The worldwide earthquake was only the first problem to interrupt Lex’s attempts to reach the island he thought should hold the Well of Souls. The second time, it was weather; a hurricane blew up out in the Atlantic, then headed towards Florida. At one point, it was aimed directly at the island that interested Lex. It ended up missing the island and turning north to run along the coast before dissipating nearly harmlessly, but it was enough to make them miss the planned trip; both the ship captain and Oliver Davis, the helicopter pilot, had other clients booked for the following week.

The next attempt was a couple of weeks later. This time, they actually made it out to near the island and into the air. The ocean was rough, but it wasn’t enough of a storm to disrupt the trip. They had the time to see the island from above and locate a possible structure near the middle of the island, but when they came close the winds increased. They became worse and worse, then started to change rapidly. Oliver Davis wasn’t willing to fly his helicopter into the potentially dangerous winds, so they had to retreat.

The weather conditions near the island didn’t make sense, so Lex went back over the information he had from his grandfather to see if there was anything he’d forgotten. There was: the tornado brooch! Lex’s grandfather had called it a key in his letter. That, along with the winds being a severe problem, meant that Lex probably needed to at least have it with him when he went to the island, and he’d completely forgotten about it.

It required a trip back to New York and Aki’s dungeon to get the brooch.

They were already back in Miami when Oliver Davis called them with the bad news: the helicopter was going to be unavailable for about two weeks. At first, Oliver didn’t want to say what the issue was, but Lex eventually managed to get him to tell the story. It was mundane yet terrifying; he’d landed and let his passengers go before performing his routine postflight inspection, where he found a visible chip missing from one of the blades of the tail rotor. It was small, but it still meant the helicopter wasn’t going anywhere until it was repaired.

It was actually four weeks before they managed to head out on their fourth trip to the island, this time with the tornado brooch pinned to Lex’s shirt. The winds that proved so problematic weren’t an issue this time until they tried to get to the center of the island, where the possible structure was. Oliver was confident he could land them on the island, but they weren’t prepared for an expedition on foot and instead took as many pictures as they could to map out the island. Even though it showed up in satellite images now, for some reason the details were always obscured.

Lex’s pictures came out fine, but all of Bethany’s were blurry. Lex could only attribute that to the tornado brooch.

The fifth trip wasn’t derailed by anything magical; instead, it was canceled due to illness. Both Lex and Bethany felt a little off the first day, but before they reached the island, Bethany was vomiting; Lex wasn’t far behind her. It was probably food poisoning, but that was enough to cancel the trip. They returned to shore and spent a few days recovering before they tried again.

The sixth trip, they were finally on the island. It was lush with greenery. As beautiful as that was, it was also difficult to travel through; fortunately, they’d come prepared this time. Oliver let them off as close to the increased wind barrier as he could. If the island were flat, it would have been within sight of the structure, at least with binoculars. Unfortunately, the island wasn’t, but they still knew the route.

Lex had to hold Bethany’s hand to get her through the wind barrier. It didn’t affect him at all, but as she tried to go through it, it pushed her back more and more until it actually lifted her off her feet. The moment Lex touched her to help her up, the wind stilled and gave them the clue they needed for what was happening.

It took four hours (and two minor changes to the route) before they reached the foot of the “structure”. The area around the structure was completely flat and barren, covered only with consistently sized rounded gravel. The approach was just as obviously man-made as the structure itself; nothing in nature was perfectly flat.

The building was an incomplete step pyramid made of massive stone blocks. It looked almost like a pyramid where the top had been sliced cleanly off, but Lex expected that that was simply how it had been built. There was some sort of something on top of the pyramid that wasn’t a continuation of the building, but they hadn’t been able to see it since they came down from the hills an hour earlier, and that wasn’t close enough to really make out what it was.

The stone wasn’t native to the island; Lex was no geologist, but even he could tell that glossy black stone blocks didn’t come from an island that was made of rough brown stone, whether or not that stone was covered in greenery.

Lex could only stare at it. After all these months, he was only a matter of a few steps away from his goal of finding out something about his family’s past. It was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure and he wanted to soak in every moment of the emotion before he moved forward and found out which was right.

Bethany gave him a couple of minutes before she interrupted his quiet contemplation. “The stairs are over there.”

Lex followed Bethany’s hand and realized that he’d missed some details by staring at a single spot. The blocks here were huge, but the corners of the pyramid were made of much smaller blocks. It wasn’t immediately obvious because the stone was all the same shade.

Assuming it was actually stone. The more he saw of it, the less certain Lex was that it was a natural material at all. It seemed more like a black glass. He knew obsidian could look like that, but he also knew it didn’t normally come in perfectly polished absolutely consistent blocks that were ten feet in each dimension.

“Thanks, Beth. We probably need to get to the top.” Lex paused and turned towards his wife and admitted the secondary reason for his worry about the pyramid. “I hope this isn’t like the one Serenity found in that myth.”

He had no way to deal with it if it was. On the other hand, he had his grandfather’s account; it didn’t talk about taking over someone else’s body. It was written by someone who traveled through something he didn’t understand when he ran from his family. Timothy Rothmer had hidden something he never described as anything other than “a treasure” or “the magic of my past” along the way; returning the way his grandfather had come was Lex’s way of finding out what his grandfather meant.

Bethany nodded and reached out to take Lex’s hand. “I have a feeling that’s what the pin is for. We should make sure we stay together; I don’t know if we’ll get as much warning this time.”

“Holding hands?” Lex wasn’t about to admit it, but holding hands with Bethany while they walked through the wind barrier was a reminder of the past that made him feel like a young man again. They hadn’t held hands while they walked in years. He wasn’t sure when that changed; perhaps when they both got so busy they rarely walked anywhere together?

The smile that crossed Bethany’s face didn’t give off the same romantic vibe he felt; instead, it seemed almost fierce. “Yes. It didn’t work until we held hands at the wind wall, so we should do the same here.”

Lex added “plan a wonderful evening with Bethany where we walk somewhere and (hopefully) hold hands” to his mental to-do list. They were retired; if they wanted to take time together, they could. For now, though, he really needed to get his head back in the game. He held his hand out to Bethany.

There were two hundred and thirty-eight steps to climb the pyramid before they reached the larger flat area at the top. Lex counted as he climbed. He also wondered just what the stone was, because it had a nice amount of grip to it even though it looked as smooth as glass.

Bethany just swore quietly under her breath. Lex knew exactly what that was about; she hated stairs. Her knees weren’t yet bad enough for knee replacement surgery, but what that really meant was that she was living with the pain until it was bad enough to be worth the surgery. Increasing her attributes had helped a little, but it didn’t fix the underlying problem. Healing magic didn’t work, either; it would ease the immediate soreness, but that was all.

The top of the pyramid was a flat black surface that looked like it had been polished until it shone. Lex didn’t trust it at all; there wasn’t even a haze of dust on top of it despite the lack of wind. That wasn’t new but it was somehow far more obvious when he looked at a larger flat area. He’d never seen a floor so clean that hadn’t been recently cleaned by either a human or a robot vac-mop.

An oddly melted-looking outgrowth of the floor rose in a circle around the center of the floor. It was circular and about fifteen feet wide; the top was a dome shape. The portions more or less parallel to the sides of the pyramid were solid, while the portion closest to the pyramid’s corner had a door-like archway. Lex could see through the opening in front of him and the one on the far side to the greenery beyond.

“It has to be in there,” Bethany stated confidently. The hand that wasn’t holding his rubbed her knee as she spoke. “Still no idea what it is other than probably a portal? That doesn’t look like a portal is active right now.”

Lex smiled at his wife. She’d supported this crazy quest since the beginning, even when he worried it wasn’t safe to follow. It wasn’t like he could give up, even if she hadn’t supported him; leaving an unknown threat out there somewhere wasn’t much better than finding out what it was so that he could prepare for it. That opened up the chance that his grandfather’s family might find him when he didn’t know who they were. Serenity was far too visible to trust in obscurity, and Lex had made more than enough waves himself if someone wanted to find Timothy Rothmer’s descendants. “We’ll just have to find out.”

The inside of the domed structure was not visibly different from outside. Six-inch-wide walls rose without a visible joint from the floor and flowed smoothly into the domed ceiling, while the floor was a single expanse of shiny black stone.

Lex paused at the entrance and looked around before he stepped in and realized that there was one major difference: outside the structure, even up to the edges, there were clear joints where the stone blocks met each other. There were no such joints inside, even though it was wider than a single block.

There was no benefit in waiting. “Ready?”

Bethany gripped Lex’s hand tightly and nodded before she stepped into the structure. Lex followed immediately.

Everything became dark and silent. There was no feel of wind on his skin and the faint scent of plant life in the distance that he hadn’t noticed before vanished. All he could feel was Bethany’s hand in his and his weight on his feet as he stood.

“Can you…” Lex trailed off as he realized that he couldn’t even hear himself. He could feel that he was talking, but he didn’t hear it at all. If Bethany replied, he didn’t hear her either.

Lillene

I don’t think I’ve really talked about Lex’s motivations beyond the thrill of discovery and curiosity about his family’s past. Those are his primary drivers, but the fact that his grandfather talked about danger and Lex doesn’t know if that’s even true anymore is also a reason to look into it. He doesn’t know if he should be worried or what he should try to prepare, so he needs to find out.