We can't get the door open.
We can't leave Iko's home, because we're surrounded by desert. We have no idea which direction to go.
Plato assures us that there's only one path we can take.
And it's a prettty fucking obvious path.
The hole.
The hole is perfectly round, as holes usually aren't. The hole protrudes maybe two feet out of the sand. The hole leads almost straight down - but the sunlight, the copious, brutal sunlight, betrays the presence of a soft, curved path at the bottom. But the hole won't allow you to see any further than that.
Celine was the first person brave enough to enter the hole. Especially brave, as she left her ninja back at the Dauphine. She discovered that the hole leads to a sandy, stable tunnel, just tall enough that we can walk upright. It is, she says, a bland tunnel - but it has a curious property.
"I walked for maybe ten minutes," she said. "Did you time me?"
Her brother nodded. "Yep. I'd say ten is right. Find anything?"
"No," she admitted, but the quirk of a smile on her face suggested otherwise. "Nothing... tangible. But there's something odd about it regardless. As I said, I walked for ten minutes before turning around."
"No," Logan corrected, "you must've turned around after five."
Celine shook her head. "I walked for ten, into the tunnel. When I turned around I arrived back at the surface within a minute."
"Bullshit," Grylock insisted. He coughed and sneered. "You lost track've yerself, is all. Watch."
Horking up a big glob of yellowy spittle on the sand, Grylock hopped into the hole and began to walk. He remained below for roughly five minutes before reappearing, his eyebrows raised.
"Well, piss all over me." He clambered back up, eyebrows raised. "That's a mite peculiar, innit?"
I didn't want to enter that hole. It gives me the same sense of dread as the hole back in the castle. It promises answers, and I'm not so sure I want those answers anymore. But now... now that we've come so far...
The hole.
After making one final sweep of Iko's house and finding nothing of interest - dude really likes his philosophy books - we packed our things, stocked up from Iko's liberal stores, and dropped one-by-one into the hole. And now, lanterns at the ready, we walk.
And walk.
And walk.
And if Iko's words are truthful, I think we'll come across the remains of a city at some point. Wouldn't be the first underground ruins I've come across, but... that doesn't make 'em any less eerie.
...
Why are there so many underground cities...?
Sincerely,
Dragomir the Wanderer
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