Change: New World

Secret of the Passage

The further we traveled, the darker the surroundings seemed to get. The air, which was already stale to begin with, seemed to suffocate you with every breath you take, its dry tendrils snaking its way around around us, causing our throats to quiver while our lips cracked. Each step was as loud as thunder, enhanced only by the contrasting silence around us. The echoing of our breathing too, sounded a lot like demons howling in the night, ready to jump out and attack at a moment’s notice.

Of course, in all likelihood, these varying sensations were merely figments of our overactive imagination. Fantasies molded through the tension and ensuing caution we currently draped ourselves with. No realer than the cartoons on a television screen.

Well, the other possibility that these sensations were in fact real and concrete was quite possible too, but I pushed such a depressing thought out of my mind even before we entered the passageway.

Like I’ve confirmed before hand, there were no living things within the passage. The deeper we went, the more I ascertained this conclusion. [Sensory Remapping], my all purpose detection skill, did not catch anything, save for our own breathing and thumping heartbeats. Unfortunately, this sort of conclusion only served to further enhance my paranoia, rather than relax it.

To me, there was no such thing as a place with no monsters within this school. If there weren’t any monsters, then either one, they all died already, or two, you simply weren’t looking hard enough.

I kept this thought mainly to myself, as we progressed further. For 5, maybe 10 minutes, we’ve walked non stop, never stopping our light tread deeper into the ‘tunnel’. Along the way, I noticed a few things.

One, the path was uniform. A 6 feet wide, 8 feet tall passageway that never sloped downwards, nor ascended upwards. Always straight, and in one direction with no signs of ever shifting. If you were to ask what direction, then I’d answer back with west. From the looks of it, this passageway was traversing all across the school, possibly with the old school building, or maybe beyond that as its final destination.

The other thing I noticed, were the support beams. They started appearing after we reached the 500 feet mark of our travel. Long, wooden beams that were embedded and spanned the entire length of the dirt covered walls and its ceilings, all each spaced out about 10 feet away from each other. Looking at it from a passerby’s point of view, these beams could easily be mistaken for the support beams found in an abandoned mine cave.

For all I know, these beams were from an abandoned mine cave. This whole passage way could very well be the entrance to an abandoned mine cave. Of course, I had no way of either confirming or denying this possibility.

Aside from these support beams, no sign of life, monster or otherwise, was present. At least it stayed that way for a majority of our trip.

As we continued walking, I heard a faint intake of breath from behind me. I turned back around, only to see Hina’s expression shift. Her eyes slightly widened, as her face twisted into that of realization. From behind her, Cielle and Cher had also noticed, as they too stared directly at her, Cielle going so far as to shine the beam of light from the flashlight onto Hina’s face.

Noticing all the attention directed at her, she scrunched up her face in a show of awkwardness, before she arbitrarily coughed.

“What’s wrong?” I was quick to question, as I halted my footsteps in mid stride.

“Ah, no, nothing’s wrong it’s just that… I finally realized what this place was.” She replied back, a hint of pride etched in her voice.

Upon hearing her, I reflexively raised a brow as I spoke. “Really? Then what is this place?”

Coughing once more, she immediately replied. “Well, if my guesses hold true, then this passageway should lead directly towards the old bomb shelter located in the old school building.”

“The bomb shelter?” This time, it was Cher who mimicked, seemingly having caught interest in our conversation.

“Umu.” Hina nodded. “Look at these support beams.” She pointed to a nearby wooden pole that directly stood besides the dirt wall. Almost immediately after, a ray of light shined over onto the indicated pole, completely exposing that one spot on the wall in all its splendor.

“If you look closely, the beams over here are still fairly new. No sign of decay or rot, which indicates that this tunnel was newly created. And this coincides with the fact that the new bomb shelter was just recently built as well.

Too add to that, the direction this passageway is heading towards, plus the level of elevation the passageway is at, honestly this is the only conclusion I can think off.”

As I heard her words, I subconsciously nodded. In fact, I never once played with the possibility that this passageway connected with another bomb shelter. Truth be told, aside from the floor I contained myself in, I’ve only ever briefly explored the lower sections of the old school building. In actuality, I had forgotten about the existence of the old school building’s bomb shelter.

“Why would they build a passageway that connects with the old bomb shelter?” I asked.

Hina casually shrugged in the process. “Plenty of reasons… Most likely to accommodate the amount of students in case of an emergency. One shelter simply isn’t enough to keep hold of thousands of kids plus staff. They were probably planning on remodeling the old bomb shelter, and it would be rather inconvenient if the bomb shelters were separated with no access between either one of them.

Although, going by how shoddy the work on this tunnel is, I don’t think they ever really finished. They must have ran out of funding along the process… which isn’t really all that surprising, considering how many new renovations the school had recently, like the new swimming pools, and the observatory...”

Hina was quite informative regarding this matter. Although I could guess that most of her information came from her childhood friend. After all, a person on the student council would obviously have access to the budgets and purchases made by the school.

“Anyways, they probably abandoned the project halfway through and decided instead to cover up the passageway with a door and some terrible paint job.” She continued while sighing in exasperation.

“...” I contemplated this information for a moment. If what she said was true, then sooner or later, we’d end up underneath the old school building once again. As this thought entered my mind, I couldn’t help but gaze off into the darkness, still uneasy at what lay at the other end.

From behind me, the sound of shuffling footsteps could be heard. Hina had once again resumed her trod forward, seemingly having closed the subject on her own accord. “Well, in the end, we won’t know for sure until we check things out with our own eyes…”

With those receding words, I turned back around to stare at the passage in front of me. Before I had even noticed, my legs once again moved, propelling me forward into the darkness.

****

After minutes of nonstop walking, something finally changed.

The musky atmosphere created by my restless imagination, seemingly came to life. I was certain, positive, that the temperature had inexplicably increased. It wasn’t to the extent where it became unbearable, but to the level where a dry sweat was starting to form on my forehead. My throat this time really did quiver from thirst, and my lips really did crack from the heat though.

It was like being in a oven on low heat. A temperature hot enough to cause an unpleasant sweat to form.

I was the first to notice this, since I regularly shifted my perception using [Sensory Remapping]. I was using this method of shifting senses as an early warning detection system in case something dangerous were to pop out. When I inexplicably augmented my sense of temperature, the first thing I noticed was the gust of heat. The others still hadn’t noticed, but they had already begun to unconsciously sweat.

After warning the others about my discovery, we proceeded forward, this time with excess caution in our stride.

It wasn’t long before something else interrupted us.I was once again the first to notice, since, after all, I was the one at the front and I was also the first one to see ‘it’.

As I looked downwards, towards the barren dirt floor, a voice from behind interrupted my silent brooding.

“What’s wrong?” It was Hina again. Her face was scrunched in slight worry as she looked towards me. “Why did you sto-”

She peered over my shoulders, only to quickly halt her own words. As she looked onward at the same thing that had caught my attention, her eyes widened from surprise while she too locked eyes with the oddity on the floor. While the two of us marveled at the object beneath our feet, the others had already gathered and were now also staring at ‘it’ with the same level of fascination.

“That’s a…”

“There’s nothing else quite as similar….”

“Yeah, without a doubt…”

“...It’s a Gila headpiece.” I finally managed to choke out the words as my eyes persisted its silent stare down.

Before us, was an ominous looking piece of obsidian. It resembled the head gear that adorned the Gila’s faces, but this one was twice as big, with protrusions sticking out at the side of the head. There were traces of dried green blood on its outer edges, while the floor beneath had obvious signs of corrosion.

Additionally, a few sections of the headgear looked as if it had been corroded or maybe melted off. On top of that, behind the head, on the floor that led deeper into the passage, were drag marks. They were a little faint due to the collected dust, but they were quite distinct in their own right. From the looks of things, the owner of the head piece definitely put up some form of resistance.

Without a doubt, it was from a Gila.

“[Identify!]”