Chapter Seven—The Dungeon Akarilion

“Mmm!” Ali noised as he chewed his dried meat. “Food! Haha! It never tasted so good in all my life.”

Being well watered, Shiro too enjoyed his dried meat and bread. Both men had worked up an appetite that was revealed after they had had their fill of water.

Their camels were untethered, but Shiro’s had lain down. It was a long journey through the desert to this oasis and the skies were beginning to take on an orange hue as evening came.

Still chewing on a hunk of meat, Ali removed his piece of the map and put it down on the ground next to Shiro, who found his half and matched it up as Ali sunk down on his knees into the sand.

The palm trees were thick inside the ravine and provided a lot of shade, which allowed the men to remove their sun protective robes of white and blue cloth. Shiro eyed the turtle nuts, intending to crack some open. But not now.

“Aha!” Ali said, nodding. He looked up and about. “The entrance is behind the waterfall.”

“Mmm,” Shiro noised, with a nod of his own.

“What is it, my friend—by the gods it’s a paradise here!”

Shiro looked about. He felt like he could lie down and sleep right now without a care in the world, and yet his excitement was giving him energy, along with the ample supply of food and water.

Ali is right, he thought.

“I wonder, though,” he said. “Do you think there will be many dangers inside the dungeon?”

Shiro stood up on his feet, his fists on his hips. He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do. We should careful.”

Unlike Shiro’s Rs, of which he tended to pronounce like the L, Ali said his with a roll of his tongue. The words had sounded like “We shood be carrrefool.”

There were many languages in these regions, but this empire was vast, so a single unifying language had to be used for ease of access.

It had confused Shiro at first, as he had learned scores of words from half a dozen languages and twice as many dialects before he caught on to the proper language he was to learn if he would function properly in these lands.

And find a way back home.

It was this language of the empire that he and Ali spoke now.

“Hai,” he said.

“Well,” Ali said, gesturing down at the map with an open palm, “there’s nothing on the map of the interior, or how to get in, if there is indeed a secret method to the door. So we don’t need these anymore.”

Ali was a greasy swashbuckler, but there was also another air about the man. He stood up straight, his shoulders square. With his open jacket, his billowing pants and his scimitar bobbing at his side, Shiro thought he could be an adventuring prince. He had not asked the other man very many persona question, but it was Shiro’s thought that Ali was at one time in his life, somewhat wealthy. If even only a poor kind of wealthy.

Nodding again, Shiro took both slices of the map and put them inside his jacket. “Let’s tether the camels.”

Ali laughed. “But why? Do you think they will leave us for the hot sands of the desert?”

Shiro looked about. Exotic-sounding birds chirped within the trees. He had never heard such cries before. Tethering his animal was a force of habit, to ensure it didn’t wander off or get stolen.

Chuckling, Ali said, “Come on, my friend! Live free for once in your life!”

Shiro raised an eyebrow at the man and finally, agreeing with all that the Abassir said, he nodded. “Then let’s go to the waterfall. I think I spotted some rocks we could climb over there.”

“That is the way of it!” Ali proclaimed.

With purpose in their strides, they trudged over the undisturbed sand up the river toward the waterfall, where the Dungeon Akarilion was shown to have its entrance behind the waters.