For some time, grieving moans accompanied our steps as we journeyed deeper into the mountain. Gradually, though, we came across fewer and fewer visitors. The tombs and crypts grew emptier, the piles of human waste less frequent, older, and crustier.
Deeper we delved. The shadows between the sconces grew, until Mother took one of the last torches off the wall. The light surrounded us, then; but fear, in all its forms and flavors, refused to leave me that night. It would only mutate, and grow. My fear of that which I could see and smell was replaced by terror of the forsaken darkness ahead.
I wanted to speak. With each step we took, I wanted to say something, but I could not. My mouth, like my heart and like my soul, was stifled from fright. One foot in front of the other was all I could manage. Even that proved a fragile act.
An updraft swept up from the mountain’s belly and almost snuffed our torch. The flame returned, but my balance was less resilient. I slipped, shrieking “Mama!” as I slid on the cold, wet stone steps, and tumbled painfully down the mountain’s putrid throat.
The darkness swallowed me as the distance between me and my mother grew. Her flickering flame spun over my vision as I fell, its occasional appearance the only semblance of safety. My scream reverberated and seemed to swell in volume, shooting an itchy, burning wave of horror into my veins.
I could not fathom what might happen. At that age, I had no real appreciation for death—nor could I conceive of the many things worse than death.
I tumbled down in a series of bruising thuds before slamming face-first into cold rock. Pain left me weeping. I could not see the floor, but from all that I had seen—and smelled—so far, I knew I had to get my face off the ground. Forcing myself to roll onto my back, I continued to cry as my mother's flame rushed into view.
“Jularra,” she rasped, brushing hair from my face. She looked me over as if she had dropped an expensive vase rather than her only daughter. “Are you all right?”
I found myself unable to respond. Her own cheeks streaked with tears, Mother cupped my face and leaned over me.
“You’re not injured,” she said. “Good.”
I closed my eyes, my battered body demanding more time to recover. Only when my bruises stopped screaming at me did I begin to get a sense of the new chamber's size.
The muscles around my ears twitched, sending prickles up the sides of my head in response to the smooth, high-pitched whistles starting to float up and around the chamber. The sounds were delicate. Unnerving. My desire to survive and take stock of what I had fallen into overcame my pain. My eyelids crept open.
I stared up into a cavity of astonishing scale and design. The towering ceiling was lost in darkness and guarded by a sea of hanging stalactites. Each of the countless spikes was unique, but together they formed an imposing pattern. Scenes of Acorilan—my country’s shadows, its secrets, and its nightmares—were meticulously chipped and cut into every drooping ornament. Tales of ancient knowledge and long-lost practices unfolded across the faces of the many teeth high above; water that had filtered its way through the mountain moistened each of the land’s fears and regrets, and dripped down onto the floor as if the room was salivating.
Teeth were exactly what the stalactites resembled to my naive eye, far below. And were it not for the unexpected movement on the ground, I might have been driven mad by the thought of being consumed by the mountain.
Something shifted, and an unnatural crimson light nearby was disturbed. My eyes panned down from the ceiling. At first, all I could see was an intricately carved face, set deep into a recess in the wall. A black hole in place of its mouth looked big enough to slide a body into. But just as I began to identify additional carvings of what appeared to be depictions of rituals and invocations, a figure began to take shape.
Nearby, another started to appear in front of its own recess. Two others emerged from the darkness opposite. I stood petrified, waiting for them to launch from their little alcoves and transform into horrifying forms that would tear at my flesh and quench their thirst for my soul.
But the specters remained. They stood in front of their tombs—before the holes their bodies were placed into, and forgotten, years before. The sounds continued as they turned their gazes on me, and on my mother.
I did not know why they looked to us. I did not want to know. The haunting sounds that accompanied their arrival plummeted into grotesque bass bellows. As the four fully-realized female apparitions assumed their complete shape, a new, discordant drone poured slowly into the chamber. I closed my eyes and begged one more time.
“Mama, please.”
Mother squeezed my hand. As she did, a hissing, sliding tone floated out from amid the drone. Something was near. Something old.
Once again, survival became curiosity. I had to see.
I registered only the flame of my mother’s torch before catching sight of something else behind her. My pain fled as I clamored for my mother and clawed up against her chest in fright. She wrapped her arm around me. It was then that I felt her trembling, and upon feeling her fear, I wet myself.
“It’s almost over,” I heard her say. But her nebulous promise of an ending only terrified me further. I began to shake.
Further down the chamber, past the four figures, hovered something that resembled a human. But where a human figure would normally be defined, there were instead thin outlines of flowing ooze. The translucent shape changed and flowed randomly as it
