relatives looked around. A little further from the shining symbols, closer to the center of the cave, the rays, coming from the mass of rock paintings, intersected each other and formed clusters of dense nebula and dust clouds in the Abode of Unity. Through this bizarre curtain that enveloped almost the entire space of the grotto, the children noticed a small luminous boulder.
– What is it there? Unga asked. – Let’s go see.
And the future hunters rushed to the mysterious stone.
While passing through the nebula, Ronin, who stepped in front of everyone, inadvertently entered the dust cloud. Suddenly, the cloud broke into many tiny particles. The particles shot up and hovered over the youth.
– Oh! The young man stopped and, cautiously raising his head, stared at the dust particles.
Unga and the girls also noticed what was happening.
– Wow! Have you seen? Unga exclaimed, opening his mouth in surprise.
«Yes-ah-ah,» the young compatriots picked up in unison.
Meanwhile, the luminous particles, trembling slightly, continued to float in the air, as if they were waiting for the disturber of the peace to leave their place of residence. The teen slowly and cautiously took a step forward. At that moment, the grains that were farthest from the young man smoothly descended a little lower and hung again.
Elna, Unga and Omi groaned with delight, and Ronin realized what was happening and took a few more steps – away from the bizarre dust particles. And then all as one tiny particles of light rushed back to their original location. They clung to each other measuredly, re-creating a cloud of light dust.
– Ah! Omi exclaimed and, without thinking twice, briskly jumped into the same dust curtain.
Grains of light scattered again and hung in the sky! As soon as the daughter of the leader moved away from their former place of accumulation, the particles again gathered into a single whole.
– How wonderful it is here! Elna rejoiced and also jumped into the dust cloud.
The children, rejoicing and admiring the fun of the mysterious dungeon, began to rush from one cloud to another, dispersing the particles of light across the Abode of Unity. And when the young relatives were tired of the unrestrained running around the Temple, Ronin called his fellow tribesmen to him, and, having caught their breath, the future hunters finally approached the mysterious stone.
«Interesting, what is it?» Unga asked thoughtfully.
The strange and slightly ugly miracle stone was covered with equally strange shining tangles of roots that resembled shoots of a liana tree. The plexus emanated directly from the grassy island under the stone, and their glow was like the glow of the symbols of the first people on the walls of the cave.
Ronin, bypassing the boulder, touched the top of the miracle stone and immediately noticed standing near the bowl and a huge vat.
«Someone here would…» the youngster did not have time to finish, when suddenly, combined with a dull crack, the processes on the bizarre stone began to move and, losing their glow, began to slowly slide down.
The children groaned in surprise and jumped away. A moment later, the rays of light emanating from the cave paintings and symbols of the first people began to fade throughout the Temple of the Creator – the luminous dust clouds and nebula faded away. The cave quickly began to envelop the darkness!
The young relatives panicked.
«Ronin, what have you done?» Elna exclaimed, looking around, frightened.
«Ronin, what’s going on?» Unga asked confused.
I don’t know, I didn’t do anything. Nothing at all,» the equally frightened youth justified himself.
Elna, I’m scared! Elna!.. – Omi hugged the black-haired maiden.
«Hush, honey, everything will be fine!» Elna hugged the baby.
«Ro-ro… i-nin, Ro-o-ni-i-n, what is this?» Unga said in a trembling voice.
The pale young man pointed to the boulder and tried to say something, but the words no longer came out of his mouth. The teenager seemed to be speechless. Opening his mouth and silently moving his lips, Unga plopped down on his back and was dumbfounded. The bandage around his thighs got wet, and a puddle formed under the youth.
– Aaa! yelled little Omi and clung to Elna so that she felt the sharp claws of the little girl pierce the skin to the blood.
As soon as the luminous stems exposed the top of the boulder, the young relatives saw someone’s face in the stone forms. And the young realized at that hour that the mysterious stone was not a stone at all! The children recognized the human body between the plexuses, and it was enclosed in plexuses, clothed from head to toe, as if in captivity. And between the disgusting shoots, the gray and, it seemed, petrified face of a stranger was serenely visible. His eyelids were lowered, as if he were in a dream, but in the semi-darkness it was seen by the young relatives that his eyes were restless. And this vision inspired confusion and fear!
Ronin was taken aback. Unga crawled away from the tangles in fear. And Elna’s legs shook from excitement, and, hugging the baby even more tightly, the dark-haired maiden fell to her knees on the sharp outlines of the relief.
The emerald streams of light and luminous dust clouds in the Temple of the Shaper faded completely. The abode of Unity was enveloped in darkness, and everything in the cave seemed to freeze at that hour. In the impenetrable darkness, the children could no longer distinguish one from the other – it was impossible to see anything at arm’s length. Only Omi and Elna were together, in each other’s arms. The girls hid. They did not speak or even move, for they were afraid to break the silence of the grotto and awaken the stranger imprisoned in the roots. From left and right, they sometimes caught the tremulous breathing and sniffling of Unga and Ronin, and a barely audible stream flowing in the warehouses of the dungeon broke the eerie calm.
And suddenly, in the midst of the dark blackness, right in front of the young, red eyes lit up, and huge pupils appeared in them blacker than night: the stranger’s gaze suddenly quickened, and fiery eyes, closing their eyelids over and over again, began to look first at Ronin, then at Unga, then at Elna and Omi, then somewhere in the distance.
Ronin collapsed unconscious. Omi, seeing the luminous ghost, turned away and screamed with all her might, her screech echoing through the Temple of the Shaper. Clinging even closer to the black-haired maiden, the baby began to roar excitedly. Ungi was not audible at all, and the pale Elna, at that moment shaking with fear and not feeling her legs, inadvertently caught a captivating and terrifying look.
And that gaze was alive and intelligent! And there was no light in the Abode of Unity, except for the light of fiery eyes. The reflections of the radiance of a terrible look dimly illuminated the outlines of the petrified face, and the black-haired maiden recognized the features of her leader in those outlines. And it seemed to Elna at that hour, as if the leader’s lips were moving, trying to say something, but the gloomy stems held back the cheekbones, as if suppressing the voice…
Midnight procession
By dusk, Valla’s squad had skinned Longneck. The relatives cut off as much meat as they could easily deliver to the camp, and a third of the carcass had to be left to be torn to pieces by carnivores.
Bags were made from the skin of a defeated reptile. They were stuffed with slaughter. And the hunters also profited handsomely from the bones: each time, any defeated giant replenished stocks of equipment with their remains – at least two bone equipment. There was also an increase in production for other accessories useful in everyday life, not to mention trophies in the form of teeth and a skull. Part of the ridge at the end of the tail was one of the components of the bone bow. Another such tail, and a full-fledged powerful small-arms gun to replace a wood one, would have been picked