Crimson Gods Pt. 03

Part 3

The first thing I felt upon waking was the pleasant weight of Tara's naked body snuggled against me. As the memory of what had taken place last night came back to me, a broad smile crossed my face. The morning light was shining down through one of the holes in the rocks at the top of the cave. It looked like the storm from last night had dissipated while we slept. I felt Tara shift besides me and looked down into her face as she slowly opened her eyes. I was expecting the feeling of panic or regret to rise again in one or both of us, but she simply sighed contentedly and snuggled against me closing her eyes again. I was again struck by the feeling that there was something different about this cave, something that helped alleviate my anxiety and give me a sense of peace.

"Can we just stay like this for the rest of the day?" Tara said with a sigh. "Or maybe the rest of our lives?"

"I don't see any reason why not" I replied with a good-natured chuckle, as I leaned back into our packs and stroked her back gently.

We sat like this for a while, both enjoying the feeling of each other's body and the peace of our little sanctuary. Eventually, my stomach let out a low grumble betraying my hunger, so we moved to get our day going. I pulled my shirt and shorts on, deciding that it was probably for the best to leave the underwear off, and started cooking some breakfast. We had about a cup and half of coffee leftover, so I let it warm up on the stove while cutting up some cheese. While I was preparing breakfast, Tara went to relieve herself in a corner of the cave, not bothering to put on clothes. As she walked back, I couldn't help but stop and stare. This was my first unencumbered look at her naked body in the daylight, and I could already feel my cock starting to twitch. The way the sun hit her body it almost seemed like she was glowing. Her alluring curves seemed to flow as she walked, demanding attention and adoration. She gave me a small mischievous smile as she got back to our makeshift bed and wrapped a sleeping back over her shoulders.

"Coffee and sex with the hottest guy I know. What did I do to deserve this?" She asked playfully as I handed her a cup of coffee.

"Walking around naked is a good start," I said with a laugh, as I sat down.

As we ate breakfast we talked through our plan for that day. We had a bit of late start but as long as we left by midday, we would have plenty of time to make it to our day one campsite before night. It was hard to tell from inside the cave, but I guessed that we had three to four hours until we would need leave and I proposed that we use that time to observe the lake a bit more. Despite everything that we saw yesterday, I felt compelled to find out all we could about the lake now that we were here. I could tell Tara was nervous about this prospect, I was too in fact, but when I suggested she could wait in the cave, the stern look she gave me said there was no way she would let me go alone. Something about the fierce look in her eye as she insisted that she go along, gave me the impression that she was determined to protect me if necessary, against anything we might find. As I watched her finishing her last drink off coffee, I realized that I felt the exact same, ready to do whatever was needed to protect her.

I stuck my head out of the cave to check on the weather while Tara collected our gear and started packing. The rainstorm from last night looked like it had been quite ferocious, leaving evidence of high winds and heavy rains. Several smaller trees had been blown over, and the water level seemed to have rose in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The waterfall itself seemed to have been turned up to it's max setting, now sending water crashing down in a torrent. Despite my nervousness at what might wait for us at the lake, I was eager to get going. The smell of fresh rain, the warmth of the sun shining pleasantly and the sounds of the forest were all invigorating to me. I practically skipped back into the cave, wide grin on my face as I helped Tara finish packing and clearing any sign that we had been there.

We decided to leave the big pack under the waterfall and pick it up on our way back. Tara carried the day pack which we had filled with enough provisions for a day plus, just to be on the safe side. Tara gave me an embarrassed look as she grabbed the crossbow, chucking about how useless it would be against the lake monster. I didn't laugh, however, because I knew how she felt and agreed. The crossbow might not help, but it felt better to have something to arm yourself with than nothing. I gave her a reassuring smile and pointedly strapped the gun to my waist.

I could feel my heartbeat speeding up the closer we got to the ridge. The route up the side of the waterfall was much muddier than it had been yesterday, but we made sure to cling close to the slope regardless. I forced myself to calm down, taking slow measured breaths as we drew within a couple of yards of the ridge. I paused to look over at Tara and gave her a gesture to stop. Before she had a chance to protest, I set off crawling up the last couple of yards alone. As I took my first careful look at the lake everything seemed to be relatively quiet. The water seemed to shimmer with the light, and the lush mountain landscape looked even more picturesque than it had yesterday. Seeing no obvious threat, I turned back to Tara, who was watching me with a mixture of anxiety and excitement, and gestured for her to come on up.

I smiled as I got a fantastic view of her cleavage down her now muddy sports bra as she carefully crawled towards me. When she looked up and saw what I was ogling, she let out a silent chuckle, giving me a sly grin. As she drew level with me I whispered "seems the same," before turning back to examine the lake.

The water level seemed to have risen slightly because of the storm. I could see the water creeping up into the trees at certain points, and covering where there used to be banks at others. The main reason I had wanted to come to this lake in the first place was to make sure there were no easy access points to our valley, and my first impression is that I had nothing to worry about. The lake was virtually surrounded by rugged mountains and alpine greenery. The slopes of the mountains to the east seemed to drop sharply right into the surface of the lake, forming a barrier of sorts to that side. To the west, there was a more gradual slope at the shore line, but there was a natural curve to shape of the lake that effectively hid the out-shoot where the lake fed the waterfall. To get to our valley from this direction would be difficult if not impossible, I reasoned, at least on the land.

I turned my attention back to the lake itself, spotting the house across to the north from yesterday. I swallowed a lump in my throat and suppressed a shiver as I examined the structure. An uneasy feeling grew inside me as I tried to make out additional details. Whatever the purpose of this building, it was definitely new. It had an almost modern design composed of simple sharp corners and a rectangular shape. The building material looked like stainless steel at first glance, but the way it seemed to absorb rather than reflect light made me guess it was some other material.

"Looks new" I said to Tara who was similarly studying the building next to me.

"It does," she whispered. "Look at the trees under the water around it."

"Trees?" I answered confused.

"Yeah, there" she pointed before continuing. "It looks like the lake used to be lower, but rose right where the house was."

Studying the land around the building more carefully, I saw what she meant. There were several trees poking out of the water well below the shoreline. "Do you think it was the Awakening?" I asked in a hushed tone, still not fully following her logic.

"It has to be," she replied. "You said the lake was a lot smaller on the old maps right? So the earthquakes must have shifted the mountains changing the shape of the lake," She finished in a hushed voice.

"That's fair, but what about the house?" I replied.

She smiled at me as began to explain, "The shoreline where the house is built wasn't the shoreline at all before the awakening right?" I nodded and she continued, "So the house has to have been built since the shoreline shifted. Why would they have a boat launch if the building wasn't on the water?"

Tara smiled and nodded excitedly as my face lit up with comprehension. This building must be from the other world, placed here by someone or something from there after our worlds combined. We watched the lake for a while longer, before I motioned for her to follow me back down the slope. After carefully descending what I guessed was a safe distance from the lake, we stopped and sat on a rock. "What do you think?" I asked as we sipped some water and rested.

"Everything seems fine. It seems like just a normal lake except.." she said, trailing off with a shudder.

"Except we saw a shadow monster eat a boat yesterday?" I offered, trying to cut some of the tension.

"Yeah," she responded sheepishly. "I mean what was that?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. "It jumped out so fast I could barely see it, but it had to have swallowed the boat whole, there was no debris."

"I don't know" I responded honestly. "Even through the binoculars it seemed like it was just a shadow, like it just swallowed them whole and went home."

"The binoculars?" Tara said more to herself than me, with a pensive look on her face.

"Yeah, I was checking out the house remember?" Even as I said this, the words triggered a thought.

"Could you see the house yesterday without the binoculars?" Tara asked, voicing the very question that had been reverberating in my head. "Not just that it was there, but could you make out any detail?"

"I don't think so," I said in an uneasy voice.

"But you can today right?" she asked.

"I must have been able to see it yesterday," I said, struggling with the implications of this line of thought. "I must just be misremembering."

"It's more than that Dan, and you know it," Tara said in a serious tone. "I could barely make out the other side of the lake yesterday, and now I can see tree's sticking out the water?"

"But that's crazy" I said with a note of incredulity in my tone. "How could our eyesight have gotten better overnight?"

"I don't know, but it did," Tara said as if she was stating a simple fact.

I wracked my brain, trying to remember what I saw yesterday, trying to envision the same level of detail I could now make out unaided, but Tara was right. Yesterday I could only make out the vague shape of the structure in the distance, but today I could see the whole building. Consumed with this thought I looked around, subconsciously seeking more evidence. The color of the trees did seem brighter, more vivid, but I had ascribed that to the rainstorm. The sun seemed to be shining more brightly, but again that could be explained by less cloud cover.

As my gaze swept by Tara's face, I froze, looking deep into her eyes, studying them properly for the first time. I felt trapped; uncontrollably drawn to her bright hazel-green eyes. She had always had pretty eyes. They had a distinct light green color around the outside that seemed to bleed into the soft golden color ring around the pupil that gave the impression that a laugh was dancing across her vision. Today, however, there seemed to be a glow or sparkle I couldn't fully define. I felt like I could almost see the electrons firing as they caught the incoming light, gently lighting up as they traveled along the nerve fibers. The green seemed more crisp, and the golden ring more spectacular and vibrant. I felt my stubborn resistance fail as I looked into these eyes and was forced to admit my vision was better than it had been yesterday.

Tara seemed to feel my acceptance, smiling kindly and nodding encouragingly as I accepted what she already knew. "Did you feel, like, energized in the cave last night?" I asked uneasily.

"What do you mean?" she responded with a pensive look on her face.

"Sort-of, I don't know, upbeat or charged?" I said, struggling to put words to the sensation.

"Yeah, I did, still do actually." She responded with a frown. "Do you think it's connected? Like something about the cave gave us energy or stamina, and made our eyesight better?" she asked.

"I don't know, maybe" I responded while my brain worked through these ideas. "We know that there are things from the other world out there right? So would it really be that crazy to think the cave wasn't... natural? Or natural from our world at least, and that staying there has affected us?"

"It's at least possible" responded Tara nodding.

"I suppose..." I began to say, but abruptly trailed off as a sound reached my ears. Tara's eyes went wide, and she froze as she also heard the low mechanical whirring sound coming from the lake behind us. I held a finger up to my mouth and motioned for her to crouch down behind the tree with me. Whatever this sound was, it appeared to be getting closer. I silently pulled out my gun out of my hip holster as Tara hefted the crossbow. We stayed as still as we could, hunched close to the ground, as we waited and listened. Just over the crest of the hill, I could make out the top of a dome shaped object as it moved along the shoreline. A faint blue light emanated from the object, seemingly scanning the landscape as it went. Tara and I both held our breath as it hovered by our outlook where we had watched the lake earlier. Praying it couldn't read us this far down the slope, my heart raced as it paused and scanned our area, but after several painstaking seconds, it kept moving.

Tara and I sat there and listened as the sound moved away from us, both frozen in place. After the sound had faded off, I let out a breath of relief and turned to Tara. I was about to suggest we get moving when I saw it. The disk had somehow silently moved and was hovering right behind us. Made from the same material as the lake house, it was a metallic, disk-shaped orb, about the size of a car tire, with a blue camera lens around the middle.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as I let out a shocked yell of "behind us!" Before she could react, however, Tara was seized by the foot by a thin mechanical arm from the orb and pulled off her feet. As she was carried up the slope, adrenaline flooded my body and I reacted without thought. "Tara!" I screamed as I turned and ran up the slope, trying desperately to reach her. I could hear her panicked screams as I managed to say a step behind the orb, despite having to dodge trees and other obstacles. As I reached the crest overlooking the lake, I watched in horror as the orb carried my sister just beyond my grasp over the water.

I knew that I couldn't follow over the lake, even setting aside the house, I would never be able to keep pace with the orb swimming. I thought of trying to shoot the orb, but from this distance I couldn't be sure I wouldn't hit Tara. I felt helpless and panicked as I tried desperately to form a plan, but ahead of me I saw Tara bend at the waist and aim the crossbow at the orb. I could hear the dull plunk of her arrow hitting its mark and saw her drop from the arm and fall into the lake.

I immediately sprang into motion, tossing my gun aside and diving headfirst into the lake and striking out with my arms and legs in her direction. I hardly registered the cold of the water as I felt possessed by an urgent need to reach Tara as fast as I could. She had been dropped maybe thirty feet from the shore, and I could see her furiously swimming towards me when I pulled my head up to take breaths. I wasn't a particularly strong swimmer, but the fire in my gut spurned me on faster than I thought possible. As I finally reached her, I stuck my head up and looked behind her to see the large shadow figure gliding swiftly towards us.

I knew immediately that we had no chance of out running this thing, it was already practically on top of us. The world seemed to shimmer and crack as my mind reeled in a desperate attempt to escape this situation. I felt my vision strain and body swell with energy as the shadow reached us, diving underneath to get into position. I was distantly aware of pulling Tara into a protective embrace as the fire inside roared to an inferno. I looked down and saw Tara's wet scared face as the shadow moved into position. This moment seemed to stretch or expand as I locked eyes with her. I felt like lightning was dancing around my vision as I saw the terror in her eyes. I was filled with a overpowering need to protect her to save her. My entire being seemed to scream out in urgent need. The last thing I remember was letting out a deep visceral yell "NOOOOO" as the shadow began to rise, and my vision faded to black.

-

"Who is this one?" said a deep and imposing voice. I opened my eyes to see a deep read sky behind ten identical stone pillars arranged in a semi-circle pointed at me. Each of the dark brown pillars had a throne of sorts with a dark outline of a person. "Is he the one?" said a different voice. I couldn't tell which seat was the origin of the voice, but something told me they were all looking at me. I was huddled down on a small cliff next to a granite stone throne completely naked. "He has the look," Said yet another voice, this one definitely female. "But is he the one?" demanded another one, male this time, as lighting cracked across the sky. "We shall see" said another voice distantly as my world faded to black.

-

As the dream faded and I began to wake, I opened my eyes slowly to find my vision was blurry and dark. I could vaguely make out the sound of a crackling fire as I blinked and tried to focus. My whole body felt sore and weak as I tried to raise my head.

"Don't get up" said Tara's voice as I felt gentle hands push my head back.

As my eyes finally focused, the first thing I saw was my sisters concerned face looking down. She let out a relieved breath and I could see the tension fading from her face. She was naked and had a leg draped over me, leaning into me watching me protectively.

"Wha..what happened?" I croaked, feeling helplessly weak.

"We are back in the cave" she answered in a concerned voice, "how do you feel?"

I tried to answer, but before I could get the words out my strength gave out and slumped down, closing my eyes.

"Dan? Dan!" I could hear her exclaiming, but it was all I could do to not pass out. There was a certain panic in Tara's voice as she said "Please be ok, please be ok. Dan!" I could feel her shaking my shoulders slightly, trying to get me to wake back up.

"He needs to pair" said a distant, mysterious voice.

As Tara heard this, she jerked in shock and hunched over me protectively. "Who's there?" She said in a voice that, despite her obvious efforts to sound confident, betrayed her fear.

"I said he needs to pair," said the voice in response. The voice was feminine, but how far away it was I couldn't say. There was something almost familiar about the voice, something I couldn't quite say.

"Who are you? What do you mean pair?" Tara responded, doing a better job projecting confidence this time.

"You may call me Halthor" the voice responded in a regal tone "Pair, or cum I believe you call it. I have watched you two in my well for the last two days. I don't know how he stopped a citadel, but he intrigues me. If he survives, I might even decide to collect him myself, if I find him to be worthy of course." The voice spoke in a conversational tone, but there seemed to be a force behind the words I couldn't quite define. "I must go now girl, but if you wish to save him, he needs to pair." The voice paused as if in thought before adding "The strength required to do what he did cannot have come from my influence alone, but he needs replenishment. I leave him to you girl." There was a finality in the words and a feeling like the speaker had left after saying them.