zentor immediately
spotted the movement and began gliding down toward them. They were
met with several blasts of light from Joe, which sent another
Zentor ploughing into the ground. Chris reached the second cave. It
was even shallower than the first. The crystal had also turned a
slightly duller green. Now in a mad panic, he ran back past Joe,
who was firing at the rapidly increasing numbers of Zentor. He
reached a third cave, closely followed by Joe and Susie, just as
several bolts of light exploded on the walls behind them. This one
was much deeper. They ran to the back and Chris and Susie started
pulling away the rocks, while Joe stood guard at the entrance. The
crystal was now bright green. They dragged, clawed and dug savagely
at the piles of rocks. Like Susie, Chris could feel the presence of
the approaching Zentor, and he was almost manic with fear.

Several Zentor
landed at the entrance of the cave and were greeted with blasts
from Joe. Still more arrived, their sheer numbers forcing Joe to
retreat further into the cave. Chris knew Joe would die if he
couldn’t find the entrance. Susie abruptly stopped digging and
looked across at Chris. He thought she had found the entrance, but
instead she whispered, almost to herself. ‘Prower.’

Chris paused.
There was the unmistakable sound of the Prower.

The Zentor, now
well advanced in to the cave, had stopped their assault on Joe and
their shrieking. At the moment they turned around, the Prower
arrived. A wall of fur and gnashing teeth advanced on them, tearing
into their numbers and ripping their bodies to shreds. In less than
a minute, all the Zentor at the cave entrance were dead.

The Prower ran
straight past Joe and Chris and right up to Susie howling and
whimpering. ‘They say we don’t have much time,’ Susie said. ‘The
Zentor are regrouping. They won’t be able to defend us a second
time.’

All round the
cave Prower began sniffing and scraping the ground with their
claws. Soon one of the Prower started growling excitedly and
digging.

They both ran
over. The Prower was scratching at the base of a large flat rock.
Just the type of rock the Nethral would use, Chris thought, as he
slipped his hands under one side of it. Heaving with all his
strength, he shifted the rock enough to show the opening of a hole.
With Susie’s help they dragged the rock further away, revealing a
tunnel barely large enough to fit through.

The cave
entrance was now being peppered with light blasts. The Prower were
retreating quickly. Joe jumped into the tunnel, followed quickly by
Susie, and finally Chris.

Like the
Nethral entrances Chris had seen previously, this tunnel was small,
forcing them to crawl on their stomachs. When they had descended
only a short distance, Chris heard weapon fire behind him, followed
by a rumble, then a puff of wind. Chris realised that when the
Zentor realised they couldn't follow, they had fired into the
tunnel and collapsed it. He had to fight back the feeling of being
buried alive. But ahead was the Nethral and the underworld, he
thought to himself - things can only improve from here.

Under the Mountain

They crawled and slid
for a long time before reaching a place large enough to stand up.
By this time their arms and legs were covered with scratches and
bruises and their clothes were filthy from the wet, muddy ground.
But they were safe - there were no complaints. They had entered a
small cavern, only dimly lit by glow-worms. The air smelt stale and
rotten. Chris immediately felt uneasy. The air should have been
fresh, and there was no sign of the usual accompanying insect and
bat life.

Susie and Joe
walked around the cavern, gingerly stretching their muscles and
inspecting their surroundings with a mixture of curiosity and
distaste. A small stream fed into a murky pool of water, along one
side of the cavern. Chris knelt down and tried to wash some of the
mud and grime from his hands and face. To his annoyance, he had
lost his crystal weapon in the mad scramble to find the entrance to
the Nethral tunnel.

Joe joined him
and began washing some mud from his weapon.

‘You alright?’
Chris asked.

Joe nodded as
he looked around the cavern, sampling the air with a series of long
sniffs. ‘You sure there’s a way out of here?’

Chris pushed
his doubts to the back of his mind. ‘There are heaps of tunnels
down here. We’ll find a way out,’ he said confidently.

A short
distance away the cavern narrowed again to a dark tunnel, barely
high enough for them to avoid crouching as they walked. Susie had
been peering down it. She came back and washed her face in the
pool.

‘Does your key
show any signs of feeling warm?’ she asked Chris.

Chris checked
the key - nothing.

‘Mine neither,’
she sighed. ‘We can’t be in range of the portal.’

‘Once we find
the Nethral, I’m sure they’ll lead us to the portal,’ Chris said,
rising to his feet.

After everyone
had drunk enough water, they set off down the only tunnel with
Chris in the lead. The going was hard. In some places it narrowed,
so they had to crawl on their hands and knees and, in others, there
were so few glow-worm colonies that they had to feel their way
forward, often over protruding rocks and down sharp inclines. Chris
was becoming less confident of finding the underworld the further
they went, as it was becoming clear that the huge caverns and
forests he had being promising were not materialising. Instead the
air was becoming increasingly warm and putrid and the colonies of
glow-worms smaller and fewer, further reducing the light. There was
much more water, too. At times they were forced to wade for long
periods in knee-deep pools that were unusually warm and stank of
rotten-egg gas. Chris also noticed white or yellow-coloured
deposits on many of the rocks they passed. Joe touched one of these
deposits and then licked his finger. Many swear words later, and
after thoroughly washing out his mouth, he concluded the deposits
were toxic.

After several
hours of walking it was clear the situation was getting worse. The
air was so hot they became drenched in sweat, and so rancid that
every breath felt as if they were breathing acid. Despite their
growing thirst, they had long since stopped drinking from the warm,
smelly water that flowed along the tunnel floor. Chris took to
monitoring any cracks or holes in the walls for a slight breeze,
anything that would indicate there was another tunnel they could
try, but there was nothing. The tunnel seemed to be diving into the
bowels of the planet, probably right underneath Mount Caporel.
Although no one said anything, Chris knew Joe and Susie were half
expecting to see pools of boiling lava around the next bend. The
final straw was the appearance of hot vents of scalding gas, which
seeped through cracks in the tunnel floor. By now, the glow-worm
colonies had almost disappeared, and with them, the last remnants
of light. In the near total darkness, crawling along on their hands
and knees, Joe nearly fell into one of these vents. It was only the
quick action of Susie that saved him. After this incident, Chris
called a stop to their descent. Painstakingly, they retraced their
steps until the light improved and the air became less rancid. When
they reached a small cavern they stopped for a rest. No one spoke
for some time, the reality of their situation almost too awful to
contemplate.

‘Maybe we could
dig our way back to the surface?’ Susie suggested, breaking the
sullen mood.

‘Nah… wouldn’t
work. Those creatures caved in the whole top section of the tunnel.
It would take weeks to clear a path,’ Joe said, now lying flat on
his back and staring up at the dimly lit clusters of
glow-worms.

Chris crouched
next to a pool and scooped up a mouthful of water. It tasted like a
combination of mud and rotten eggs, but at least it was drinkable.
‘We may have no other choice,’ he said, glancing across at the
others.

Joe let out a
loud burst of laughter. ‘And what happened to all those beautiful
forests and happy Nethral just waiting to meet us?’

‘I don’t know,’
Chris said, feeling irritated at the mention of the Nethral. ‘We
must have come the wrong way.’

‘Not according
to that crystal thing you got,’ Joe replied.

Chris didn’t
care for Joe’s tone. ‘We must have missed a side tunnel, or
something. We’ll just have to retrace our steps.’

‘Well I didn’t
see any tunnel but this one,’ Joe said, flicking mud onto the roof
of the cavern and dimming a section of the glow-worms.

‘Well what do
you suggest?’ Chris flared. ‘Just sit here and whinge until we
starve to death?’

‘Stop it, you
two,’ Susie hissed. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere.’

‘Whose idea was
it to come down here in the first place?’ Joe continued. ‘I just
wanted to get the hell away from those Zentor, not crawl down the
nearest rat hole.’

‘If we had
listened to you, we would all be charred corpses by now,’ Chris
replied harshly, not bothering to conceal his anger.

You’re right,
of course,’ Joe continued casually. ‘Now we have a choice of
deaths; starvation, choking, poisoning, being buried or burned
alive.’ He marked off the choices with his fingers.

‘Please stop
it,’ Susie pleaded. ‘Arguing isn’t going to solve anything.’

Joe was going
to say something, but thought better of it. Instead he crawled over
to a corner of the cavern and curled up into a ball, cradling his
weapon like a small child hugging his favourite toy. Susie and
Chris also fell into a dejected silence.

After a while,
because he could think of nothing better to do, Chris pulled out
the Nethral crystal. Susie watched him flick it from hand to hand.
‘Can’t you use the crystal to contact your Nethral friends? I mean
use your abilities to tell them where we are?’ she continued when
Chris looked at her blankly.

‘I can try,’
Chris said, sitting up and examining the crystal with new
interest.

‘Try!’ Joe
said, lifting up his head.

Chris, as
before, held the crystal in his hand and cleared his mind. But this
time he only received vague, fleeting images of Nethral that
disappeared before he could focus his thoughts.

‘Nothing,’ he
said, after several minutes of determined effort. ‘I don’t think my
powers are developed enough.’

Joe groaned,
then dropped his head back onto the ground.

Chris was about
to put the crystal away when he noticed the colour had changed.
Although still green, it now looked duller, like when he ran into
the wrong cave in the surface. He sat up and held the crystal
against the light of the glow-worms.

‘What’s up?’
Susie asked.

‘The crystal
was bright green, now it’s a dull green.’

‘Huh...so it
changed while we walked.’ She moved up to Chris and looked over his
shoulder. ‘Maybe, as well as showing you where the Nethral tunnels
are on the surface, the crystal also acts like some kind of homing
beacon that guides you through the right tunnels to the
underworld.’

‘You mean we
can still use the crystal?’ Joe asked.

Susie
nodded.

They started
back along the tunnel and it wasn’t long before Chris could detect
a difference in the crystal’s colour, it was turning greener as
they climbed. After retracing their steps for some distance, Chris
estimated the colour was close to the colour he had seen near the
tunnel entrance, although it was difficult to judge in the reduced
light. At this point, they slowed their progress and began
examining the tunnel walls for any signs of an intersecting tunnel.
When Chris couldn’t detect any further change in the crystal, they
turned around and retraced their steps again. Eventually, they
narrowed down the area from where the crystal started to change
from bright green to a straight stretch of tunnel about hundred
metres long. The tunnel through this region was narrow and poorly
lit. They examined this area very carefully but couldn’t find any
obvious side tunnels. There was one place, however, where rubble
and boulders had spilled across the tunnel floor from a cave-in.
Chris climbed up to the top of the rubble and examined the
glow-worm colonies on the roof. They appeared to disappear into the
rubble. He pulled away some of the loose rocks. Dead glow-worms
colonies were on parts of the roof he had just exposed. He dug
further and found the newly exposed roof was thick with them. The
rest of the roof, however, had collapsed, so the more he dug, the
more rocks fell down from above.