"Fuck'n shit... I forgot about the gauntlets again..." I mumbled. Without even sparing a glance for danger, I stood-up and started to take inventory of myself and all the gear and phantasmagorical crap-ola I had accumulated over the course of ___ish days-if they even counted as days. I felt like I had been sedated and shoved into a can of stewed-tomatoes. Correction: stewed socks. Each 'morning' I was becoming more sure that 'breast-plate' was a cruel misnomer. Metal chest-pieces are no friend to your boobs. They had managed to wedge themselves together on one-side, with lefty tucked a little-bit under righty and righty trying to slither over my clavicle. I bounced half-heartedly on the balls of my feet and shifted the armor back-and-forth until they settled back into their respective metal depressions. Remembering my katana, I hurriedly scanned the ground to make sure it had come with me; tt was laying unsheathed one ledge down, maybe a meter below me. As I picked it up again, I felt self-conscious of the fact that straightening my boobs had been more important than defending myself against attackers. My [helmet] was nearby. I stowed it in my armpit and picked at a tangle in my hair.
What I mistook for a boulder was just one of hundreds. Huge blocks and slabs of rough-cut limestone as big as entire rooms covered the place, stacked snug and uneven together in a sort of stone-age amphitheater that sloped downward toward some sort of light-source. Unlike any stadium I had seen, there was not any hint of regular tiers. In many places, the stones were so poorly matched vertically that one would be standing five feet taller than its cohorts. In other places, there were deeply sunken blocks and suspicious over-hangs. At any moment, I was expecting some talking lizard or other trippy-ass creature to leap-out from a shadowy place or push through a crack. Yet, the patchwork of stones seemed, itself, to be a quilt: the seams between the stones were surprisingly regular and not much wider than the tang of my blade. I would have marveled at how they all fit together as near-rectangles or how their worn edges spoke of ancient wear; yet, my toes were cold. I scrambled back onto my rock to shove them back into the smelly dung-colored socks that ___ gave me. Rifling through my bag, I started to get that creeped-upon feeling, again. Paranoia is the mother of defensive pessimism. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that something was glowing below but I was working hard not to acknowledge it directly. I busied myself finding a good hiding place to jam my boots on again. As I scanned the room, I noticed a number of towering black pillars. I could not, as hard as I squinted, figure-out what they were made of but they looked irregular, like fossilized trees covered in black bear-skin rugs. Then again, the room was so dimly lit that everything had a furriness to it.
Spying a cleft, I galloped over about a dozen stones and plopped with a dull 'clink' into the space, hidden with my back to the center of the room. I tried to shove out of my mind any notion that someone (or thing) might have seen me dart that way and was quietly stalking over to pounce on me. My morning haze was just beginning to clear when I realized that my [helmet] was not in the sack where I had hoped. I took it out of my armpit when I was digging through the sack. Picking at another tangle in my hair, I nestled back into that cold, sweaty feeling-trying to think of a good reason I should not pop out of my cleft and get it. It felt appropriate, in the interest of procrastination, to take a look at the ceiling. It was not what I had expected. Above me I saw a neat lattice work of curving rafters bleached much whiter than the elephant grey of the limestone. They met and crossed each other to form vaguely Celtic patterns: wedges with curved sides, half-moons, squashed-in triangles, curving talons. When I looked harder, I could see neat little scallops and grooves cut into them. I had not even thought about what kind of people would build such a place before that moment, let alone how they could do it. I could tell that there were designs in the spaces between the rafters but all I could gleam were a irregular smears of blue-ish purple punctuated by blackish-blue and specks of violet. It was hopless. I stuck my head up for a moment to see if I could catch a glimpse of the back wall. The dim gleam from whatever-that-light-was did not seem to reach. With time, my eyes might have adjusted but the longer I exposed my head the more I missed the helmet.
Finally, I surfaced from my hiding-place like a deranged meerkat. I zeroed in on the helmet, grabbed it as I ran by and found the next available cleft.
"[being a big-girl]" (it's getting late, John)
I noticed that the columns were arranged in a series of concentric circles and that there were not more than about a dozen (thirteen, I learned later) in each ring. The light itself was actually coming from behind the final series of columns, so it had to be much brighter than I could have known. I also noticed that the ceiling sloped downward at a shallower angle, so that it became higher as the light become brighter and I still could not tell what lay between the rafters. As the columns in each ring came closer together, so did the rings. I passed through five rings of columns before the floor flattened. I was still in such awe of the shear scale of this place, climbing from one block to the next, I did not notice the chasm between the irregular blocks I had been scaling and the perfectly circular platform surrounding the final three column rings. It startled me to see that enormous ring of black and empty space-it could have been 250 meters in circumference. Worse, it looked to be more than two meters across, which is a long way to fly, anyway, without being covered in metal plates. Peering over the edge, I set the sack down and looked for a small stone to drop to the bottom so I could tell how afraid I should be to jump over it. There was none-not even one, loose rock.
"That seems like my kind of luck;" I said to the hole. "I can't find a rock in a room made of stone." But I had promised myself that I would be a big-girl about this and see it through to its conclusion. I removed my gauntlets and placed them in the sack, then tightened the drawstring and tied a double-knot. Taking it by the end of its rope, I swung the bag around twice and held my breath, heaving it with all my might toward my destination. It landed with an obnoxious thud that echoed several times.
"Here comes the next of BJ's henchmen..." I jested to myself, "you know where to find me, boyfriend, so bring it on...". I flung my helmet defiantly and listened to its shallow "tink" rebounding off the pictures I couldn't see. "Nothing to lose," I said, cracking a smile and backing-up for my jump attempt. Suddenly, I noticed my leggings and how heavy they would be run in. I chucked them. "Clang" "Clang" (clang. clang. clang. clang. clang. clang. clang. clang). I thought about throwing the katana but I noticed that there were still quite a few dark clefts around.
This was it. I was going to take that final leap of faith. I knew I needed to just do it and yet I could not just take that jump. I jogged to the chasm, back-pedaled, jogged to the chasm, back-pedaled. I ran in a few circles to get warmed-up. Then, I set-off at a dead run and just as I was about to lift-off I dug in my heels and fell backwards. It had just hit me, all at once, that no matter how much of a big-girl I tried to be, I could barely jump that distance without anything weighing me down at all. I would need to strip down almost naked to make that jump. At least, almost naked in terms of having to throw my armor over there before myself. Then, I heard what I swear was the sound of a heavy door closing. Without another thought, I got to my feet, backed-up a couple meters, and sprinted toward the edge of the chasm grunting. I jumped with all my might and hit the side of the platform with a dull thump and fell about three meters into a moat about another meter deep.
I was cold. I was wet. I was smiling much bigger than I had in years. I could have been dead or falling down to hell and instead I was only waist-deep in water. Not only that, but I was able to see the bridges much better from below. Yes, there were bridges: they were narrow, black, far-apart and set well-below the edge of both sides. Nonetheless, I waded over to one and found a ladder next to it.
The central platform was made of better stuff. It was all made of smooth, semi-glossy marble in the same shapes as the spaces between the rafters: moons, talons, perfect curves; the color of the tiles reminded me of the whole room put together: bluish purples, creamy grays, deep blue-blacks. I went up to the first pillar I saw and touched it. It was, indeed, like a bear-rug but petrified.
I tarried there behind the column for a while, anxious. Nervous might be an even better word. I gazed for a while at the beams of high-frequency light streaming away toward the outer walls that were no longer in site. I hugged the pillar, pushing my breastplate lovingly against it in search of some sense of security. I undid my bag and grabbed the helmet and gauntlets. I figured I would just leave the rest there and hope... well, just hope.
Almost casually, I drew the katana and snaked my way between the staggered rows of pillars. [ ]
My first impression was that a shining sword was passing through the middle of the floor and touching the ceiling.