Chapter 24: Keltrians

~~ Delta - June/03 - (Earth - Dec/2095) ~~

The cave system we were exploring was extensive.

I’d become fascinated with it. Learning that my great-grandfather had gone missing exploring a cave system at Mt Mulu in Malaysia, explained my fascination with caves.

My mother had found a picture of him, and I was amazed by just how much like him I was, I even had his eyes. I had also inherited his ability to build things. I wasn’t sure where my fascination with reptiles came from.

When I asked my mother, she suspected it was a little closer to home as my father had loved taking her to the Zoo and his favourite sections were the reptiles and snakes. I was satisfied with this explanation.

I still wished I knew where he had ended up. For some reason, I didn’t believe he was dead. He had gone missing when his ship had jumped, but it never came out of the warp in our space or our time. I hope he ended up somewhere as exciting as where I now lived.

James and I had been wandering down a new passage in our system. We were a fair way down. I mentioned that I could smell a faint smell of sulphur. We came to a passage that split, and I wanted to go to the right.

It was narrower than the central passage, but I felt drawn in that direction. James decided to humour me, so we went that way. The passageway twisted several times, and the height of the route dropped, as did the floor.

I guess we went down at least another twenty metres when we were halted by a blank wall. Something about the wall was odd, and I touched it on one side. I felt a tingling in my fingers, and part of the wall slid back and then turned in the centre to give us access to the passage beyond.

I’m not sure who was more shocked. James, Kale and Arnett all gasped when they realised, I had opened a Wizards chamber. As far as we knew, the only chamber on this planet was on Watson Island.

James and I lifted our wands, increased the brightness and entered. We followed the passage for about 20m. We could see the light coming from the other end. This had us intrigued, as we were deep under the mountain.

We then entered into a vast chamber. The ceiling must have been at least 16m above us, and the room was at the very least 40m across. It was shaped like a spherical cap. We looked up at the ceiling. It was smothered in crystals. They were very bright, as was the room.

We approached the dais in the centre. We knew most of the other transporter rings here, were about 3m in diameter, but this one was closer to 5m in diameter. Back closer to the rounded walls were the six curved bunged pits that contained slow bubbling lava. The room was warm but not hot.

We felt air movement and guessed that it was why the smell of sulphur wasn’t as strong as it could have been. I also detected spells, but it was as if they were not as strong as they once were. I believed time had taken its toll on them. Five other passages led off from this chamber, dividing it into six equal segments.

James marked the one we had entered through to make sure we got out the same way. We decided to go clockwise and moved to the door on our left. We noticed it has a large opal embedded over the doorway.

I was curious, so I walked to the next and found a topaz. I walked back to the door we had entered through and found no gem over the door just a strip of silvery metal in a wave pattern with three crests and four troughs.

I walked past to the next door, and this door had a diamond over it. For some reason, I wanted to go in there. So, I called the others over, and I found the mechanism to open the door. We entered a 3m square corridor that was about 20m long. It then opened into a new chamber.

The ceiling lit up as we entered. I thought it was about 30m wide and about 50m long, but it was hard to tell. There was so much crap in this room. I couldn’t see the back wall properly. I think the four of us just stood there gobsmacked for several minutes.

I then giggled, “Shit, Lee’s people are going to go nuts when they see this stuff.”

James nodded in agreement. We wandered around, looking at all the items. “I don’t think this stuff is from Earth James, it has an alien look to it,” I said. I did get the impression it was someone’s worldly goods.

While some of the items had a familiar look, like tables and chairs, cupboards, vases and chests of who knew what, the styles were not familiar. I couldn’t relate them to any era I could think of on Earth. It was all just subtly off.

A lot of the materials used made me think of a form of a metallic plastic. Some items had a more natural grain type finish, but they too were not quite right. The trees or plants used must have been subtly different from the ones I knew.

One of the things I found interesting was the height of the furniture. For James and me, it was almost perfect. The previous owners must have been at least our height or even a little taller. The room looked like a storage room.

The furniture and other strange items were stacked up as if they had been dropped off here, while more was being collected. I also found a side entrance, and it led to what I would call a lounge room. Off this room were a large bedroom, a form of bathing room and a combined kitchen dining room.

I walked back into the lounge room. I came across a long desk against a wall. A pile of books sat on one side of the desk. Again, they had that, ‘I’ll put them here for now,’ feel about their placement. I felt that the owners had been in the middle of shifting house.

Beside the desk were four metallic boxes. The two smaller boxes sat on the larger ones. I was fascinated as they looked a bit like my mage’s box, but they were bigger. I felt a pull to one of the boxes and put my hands on the top of it. As I did, I wondered how it opened.

I whipped my hands back when I heard the clicking. ‘Oh shit,’ I thought. Then I felt as if a part of me was gone, that I had been deserted. My bling was gone I knew it was gone. “James,” I screamed out.

He came racing over to me, “What, what’s wrong?” he said as stopped beside me.

I looked at him in horror. “I’ve gone and dun-it now,” I said.

“What have you done my sweetling?” he asked.

I pointed at the box, “I didn’t mean to do it. I’m not even sure why I touched the box. Now my bling is gone, it’s gone,” I said and sobbed into my hands.

James wrapped his arms around me, “Silly girl, you’ve opened a wizard’s box. That’s why your bling is gone.”

I looked up at him, stepped back and wiped away the tears. “Why would Lee leave a wizard’s box here?” I asked sniffing.

James looked around the room. He said, “I don’t think Lee knows this chamber is here. I feel it’s shielded in some way. It feels different from her and Justin’s shields. It’s also very deep underground.”

“So how do I get my bling back?” I asked. It felt so weird, not wearing my bling. It was almost like I had an itch under skin but couldn’t decide where to scratch.

He looked at the box and grinned at me, “You don’t. You claimed the box, so it’s yours.”

“Oh no, no, no, I’m not a wizard, I’m just a mage,” I said, still in denial that I had opened a wizard’s box. I wasn’t like Justin or Alec or Kim, I wasn’t smart enough to be a wizard like they were.

Kale and Arnett just grinned at me, when what James had said, dawned on them.

James approached the box beside the one I had opened. He looked at it curiously. He placed his hands on the box like I had on the other box, and we all heard it ‘click’ when he said, “Open.”

He then turned and gave me a huge grin, “Well, it looks like we are both wizards now.”

Kale and Arnett looked between us. Kale said, “Wow, we going be servants to wizards, that is so cool.”

James opened the lid and looked in. I had to look too. “Well that makes sense,” he said.

“What?” I had to ask as I looked at him.

He grinned at me, “I’m your Apprentice.”

The other box seemed to be calling me, and I had to lift the lid. James looked in with me. “Shit!” he said.

I glanced at him and then back into the box. I lifted out the diadem. It was really lovely and reminded me of Sean’s, except his was one solid band of platinum. This one was three thinner strips of metals side by side in a more waved pattern in the centre just like the symbol over the door.

I felt they were all derivatives of platinum and the band was about 21mm wide. A large De Ray crystal was mounted in the centre, and three largish gems were mounted on each side like Sean’s. Mine, however, had the two in each band. A diamond, a ruby and an emerald were on one side, and a topaz, an opal and an amethyst were on the other.

I swallowed. Bloody hell! It was a Lord Wizard’s box. I looked at James and the faeries in shock. James smiled his love at me. Finally, he said, “Well, Lee did say you were an extraordinary magician.”

I put the diadem on and felt better. The feeling of being deserted was replaced with a sense of great happiness. I sighed in relief, and James and I put the rest of our new bling on.

We noticed the wand was a little longer than our old ones, but we didn’t think it would take much effort to get used to the new one. James’ bling was missing the Opal and the topaz but had pieces of malachite in place of the two other gems. His items were made of the same mixed metals as mine, but the bands were a little thinner.

I pulled out my crystal ball and thought of Lee. Her face appeared inside of it. “Trixy?” she inquired.

I grinned at her, “Hum, I think you might like to teleport to my location, Lee, I have something to show you.”

Lee looked at me with raised eyebrows, “Yes, I think you do, Lord Wizard Trixy.”

I had to laugh. The situation was just too surreal for me to do anything else. Lee and Sean appeared in the room beside us.

Lee shook her head at me, “Well, Trixy, this is certainly the trickiest thing that I could think of you pulling off.”

James and I just grinned at her and Sean. Lee and Sean looked around in amazement. We told them that we hadn’t looked at the other rooms yet. Lee asked me, “Trixy, can you feel the other boxes?”

I frowned, and then let my senses open to feel for them. “No,” I said. “I can’t feel any other boxes close by.” 

We went and looked in the other rooms, but while they had stuff in them, it was if the movers hadn’t finished the job in these rooms either. Some had more in them than others. “It’s like it was a last-minute decision to move here,” I said.

We couldn’t locate any other boxes. Lee said, “I think the Lord and his apprentice must have anchored their boxes here. Then whatever went wrong happened. The bling returned here, but the owners didn’t. The other Wizards must not have got a chance to anchor their boxes.”