Dante II
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
Primordial love and ultimate intellect.
—Canto Third
There was a sudden jolt as the flare struck Buffy’s knee. She raised the light high, the hissing stick throwing harsh green light throughout the chamber.
“Bugger me,” Spike whistled, stepping forward, looking up. The chamber was vast, stretching hundreds of meters high, into the darkness. It widened out from the relatively narrow wall-blocked cave entrance to an enormous amphitheater of rough hewn stone, stained green by the light of the flare.
“We’ll admire later,” was Buffy’s simple response, starting forward. She stopped as her foot crunched into something unpleasant. She waited a heartbeat, weighing whether or not she wanted to look down. When her foot refused to come free, however, she gave in.
Buffy made a sound of disgust as she shook her foot free from the man’s rib cage. She had expected bones, but the corpses that littered the floor of this place, in and amongst the stones and cobbles, were barely decomposed. Dried, but still retaining that fresh crunch.
“Our predecessors, I take it,” Spike said, his lip curling as he squatted to examine the remains. “Cheerful,” he muttered, noting the expensive cloth the man had been adorned in. He had worn a feathered headdress and golden talismans hung heavy from his shriveled neck. There was a dried wooden club, clasped in his dried boney fingers, small stony nobs protruding from its end.
“L-look at this,” Willow was standing near another fallen hero. “He was like a knight or a conquistador or something.” The man wore a prominent steel helmet with high feathers, still intact, though dusty. His once shiny, form fitting breastplate was now covered in dust and ash. He held a long steel sword in his hand, his wrinkled face contorted in anguish.
“What do you think killed them?” Spike muttered, standing, wiping the ever-present grime from his hands.
“I’d venture a guess it wasn’t smallpox,” Buffy started forwards again, placing her feet carefully between the bodies of several more Spaniards, Mayans, Navajo warriors and all manner of random tomb raiders. “Wonder how they got in here,” she said, half to herself as she tried to focus her eyes on the rear wall, if there was one.
“There were no other holes in the wall when we got here,” Willow added. She almost chuckled, turning around, “unless the wall can, like, heal itself or-” She stopped, blinking at the flawless surface that was the wall from which they had just emerged. “Oh, I see.”
“Hey, guys, look at this,” Buffy was peering down a shaft cut into the cave floor, obviously by the designers of this entire assembly. “There’re more bodies down here.” She stepped out over the shaft and dropped down.
“Hey, wait for us,” Spike sprinted to the shaft, his feet clanging and crunching along the way. He too dropped down out of sight. The light was now emanating entirely from the lower level, stabbing up into the darkness like a pillar of green stone.
Willow stepped carefully from stone to stone, finding her footing where there were none to stop her. She looked down into the shaft, seeing that it was more like a hatchway to the floor below.
“Come on Will,” Buffy appeared below. “It’s only a ten foot drop or so,” and she began to walk down what was apparently a corridor of some kind.
“Come on Will,” Willow echoed, “the drop only killed half a dozen of the world’s bravest,” she sighed and sat on the edge, dangling her feet, then sliding down onto her belly. Finally, hanging on by only her hands, she dropped into the hole.
It was more like a fifteen foot drop, she thought as she collapsed onto the stone floor, wincing as bruises began to form. Nothing but a high ceiling would do for a service corridor in hell. Buffy was right. There were more bodies down here.
Willow sprinted to catch up to the other two, and their light, noticing the progressive ages of the heros become victims as she passed. They said nothing as they approached the end of the corridor. There was a single man laying there, his body preserved in the dry anaerobic environment for what must have been thousands of years. The corridor ended in a broad, high ceilinged stair, leading down. The man lay on his side, his Clovis spear gripped firmly in one hand, his other resting lightly on the wall. He had had no light for his venture. His torch had burned out quickly. He had felt his way into this darkness to confront whatever nightmare had made his women infertile and his herds scarce. His thick hairy brow jutted prominently below his thick matted hairline, his black locks spilling down his back and shoulders, covering his torso as effectively as his simple loin cloth did his waist.
“Poor guy,” Willow murmured, sympathetically. Buffy, however, gave him less than a glance before hardening her resolve, setting her jaw and starting down the stairs. They were shallow but wide, as if designed for legs longer than those of humans.
Just as Spike and Willow started after her, the sizzling of the flare died down and with a small pop, went out.
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