They moved at a brisk pace as they followed the golem, the light that it cast allowing them to easily keep their footing in the cold, uneven, slippery cave that acted as a passage into the heart of the mountain. However, the combination of the wetness, unevenness, and the slight downward gradient inevitably caused some feet to slip, sending their owners falling and coating their black clothes in a layer of moisture, much to the enjoyment of the others.
The path was intricately formed, with many side passages appearing, as though the cave was designed to lose people.
As they ventured deeper inside, the cave became tougher to exist in.
The golem flickered occasionally as their journey continued, reacting to the slowly reducing amount of air found inside. As they travelled even further along the cave, the space became smaller and smaller. The walls pressed inwards, forcing them to twist their bodies in order to fit. Inevitably, Marcus had to reconstruct his golem to adjust for the new conditions. The ceiling, once standing high above them out of their reach, now began forcing them lower and lower to the ground.
In the end, they had to crawl along the floor, a decision objected to initially by Elanor and eventually, as the sound of scurrying creatures began and increased in frequency as they pressed on, by Roxy. As a result of the tight conditions, Marcus ended up severing the link between him and his golem, causing it to vanish.
The conditions didn't last long, as they quickly reached a dead end.
"We came all this way for nothing?"
"I can't believe you dragged us through that for no good reason."
Complaints began from the two as they began to turn back.
Marcus stopped for a moment before the dead end. Curiosity in his eyes, he snapped his fingers and ignited a fire in the palm of his hand, and extended his arm out to the blockage.
Directly in front of him, he saw the reflection of his flames flickering back from six large, black holes.
'No, not holes. Eyes.'
"Shit," he muttered.
He yelled loudly, drawing the attention of those behind him. They turned and re-approached the dead end as quickly as they could, the two dark users channelling shadows into their hands.
Now illuminated by the flames held in Marcus's hands, the source of the blockage was clear.
A large, black arachnid lay on the floor. After composing himself for a moment, Marcus noticed that the creature was completely motionless.
"It's legs..." Elanor quietly said.
The creature was mutilated. Severe lacerations were dotted all over its body. Some legs were bent in unnatural ways, while others were completely crushed. Despite its wounds, a branded mark could be clearly seen over its left eye.
"Who the hell could have done this to something like this?" Roxy asked incredulously.
Despite not knowing anything about the creature, Marcus could understand what she meant. The magical power that resonated from the corpse, even after however long it had been dead for, was immense.
"Could this be..." Tess murmured.
"The eternal guardian... the spider king..." she continued.
"We continue on." She loudly declared, after a long pause of contemplation.
"Continue on? Where?" Elanor asked her.
"Behind it."
"Behind it? Is there anything there?"
"There is," Marcus said, climbing over the corpse. "There's a small gap, then the cave opens up to something. Come on."
The four squeezed through the gap and stumbled out onto a spacious ledge overlooking a huge, open area.
It was as though they had stepped outside.
Unnatural light, emitted from vast deposits of crystals, illuminated the area as if they were the sun.
Odd, unnatural sounds originated from their right, scaling the seemingly infinite chasm to terrorise their ears.
Ahead of them stood a wide road, flanked by large, lifelike statues of warriors from a bygone age, each uniquely armed and posed in various stages of a fight. The area was marked by time, being covered in many layers of sand and dust from millennia buried. Further ahead stood a... a castle? A temple?
Marcus couldn't make out the purpose of the sand-dyed building.
The building was extremely large. Despite their elevation, its presence smothered them. It was extremely wide, its size filling a person's line of sight.
There were three floors, each supported by pillars that caused five wide gaps to open up, that stood atop the ground floor. A small hallway, granting access inside the building, was the only break in the thick rock that made up the ground floor.
Upon closer inspection, each pillar was engraved with an image of a warrior with a shield on their left arm. Fixed to the centre of the shield was an image of an arachnid.
More statues, this time of warriors armed with bows, slings, and other ranged weapons, stood atop the roof of the building, eternally sentenced to a silent watch.
In the centre of the roof, barely visible even from their elevated position on the ledge, stood an empty throne, slightly raised on an individual platform.
The building had a certain allure to it, it's being capable of tempting even the most stubborn of people inside its labyrinth.
A fair distance away to their left, unnaturally far considering the logical constraint of the mountain, lay a small town. It was connected to the temple via a narrow, winding road like that one would find in a forest.
'What...'
'What...'
'What...'
'...is this place?!'
The three children shared the same thought.
"It... it's real!" Tess exclaimed excitedly, a smile creeping onto her face.
"This is Direllia! We're in Direllia! The legends are real!"
"Direllia?"
"Legends?"
The others shot her strange looks as they asked their questions. Tess, however, paid them no attention. Her mind was spiralling into a web of thoughts.
'What do the syndicate want with this place, with the king?'
'Could they be here for... for that?'
She shook her head. "No, that can't be real," she said aloud, drawing more looks from her companions.
'But...'
"We need to hurry," she said as she hopped down a path of rocks leading from the ledge to the ground, before she began moving briskly towards the town. "Marcus, with me. Roxy and Elanor, check out the building."
Marcus glanced at the others before running after her.
'What the hell is this place?' he thought to himself. 'I've never seen it before, never in the dreams.'
As the thought crossed his mind, a small spark of hope ignited in his heart, but he quickly crushed it, not willing to give himself into any delusions.
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"This place gives me the creeps. It always feels like I'm being watched."
"Me too. Be glad they aren't sending us down into those places."
He shuddered. "I don't want to think of it."
The two men, one blonde haired and one brown haired, stared down at the stairs that led to the maze underfoot, where their search was being conducted. Sounds of the search could be heard from below.
Screams of the tortured covered the distance impossibly easily. This was the fate of those taken, forced to work under threat of violence.
"Why are you just standing around?"
The two jumped at the sudden voice, and hastily turned around.
"Didn't I order you to find that parasite?"
"Y-yes sir. Sorry, sir," the two men stammered.
The man was dressed in a black suit, covered with dirt and specks of blood. On his right hand, his fingers were adorned with various rings.
His blue eyes were terrifying, clearly emitting the deadly determination he held inside.
"Get a move on. We need these people, so I don't intend to fail them," he said as he walked past them, rolling his sleeves up as he began descending the stairs.
"Soon, father," he muttered to himself, violently clawing at his bearded chin. "Soon I'll avenge that night."
The two men waited for him to leave before they started talking again.
"I'd forgotten about that thing. Honestly, compared to this parasite, it's probably like heaven down there."
"Seriously? Have you heard those screams down there? How can you think that?"
The blonde man fidgeted with his cadmium combat robes, a generous gift granted in bulk to the syndicate. "That thing... the parasite. Just the thought gives me the creeps, sends a shiver down my spine. Plus, the screams are from those runts in the village, right? No problem of mine what the others put them through."
The brown haired man snorted. "You're seriously scared of some bug?"
"It's not 'some bug.' It's a parasite, something that goes in you and feeds off you until you die."
"So just put it in some jar or something, don't put it inside you," the brown haired man interrupted.
"Anyway, it's not even just a parasite. It's meant to be the legendary parasite of the spider king. I'll simplify it for your idiot brain. It's incredibly dangerous, and is just as scary as it is dangerous."
"Spider king," he scoffed.
"You, you do know where you are, right? A place that is part of that legend, that shouldn't exist. Mean anything to you?" The blonde haired man asked with a tone of confusion.
"Whatever. Come on, let's look for this stupid thing."