Minty groaned and rolled over onto her front. Everything hurt but nothing seemed to be broken. She sat up an slowly opened her eyes. A short way away from her Buffy was stirring.
"What happened?" Buffy gingerly explored a huge bump on the side of her head.
"I think we're inside the hill." As Minty's eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness she could make out a few things. They were inside a huge cavern inside the hill. It towered into the darkness. She could make out the faint outline of the hole they fell into. She looked about. In front of her something glimmered, faintly. She crawled towards it. It was water. She tasted it and spat it out. It tasted foul. She felt around the bank of the pool, it seemed to be perfectly round. It was also quite large. In the centre she could just make out a tall pillar of stone.
She crawled back to Buffy. "Are you OK?" she asked
"I think so, I've got a huge bump on my head though." She sat up. "OK, where are we, how did we get here, and how do we get out?" she fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a lighter. "I knew I'd have a use for this one day." With the meagre light from the lighter they looked around. They were in a sandstone cavern. It must have been 100 meters across. Buffy estimated that they had fallen the same distance. By rights they should have been dead, but they only suffered cuts and bruises.
They walked towards the centre of the cavern. There was a perfectly round pool and in the middle of that a perfectly round island with a standing stone on it. The stone was about 40 feet high. The water in the pool was stagnant and black, small bubbles popped on the surface.
The two girls walked back the way they came to get away from the smell. They paced the edge of the cavern. Set equal distance apart were seven 15 foot high arched double doors set into the cavern wall. In between the third door from where they stood and the fifth door and the seventh door there were three normal sided doors that were smaller replicas of the large doors. Around each door were long lines of runes and on the walls in between there were relief-carvings of animals and humans in long robes. They were beautifully detailed. In the middle of each door were two lines of runes the top set larger than the bottom.
"Pass me the lighter," Minty said. Buffy handed it to her. Minty stood on tiptoes to look at the runes closely. She ran her fingers over them. "I have seen these runes once before, in Tintagel." She ran her fingers over them again. "They're Celtic in style, and date back probably to the beginning of time. I think the top line reads - 'The Seven Burrows' - that would make sense, there are seven doors. Maybe they are burial tombs. I've never heard of anything like this so far north before." Buffy tried pushing one of the sandstone doors. It wouldn't budge. "They're probably on a runner or catch or something. We'd never move them."
"Yeah, but how do we get out?" Buffy looked up at where they fell in. "We couldn't jump that high."
Minty ignored her, something was pushing the edge of her consciousness, she turned and faced the standing Stone. She thought she could see flecks of silver shining through it. "This is a powerful place. But I don't think it is evil. Can't you feel the power?" she turned back to Buffy.
"I can feel something but I do not know what it is."
Minty turned back to the Stone. "This is a magical place. But something has shifted to let the evil it protects against out."
"How do you know this?" Buffy was confused.
"I don't know," Minty sighed. "But I know it is true." As she looked at the stone something appeared in front of it. It was very faint but it looked like a girl, no older than herself, dressed in a white robe of medieval style. There were white flowers in her hair and she held a silver staff in her hand. Her hair was white and it gathered in a pool around her feet. She was floating two feet off the ground. "Please help me," she mouthed. Two tears fell down her cheeks and she disappeared.
Minty stood frozen for a few moments. "Did you see that?" she asked Buffy staring at the spot where the ghost had been.
"Uh-huh." Buffy was staring at the Stone too. This was so different to fighting vampires and demons. She wasn't too sure what to do.
"Buffy? Minty?" a voice shouted down from above. It echoed around the cavern.
"We're OK!" Minty shouted back. She strained her eyes and saw three heads gathered around the hole high up in the shadows.
A rope slithered down the hole.
"Tie yourself to this." Giles shouted. "We'll pull you up one by one."
"You go first," Minty said to Buffy.
As Buffy was pulled out Minty turned back to the standing Stone. "We will help you." she said.
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