Death of an angel (middle)

The response we got was a little disheartening but at the same time I think deep down it was also somewhat expected. Long story cut short, he did not have a clue what they meant, he had passed it on to some of his peers, but he had told us to not get our hopes too high, it did not resemble anything he had ever come across.
Not having any other choice we simply had to put those symbols aside and put our entire focus on the parts that was translatable. Over the course of the next few weeks we both finished up our remaning duties at our current dig and resigned from the expedition to be able to put more hours into our translation-efforts. It went slowly since we could only read half of the texts but we made some progress. It took us roughly two months to discern that somewhere in the vicinity of what was now Denmark there was something of importance. We had not yet been able to find out what that something was exactly, but we at least decided to relocate to the European mainland while we continued our efforts. I had a distant aunt living in northern France so we were able to secure very cheap lodgings there, it was also not too far of a journey to get to the great libraries in Paris. About a month after our relocation we caught a breakthrough and was able to read about a Chamber of the Moon that was a source of some kind of worship to the writers of the tome. The impression was not that of a temple dedicated to a god similar to the churces of today, but more of an abode for something extraordinary. We were fortunate in that the writer who had written this particular passage seemed to prefer the germanic language over the unknown one that was so very prominant in other parts of the book. There were a few lines concerning landmarks that, if still existed, would surely point us in the right direction. So I went on a journey to Denmark to try to find these landmarks while my associate stayed and continued trying to read the remaining pages. He was more skilled in languages while I figured my expertise in geography would suit me well in these circumstances.

This venture turned out to be more difficult than I had first anticipated, I had thought that with the reveal of the landmarks in the text that it would be a matter of a week of two scouring old maps and libraries to find what we were looking for. As it turned out that book must have been even older than we had first anticipated. My friend and I communiacted over the telephone almost every evening sharing our findings with eachother and offering advice in each of our searches. It seemed quite bleak for a little while until my friend phoned me one night with excellent news. He had beena ble to pin-point the location in a much narrower area than before, this helped my scouring of old maps greatly. In a week I had managed to find the area that the tome had pointed to, it was now in the middle of a rather large forest. Large enough that we hoped it would still remain untouched from human hands. I telephoned my colleague immediately to tell him to pack his bags and join me as fast as he could manage. As I waited for his arrival I secured the necessary equipment and provisions we would require in our travel. I met him in a rental automobile outside the trainstation and we went off almost immediately for our destination. As I noted before, the site was in the middle of a large forest so the car would not take us all that close, we could also not find any paths that led into it, manmade or trampled. Which was of both good and bad fortune, bad because it would make our hike that much more difficult and time-consuming, and fortunate in that it also signaled that whatever was in there would not be disturbed by any summer-house and loggin-efforts. We spent a few days finding our way in the forest until we found any clues, keep im mind, we did not have any precise co-ordinates of exact location. Only a rough are in which to search. But we did end up finding something, the remains of a spire so old and covered in moss and vines that it was almost indiscernible to the surrounding rockformations. Probably the cause to why it was still unknown. A lone spire was not quite what we had expected to find, but in regards to it's age we figured the base could very well be underground at this point in time.

How right we were, after digging our way into one of the windows and making our slow descent that way we eventually came to find that the overgrown vegetation had for the most part stayed on the outside of the structure. A few meters down and we were almost free of any obstruction, apart from the occasional breach in the walls where the rock had given in. I believe we were both very startled in what we found down there, it was unlike any old ruin neither of us had ever visited before, for it's age the murals on the walls were still quite preserved but what was even more strange was the complete lack of any life. In such a dense forest you would expects quite a bit of life, but there was nothing, no rats, no spiders, not even the tiniest of insect. That, most of all, I think, was what made this particular expedition seem the most, in lack of a better word, weird. But of course, we had yet to surmise what exactly we would end up finding in the bowels of the structure. But i digress, let me get back on track.

The murals was what we focused upon as we journeyed further downwards, they depicted people, no doube the people who ended up building and then paiting these murals, finding something peculiar in the forest and building this complex around and above it. They had intentionally left out what exactly they had found, but it was loosly depicted as both something of fantastic light, but also of great darkness. Eventually as we went deeper and deeper, the darkness became more prominant than the light until it was officially named the Spire of the Night. The murals made the name quite clear in writing, perhaps they had expected the structure to outlast any of it's builders. It was not long until we arrived at what must have been the central chamber, the paintings on the walls all pointed to this room to be what the book had called the Chamber of the Moon.
The door was think and heavy but our spirits were too excited to stop at this juncture, we put our all into opening the door and slowly we managed, millimeter by millimeter it shifted open. As soon as it was open enough we took a moment to rest our backs and catch our breath before squeezing into the chamber. I have to say that we both knew quite well that what we were doing was incredibly dangerous, travelling out alone to an unknown ruin, moving on a fair bit underground, only to squeeze ourselves trough an ancient door into a chamber we knew nothing about, but there was nothing in the world that could have stopped us at that point.

As I lit another torch and we both looked out around the room my gaze fixated at the middle part of the room. I couldn't even speak and from the gasp I heard from my partner I knew he was witnessing the same thing. In the dead center of the chamber there was something wholly unexpected and far more spectacualr and terrifying at the same time. A figure much like a human hunched over, still breathing but incredibly thin and with a dead, glassy look in it's eyes. But that was not what drew our our minds to a complete standstill. From the creatures back and lying down out over his sides were two massive feathery appendages. Wings, it was wings. Their color had once been white, you could tell that much, but now they were more grey, even black at places. They seemed to give off a very pale shine if looked at intensely enough, one of the wings had been clearly damaged at one point, probably by fire as it looked very much like burnmarks.

After a while when I resumed control over my mind I first looked over to my fellow explorer and the look he gave I am quite sure I gave right back to him, no words needed to be spoken, we both had realized what we had found, no matter how ridiculous the idea would sound if voiced. I looked out over the room to try to make sense of the situation and from the looks of the chains and small remains of leather around, this creature, I almost can't say it, angel, had been a prisoner in here. Chained to the floor.

At that point my legs gave out from underneath me and I sat down on the floor suddenly incredibly exhausted. "An angel.." was all I could utter and as I did so my friend quickly turned to me with a very determined look on his face. He started to move closer to the angel to, what I assume, get a better look at it. When he was close enough to get a good look at his face he also said, very quietly "..an angel..." And as he did so he quickly jumped back in fear and as soon as I could look out from behind him I could see that this angel, that had until now not moved in the slighest apart from the shallow breaths moving his chest in and out. had suddenly risen his head up to look at his unexpected guests, still with the lifeless lack of shine in its eyes.