The man with no name
As Holly exited the ancient tunnel and traversed through the thick depths of water, she didn't think much of her discovery. Maybe she was distracted by the need for air or the fun times she and the girls were having. But the mysterious orb was off her mind. It was like an influence, a corrupting feeling over her, that made her forget it even existed. Maybe it was the reason why it had been left in its alien cavern for who knows how long. Holly could only think of the bulky weight of the orb as she swam back to the surface.
Ruth was hesitantly scanning the small beach the girls had made for themselves. Her face was still wet from when she went back underwater searching for Holly. Yet, she had found no one, and she was starting to get worried. “Guys!” Ruth called to the shore.
Bree raised her head from her zoned-out tan. The others were too focused on chattering to hear at first. “What do you want, Ruth?” Bree asked. “I haven’t seen Holly.” Ruth yelled back. “Wait, what? Well is she hiding?” “Well it’s just… she hasn’t come up for air… and there’s no way she stayed down there for that long!” Bree intrinsically threw herself off the float into the cold water. She was not gonna let one of her friends die, she simply couldn’t. She tried to swim closer to Ruth, past several jagged rocks that could easily block off the yacht. When she finally reached her, she plugged her nose and took a dive. Bree peered into the murky ocean below them, but couldn’t for the life of her see anything. For a moment at least.
Quickly, she could see the figure of Holly rising fast from the depths. She also seemed to be holding some kind of object, like a stone. Bree ordered Ruth to move out of the way as Holly came crashing out of the water. She gasped for air while still holding the heavy-as-sin orb. It took a minute for her to re-adjust. “Oh thank god, Holly! I was so scared!” Ruth went straight for a hug at the sight of her friend. “Ok thanks, Ruthie, thanks.” She replied. “Yeah it’s gr- wait.” Bree had seen the orb. Its glow wasn’t as prominent out of the sea, but it still emanated a presence unlike anything the girls had seen before.
“What the hell is that thing?”
For a guy nicknamed Blondie, he is not the tiniest bit blond!
Otaku
Holly, Ruth, and Bree swam back to short, with Holly carrying the ruby orb on her hands. The three girls sat down on the white sands of the beach, which Holly delicately laid it down due to its bulky weight and apparent fragility of the craftsmanship.
Bree glanced at the ruby orb, shimmering with ruby light on her face. "What's this, Holly?"
"I don't know," Holly replied honesty. "It's some sort of orb-shaped jewel," she said.
"Looks to me," Ruth replied. "Pretty ancient, perhaps hand-crafted, but appears to be made of some sort of gemstone that's perfectly clear yet emits a form of light radiating from it."
"I found it in a cave underwater," Holly explained. "I was looking for a place to hide from you when I stumbled upon this."
"Is there anything interesting about the cave?" Bree asked. "The orb here looks perfectly polished and untouched for years."
"Yeah," Holly confirmed. "The entrance looked like something out of a fantasy flick. There's two dragons with gemstone-embedded eyes flanking the entry with a inscribed mantle."
"What did it say?" Bree and Ruth asked in unison.
"Nothing," Holly sighed. "I couldn't read it. It was too eroded and encrusted to be even legible. Anyways, I entered the cave to which there was a long, ancient tunnel without any light or inscriptions. Just only a air pocket at the end of the tunnel."
"Where you found the orb?" Ruth asked, tapping on the orb.
"Yes. The ruby orb was on top of a pedestal, on a platform of rocks. I emerged from the water and climbed up. I didn't know who or what build this air pocket, but the orb I found was beautiful and oddly alluring." Holly said as she wiped sweat off her brow.
Then suddenly, Amanda and Charlotte emerged from the sea, dripping wet with seawater as the sunlight shimmered off their soaked bodies. They saw their friends, Bree, Holly, and Ruth sitting down on the sand as they were looking at the red orb that Holly brought and discussed about it.
"What's up?" Amanda asked, lifting her hair up to push away seawater soaking it. She immediately noticed the red orb lying on the ground, still pulsing with glowing ruby light.
"It's a long story," Holly explained.
Amanda took off her sights from Charlotte, quickly kneeling with the other three. Meanwhile, with Amanda's sights gone, Charlotte ran towards the jungle in the interior as she snatched the ruby orb without notice. She seized the opportunity to explore the jungle on her own, taking a deep breath with the natural scents, sights and sounds of the jungle for a short while before returning to the beach.
As she walked, she spotted a ruins of a small ancient temple. The foundations had been long-collapsed, only leaving rubble in the form of fractured columns and wrecked walls. There was an arrangement of long-eroded and broken statues, depicting women dressed in what resembled sarongs and cossies in various styles.
For a while, it inspired her curiosity, wondering what long-forgotten, lost civilization could have built it. She admired the skillfulness and artistic value of the statues and bas-reliefs, despite what time and nature taken its toll on it. She spotted a large temple in the distance, which she approached closer.
Charlotte saw two rows of statues. These depicted young female warriors, dressed similarly to the statues she saw, except they were colored, albeit their pigments had faded and flaked off from age, with a wide variety of physical appearances. The statues were brandishing weapons and each statue held a large round shield, planted on the ground, depicting a sea animal emblem.
The painted full-body atlantes, column-sculptures in the form of youthful girls with their own temperaments, held the mantlepiece of the temple's entrance. From left to right, these consisted of a bold girl with short black hair, a serene girl with long light reddish-brown hair, a humble dark-skinned girl with long dark brown hair, and a cheerful girl with blonde hair tied to twintails.
The mantlepiece on top of the temple's entrance depicted a heavily-stylized beautiful lady with human and draconic traits, whose calm eyes glanced down at a frightful brass decoration depicting a dragon with ruby eyes. The sealed door itself was made of rock and steel, yet had broken over age.
Charlotte approached the door with fascination and dread. She didn't know what purpose of the temple, and what it kept behind the sealed doors. As she reached closer to the door, she suddenly tripped and slipped on a rock. She lost her balance and fell down, tumbling into a small, hidden crevice in the door and directly into a dark shaft as she closed her eyes while screaming for her life, still gripping the red orb as a source of light.
The rules for this game are simple:
The yacht plowed through the gentle waves of the calm seas towards an island shrouded in the mists against a clear blue sky. The figure of the island steadily grew in size as it revealed its true proportions. From the distance, there was a large volcanic caldera surrounded by a sea of emerald green.
On the shores of the island, the yacht lowered its anchor as it slowly beached on the white, fine sands under the clear blue shallows. The gentle waves lapped on the moist sand, washing up pebbles, seashells and other debris from the sea.
A group of girls emerged from the yacht, fully dressed in a variety colorful, stylish, and ornate swimsuits that shimmered vibrantly and vividly in the bright sunlight coupled with the warm breeze and cool sea spray. They stretched their arms and legs, basking in the sunlight, taking a deep breath, and softly chatting with each other as they prepared for their tropical vacation.
All of the girls joyfully ran and jumped out of the deck of the yacht, diving into the shallow water and immediately surfacing up to air, as they waded towards the beach of the island. Soon, they set up a rudimentary campsite by putting up tents along with foldable tables, beach blankets, and deckchairs on the sands of the beach.
But in a secluded part of the beach, five girls swam and played in the warm waters. Amanda, the oldest of the girls with shoulder-length chestnut brown hair, exchanged water splashes with Charlotte, a bubbly girl with blonde hair. Bree, a tall, aloof girl with long, straight black hair, lied on her pool float while basking under the sun. Ruth, a girl with red hair tied as spiky pigtails, swam underwater in the sun-lit shallows with Holly, a cute girl with curly auburn hair.
Holly dove further into the water, swimming away from Ruth who was chasing her, towards the coral reef that represented the limit between the shallows and the deep sea. She felt scared, apprehensive as she swam further away, yet she needed to win a game of underwater tag.
Holly swiftly swerved underwater and deep underwater. Her air supply that she held in her lungs was slightly running out, but it didn't matter as long as she could quickly surface up for air. She lightly held on a rock outcrop, looking for a good place to hide as she scanned the coral reef that was teeming with tropical fish and colorful coral.
Something had caught her sight.
Holly spotted a small grotto beneath the edge of the reef, hidden amongst the variety of coral in colors and shapes. Two dragon statues, one with ruby eyes on the left, and another one with sapphire eyes on the right, flanked the entrance, as if they were guardians. On the top of the mantle of the entrance, a long-eroded inscription appeared.
In a moment of curiosity and an urge to find a hiding spot, Holly swam into the grotto. She saw a long passageway for a small grotto, which she felt surprising for such a deceptively small place. But her curiosity and bravery got the better of her fears and rationality, to which she decided to explore the tunnel to see what's at the end.
As Holly swam into the tunnel towards the destination, the tunnel slowly grew darker, away from the bright, warm sunlight and into the dark, cold waters of the tunnels. Her locks of auburn hair curled at the ends sleekly danced in the opposite of Holly's movements.
Holly felt her lungs slightly burn, realizing her air supply in her lungs were starting to slip and she needed to surface. Yet, she chose to resolve, hoping she could reach the end of the tunnel underwater. She imagined it to be a treasure trove, but it could be just a simple cavern.
Reaching the end of the tunnel, Holly glanced up to see an air pocket at the end. She took the opportunity to surface, rapidly kicking her legs to propel herself. The water in the air pocket broke, unleashing a large splash that emerged a youthful girl with auburn hair.
Holly gasped for air, recovering from the long swim in the tunnel. She looked around with her head above the water. The room was almost hemispherical in shape, illuminated by dimly-shimmering gems studding the ceiling. In front of her was a raised platform, where it held a red orb gem on the pedestal.
Holly became piqued with the red orb. The gem was beautiful, finely-crafted and radiated with ruby light. She wondered why it was glowing, and who made it. But it did not matter, for she behold the beauty of the gem, and it was valuable. She imagined it as it would be good for being a jewel, or she could sell or auction it for money.
Holly swam towards the raised platform, clutching on the rocks and climbing up the raised platform, still shivering and slightly exhausted from swimming underwater. Initially, she struggled to keep her footing, but with some determination, she continued climbing up the raised pedestal towards the pedestal.
Finally, she stepped onto a stable flooring and stood up, dripping wet with seawater. She gazed at the radiant red orb, lifting her hands as if she wanted to take it. An inscription on the wall, written in an ancient language and long-eroded by time and seawater, was set behind the pedestal, which she was unable to read and understand, so she ignored it.
Holly picked the red orb from its pedestal, looking at it with a captivated gaze. She turned around to face the water where she surfaced. She breathed for a few times, inhaling a large volume of air into her lungs, and dove into the water. She swam back through the tunnel, holding the glowing red gem excitedly with little thought of what it was.