My hometown is deep inside the stone chambers that are under this cursed mountain.
It is said that to get out, one must face the trials of the ancient ones and risk their life and the fate of the whole mountain.
If the ancient ones are displeased with the result, they will kill you, and the less they are pleased, the more damage your death will cause the mountain, meaning if enough people fail, the mountain will collapse and destroy all the chamber population.
The prophecy states that after the one with short hair, eyes of emptiness, and strength like one of the ancient. But my hair isn't short, I'm not strong, my hair is long and silky, and my eyes are filled with emotions.
I wake up to my mother calling me, "Airoh, your breakfast is ready". My mother calls for me from the kitchen.
I get up from my bed and get dressed, it's my usual black silk clothes, it's all we have in this small chamber, but I never found that troubling, they are quite comfortable and look good too.
I rush downstairs to eat the food my mother prepared, it's steamed mountain drip, she made my favorite. Mountain drip is a thing that grows out of the mountain, and it is very sweet.
"Morning, Mom, where are Leo and Lack?". Leo and Lack are my 2 smaller brothers, they are twins
" I believe they went out to gather herbs for the sheep. Oh dear, what have you done to your hair, your beautiful white hair? Come here, I'll brush it for you." She says, coming towards me with the brush.
"Well, I just didn't brush it yet myself, and I don't think it looks bad, all messy instead of brushed. Also, aren't the trials beginning again now? It is the seventeenth mountain glow this year." I wonder about wearing those white robes from the trials. Those white robes are the most beautiful clothes I have ever seen. They are the robes priests wear with golden lining and symbols of the ancients.
" I believe they already did, my dear. But may I ask why?" She asks with curiosity and fear in her eyes while she continues to brush my hair.
"Well, I was thinking about trying to apply," I said with carefulness and hesitation. "Also, watch your hand, you're pulling on my hair, and it hurts."
"You will absolutely not go to those trials, not now, not ever, do you understand me? Those trials can and will cause your death." She said with worry and concern.
God damn it, she never lets me do anything fun, always saying it's too dangerous. "Fine, relax, I won't go. Also, while you are brushing my hair, would you mind braiding it?"
"Why of course I will, darling." She braids my hair gently, doing it in the style I usually go around with.
I go out of the house to wander around the chamber to find a nice space to write and draw on. I usually just sit by the massive tree where the trials take place, but because of the trials happening today, I'll have to find a different spot.
I end up going to a random tree and just climb it and draw there.
I take out a sheet of raw stone. Raw stone is insanely thin; you can easily get cut by it, but it is the only good thing that we can write and draw on.
I draw myself in the robes of the trials, if they would truly look like that on me, then I would kill to get them, them, and the prophet cloth the prophet of our chamber wears, it's a long piece of gray and gold cloth wrapped around your eyes I do not know how but the silk is see through so it just looks really fucking cool.
I always dreamed of becoming a prophet and foretelling the future, also so I could wear the prophet's cloth.
I start drawing it, imagining in my head how I would look in those beautiful robes I always thought of if I were to go to the trials, that I would ask for a prophet's cloth. I try drawing myself in all the priestesses' robes and headwear, even though my favorite is the prophet's cloth. There are other ones, like the mask of the foreseen, which is a mask without any holes. I never knew how they breathe and see through it.
The mask is white with 4 golden lines on it, each one of a different length. There are also the claws of divinity, which are golden gloves with white claws and random lines, or that's what they look like at least.
I draw for hours until nightfall and then stuff the drawings in my bag.
On my way home, I see a dim light behind the massive tree that stands in the middle of the chamber. I go to it, it's the trials, turned out they haven't started yet. "Maybe I should go look at them, see what they're up to if they didn't start already."
There's a guard at the entrance. "Hello, why haven't the trials started yet its already nightfall
"The priests claim they need one more person. They need 20 people they only got 19 in there." He sighs with a tired voice.
"Why don't you do them?" I ask him.
"Believe me, if I could, I would got nothing else to do in this life but they claim I'm too old, only those who haven't yet grown into adulthood can take part in the trials." He sighs again. He looks tired of this world of his life. I wonder what made him like this.
"Could I participate? I'm only fifteen, so I'm plenty before adulthood." I ask him with the hope of being able to undergo the trials, completely forgetting about what my mother told me.
"Are you sure you want to, girl?"
"Absolutely, I always dreamed of going to the trials, and this is finally my chance." I talk fast, filled with excitement and anticipation.
"Well, if you are that sure, I suppose I can let you in," he opens the door for me, and I go inside.
I enter the building, and it's magnificent, it's the biggest building in the chamber, and the most beautiful one too. It's filled with silk looms and towering marble pillars with specks of gold. There is light in the room, but I do not know from where the floor has a beautiful design of black and white marble, and there are nineteen other people in there, around the same age as me, some even younger.
Two big, muscular men greet me when I enter the mansion. They guide me to a wardrobe where I am to choose a robe.
"Holy fuck, I'm living in my dreams right now, so many robes, so many options, which ones do I choose? All of them are so pretty, I didn't know there were so many options. I only knew we were getting priestesses' robes, we have the black robe for the priest of animals, who wears black to symbolize the darkness in most of them, we have the white of those who preach to the ancients, we have the gray that symbolizes the hope in our chamber, the robes just go on and on."
I ended up choosing the gray because I need the hope of the chamber, for it is only after I choose the gray and manage to convince the priests to get me a prophet's cloth that I realize what I had gotten myself into.
"These trials are extremely dangerous." The two men speak with powerful, intense voices inside the building; it seems as if their voices are making large booms.
When they speak, my body fills with the terror of the mistake I made by going there, the excitement of being able to have the chance of wearing the robes and cloth made me lose all common sense. Why, why did I not listen to my mother before I got fully dressed in the robes and placed the cloth on my eyes I almost squealed with excitement. How is it now? I just want to curl up into a ball and cry.
"There is a high chance you will die, we do not deny that. We do not know what is in those trials, but we can confirm that it is our only hope to survive this next year. You are our last and final hope, so be not afraid, be proud of yourselves that you have tried to save your fellow Silerkians, "they say with sadness in their eyes. Or wait, is that guilt they think they will be responsible for our deaths? They think it's our certain doom.
When they speak, I fill up with more terror and fear than I ever felt in my entire life. How is everyone here so come why am I the only one so afraid? I want to cry.
Once the two men finish their speech, which I didn't hear to the fullest because I was lost in my fear, I hear a sudden uproar in the room everyone is beating their chest and showing a face of courage which is only then when I realize everyone is as terrified as me that's why they did this uproar to encourage themselves and the rest so we will not drown in our own anxiety and fear of that which lies ahead of us.
Once I realize that I join the uproar, thinking only of the roars and screams of courage these fellow chamber members are screaming, I drown my fear and anxiety, and only think of the hope their screams give me.
After the uproar calms down, the two men tell us we will need to jump into a hole that seems to go on for an endless amount of distance, the bottom isn't even slightly visible.
Once they start jumping, anxiety fills the room. I try to focus on the screams from before and on my family, thinking that I will be able to free them and the rest of the chamber from this prison of a home.
I am the seventeenth to jump down the hole. The feeling is horrifying, I feel as if I will hit the ground any second and just splat on the ground, but then it feels as if I stopped mid-fall, and I dare look under me.
beneath my feet is a glowing blue platform. Something pushes me from behind and makes me stumble, but when I almost fall off the small platform, another one forms beneath me, and I try taking a step, and another one forms under my leg.
I wander around the endless abyss until suddenly I hear a loud voice which seems to echo itself multiple times as if multiple people were talking at the same time.
"Thou hast entered the trials, thy age is satisfactory for the trials start thee shalt now choose an armament which with you shalt fight in the trials and use to defend thyself."
Once the voice stops, a choice of weapons is presented to me. The weapons I get to choose from are a bow, a sword, a staff, a spear, and a pair of daggers.
"What am I supposed to choose? I never yielded anything close to a weapon, and now I'm supposed to fend for myself with one." I call out to the voices who spoke before.
"Thou may try out the armaments before making a final decision." The voices answer my questions, which I must say I did not expect.
I start trying out the weapons, starting with the daggers. They are not heavy and are easy to wield, however, I cannot manage to land a decent enough hit on the wooden log. They supply.
It turns out that cutting a log with a dagger is quite hard, so I move on to the sword, and I almost instantly move on because I can't even pick it up.
I move on to the staff next, and it has a beautiful design with two golden tips at each end, and there is a long golden line that is floating around the staff, and the staff itself has designs of what seem to be ancient letters, and I can't manage to read them.
The way you attack with the staff is with the long golden line that floats around it. You can change its form to make it something like a ball, and then swing it at enemies, but I couldn't really get anything better than the ball, so I just gave up.
The spear is a long weapon, and it's weird for me to use. I can't manage to keep being away from the enemy and always end up missing the edge of the spear I eventually manage, but it's way too hard for me to use, so I move over to the final weapon.
The final weapon is the bow, which take me a while to understand how to put the arrows the right way, but once I managed to place them on the string, my aim was decent. It took me some time to hit the log, but it is the weapon I managed to use the best, so I choose it.
"Hello, I chose a weapon. I wish to use the bow for the trials," I yell out to the voices.
"Very well, thee shalt now be transported to the trials." The voices answer my screams.
And right after they answer me, the platform beneath me disappears, and I fall again, screaming with surprise from the sudden fall and the fear of falling, but then I quickly start falling slower and slower until I reach the ground.
I land on a stone platform. I look around me, and the only way to continue is by moving forward. There are stairs that lead off the platform and to a mossy stone path.
On the path, there are a lot of rocks and the terrain is uneven, so I almost fall multiple times.
On the walls and ceiling are a lot of bugs and other creatures with long bodies and many legs, they absolutely terrify me. I try shooting one with my bow, hitting it on its long, disgusting body. When I hit it, it falls to the ground as a green ooze, which I can only guess is the creature's blood, but then the ooze starts enveloping the thing, and it transforms into a massive being.
The thing is made of the green ooze, making it look like a big slime monster. It has something of a human form, but far larger and thicker.
I run as fast as I possibly can away from that thing, but it's chasing after me, hunting me for hurting it. I stumble on one of the rocks that lie on the path and fall.
I quickly turn around, trying to grab my bow, but my hands are shaking. I end up just picking up a rock and throwing it at the thing. It fully envelopes the rock and grows even bigger.
"Help me, someone, please." I cry out in desperation, not knowing what to do, but nothing comes. The voices do not answer my plea. I am alone in here.
I try to crawl away, crying, I can hardly see, the tears are blocking my vision, and then I feel it, the disgusting green ooze, the monster has grabbed my leg.
I scream out in terror, and I try to escape, but its grasp is too strong, and then I get fully enveloped.