If the cold hadn’t frozen my ears, I would be able to hear the snow crunch beneath my boots. Each step unveiling the path in the blinding blizzard. White one white with more white that falls from the white sky holding white clouds. The only tell of day, the illuminated fog that comes with the wind. I walked with my hands placed in front of my face to block what wind I could, the cold easily sweeping past them. Following a rope tied by tether to my waist, the camp site gets closer with each step into the blinding arctic. Red from beyond the fog. The camp site just out of view. Holding the rope and pulling with my hands assisting my legs in traversing the snow, finally. I made it to the first check point.

 

A sigh of relief upon entering the tent set out for me. Peeling my thick clothes from my body and placing them on a table. Pulling from a spot within my jacket a notebook, inside a detailed explanation of my journey. “January 17, 1984. Finally, after a day’s pass and three temporary stops I made it to the first stop of many. From here to the cave another day in the snow. My compatriots left behind in the previous camp, too sickened to continue. I return to end camp to gather left behind logs, after gathering, will return to ship”. I flip though the next couple of pages, feeling the dry pages with the tips of my fingers. A journey months on the waters, months in the snow. Over in what felt like days.

 

Snapping closed the book and tossing it onto the table with my other belongings, I stand and rummage through some left-over boxes. Old tins still full, I sit back on a chair and place them now opened onto a fire. Nothing major, just a small flicker, enough to burn my meal and warm my frozen toes.

 

Thirteen hours pass. I slept and awoke, then waited. The next point slightly farther. We had utilized another rope along the path, the issue was the fog, the storm. I simply sat within my tent, warm food in hand and waited for it to pass. Gathering my things and setting off, new trinkets in hand. Stepping outside the tent my face is unassaulted by the snowfall of yesterday. With the storm gone, with it the fog, the sun flicks off the soft snow that carpets the arctic and shines brightly in my eyes. Stepping back into my tent and throwing off my pack, reaching my hand inside and pulling out a pair of snow goggles.

 

My path to the second camp unaffected by my previous blindness, I made it in the same time as the first. Once again stepping into our left behind camp and taking my spot within the refuge. In the same manner as previous, my extra skin comes off and is placed to the side. A notebook retrieved and worked on. A box rummaged through for extra food as to not waist my own. A day like previous. A sleep like previous. I open my eyes and set upon the path forward. Clipping the rope to the belt on my side I walk into the blinding light.

 

Just one stop now. Then the last walk to the cave. The logs left behind too important to leave without. My colleagues already got an earful, when I return, I plan on giving them three more.

 

The last camp. Almost at the end of my trip back. By the time I stepped into the camp the sun had fallen past the waters. The moon was out and with it the many stars. I had pulled my goggles down past my eyes and looked up at them. The soft glow of the moon, the small dots that make up the cosmos. Nothing could have made this trip back as worth it as this view.

 

The next day, the last of my trip. Leaving behind my main back and grabbing a smaller, I only needed space to grab the logs and return. I stepped out to the rope that trailed to our work. Clipping the rope to my side I stepped out.

 

Breaking the flat and small bumps of white, three stone monoliths mark a divot dividing the norm and the odd, the known and unknown. Separated each on the sides by three hundred and thirty-three feet. In the center of the stone pillars the mouth of Gaia. A cave that swallowed the light of sun, moon, and handheld stars. The monoliths had been discovered by plane. When the government spotted it, they thought to keep it hidden. When they had first begun their study, they set base in the center. After the camp got too heavy the snow fell from under them, and the cave was revealed.

 

The monoliths, inscribed by what was thought to be chisel. The date gained from study set to before the ancient stories of Atlantis. The shapes of cut stone formed to many words known and unknown. English, Russian, Greek, Aramaic, all the languages known and unknown wrapped around the bases of the stones. Of each only a small phrase. Each monolith its own. Of the first “Through the breath of Yaldabaoth I am whole”. Of the second “Through the knowledge of Saklas I am whole”. Of the third “Through the gnashing teeth of Samael I am whole”. These words placed before their makers, my team was sent to study them, and what we could gather from the pit of hell between them.

 

The wind had picked up from my first foot falls approaching. I heavily relied on the rope and hands to get closer to the camp. Just off the outskirts of the first monolith sat the tent holding the logs. I only needed to reach them. I was leaned back pulling myself forward when I slipped and fell. The dense white fog mixed once again with what was falling and what had already fell. The rope was still within my grasp but… I fell. Laying on my back I held my hands close to my eyes so I could see the rope in my hands. I pulled it through my hands trying to make it taught on the end, pull after pull after pull. Then it stopped. I laid there in the snow and looked at the end of the rope. Frayed and in my hands.

 

I rolled over on my stomach and used my hands to stand. The white fell in front of my eyes and made it impossible to see just beyond my hands. I took several steps forward, trying to get closer to what I thought was the edge of the camp. My vision dropped with my feet as I walked over the edge, and I fell right through the gates of hades.

 

I could hear the wind hurdling past me as I fell. The darkness that wrapped its tendrils just under the ridge. I used to look at it full of fear, now I fell within its embrace. Ten. Twenty. I don’t know how long I sunk into the earth. I couldn’t even tell which way I fell, after the first roughly five minutes the feeling of dropping ceased. I began to hallucinate a small dot of light coming from the center of black. Thought my mind was playing tricks as it was attempting to make sense through the shadow. The dot widened and widened. Then I realized as the hole I was making my way to got bigger before I knew it, and I crashed through into a new light. The feeling of falling returned once I could see light and the ground I was falling too.

 

A small chamber. In the center a small puddle, its depth impossible to measure from where I was above it. The area was wrapped in what looked like green plants with red, purple, and blue luminescent mushroom. Auspicious, I would think if I wasn’t falling to my doom. I closed my eyes as I got about one hundred feet away from impact. I could feel my pulse react to the thought of me hitting the stone, the feeling or hopefully nonfeeling of my head splitting open. Then like before, when I was surrounded by dark, like now the dark that came with the closing of my eyes. I lost the sense of falling.

 

My eyes open to the ground. So close if I extended my tongue, I could taste the stone. The weight of me now fixed back in reality, and I fall landing my weight on my head. Now pain stricken I stand rubbing my head and tilting up to the dark hole cut into the ceiling. Like the one above, the light gets not past the brim of it.

 

Now looking around the room, a deep cut stone found only in the deepest parts of the mantle. The glowing mushrooms scattered in spots not segregated by color. Between them small vines that stretch deeper through a pathway ahead. The small puddle I landed in only knuckle deep, if an impossible force had not stopped me, I would have cracked open my skull and bled out in the small creek. At least my last moment wound be on the water that reflected the luminous fungi on the walls. Colors that danced with the speed of the stream as it trickled down a path unknown.

 

The walkway, now the only path. My feet find themselves placed within. The light only came off what the water was willing to reflect on the walls, and slightly down a bend the light stopped. My hand now placed on the wall to guide me. Dripping water from high above stalactites drum with an ancient rhythm for ancient ears, my ears blessed by a space unknown, know not of its full splendor. Around the tip of another bend, light. My feet splash in the small stream like a giant upon the earth. The echo of the steps ring out and meet the drumming water. A symphony of old and new.

 

Coming to the opening in the stone my eyes take a moment to take in the light. From the white and cold that I came from this place was of the opposite. I stood on what seemed like the brim of a cliff. A sky that stretched for eons. Below where my feet stood on ancient, trees that scratched at the sky. The clouds that stood on high found themselves stabbed by trees that grew with an impossible vigor. Between the trees from what I could see through the twisting and lifelike fog, vines and twisted branches. From the distance that I stood, I surmised the vines to be as thick as five feet wide.

 

A storm caught my eye from the distance horizon. Red lightning. Under the storm, a temple of stone. Ancient by the looks. It could have been thousands of miles from me. My ability to see it could only be possible if it were a massive structure. From the face that spoke from the treetops, It resembled those of the Aztecs. I wondered in that moment, was I still on the face of this earth or, was that hole the edge.

 

The lip of the cave entrance I stood from had no safe way down. The sun sat in a spot in the sky I could not yet see, as it set on a horizon my eyes could not witness, I sat and looked over the jungle of ancient. The hot ball of light that encompassed the sky in its light had retreated. Left behind was small dots of white. Like the arctic I came from this sky not polluted by the light had been painted by the most beautiful mind. Blues and purples twisted in spirals. Drags of white light across the black canvas. And a moon that hung low. Massive and bright. Grey dots and scratches on its surface. I studied it in wonder. Then. Behind it, came another.

 

 

 

 

“What else is written?”

 

I once again flipped through the empty pages. “That’s it”

 

“Are you sure that’s all that was left? Like, a backpack, a note, something?”

 

“Like I said before, this journal was all that was left.”

 

“And what. You just found it on his desk?”

 

“Yes, I told you that.”

 

“Then where did he go? Jump into that hole?”

 

“…That’s what his journal says”

He just looked at me with a blank face.

“Then how did that get back up?” he was pointing at the log between my hands.

 

“How am I supposed to know that?”

 

“Whatever. Let’s go.”

 

“Are we leaving him?”

 

“Yeah. There's another sight they want us to look at. They said it's similar to this one.”

 

“Where are they sending us?”

 

“There's a spot just outside of the Southern Ocean, they say has another column of monoliths”

 

 

 

 

 

He stood and left my side. The book within my hand held more secrets than I could know. The empty pages... There were no empty pages. A handful of sheets had been ripped, brown and black smudges on the tear marks. The end page, scrawled at all angles, circles and shapes I know not.

 

This was the end of our expedition. If this letter finds you before I do, don’t tell anyone of what you read. There were no words on the monolith. I do not know what he was talking about. What was on the monolith, circles and sigils. Much like on the end page. I will send in this letter a drawing of what one looks like. The next time you talk to the Silver Hand, show them the symbol. Have them investigate it.

Tales From Over the Edge - Shekach