Our short adventure in the town of dumb birds ended sooner than expected. We didn't have much else to do there, so we decided to just continue our journey. Since we didn't have any money, we couldn't spend the night in any inn or anything like that, but at least we got some information about what lay ahead.
"We came out of a forest and ended up in the jungle. I'm starting to get tired of so many plants" Raidha complained.
Apparently, what awaited ahead of us was a deep jungle, the same one where the pyropos came from.
"What worries me is not the plants… The jungles are full of dangerous animals."
"And it sure is full of disgusting bugs. AHHHHHH! I do not want to go! Let's go around it!"
"I don't think you even know how."
"It's just following the edge!"
"Trust me, it's not that simple."
"Of course it is!"
After enduring Raidha's screams for a while, I ended up convincing her to go through the middle of the jungle. Lucky for us, they kindly let us go with the next batch of pyropos. Thanks to that we saved a lot of time and foot pain, despite the fact that it was a bit scary to be next to so many bombs with feathers.
In a couple of hours we reached our destination, it really was a lush jungle. After watching it I started to believe that going through there wasn't my brightest idea yet, but I refused to have Raidha blurt out "I told you!" so we finally got into it.
The first few hours went fairly well, I just had to do my best to keep Raidha from seeing a couple of spiders bigger than my head. But as time passed and we went further into the place, our spirits waned. Because of the density of trees and plants, we were not moving very fast. Before we knew it the light began to dim and we hadn't gone much more than three miles.
"I don't think we can get through this before the sun goes down."
"No… Obviously we won't. The jungles are huge, it will probably take days to cross this…"
"Days?! I told you! It was a bad idea!"
In the end I had to hear the I told you anyway...
"Well, take it as an adventure. Who knows, maybe we will find something similar to a hidden temple in the middle of the jungle, with a great treasure inside."
"Yes of course, as if those things really hap…pen."
"This… I was just… joking."
I cut down some vines to clear the path and in front of us appeared a huge stone building that definitely looked like some kind of temple. Raidha and I stood there not knowing very well how to act in the face of such a discovery.
"What do we do now?"
"… Shall we try to explore it?"
"For some reason I don't think it's a good idea."
"Me neither… But who knows, maybe it's safe and we can spend the night inside."
"Well, that's probably better than spending the night in the middle of the jungle."
We entered the temple. We took each step with the utmost care, I didn't feel like running with a stone following me or something much worse than that. But in the end they were just unfounded fears for simple scenes from a movie. There didn't seem to be any traps inside that construction. What's more, it wasn't even a labyrinthine place, just straight corridors with different rooms practically empty or full of plants that had destroyed so much furniture and walls to the point where it was quite difficult to know what was placed there in the past.
"No traps, no treasure, no nothing. I'm a little disappointed, a bit of emotion wouldn't have been bad," I cursed as I picked up a piece of rusty metal from the ground.
"Better!!"
"Don't yell at me… Let's see, this doesn't look like a tomb or anything. It doesn't even look like part of a city, it's a real temple of worship or something with a similar purpose."
And it was not necessary to be an archaeologist to see which cult created this temple. They were quite worn and faded because of time, but the walls were carved with images of birds similar to the one we released a few hours ago, except that these were much larger and were represented with fire around them.
"Apparently that little guy was a real phoenix."
"Do you think this is the same bird?"
"I do not think so. This place is extremely old, I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that it is more than 1000 years old. If it was the same bird it means it has even more of it."
"So where did the others go?"
"It's just a guess, but they probably suffered from some kind of degradation, disease or something and ended up like those silly birds."
Going a little deeper, we finally came to a large room that seemed to be in better shape than the others. Like the rest of the temple, it had engravings of those birds everywhere, but at the very bottom there was a large mural that practically occupied the entire wall. In front of it was a rather ornate altar. Plants had taken over much of the room, but traces of soot could still be seen on the altar.
"I hope they didn't burn people alive as sacrifices for those birds or something like that..."
I cleared some branches that covered the windows and let the light fully enter the place. Everywhere there were remains of practically rotten furniture and many more pieces of rusted metal along with a lot of completely smashed statues.
"Well, let's spend the night here, okay?"
"Certainly better than spending the night outside."
We cleaned up the area a bit and built a fire before the sun went down completely. Searching here and there we took the opportunity to collect everything that caught our attention. Although everything was in poor condition, some pieces of metal could be useful to us.
"Hey, look what I found here."
Raidha walked towards me with a small box in her hands. Unlike most things in the place, it was in fairly good shape.
"Did you really find a treasure?"
I glanced at the box she was carrying. It was a small metal box, which surprisingly wasn't rusted in the slightest. In fact, it seemed pretty sturdy.
"It's locked and I don't see the key anywhere, I wonder if it's something valuable."
"I don't think that will be a problem."
I took the box from her hands. I moved it around a bit and hit it a couple of times. There was definitely something inside it, but from the noise it didn't seem to contain a lot of stuff.
"Well let's open it."
I touched the latch and sent my energy inside. For a moment I felt some resistance, but the metal slowly began to obey me. In a few seconds I had opened the bolt.
"Done… I wonder what metal this is…"
We open the box. Inside was a single object, some sort of inconspicuous coin. A simple circular piece of metal whose only striking thing was some strange characters drawn on both sides.
"What is this? The money they used at that time?"
The metal it was made out of wasn't even shiny or flashy, I had a hard time believing this even had any value.
"I don't think this is worth much… Well, I can make some bullets out of the metal."
That was better than nothing, after all it was in better shape than any other piece of metal in the place, and it's not like metal was easy to come by in the first place. I let my energy flow there, just like with the box, I immediately noticed a rejection.
"What the hell?"
The damn little coin resisted with all its might to accept my energy.
"What's happening?"
"Nothing…"
I picked up the coin and looked at both sides. It definitely didn't seem to have anything special, which annoyed me. I started to send more energy, but it still didn't enter the coin.
'It can't be that a coin wins me…'
My energy quickly surrounded the coin, but I couldn't even picture the shape of the metal in my mind. I finally decided to attack harder. I closed my eyes and released as much energy as possible.
'Damn, get in!'
Finally I felt some of the energy touch the coin and suddenly, it disappeared. Not only did I lose the image created in my mind, but even the weight seemed to disappear from my hand.
"What is this thing made… of…"
I opened my eyes to complain but the coin really wasn't in my hand anymore... Actually, not only was the coin not in my hand, the room itself wasn't around me! No, maybe that wasn't the worst… Not even the ground was under my feet!
"Where the hell am I?"
Me encontraba literalmente en medio de la nada. Nada arriba, nada abajo, nada en ambos lados, únicamente yo flotando en medio de la oscuridad.
"Raidha! Raidha! Are you around?!"
No, Raidha was nowhere to be found.
"This is going to be... troublesome…"
—Moron, what are you doing?
Oh sure, Raidha wasn't there, but a certain maniac was.
"Trying to get the slightest idea of where the hell I am, do you even know?"
—No…
"Great, you're definitely…"
—... but I think we have not moved.
"Tell me a bit more."
—For a moment I felt the same as I felt when we traveled to another world using that sword… but at the same time I feel that we haven't left the other world behind.
"Do we travel to another world? An empty world?"
—As I say, I feel that we have traveled to another world but we have not left the previous one, as if we were in another world within that world.
"You mean, a world inside that coin?"
Actually the coin had disappeared from my hand. Maybe… it wasn't such a far-fetched idea. After everything we had encountered so far, nothing seemed impossible to me anymore.
'So if we've been able to get in, we should be able to get out.'
I clenched my fist and closed my eyes again. Just like I did to go in, I let out some of my energy and thought about going back. The moment I opened my eyes I was in the temple... holding the coin in my hand just like before.
"Wow, this is… amazing…"
"Oh, the symbols lit up."
Raidha spoke as if nothing special had happened other than that the strange letters on the coin now glowed a faint shade of gold.
"Uhm… Raidha, have I been standing here the whole time?"
Not that he had spent much time there, but not so little that she didn't even care about my sudden disappearance.
"What are you talking about?"
"Maybe…"
I picked up a piece of stone from the ground and touched the coin again. Instantly I was back in that empty place, with the stone still in my hand. I dropped the stone to the side and refocused on getting out of the place. By the time I got back outside, the stone was no longer in my hand.
"What have you done?"
"I see…"
I went back inside and picked up the stone again. Just as I thought when I left, it was back in my hand.
"Raidha... it seems you found something really... extraordinary."
"I would appreciate it if you could explain to me exactly what are you doing!"
"I better show you."
I took Raidha's hand and went back inside. Just as I thought, Raidha entered next to me.
"Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!"
Of course, Raidha was just as surprised as I was the first time.
"In short, it seems that you found… what we could call a pocket world… Although there is nothing here."
There was literally nothing, I couldn't even feel any energy.
"But apparently we can leave anything here, which makes this thing terribly useful."
"Why would anyone abandon something so convenient in this place?"
"Probably because it didn't work. There's absolutely nothing in here and the symbols started glowing right after I walked in."
Nobody would have abandoned such a thing if they knew it was still working. They probably thought it was broken and forgot about it.
"By the way, let some of your energy out while you think about going back."
Raidha did as I told her and disappeared before my eyes.
"Anyone can use this thing…"
—It seems that you are not as special as you thought.
"It's not that… I'm just worried that anyone could come in and pick up whatever I keep here… or get trapped inside if we're not careful."
I waited a couple of minutes and got out of there. From Raidha's point of view, I had left at the same time as her. Apparently time didn't flow at the same speed there, which made it extremely convenient… No more carrying heavy things with us!