Either it was due to sheer luck, or that the aliens down on the center of the crater were too occupied on the drilling, we somehow managed to get to the swamp without any alerts even though I felt like we were technically rushing even though we were crawling until right before the swamp area. We then also walked for about five more minutes deeper before I felt like it was already safe to turn on flashlights.
At that moment, I asked Billy if it would be okay for us to search for a decent hiding spot for the time being since I wanted to transmit some messages to Nest. At first, he seemed to be not sure what to say, but he eventually said that it should be okay as long as I would not take too long. After that, we searched for few spots that would give us cover from above and at least from two sides.
Fortunately it did not take us that long to find three strange trees with their branches strangling each other's that it somehow created a decent hiding spot under it and was wide enough for three people. We quickly headed there, and then Billy took his position to provide cover and watch our surroundings as I began to transmit the messages to Nest.
'This is Black Caiman, calling in to Nest. Please respond, over.' I transmitted the message.
Unlike before, at that time my watch did not vibrate or blink even after some while. I waited for a few more minutes yet it still did not respond anything. Both Billy and Jessica even turned to me for a brief moment, probably confused as well since I did not push any buttons in the last few minutes.
'Nest.' I transmitted again. 'Black Caiman here. Please respond, over.'
Still, there was absolutely no respond even after precisely three minutes after I tried to contact Nest again. Billy then shortly walked towards me and looked at me straight in the eyes with less but still stern expression. I did not say anything except to shake my head twice to him.
"Well?" Billy asked me.
"No respond…" I said to him as I looked down and sighed hard.
In an instant, I recalled upon the word 'expendable soldier' that I had said to Billy, wondering if somehow E.X.T.I.R.T might also consider me as one. I did not even know what else to say either to him or to myself in order to convince ourselves that there must be some sort of a serious problem in the communications system that made me unable to contact them anymore.
"Let us just go then…" Billy said as he sighed.
"Go where?" I asked him, confused.
"Deeper into this swamp." Billy responded, somehow with an upset tone. "If we are lucky, we may be able to find a shelter for us to sleep later tonight."
"And in the middle of the swamp?" I replied unsatisfyingly. "How can you be so sure?"
Right after that, he stopped his steps, went completely silent for a little moment before he slowly turned to me with a rather angry expression.
"Yes." he answered, apparently also holding his breath. "I believe that it was also your suggestion to go into the swamp instead of heading straight to go past the rift after the crater."
"I called that suggestion because I believed that it was too risky for us to head straight while it has gone dark." I tried to clarify myself to him, hoping that his anger would somehow subside.
"Of course." he smirked for a moment before his face became upset again. "And so, here we are right in the middle of the swamp. Which means that we will have to spend the rest of the night here if we are not to go to the rift, right?"
"What I am trying to say is that it will be impossible for us to sleep out in the open like this, Bill." I tried to explain it to him as I tried my best to keep my head cold and calm.
"Okay, so I will take that as a no." Billy concluded. "So, what will you suggest next, Lieutenant Burners?"
It was right when he no longer called me by my name, but instead with my rank and my surname that I bat my eyes to his, and realizing for sure that I had just then made his anger worse. Apparently he began to get stressed out upon the fact that his force did not seem to take a serious consideration of his safety any longer, and it had gotten far worse when he realized the same possibility could fall upon me too.
I actually could more or less understand if he somehow had expected his force to be more considerate to him, whereas in my case I would like to think through calmly all possibilities that could have caused it since I completely believed that he was too valuable to be considered expendable by either E.X.T.I.R.T or the Special Forces Command.
Unfortunately, I could not come up with any other words that might convince him otherwise, and thus I hit upon a dead end on what I should say to him next. If anything, I was finally able to see through Billy's flaw when it came to anger management in desperate and seriously confusing situations based on what I had just seen by myself. Luckily, Jessica then apparently forced herself to step in between the two of us, and somehow succeeded in cooling down the atmosphere around us.
"Look, listen to me." Jessica said as he turned to me. "First of all, unlike the previous swamp, this swamp looks like it is completely dry so I guess as long as it is not raining I believe that we can sleep just fine."
I looked at her eyes as she said those words, and since I did not want to make another tension between us I only lifted both my eyebrows and nodded to what she said.
"Bill… oke gue paham elu kesel gara-gara markas elu seakan ngebuang elu gitu aja, tapi elu juga mesti tetep tenang karena masalah kita disini belum selesai, 'kan? she continued to Billy, telling him that she understood his anger due to what his Commander General might have said to him, but she also reminded him that we still had a serious threat before us and therefore it was imperative for him to stay calm.
"So… why do not we all continue to walk deeper into this swamp and search for a decent shelter while at the same time we will also get a little further away from the aliens' presence?" she finally suggested and smiled to the both of us.
"Fine by me…" I said, finally relieved as well since the tense atmosphere had finally subsided.
Billy did not say anything, but he did gesture his head towards his right direction, signaling that he was okay with that suggestion. We had finally fully regained our composure, and therefore we continued our journey into the north direction, where there were more trees to be seen. Although there was no more tension between any of us, I had to admit that I somehow felt that there was an awkward moment between me and Billy along our way. Nevertheless, I would prefer it to be that way instead of tension.
We spent no less than ten minutes in total silence, before I noticed that the trees around us became slowly less dense. While the trees became less in numbers, familiar mossy rock surfaces began to be seen again, indicating that another megalithic structure might be nearby. Just as that thought popped in my mind, another revelation that emerged right before our eyes then confirmed it.
It was a massive structure, built right next to the only wet section of the swamp. Based on the size and the shape of the structure, I knew right away that it must be man-made and most likely built around the same time the previous megalithic structure was built. Both Billy and Jessica were also completely awestruck that I had to pat her back to make them notice I was about to say something to them.
"Let us go closer." I said to them. "Hopefully we can use somewhere inside the structure to stay and rest for the rest of the night later on.
I first looked the structure with more details by going around it first, making sure if it was also built by using the same technique and materials like the underground room that we had found earlier. It did not take me too long to confirm that it was indeed constructed by the very same cube bricks. As for the rough measurement of the structure, perhaps I spent around twenty minutes going around the structure before I returned to the spot where we had first seen it.
It was a structure with a raised platform, forming some sort of a terraced compound. One of its sides was connected with a ramp, while the rest of the other sides did not. The ramp part of the structure was built along eighty feet before it reached the height of forty feet, and continued by another a hundred and twenty feet of raised platform. Above the platform was another large structure, perhaps some sort of a room with size still unknown since I had yet to go up to the second floor.
Jessica warned me to walk slowly since the ramp surface might be fragile and that we would not want it to collapse all of a sudden. I had first thought the surface of the ramp to be somewhat rough, but to my surprise it was undoubtedly smooth, indicating that the people who had built it in the past had possibly polished every bricks that had been used to construct the ramp very neatly.
When we finally reached the second floor, I realized right away that there was indeed another structure built right at the center of the platform. I also quickly noticed that the structure had two floors since it had several windows in which two vertical rectangular holes had been seemingly made on several rows of the walls. I spent some more time to have a rough measurement on the size of the structure.
It had the height of around twenty two feet since there were eleven cube bricks stacked vertically before the top of the structure, and it had the length and width of forty feet. As for the windows, apparently it had been made simply by not stacking a brick on one spot, indicating that they were constructed in the same way as the underground room earlier. There were approximately eight windows in a column, with after each four rows of wall there would be a couple of windows in a row.
Both Billy and Jessica did not say or comment anything when I had done with my rough measurements. I could guarantee for sure that she was already impatient to go inside the structure, or rather I should say building, and so right after that, we entered inside. Just when the three of us made our way inside through a six feet by four feet gap, I was made surprised again by the features of the building's interior.
The first thing that I noticed right away was that there were so many carvings on the wall of the first floor. The wall itself was definitely had been made by the cube bricks, but apparently it had been also then given another layer of some sort of wall plastering with other different kinds of materials since the wall surface was very smooth.
There was also a stairs built on one of the corners of the wall, which was the only spot where no carvings had been made. I really wanted to go up to the next floor and see what else might be up there, but I changed my mind once I saw that the stairs had been made by only stacking two bricks vertically for each stairstep since I did not want to suddenly break one of the stairstep and made myself fell down as a result.
Jessica however, insisted on going upstairs and in the end, she went alone because Billy also shared the same thought as I did. Perhaps it was due to her rather light weight that she was able to make it up to the second floor without even making the brick stairsteps vibrated. I supposed I had been worried over nothing for several seconds watching her going up the stairs.
Back to what was right in front of me, there were approximately eight carvings on the wall, but in the orders that I had yet to know. There also might be some more on the second floor, with only Jessica who would be able to see it since both Billy and I would not think for a second to get up there. After a little more while, she finally came down again and said something that surprised both me and Billy.
"I… think we are now inside some sort of a temple…" Jessica said as she clearly had that enthusiastic expression on her face.
"Okay?" I responded in half disbelief. "Why do you think so?"
She said that while the first floor only had carvings on its wall, the second floor had no carvings at all. Instead, there was a single statue built by the same brick but with an entirely different size. She could not be certain what the statue might resemble, but she was somehow sure that it was how the people in the past would imagine what their 'god' looked like.
Since the structure was built relatively near to the mountain, she hypothesized the 'god' to be either a mountain god, or volcano god. She also mentioned that apparently the temple was also facing straight towards the direction of the mountain, which further supported her hypothesis. However, there was also one thing that she could yet answer.
It was the unusual design of the temple, especially regarding the elevated platform, making the structure also somehow had a faint resemblance of a ziggurat, another prehistoric structure from the Mesopotamian era with similar function to a temple. At that moment, I fully realized that the structure must be the one that was carved on the first artifact, but since there were no other similar temples or ziggurats that came to my mind, I felt like I could not respond anything to what she had said, except to ask more.
"Well then, what should we call this structure for now?" I asked her. "The Temple of the Mountain God? Or The Ziggurat of the Volcano God?"
She had first fallen silent, and as I looked towards Billy, he only lifted both his shoulders, signaling that he had absolutely no idea either. Then, she walked slowly forwards, approaching the center of the first floor and stopped there as she began to look at all of the carvings in a glance. After a while, she finally looked down for a brief moment as she spoke out on what she would call the ancient structure.
"For now, I will call this place…" she said before she paused, "The Temple of the Volcano God."