The Four Swords

Prologue

Darkness.

Darkness consumed all.

Then a pale light started to push forth, sending the darkness screaming into the cracks and shadows of the rock walls.  A small head torch rounds a corner in the small, tight passageway, bobbing up and down with its wearer's movements and hiding its wearer from view as the two crawl through a tunnel carved in the rock.  The light continues forward and soon comes to a crossroads and stops.  The light that spills forth floods the floor, and two small and delicate hands enter its beam, pale skin and ring less the hands begin their search.  The rocky floor is smooth from the years and passage of water, but still a man made mark can be found worked deep into the living rock.  The mark is found at the entrance to the new passage to the left, and taking this new tunnel the light starts its journey again.

Two more crossroads are dealt with in the same manner, the light always taking the marked passageway over the others. Finally, the light finds its reward in the form of a cavern large enough for its companion to stand again.  The cavern seems huge in the darkness, the small light not quite reaching the far wall. 

A hand glides over the surface of one of the flat, glass-like walls, and stops upon finding a fine carving, so fine it can hardly be seen in the light of the torch.  Closer inspection shows it to be writing, ancient Latin from what the person can make out, and users those small fingers to spell out two words.

"The four," the person translates, breathing the words out softly with a female voice.

Once more the light moves as the woman looks about the room, and a glint of a reflection catches her eye.  She moves deeper into the large cavern, slowly moving towards its centre, and the object that had caught her attention.

A frame work of a pyramid comes out of the gloom, its four sides glinting a brilliant silver in the torch light, but the closer she gets, the truth of the object is finally revealed.  With a gasp she looks on, now frozen to the spot.

Four swords, joined at their tips, rest on a stone pedestal.  Each sword unique in design and looking as sharp as the day they had been made.

She is attracted to one slightly more than the others, but as she attempts to get closer, the head torch fails.

Darkness waists no time in its attack, claiming back the hidden prize and woman within its solid confines, darkness so complete she can not tell if her eyes are open or closed, for the first time she feels the chill of the rock cavern and knows the silence that surrounds her.   She stumbles to find the exit and slips, the fall is short, and as she hits the floor she wakes up.

Johanna Lin looked about her tent, then at her broken hammock, but the image of the swords stayed fixed in her mind as if they called to her.

"Now that would be a true find," she said to herself as she picked herself up off the floor.

She dusted her nightshirt down and then stretched, the pale light of dawn leaking into her tent.

"Time I was up anyway, better see if Greg can fix you though, not the best way to be woken." she said to her broken bed.

Grabbing her towel she left the tent to get freshened up, ready for another long day on the dig.