Eric Leblanc slammed the door to his cabin shut, wiping fresh red blood off of his face as he did so. He walked over to the end of the cabin, where a chair made of human bone sat. Eric heaved a sigh as he collapsed on the bone throne, arms slumping over the femur armrests. His backpack bulged against the back of the seat, grinding against the assembled bones as he shifted his weight. Eric wondered if he would notice that he’d gone insane. These days he wasn’t sure that he would even care. As he pondered his possible insanity, he looked to the several skull lanterns hanging down from his ceiling, casting a warm glow over his home. Small flames burned in the hollow sockets as the skulls of his defeated foes glared down at him.

Eric snarled as they stared at him, and he looked away from their penetrating gaze. They shouldn’t have tried him. Didn’t they learn? He tried to teach them, but these damned natives never learned. Linda sat in a chair in the corner, stationary as always, with Timmy standing next to her. Eric mimicked their tones as he began speaking to himself.

“Daddy you said you’d show me how to make a bamboo spear!” Timmy whined, his drawn-on face a deep frown.

“Now sweety...” His wife said softly, not moving an inch as she spoke “Your father’s been busy with his show, he’s tired, he’ll show you tomorrow alright? Just take it easy.”

Eric smiled to himself, standing up from the bone throne as he approached his family. Their unmoving forms were engulfed in his arms as he squeezed them against his chest. The twigs snapped under the pressure, and Timmy and Linda fell apart, falling through his arms and clattering against the wooden floor. Eric stared down dumbfounded at what had just occurred, the bodies of his family lying prone and broken before him.

Eric then fell to all fours and wept, salty tears carving a trail through the drying blood on his face. They weren’t real… He needed to accept that they were gone, but by God it was too hard! What had he done to deserve this fate!? He suddenly growled like a beast as he stood from the ground, bringing his modern axe to bear, the dark carbon steel blade shimmering in the candlelight from above. He looked up at the skulls, which still glared down at him. His former foes seemed to be sneering down in disapproval at Eric's weakness.

Eric bared his teeth “Don’t look at me!”

He swung his axe, cleaving through the skulls with a spray of white powder and flame. Fire licked the walls and floor of his cabin, but those did not catch fire immediately. What did, however, was the bed of fur he had been sleeping on for the past few months. The flame spread quickly, the fine hairs burning away quickly as the hide too was engulfed. Eric cursed and tried to stamp out the flames with several stomps, but still the flame grew.

Giving up, he grabbed up an unburning piece of the fur mattress, and quickly threw it outside after kicking open his door. The fur landed with a poof, loose soil clouding around its impact site. The firelight illuminated the tall wooden palisade gate He turned around to see other pieces of flaming wax on his floor, and he went to work stamping them out. This effort proved to be in vain, for while he was able to stomp out many of the spilled candles, he could not get them all. As soon as a log caught flame, that was it. He had no water to douse the fire, not that his water skin would have held enough for the job anyway.

He sat with his back against the palisade gate as he watched his cabin burn. Days worth of work and effort, just gone. He then heard a high-pitched scream somewhere beyond his defensive walls, and his head slumped as more screams answered it, all surrounding his fortress and closing in. He took off his backpack, setting it between his legs as he rummaged through their contents until finally, he found what he was looking for.

The cool black metal of the ovoid shape reflected the firelight. The black segmented metal that contained the whirring red stone resembled a rib cage. It was no bigger than his hand, and he cursed at seeing the red hue. Eric had thought that he’d switched the thing back to blue after he was done taking out his frustrations on the natives, but he must have lost himself in the killing again. He pressed the small round button near one end of the device twice, and soon, the angry red color turned to a calming blue hue.

Soon the approaching screams ceased and he heard bare feet skitter back into the depths of the accursed forest. Eric stared into the calm blue light but did not feel anything other than frustration. Whatever this device was, it held no effect on him. Why were those cannibals affected in such a way? He shook his head. He didn’t really care. Eric hadn’t cared about anything since the day he let his son stay dead.

Well…

That wasn’t completely true. There was still one thing that drew something out of him, something that took away the pain for at least a little bit.

He loved killing these savages. Eric hated them with every ounce of his being. Yet despite months of what he defined as ‘self-defensive genocide’ there always seemed to be more. Where was it they came from? They didn’t live in the caves, he’d only run into mutants and the blue men down there. He hadn’t seen a single ‘normal’ cannibal within the cave's wretched depths. He had seen their villages of course, his horrifying first days on this peninsula had him frantically combing the land for the whereabouts of his son, bringing him into contact with those small communities.

After it was clear that Timmy wasn’t on the surface, Eric had descended into those horrid caverns with nothing but a crash axe. Exploring those caves had been the most terrifying experience he’d ever had in his life. They did eventually lead him to Timmy, but Eric had been too late to save his son from that bastard Cross. Thinking of the red-painted scientist caused Eric to tighten his grip on the artifact in his hands, the cool metal pressing deeply into his flesh.

Then there was Megan… that poor little girl didn’t deserve her fate any more than he did. When he first came upon her, blooded from murdering her father, Eric had hesitated to scoop her up and bring Timmy back. For, while she was covered in blood, skin a bluish hue, and eyes distant with clear insanity, she had still been a little girl.

Then, Megan had mutated into the most horrid creature he faced on the peninsula. Somehow, like with the other horrors he’d faced, Eric had killed her. He hadn’t felt guilt for the act, it was him or her, and he was actually relieved that this had been the outcome. If Megan hadn’t mutated, Eric didn’t think he would have been able to drag her to the Obelisk. Simply imagining the child screaming and crying as he brought her to what would have been her second death would have stopped his hand for sure.

That proved to not matter, as when she was dead, the Obelisk would not accept the corpse. Eric remembered the taste of maddening despair he had felt knowing that he'd need a living child to revive Timmy. When the artifact spat the poor girl out onto the ground with a bloody plop, a golden keycard fell out from somewhere on her person. Eric had taken the keycard, remembering the locked elevator at the end of the cyclopean room he killed Megan in. Not giving up hope, Eric had ridden the elevator to the top. He remembered the spectacular view that he mostly ignored as he marched into the final room in the Sahara labs. It was narrow, with smooth metal pentagons curving up either side of the wall toward the ceiling. When Eric had passed through the threshold, he had been immediately drawn to the loud droning buzz from over his head.

A perfect copy of the device he held in his hand now sat above him, yet this one had been as big as a storage container. Not knowing the device's purpose, he approached the terminal at the end of the strange chamber, noting the laptop that sat upon an upturned plastic garbage can in the corner. The glowing characters had read ‘emergency shut off’ and several cables seemed to lead up to the device in the ceiling. Turning his attention back to the main terminal, Eric saw much to his surprise, the diagram of a plane.

Three dots surrounded portions of the diagram and three names arraigned themselves on either side of the screen. Thomas, Kevin, and Sally. All three were children apparently, for under the kid's names had been ‘Age’ followed by the corresponding number. There were three children on the plane. Three potential sacrifices to bring his son back from death. Not quite aware of what he was doing, he had raised his hand to the large orange ‘ACTIVATE?’ on the screen. Would it bring down the plane much as his had been?

He had paused just before pushing that button that would give him the keys to Timmy’s revival, reminded of how he had painted his own skin red in the caverns before now. He had done it to ward off any more potential threats by cannibals, but he felt an eery sense of connection with Cross. He too must have sat before this desk-bound computer, painted red to scare off the natives before pushing that button, the button that ruined Eric’s life. The symbolism was not lost on him despite his sanity having been worn to almost nothing.

Eric had stared at his painted hand, breathing heavily as he backed away from the terminal, looking instead to the emergency shut-off laptop in the corner. He agonized for a full minute on what he should do, torn between saving his son or sending a new group of people to their deaths. He wanted his son back so very badly… but remembering that he wouldn’t have brought a live Megan Cross to the obelisk helped his decision to shut off the device for good.

There was also the matter of Megan’s fate…

Dr. Cross had brought her back from the dead, yes, but at a horrible cost. Megan had come back twisted and violent and eventually had mutated. He knew from the videos he had found scattered across the peninsula that eventually, these poor kids became the very monsters that he had been fighting since the crash. Would he really do that to Timmy? His right hand shook as he took another step back from the monitor.

What would Linda say?

Tears streamed down his cheeks when he made his decision. When he left through yet another cavern system, he burned the photo of Timmy he had carried with him, the ashes flowing away in the wind. After a few days of mourning, Eric had revisited the yacht, which in turn led him back to that same cave entrance to attain this smaller artifact he now held in his grasp. He hated the thing. Hated whoever or whatever had made it.

Every artifact was deserving of hatred, for their creators had to have been of evil nature. Eric stood suddenly, possessed by a wave of intense anger that made his head spin. He began pushing the button rapidly, squeezing the disgusting thing with all his strength as it shifted hues from blue to red to black rapidly. He finally screamed and threw it hard against the ground. It bounced once and rolled a small distance before coming to a stop… then, oddly, the device began to glow a shade of deep violet. Eric frowned.

That was new.

He approached the artifact, his rage not entirely quelled. Before he could kick it into the roaring flame of his cabin, it quickly floated upward, a high-pitched whine emanating from it. The sound was so aggravating that Eric found himself clutching his ears to shut out the horrid noise. He backed away as the sound intensified, his hands offering no protection for his eardrums.

Then everything went white.

The high pitch noise ceased, and Eric rubbed at his eyes. Had the thing flash banged him somehow? Why was everything suddenly cold? Soon the white began to fade, and Eric opened his eyes to find that he was in pitch darkness. Completely engulfed, his breathing quickened, and panic threatened to overtake him.

He looked for the flaming wreck of his cabin, but either the fire had been put out or he had been made blind. He looked up at the sky, trying to see the pinpricks of stars. Nothing, just solid black. Eric fumbled for his lighter in his pocket, lighting the small flame. Much to his relief and then subsequent horror, the light illuminated his surroundings. This, of course, meant that he was in fact not blind. The problem, however, was where he was.

He was inside a cave. Eric paused before moving forward, only able to see a few feet around him from the light cast by his diminutive torch. He listened for any movement, any noise whatsoever, and thankfully, he heard nothing. He rummaged through his bag until he found his flashlight, stowing away his lighter. Turning on the hefty tool, he pointed it straight forward, slowly turning in a circle as he examined the cave walls.

He was in a large stone chamber of rough stone, a sheen of moisture reflecting his light off the cool rock. Eric saw that he was standing atop a smooth stone altar that was wide enough for him to lay atop with a few inches to spare. Other than the altar he stood upon, there was only one other man-made (If you could even call it that) construct within the chamber. Familiar double doors of dark ribbed metal stretched from the floor of the cave to halfway to the ceiling, completely sealed shut.

Had he accidentally activated a function of the artifact he wasn’t aware of? Did it teleport him to a cave? If so, was this a cave that he’d been in before? He’d explored those depths very thoroughly, there were no other sealed ancient doors he hadn’t found yet. Speaking of the device…

He scanned the floor and altar around him with sweeps of his flashlight but found no trace of the ovoid thing anywhere. The ground here was actually very clear of rubble and other debris, so the artifact would have stuck out like a sore thumb. He stepped off of the altar, taking deep calming breaths as he approached the giant metal doors. There, he saw a black triangular table sticking up from the ground nearby.

Eric knew that he would need to put some weight on the mechanism to open the door, thankfully, he always carried a few big rocks and skulls in his bag. Eric unzipped his pack and placed five rocks one after the other onto the table. It sank in with a grinding noise until the mechanism was flush, and the doors responded in kind, scraping against the rough stone as they slowly opened.

A maw of deep blackness lay beyond those cyclopean doors, endless and all-encompassing, hiding unknown dangers. Eric brought his modern axe to bear, the carbon steel edge ready for hacking. He took a deep calming breath, and stepped into the darkness, lighting his way.

I felt particularly inspired to write this, what do you all think?