Chapter 2 The Cave of Trials
The air in the Northwood seemed somehow cooler than it had been in the woods Wataru had passed through on the way to the village. He could still hear the beautiful birdsong but couldn’t see a single creature—not even a butterfly flitting around the white flowers that grew by the path.
Nor could he find a convenient stick such as the wizard had advised him to pick up. The only things on the ground were flower petals and pine needles.
Wataru was all by himself, and that made him feel very small and vulnerable.
As promised, the path really was as straight as it looked on the map. But in places it was overgrown with grass and brush, making it hard to see. Sometimes it would disappear altogether for several yards, and he would have to search between the trees to find it again. Wataru assumed that few people knew about this route.
After he’d walked about ten minutes, he came upon a large mound of gray rock sticking out like a boil from the ground. This, he guessed, was his destination.
So where’s the cave?
Wataru looked around. The village was far out of sight. He turned three hundred sixty degrees, and all he could see was trees. A light breeze blew, rustling countless leaves.
Wataru scratched behind his head. Then he stepped forward and placed his hand upon the rock. Above him, he heard a bird singing.
Here-for-trial? Here-for-trial? Here-for-trial?
Wataru looked up and answered, “Yes! I’m searching for the Cave of Trials! Is it here? How do I get in?”
From the trees around him he heard a sound like many ocarinas blowing in beautiful five-part harmony.
If a trial you would take, guard your life.
For every question, an answer.
For every answer, a question.
The Wayfinder’s yawning.
Hop on home.
Never will you solve it—not in a thousand years.
When the birdsong died down, the wind started up again. The ground beneath Wataru’s feet began to rumble. And before his eyes, the lump of stone split in two.
The entrance!
It was a dark, narrow hole, barely wide enough for Wataru to pass through.
I’m supposed to go in here?
Suddenly, he was frightened. Why do I have to go into this place, anyway? he wondered. That wizard better not be tricking me. He couldn’t remember anyone in a Saga game having to go in a place like this.
As he hesitantly stood by the entrance, a gravelly voice spoke to him from the depths of the cave. “Fret out there, and it’ll close,” it said.
Wataru jumped back, away from the cave.
“I said stay out thar ’n it’ll close. Don’tcha understand what I’m sayin’, boy?”
The voice was accented, a southern sort of drawl—just like the old man at the fishmarket in Wataru’s neighborhood.
“I ain’t got no time to stand ’round waitin’ on a whelp like you all day. Hurry it up, or I’m liable to tell the ol’ Finder.”
“Are you…from the south?” Wataru called down the cave.
Here? In Vision?
“Either yer comin’ in, or yer not. Which is it?”
“This is the Cave of Trials, right?”
“If I said it weren’t would ya leave?”
“Well, I’m not saying that, but…”
“Then leave. Go home, boy. If y’can’t trust the Finder, there’s no point in ya comin’ in here. Ain’t got a lick of sense, do ya?”
A lick of…what?
“Fine. I’m coming in.”
“’Bout time. If ya plan on doin’ sometin’, next time, do it quicker, ’kay? Dumb kid. C’mere.”
Wataru took a half-step forward. Suddenly, from within the dark cleft in the rock, a large, filthy hand snaked out and latched onto the top of Wataru’s head, gripping him like a claw.
“Augh!”
His scream echoing through the woods, Wataru was dragged into the dank cave. Now gone, Wataru was unable to hear the bird’s new chorus.
Who has come?
A Brave has come?
Who has come?
A Sorcerer’s come?
Who will come back out?
Through the woods, beneath the singing birds, the old wizard arrived. He carried a staff in one hand and an ancient tome of magic in the other. He walked slowly. Coming to stand before the cave that had so recently swallowed Wataru, he stretched his wizened frame.
“I’ve a feeling this newest arrival will take a bit more effort than Mitsuru. Quite a bit more,” he said with a sigh, leaning his staff against the rock and rubbing the small of his back. “Well now, to business,” he muttered, then picked up his staff and began to utter an incantation. Suddenly, his form disappeared, leaving a whisper of dim smoke in its place. The smoke lifted on the wind, assuming for an instant the shape of a bird, then it, too, was sucked into the cave.
Wataru was falling through thick darkness, down and down a hole that seemed to have no end. He screamed until he ran out of breath. Then silently, he continued to fall. He could have taken another deep breath and started screaming again, but he was falling feet first and the sensation wasn’t all that unpleasant. Strangely, he soon found himself relaxed. Come to think of it, he wasn’t going all that fast—he was almost floating.
So instead of screaming, he started to look around. It was pitch black, of course, but he had a sensation that he was not falling through some vast chamber. Rather, he seemed to be falling down a very slick tunnel. If he moved his arms and legs, he found that he could adjust his fall slightly. When he tried sticking his arms out like wings, he felt something touch the fingertips of his right hand. It might’ve been the wall.
Where am I falling to?
As he fell, he noticed a wind blowing up from below him. Warm and thick air blew up his sleeves, making his shirt billow out. As the wind blew harder, the speed of his descent began to slow. Soon he was going no faster than an elevator, then the speed of an escalator, and finally he was going no faster than if he had been walking down a flight of stairs.
Directly beneath him, something like a shining white pedestal came into view. It was wide enough for him to land on. That must be the spot.
Wataru spread out his arms and legs for balance, and landed directly atop the pedestal. Breathing a sigh of relief, he saw that the pedestal was made of stone. He got down on his knees and touched it with his hands. It was smooth and reminded him of the faux marble counters in his kitchen back home.
He looked up and saw something in the darkness. It was not a door exactly—more like an opening, Rather, it was a crack in the rock similar to the one that had sucked him into his current situation. He would be able to walk through easily. But what he saw beyond that was more darkness.
Be brave. Walk forward.
Wataru took a step, and then another. Suddenly, his surroundings changed dramatically.
I’m in a temple. No, wait. It’s the corridor of some castle.
The ceilings were high and vaulted—about the height of a three-story building. Both floor and walls were made of stone, with large round pillars placed at ten-yard intervals. Countless sconces lined the walls, their fat tallow candles shining like stars. Still, the corridor led into a darkness that Wataru’s eyes could not penetrate.
As expected, when he turned around, the entrance he had just passed through had disappeared. All he could see was the same sort of passageway as the one that led in the other direction, stretching into the distance.
Okay, pull yourself together. Egging himself on, Wataru began to move forward. Shortly, a large statue—a one-eyed giant—came into view. It was made out of the same sort of stone as the building. Wataru examined the statue. Great armor plates hung on the figure’s bare skin, and his exposed arms were covered with the sort of tattoos Wataru assumed were meant to ward off evil. He carried a large axe over one shoulder.
As he stood, staring up at its face, the ground beneath his feet began to rumble, and then that rumble turned into a voice.
“I am the Dawn-God, Ward of the East, servant to the Goddess of Fate. Answer my question.”
Wataru steadied himself.
The voice continued. “What do you ask of me and the dawnkin?”
Wataru’s mind went blank. How should I answer? As he stood there, wondering, he remembered something. That’s right, wasn’t there something like this in Saga I? At the very beginning of the game, you had to make a request of one of three gods that ruled the three lands in the game. There were many choices: “wealth,” “honor,” “bravery,” “beauty,” “wisdom.” Depending on which you chose, your character’s abilities would be slightly different.
Wataru took a deep breath, and then in the loudest voice he could muster, he said “I want—I want to be brave. Give me bravery!”
A moment later, the weighty voice answered, “Then bravery you shall have. You may pass.”
The single eye on the statue flashed red, and then the statue simply disappeared. Behind it, the corridor continued, lit by the flickering lights of ten thousand candles.
Wataru walked farther, until he came to another of the statues. He stopped.
“I am the Dusk-God, Ward of the West, servant to the Goddess of Fate. Answer my question.”
“I will,” Wataru said.
“What do you ask of me and the duskkin?”
“I want wisdom.”
“Then wisdom you shall have. You may pass.”
The giant’s single eye flashed blue, and the statue disappeared.
He walked farther, until he came to the third one-eyed giant statue.
“I am the Snow-God, Ward of the North, servant to the Goddess of Fate. Answer my question.”
This time, Wataru asked for health. He wanted to make sure he survived the long journey in Vision.
After he asked, the giant’s single eye flashed white, and the statue disappeared. Wataru went on.
As expected, the fourth statue was the Sun-God, Ward of the South. Here, Wataru wished for happiness. No point going on a journey if it wasn’t going to be any fun, right?
“Then happiness you shall have. You may pass.”
The single eye shone gold, and the statue disappeared, but this time, there was no passage beyond. Wataru stood facing the wall. A dead end. Only candles flickered on its surface.
Then Wataru noticed a candlelit staircase descending from where the statue stood. Without hesitating, he proceeded down the steps. He felt elated, with not a shred of fear remaining. It was like he really had become the main character in a game of Eldritch Saga.
At the bottom, the stairs opened out into a wide chamber. Curtains of crimson velvet hung covering windows. There was a line of chairs with high backs sitting against the wall. The floor was polished, so that Wataru could see his own face in the reflection. Here and there were set tall candles in clusters of three. Everything smelled of wax.
Wataru looked up to see numerous paintings covering the ceiling. But the light from the candles was too dim to make out the details. He saw the vague forms of animals, flowers, and trees—wait, that thing with the strange corkscrew head! It’s a gimblewolf!
Wataru was standing there, mouth hanging open, when a voice called out to him from a distance.
“Wataru, this way.”
Startled, he looked around, and then saw, at the far end of the chamber, the old wizard seated at a candlelit desk.
“Wizard!” Wataru ran over. It felt like he was meeting an old friend. He was so happy he almost wanted to give him a big hug. But when Wataru approached, the wizard slowly lifted one bony hand and said, “Fool.”
He smacked Wataru on the forehead.
“Wizard?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. This won’t do.”
“Huh?”
“Your performance. You’re faring far worse than Mitsuru did. Far worse.”
Why? Wataru fell silent in confusion. He thought he had answered the four Wards’ questions quite well.
As though he had read Wataru’s mind, the old man said with a pained expression, “That was merely average. You lack originality.”
“O-originality?”
“Yes. And you were wrong to hesitate at the entrance to the cave. Times like that, you have to move quick. I’d say you lack decisive power, that’s what.”
No way! Wataru staggered and sat down on the floor.
The old wizard produced a long quill pen and a clipboard from somewhere. Wataru blinked, sure he must be seeing things, but no, it was a clipboard.
“Let’s see, your total score is…”
The quill pen—it must have been nearly a foot long—moved swiftly and precisely in the wizard’s hand across the paper.
“Vision Suitability Percentile…thirty-five percent. Special Ability: Zero. Constitution is average at best. And for Bravery…the lowest possible score.”
“Th-th-that can’t be!” Wataru said, clinging to the wizard’s bony knee. He received another loud smack on the forehead.
“As a result you have been assigned the rank of Novice Brave, Prototype I. Your equipment will be provided.”
The wizard tucked the writing quill behind his ear, and with his empty hand he gave Wataru a pat on the head. Something like a firecracker went off, showering sparks on the floor.
“Stand.”
When he stood, Wataru found his clothes had changed. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of undyed silk—without collar or cuffs on the sleeves. His trousers were dark blue and baggy. His boots were sturdy and laced with leather straps. Only those resembled what Mitsuru had been wearing. Everything else was definitely a grade down, if not several grades down. Instead of a leather belt around his waist, he found something like a hempen cord had been wrapped around him several times.
“This…is my equipment?”
“That it is. Congratulations.”
“What about my weapon? Even a Novice Brave must get a weapon.”
“When you return to the surface, yes.”
The wizard put pen and clipboard away inside his robes, and then with an audible exertion, he stood up from his chair. “I will be leaving for the surface now.”
“Leaving? What about me? Is there another trial?”
The wizard scowled. “You do know that for every request, there is a price?”
“You mean like, money?”
“Not all prices are measured in coins. Sometimes you must offer something larger to receive.”
Again, Wataru felt a tremor run through the ground. It was still distant. But it was getting closer. Something big—no, huge—was coming this way.
“I’ve heard your request, and the price they ask is a game where the stakes are your life,” the wizard said simply. “Should you escape, you win. You’ll have your life, and your wishes. Should you be captured, you’ll lose. And your wishes will not be granted. But that will be the least of your worries.”
With a thunderous crash, the walls of the chamber came crumbling down in four spots. The four Wards! They had destroyed the walls with their axes, the way a child destroys a sand castle on the beach. They’re coming for me!
“There are many exits,” the wizard said, pointing around the room. Wataru noticed numerous doors lining the far walls.
“Find the exit and make your escape.”
“But how will I know which one is the right one?”
Axes raised, the four Wards charged.
“Good luck,” the wizard said with a grin. “Remember the song of the birds in the Northwood.”
Then the wizard disappeared, leaving only a thin trail of mist where he stood. The mist formed into the shape of a white bird, and was swept upward toward the darkened ceiling.
“W-wait!”
But there was no time. The four Wards were upon him. Wataru screamed and ran for one side of the room, but his legs were like jelly, and he tripped and fell. Where he had been standing moments before, the great axe of the Snow-God came crashing down, biting deep into the stone of the floor. A jagged crack shot through the floor like a lightning bolt.
“Help me!”
Wataru had always laughed at the people in movies and comic books who screamed for help when it was painfully obvious that no one would hear them, or even think of coming to their rescue. He now realized how little he knew. At times like this, you had to scream.
He struggled to his feet and lurched out of the way as another axe—this one belonging to the Dawn-God—smashed into the floor where he had fallen. Even in such dire circumstances, he could tell the statues apart by the color of the single shining eye in the middle of each statue’s forehead.
Okay, run away. But to where?
The chamber was long and rectangular, and the sides were lined with countless doors. He had no way of knowing which one of them was the exit. Do I have to open every single one in order?
Wataru ran in a panic, and the four Wards gave chase, the floor shaking under their massive feet. Where they stepped, the floor stones broke into shards and scattered everywhere. Wataru saw the destruction out of the corner of his eye and it made his hair stand on end.
Still, as he ran, he noticed something. After one of the four Wards charged and swung his axe, it took him time to change directions. Not only that, but it seemed like the one who charged set the target for the other three. Where the first statue’s axe fell, so too would follow the weapons of the other three. If he could just avoid the first axe, he would have plenty of time to run around before the next attack.
Right! Wataru ran for the far wall of the chamber, the four Wards bounding after him. The heavy armor they wore clanged and echoed off the walls. Wataru only dared look around once, to find they were right behind him.
Only a few feet away from the far wall, Wataru spun and jumped toward the line of doors along the side of the room. The Dusk-God’s axe swung down, aiming for the place where Wataru had been seconds before. While the axe was coming down, he was picking himself up and grabbing the doorknob closest to him.
The door opened easily. He ran into a small, square room, lit by a soft glow, like moonlight. There were no features in the room, save a bronze statue sitting in the very middle.
Wataru breathlessly approached the statue. He tapped it. It was metal, and very cold to the touch. It looked like the statue of a fawn. It looks exactly like Bambi!
What’s a statue of Bambi doing in a place like this?
There was no exit that Wataru could see. He groped around, but all he could feel was the cool, seamless stone of the floor and walls. There was no ladder to the surface or rope hanging down from the ceiling. He had to assume that he had chosen the wrong door. It was time to try the next one.
Wataru opened the door a crack and cautiously peered out into the chamber. The four Wards, having lost their quarry, stood in a circle at the very middle of the room. Their eye-lights were dimmed. Wataru took a moment to catch his breath. Then, summoning his courage, he slid out through the door. But the moment he took his first step back into the chamber, the eyes of the statues flashed bright, and the chase was on again.
Wataru ran close to their blades, dodging aside at the last moment, then took the few moments while they regrouped to try another door. He did this again and again, but every door he opened was much the same. They all led to small, square rooms with the statue of an animal—each one different. He saw an elephant, a tiger, a great fish, a bird, an ox, a snake, and even a frog.
As he left each room he would leave the door open. He didn’t want to visit the same room twice by mistake. As he ran around, Wataru began to falter—and not on account of nerves. He was exhausted. It was getting harder each time to avoid the swinging blades of the four Wards. If this went on much longer, he would collapse.
By now he had opened every door there was to open. And, he was sad to discover, there was no obvious exit.
This isn’t fair, he thought, gasping for breath. He stopped running for a moment, feeling dizzy, and the Wards immediately turned and charged toward him. They don’t get tired at all. The longer this goes on, the bigger their ad- vantage. What do I do?!
—Remember the song of the birds in the Northwood.
The wizard’s parting words of advice. Wataru remembered the pretty song of the birds, like ocarinas playing in harmony.
Desperately, he tried to remember what they had said. Something about questions and answers…I think I’m past that part, though. And the Wayfinder, yawning. And what was that about going home? Hop on home? What an odd thing to say…
And then it hit him.
Hop.
A light went on in Wataru’s head. The frog! The frog is the way home! He forced his weary legs to move one last time, jumping away from another blow of the Wards’ axes, and running up the side of the room, staying close to the wall. Where was it? Where?! Wataru breathed ragged breaths as he ran, checking the contents of each room he passed.
Found him!
In the last room to the right sat a statue of a massive, plump bullfrog. Wataru leapt into the room and rolled to the statue’s base. Bong! went his head on the bronze foot of the frog. Sparks flew before his eyes. “Ouch!”
Wataru was holding his pounding head in his hands when he heard a heavy clunking noise. The base under the statue began to slide forward. He looked closer and saw something very interesting—where the base was a moment before there was now a large opening. He could see the rungs of a ladder descending into the darkness.
I found it! Wataru rubbed his head and began to climb down the ladder. It wasn’t that long, ending before the twelfth rung. Wataru stepped off the ladder onto soft, damp earth.
He was surrounded by darkness. Above him he could see something like a cave mouth, and through that—stars! Wataru looked up to see something shining like hundreds of stars above him. Occasionally they would flit from one side to the other in a seemingly random fashion. Fireflies? Perhaps these were the fireflies of this world.
By the wan glow they cast, he could see that the cave continued on, deeper. The walls were of jagged stone, and the floor was wet here and there with rivulets of water coming out of the rock.
The cave twisted and turned but eventually began to climb. It seemed to be heading for the surface—which gave Wataru much hope. He began to walk faster. At last the cave tunnel ended, and he found himself in a small courtyard paved with flagstones. In the middle, a single ray of light stabbed straight down from above. It seemed to be centered on a blue symbol of some sort drawn on one of the flagstones. Wataru felt his body grow lighter. He seemed to be walking on clouds.
Then, he blinked. He was standing in the middle of the forest, back in front of the entrance to the Cave of Trials. He could hear the birds singing. The sun shone through the trees at an angle, and a faint blue mist was beginning to creep through the woods.
The entrance to the cave was already closed, leaving only a featureless lump of rock in its place. He touched it. No rumbling in the ground. No southern accent. Nothing.
Wataru followed the path back through the woods to the place where the five huts stood. The wizard was nowhere to be seen, and Wataru saw smoke rising—not from the first hut, nor the second, but from the chimney of the third one.