Strange lights...

     UOPETA joined me by my side and looked a little confused about why I had my camera in my hand, and why I looked so shocked. I was only able to mumble a few words before pointing in the direction of the purple haze that I had seen. UOPETA squinted into the darkness beyond, looking for anything unusual that I had obviously seen... After the image was available on my camera, I called attention to it and showed UOPETA what I had captured. It appeared to be a shower of purple particles floating in mid air with no sign of a portal nearby at all. It wasn't apparent on the image, but after I was able to see them, and before they disappeared, they seem to all drift off to the left before dissolving entirely... Almost as though they were being blown to one side or maybe they were following something... I couldn't really put my faith into any of those two possibilities as there was no wind or draft here, and I couldn't see anything that they might have been following. Then again, with HoN Co. possessing light-bending technology it wasn't impossible to assume that something may have been there. But that still didn't explain why the purple particles were there, and why they suddenly disappeared. They were always floating into or out of an active portal, and even at this distance, if we could see one, we'd be able to hear it. But there was no sound other than that of the lava pooling in front of me...

"Are you sure it's not just a trick of the light...? Or maybe a fault with the camera?"

Impossible! If there was a fault with the camera then there must also be a fault with my eyes! I had seen it first before taking a photo of it, so there had to have been something there for me to deem it necessary to take a snapshot!

"And you're sure they looked like the particles that come from portals?"

I nodded, pointing back out across to the position I had seen them. The other two had begun asking questions about what was going on and I filled them in about seeing the particles, along with the actual image I had taken. After a few moments squinting at the image, they handed it back and began asking questions of their own. Questions that I was asking myself in my own head and had yet to find plausible possibilities to, let alone actual answers!

"Maybe it was linked to the lava... Sparks or something drifted off down towards the water... I vaguely remember about water having a sucking effect on the air around it in the direction it flows... Or maybe I got that wrong..."

Even if that were true, I doubt it would be strong enough to pull the small sparks and puffs of smoke that far. It was quite a distance from where we stood to the far side, but as I looked across, I became aware or something odd... Across the other side, just to the right of the waterfall seemed to be a notch in the wall with a light source somewhere behind it... I pointed this out and the others dismissed this as another pool of lava. I began to think that was the case as well as we had found masses of the stuff since descending to this depth. But as I looked, I noticed there was a stark contrast between that light, and the light cast out from the lava pool in front of us. The light was steady, strong and unwavering. As though the source was static and not susceptible to wind...

"Wait look! Syeonyx is right. Look at the light here... The light cast onto the wall waves and bounces... But that's not..."

"True, but look at the distance we are from it. It's possible that any wavering from the source is covered over by the distance. Maybe even take into account the heat haze we're looking through..."

"I still think it's worth a look... Syeonyx? THEROS?"

I wouldn't say I was fine with it, but by this time my curiosity had got the better of me, and before I knew it, I was using the pickaxe to mine a small tunnel around the lava pit to get to the other side. We all headed through in single file, before reaching the water. As it was fresh, clear water, we were able to see the bottom of the floor, which turned out to be quite low. This meant the waterfall, despite it's speed, was quite shallow, and we were able to quickly make our way across to the other side. As we got closer, I watched the light to see if it fluctuated, but there was no movement from it at all. As we neared the notch in the wall, we found it to actually be a crude but definite set of stairs. Whether this was natural or intentional, I couldn't tell; there were no signs of visible tool markings, so it was either really old of completely natural. Or both... Following it around, we got closer and closer to the light source, expecting to see a pool or lava, against everything that went against that theory. As we reached the top however, there was no statements of "told you so", but instead a very hushed silence... As I followed up the rear, I waited for THEROS to move to one side before finally setting eyes on the source.

"Well... I can't really tell if this was what I was expecting..."

A single, solitary torch sat embedded in a nearby wall... There was nothing more to it. There was no-one or nothing or interest nearby aside from some gravel, which after digging through yielded nothing... This was all very odd. We had been drawn up to a light source, expecting to find something of significance, and yet we had found nothing but a single torch...

"What does this mean...? Is SERVERE nearby?"

"I doubt it... There's no other way into this part of the cave other than the path we made up here..."

"No other path that we know of..."

It was such a simple object, but this one torch had freaked me out almost as much as the purple particles... I was hoping to find something up here that might conclude what the first phenomenon might have meant, but instead we now had two...

"Oh wait... It continues around here!"

UOPETA disappeared behind a section of wall that, upon getting closer to, actually hid an entrance quite nicely. Going around it to the other side though, we were faced with a blank wall which led nowhere...

"This seems to have been a little fruitless... Let's head back and continue with the tunnel... Looks like it must be a false alarm..."

I watched as UOPETA extinguished the torch and struggled to remove it from the wall, before heading back down the stairs with the others. "A false alarm..."? How could an unexplained lit torch be a false alarm...?

Syeonyx signing off