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Chapter 5

  A light source would make things significantly easier for Arz, but that was what brought him to the cave in the first place. The path dipped downward almost right away and the little light that made it in through the mouth of the cave vanished.

  Arz ran his healthy hand along the smooth gray stone walls, letting his fingertips guide him through the fading light. Whatever they had used to carve the tunnels made the walls exceptionally smooth, perhaps even smoother than the pieces of metal used to create their buildings.

  Whatever the ground was made out of stayed dry and the soles of his shoes gripped it well enough to keep him on his feet. Even when the walls grew damp with dew as the air became cooler inside the cave, the ground never became slippery.

  Arz walked blindly on, letting his thoughts wander as his eyes blindly darted about. With the minor reaction of the green root matter on the Storm Tree paste, an acid made from the roots should create a stronger reaction that could lead to a portal. At this point, he was open to a portal to anywhere. Any place had to be safer than a dead land where metal people were hunting him. What was he? A rabbit?

  Arz ran simulations of the experiments in his mind. He couldn’t see any flaws in the plans, even after thinking about increasing or decreasing the amount of paste or rainbow salt. His first instinct had to be correct, as it often was.

  He stopped suddenly when he encountered light in the cave. It was dim at first, but upon leaning to the side, Arz saw a source of light, which in itself felt dangerous. Black flames burned and gave off a glow that was difficult for Arz to describe even as he looked at it. The cave was painted in a yellow-orange that flickered with blues in the shadows when the flames danced wildly.

  Arz watched the colors on the wall before looking right at the black fire. It stayed steady, burning over a pool of black liquid that was even darker than the fire. Nothing looked especially dangerous. The flames didn’t necessarily look more dangerous than regular fire.

  Arz approached as if he were sneaking up on an unsuspecting victim. The flames didn’t react, but Arz screamed and fell back as a figure appeared in his peripherals. He scurried, flinching as his injured hand scraped on the wall.

  His scream echoed up the cave, but no other sounds followed. Arz pressed himself against the smooth cave wall until his breathing calmed down. He winced as he closed his fist to stop himself from accidentally slapping his palm on something again.

  He sidled slowly around the edge of the curving cave until he saw the obviously dead skeleton of a person.

  “Not even scary,” he muttered.

  The cave continued deeper, winding down into another tunnel of darkness. But Arz entered the little chamber that consisted of a pool of black liquid that burned with black flames and a skeleton slumped against the wall, a few feet from the pool.

  Arz crouched beside the skeleton and pulled out his notebook. The skull was elongated, about twice the height of a human skull without being any wider. There were four empty eye sockets, no spot for a nose, and only a small jaw and mouth.

  Whatever clothing the person had been wearing had mostly deteriorated long ago, and the bones were clean of any flesh or sinew. All four arms reached out to the pool of black fire, but the person wasn’t close to reaching it when they had died.

  “Is this what’s beneath the metal?” Arz poked the skeleton and punctured a hole right through the bone. “Oh, shit. That was more fragile than I expected.”

  He drew a rough sketch of the skeleton in the notebook and wrote a brief description underneath.

  “This can’t be right.” Arz followed the tip of his pen along the sketch, looking up to compare it to the skeleton. “The torso doesn’t match with the metal people. There would be no room for a bone skeleton underneath that metal. Their midsection was thinner than this.”

  He used the pen to poke at the spine of the skeleton, which also crumbled with the slightest bit of pressure. The whole skeleton crumpled and fell to the side as the spine broke.

  “Ah, alright.” Arz tucked the notebook away and pulled out his spoon and an empty vial. He shifted over to the pool and held his hands out. It produced some heat, but it wasn’t quite as hot as a normal flame would have been.

  Arz stuck the spoon into the flame and waited, watching for any color changes in the metal. After a minute, it hadn’t gotten hot enough to even start to melt, which meant that the metal and glass should be able to withstand the heat.

  First, he tried to gather the flames themselves. It didn’t work, as he expected. Flames can’t be bottled. Flammable things could, of course, but that was only to create a flame.

  Arz lay flat on his stomach and inched closer to the pool. He carefully stuck the spoon into the black liquid and scooped some out. It pulled out like syrup, but even thicker and more viscous. Multiple spoonfuls worth clung to the spoon as Arz tried to navigate it to the mouth of the vial. It might not be hot enough to melt the instruments, but it would be hot enough to harm Arz if he let it fall onto his skin. He set the vial on the ground with the mouth on the edge of the pool and slowly pushed some of the liquid in until he had a full vial. It was hot to the touch, but not enough to immediately burn him. Arz filled a second vial, and a third. He shook the spoon, trying to clean it, but the black liquid clung tightly to the metal.

  Based on his experience with oils and syrup, he would just have to be patient and let the spoon clean itself. Everything would drip off eventually. Hopefully.

  Arz stashed the vials in his outer pocket where they wouldn’t burn him and stood again. He held the spoon out to his side, letting the black liquid slowly drip off. Small black flames danced around the end of the spoon, giving Arz a little torch to use as he ventured deeper into the cave.

  The black fire gave enough light for Arz to walk down the center of the tunnel without the walls for guidance. He moved quicker than he had on the way down originally. Before long, he found a much wider chamber filled with dozens of black fire pools. More skeletons littered the place. Some arms and skulls were near the edge of the pools, as if the people had fallen in before dying. There were also buckets and big shovel-like devices resting beside some of the bigger pools.

  “It’s a mine,” Arz said, excited. “Or collection station.” He picked up a bucket and examined it. It was one sheet of metal that was bent to form a perfect bucket. No screws or different pieces fitted together. Far beyond what they had on Earth for bucket technology. The inside was discolored from the liquid, but it was empty.

  “Why would people hide in a mine or willingly crawl into burning oil?” Arz wrote down more notes as he thought out loud. “Advanced technology, beyond Earth, willingly died or died in hiding. What is the connection to the time-locked city above?”

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  He had no answer. What was the connection? Was there a connection? He had no idea how to figure out how long these people had been dead for, and he assumed it was impossible to tell the age of a city that constantly looped through its own life.

  Either way, he had a source of heat, and that would be enough to create an acid. Arz could finally say goodbye to this realm, or planet, or something.

  He hurried back up the cave. By the time he made it to the entrance, most of the black liquid had dripped off his spoon. He wiped the remaining bits on one of the petrified stalks, which quickly caught fire.

  “Oh, I should have seen that result earlier.” He stuffed the spoon away in his jacket pocket and ran up the hill as the fire spread from stalk to stalk.

  Arz looked over his shoulder as the black flames leapt across the field. “That’s going to be a big fire.” What were the chances the metal people wouldn’t notice?

  Arz picked up his pace. The last thing he needed was to run into the metal people as he was scurrying back to his hiding spot.

  The cave would be safer, but he wouldn’t be able to move everything at the moment. A quick experiment would let him escape anyway, so moving his spot wouldn’t matter. He was almost gone. It was fine.

  He managed to get back to the tree without running into anyone. Crawling back through the roots brought dread again with the sense of wonder he had not long ago fading as he became cramped in the narrow space.

  The mixture on the top of the rock had separated a little bit. Arz spat on it again and mixed it together with his spoon. He placed the rock on his knees and positioned it to cook over a fire from the black oil.

  I have taken to thinking of this black liquid as Darkfire oil. It is a fitting name with the black flames and the viscous nature of liquid. With my limited space, I hope to heat the mixture enough to create an acid, but I fear I have too little salt. Still, I believe this should work. I just have to use my legs as a holder for the cooking stone. Hopefully I don’t burn my legs off.

  He poured a vial’s worth of Darkfire oil onto the ground. It took some harsh shakes of the vial to get most of the oil out. The black fire lifted off immediately, making the small area feel far too warm. Arz positioned his legs to balance to the rock right over the fire while he used the spoon to keep the mixture evenly heated. Before long, it boiled and released a stench that indicated it was working.

  Arz squeezed his eyes closed and held his breath as the fumes burned his face. With even one breath, he had felt like he was about to pass out. His best bet was to hold his breath until he absolutely needed to take another. Inhaling acid fumes was a sure way to die.

  With careful balance, he kept the mixture boiling as he readied the newly emptied vial for the acid. It still had small drops of Darkfire Oil inside, which could easily compromise the acid.

  There was no other option. He was out of storage.

  Arz carefully poured some of the liquid into the vial. A bit splashed onto the ground and sizzled. His eyes widened and he took extra care to keep his hands out of the way. How strong of acid did he just create? He didn’t want to find out. Not yet, at least.

  Arz’s breath caught as he heard a familiar sound. Footsteps of a metal person. And this time, there were plenty.

  Did they see the fire or did they smell the fumes? They didn’t have noses, or at least not ones that Arz recognized. Still, was he compromised?

  He finished filling the vial and corked it. There was no immediate reaction with the Darkfire Oil, so he stuffed the vial in his pocket. There was still plenty of acid on the rock, and the oil on the ground kept burning, as it probably would forever.

  The metal people repeated the same damned phrase again, but their voices were far closer than Arz expected. He tried peeking through the roots, but couldn’t make anything out at his current angle. With the oil and the acid-covered stone, he couldn’t move much without potentially injuring himself, so he just had to work faster.

  Arz scooped a tiny piece of Storm Tree paste from his last supply and dropped it in the acid on the stone.

  No reaction. At least, no portal reaction.

  “Shit.” He moved the purple paste aside. There was too little Storm Tree paste to waste it on a failed experiment.

  The footsteps were getting closer. They definitely knew he was under the tree.

  “How do I do this?” he whispered to himself. His eyes scanned everything around him until they locked on the gray shimmering bubble. Arz reached the spoon out and poked it against the time bubble. When he pulled it out, a little bit of gray fluid filled the spoon. He dumped it on the rock, but nothing happened.

  The metal people repeated the phrase from before.

  “Hurry,” Arz whispered. He leaned as far forward as he could scooped more of the gray fluid from the bubble. He poured it onto the acid on the rock and sprinkled the moonstone dust he had onto it, waiting for some reaction.

  His heart hammered as the footsteps stopped right outside the roots.

  As soon as the moonstone dust dissolved in the liquid, the entire rock disappeared. He felt its weight on his knees, but he couldn’t see it at all.

  The glowing tip of a weapon pushed through the roots, brushing them to the side.

  Arz thought of all the reasons to not pour acid on himself, but he also couldn’t stop staring at the invisible rock.

  He closed his eyes, grabbed the invisible rock, and poured it onto himself. It felt hot, but it didn’t hurt. Not badly, at least. He held his breath and pushed himself against the stone in an attempt to make himself as small as possible.

  A head with four glowing blue eyes poked through the roots. The weapon’s end swept back and forth before the metal person repeated the phrase again and backed away.

  Arz let out his breath and held up his hands, which weren’t even visible to himself. He tried grabbing his notebook, but he couldn’t quite find his jacket or the pocket with the invisibility.

  “Incredible,” he whispered.

  All he had to do now was wait for it to wear off so he could keep working.

  Arz had let his mind wander through all the possibilities until he fell asleep. After a few hours, he twitched enough that the rock fell off his knees and onto his stomach, which jolted him awake. The Darkfire Oil continued burning and whatever sun there was had set. He couldn't hear anything nearby and with the dim light of the Darkfire, he could see his hands.

  He immediately pulled out his notebook and wrote the recipe for the invisibility potion. That would be helpful later.

  “Now I just need a portal.” He turned the vial of acid over the fire to see it better. The bits of oil in it had mixed with the acid, giving it a darker color than the first Spiraltree acid he had made.

  “So, this mixed with the time bubble will do something. But if I had the Storm Tree for its portal properties, will it force something open? Maybe I didn’t use enough Storm Tree.”

  The acid hadn’t had the reaction he had expected from the simulations he had ran in his mind, but the time fluid seemed to react with everything, which could be enough to spur the paste into action.

  Arz shifted until he was able to crawl out of the little cave. His whole body was tight and cramped from having been in the same position for hours on end. When he finally stood upright again, he had to take a long moment to stretch. The closest building to the edge of the bubble appeared as scaffolding and quickly formed into a full tower. New pieces were added higher up until it resembled a tree more than a building.

  Arz reached back through the roots to gather all of his vials and a few roots, which he stuffed into his pockets beside the petrified stalks. Arz set the stone at his feet and crouched beside it. He poured the dark acid onto the stone, which actually started to sizzle and dissolve with the addition of the Darkfire Oil.

  “Need to be quick.”

  He used the spoon to spread the rest of his Storm tree paste into the acid, which popped like food in cooking oil. It was promising. Arz used the spoon to scoop some of the liquid from the nearby bubble and stood tall as he poured it down onto the rock.

  The entire mixture glowed with the gray-purple color of the time bubble before it sounded like lightning struck. A portal roared to life right in front of Arz. A smirk spread across his face as he stepped through.

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