Chained - Jenlisa

Spin-Off 2: The Old Ones

  
     Lisa nodded and skirted around the car to follow Taeyeon. She asked to borrow Taeyeon's phone so she could inform Jennie of her advancement, but Taeyeon refused, saying there was no service here. Lisa sighed heavily and kept on. "I don't miss this," she mumbled. Dirt and sand kicked up around her feet as she sulked.

     "Miss what?" Taeyeon asked, sounding irritated thanks to the suns harshness.

  
     "All of this." Lisa gestured to the vast nothing around them. "It's fun for a while but I'm glad society has advanced."
   

     Taeyeon squinted, roaming her eyes over the dirt, searching for the old one's marker. "You've been here before?"
   

     "I was born here."
   

     Surprised, Taeyeon stopped looking for the marker and instead laid eyes on Lisa. "You were born with the old ones?"
   

     "No, they were here long before me, but I was born here, on this continent."
   

     "Have you met the old ones before?"
   

     "Not exactly. They pretended to be Gods long ago, and they influenced the culture here. I prayed to them once. But they aren't Gods. They're just old folk with too much free time on their hands."
   

     Taeyeon leaned her head back and pressed her water bottle to her throat. "They're powerful."
   

     "As am I, but I don't pretend to be something I'm not."
   

     "Please don't tell them that. We just need to convince them not to play around with the earth, okay? Give them a riddle or something."
   

     "Is that what you've been doing to keep them silent?"
   

     "It works."
   

     "That's only a bandaid. You need a real solution, not-" Lisa's words cut off as she tripped and slammed into the ground. She groaned and spit up dirt, making a face at having gotten dust in her nose.
   

     "You found the entrance," Taeyeon said, helping Lisa up. There was an indentation in the ground covered in sand, but it was enough change in landscape that it caused Lisa to fall. Taeyeon waved her hand and mumbled a few words in Latin. The ground shifted to reveal a stone staircase leading deep into the earth with no end in sight. Taeyeon started down it with Lisa hot on her heels.
   

     "That wasn't very well hidden," Lisa commented. She touched the walls and found carvings ingrained there. They were harder to decipher the more she descended. Then the ground above closed, and nothing could be seen.
   

     Taeyeon flicked her hand outward. "It's not meant to be, not really. How can the old ones lure in victims if they're hard to find?" A spark of light danced on her fingertip but it spluttered to nothing in a second. "Damn it all," she growled at the inconvenience.
   

     Lisa moved around Taeyeon nimbly. She couldn't see, not really, but her sixth sense was much better than her other five at the moment. "I can feel them." She took Taeyeon's hand and led the way.
   

     "I can do this," Taeyeon mumbled. She allowed Lisa to lead her, but she continued to attempt to breathe life into a flame. Eventually, Lisa rolled her eyes and ripped off a piece of her shirt and waited for Taeyeon to try again. When sparks flew, Lisa tossed her shirt piece into it and a fire burst into life. Taeyeon shut her hand around the flaming piece of cloth to preserve it, then a ball of light sprung forth and floated a few feet above her head.