The woods were engulfed in the rage and roar of the fires burning and erupting from all around fastly encroaching upon the site of The Faerie Fade. Two men were left standing in swirling hot wind amid thick clouds of smoke.
Jeremiah knelt down weeping over the body of Captain Lorgray, another dear friend lost to him all in pursuit of the dream of Excavatia.
“What do we do now?” Jeremiah asked Hanokh.
It had only been a few moments since O’Brian and his party of travelers vanished—drawn through the opened doorway into the sea of eyes.
“How do I get back to Azragoth to retrieve the Cordis Stone? How do we take him back to his people?”
“Just wait and watch there,” Hanokh raised his massive arm, pointing to the fiery orbs hovering over the four posts of the now-empty Faerie Fade enclosure.
The living orbs moved in towards the four tree-posts, and the tops of the trees swayed as the circles of light burned into their trunks extending along and through the roof of the canopy.
The structure began to become effused with golden light as the rustic wood gave way to a golden structure beneath its woodland exterior, revealing its true form.
The gnarled twisted saplings forming the shapes and edifices in the ceiling and walls of The Faerie Fade began to be smooth tracery of ornate metalwork, keeping the same pattern and design, but exuding a polished and clean translucence, like that of molded glass.
“Stand back,” Hanokh warned, helping Jeremiah rise, and kneeling to lift the body of Captain Lorgray onto his broad shoulder.
The tops of the trees, comprising the four posts of The Faerie Fade began to sway and then lean outward away from the central covering. Then with a mighty crunching and crackling noise the four tops of the trees crashed into the surrounding treetops and fell away from the structure, their trunks cut smoothly from the top of the covering and down into the ground surrounding the shining structure emerging from within. It was almost as if the fallen trees were bowing in the four cardinal directions of the land.
Then the structure began to rise, underneath the four glowing orbs as if it were being lifted off of the ground where it had been rooted for so long.
The rising structure began to lean and roll before them, but the four orbs set at the tops of the four ceiling posts did not appear to turn. The two on the left lowered, tilting and the other two on the right rose above, inverting the floating structure until what was once the ceiling was now the golden floor swimming with dazzling flashes of light and power. The opposite wall remained only the central doorway was righted, rather than inverted and the whole of the structure rested upon the four orbs of light.
The Pan and the dryads and satyrs crawled and cowered in the periphery, away from the mysterious structure, terrified of the four Faeries that seemed to comprise the living wheels of the shimmering structure.
Hanokh supported Jeremiah, whose legs and knees were still weakened, not so much from their grueling strain but also from his own fright and awe of what was happening with The Faerie Fade and its joining with the four guardians below it.
“The chariot awaits,” Hanokh said, moving forward towards the dramatically revealed carriage.
“How can this be? We cannot go into that. It is too dangerous. No man may touch the Faeries,” Jeremiah stammered.
“Then how do you explain how the prophet Elijah came here to the Mid-World?”
“Then this is the…?”
“The very same.”
Excavatia 