Ominous, swirling black clouds gathered in the sky, accompanied by more crackles of thunder and lightning. The black storm clouds slowly descended. A suffocating pressure permeated the air. Doc carefully listened to the morse code as he counted the dots and dashes and wrote down the translation.

  “3301. Instar. Liber Primus...” Doc shifted in his seat “I.. r… Irminsul? What?”

  The storm rumbled across the dried up lake bed and into the mountain pass they had passed through, propelling wind strong enough to rip foundations of decades worth of dry clay and wood from the ground.

  “This place truly fell apart, look at that sinkhole.” Vodko said, eyes fixed on the outside environment.

  Doc paid him no mind as he double checked the result because he was unable to make sense of it. He once again translated the morse code.

  “3301. Instar. Liber Primus. Irminsul.”

  Doc's body ached from being in the cramped driver’s seat for too long but the soreness was rapidly dulling behind the mask of his growing frustration. However, despite the message seeming completely intelligible, there were a pang of familiarity in it. Something. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “What does that mean?” Vodko asked, peering down from above.

  At this moment, a lightning bolt cut through the air and struck down uncomfortably close to the tank. Sparks crackled in the air as a mass of iron oxide lit up into fireflies before being obscured by another puff from the sprinkler system. Vodko shrugged.

  “Well clearly that’s an encrypted message. Code. A puzzle if you will,” Doc pointed out, “Let’s try and turn the dial all the way over here, see if I missed something.”

  Doc grabbed and turned the third dial all the way over to the left edge of ‘88’. Nothing happened.

  “Hm, nope.”

  Doc turned the third dial all the way over to the right edge of ‘’107’. The reverberation echoed once more, as a light inside the sinkhole flickered for a few seconds.

  Light crackling softly transmitted through the radio as an eerie green glow slowly lit up inside along with a machine audibly whirring to life. The light turned off, the ground started shaking, shooting sand and dust into the air as if the entire lake bed was a subwoofer. They could hear the sound of the ground rumbling getting closer.

  “What is that? An earthquake?” Vodko asked as he pushed himself up into the firing part of the turret to peer out of the periscope.

  The outside sky was still dark and gloomy, as though a downpour was about to come soon. However, the lightning strikes fell like the rain that didn’t come. The atmosphere was filled with a stifling pressure as fog started to build in the area.

  “The red zone is nowhere near a tectonic plate, nor is there any intersecting fault lines. It can’t be an earthquake. We’ve recorded two of three frequencies now.”

  Black blood was flowing out of Doc’s mouth and nose wet his shirt.

  “Hey, you’re bleeding.” Vodko commented as he looked down into the interior of the tank.

  “I- what?” Doc took a deep breath, raised the gas mask before wiping the blood with his sleeve. “What’s happening?”

  The ground began to recede in front of them and was quickly turning into something like quicksand. Doc quickly clicked the gear into reverse and grabbed the steering levers, battling the tides that were pushing the tank. The tank threads spun furiously, despite that and the cloud of dust blasting in the direction of the sinkhole, the tank was still gradually pulled towards it.

  “Schisse! It’s pulling us in.” Doc said as he pulled the steering levers to make it so that the tank swerve to avoid falling inside and stood on the gas pedal.

  Despite that, the tank was teetering on the edge. While Doc was flustered and panicked, he heard a pop from behind him. Vodko had opened his book, taken out the bottle and was taking himself a healthy swig.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Is this really the time for a drink?”

  “Da. Will not die sober.” Vodko replied before taking another swig.

  Outside a portion of the sinkhole fell into the hole, revealing a metallic surface with a symbol carved into the block. The aching feeling of something being close dissipated, the puzzle pieces finally clicked together. A shield encasing a swastika in the background, with a pillar in the foreground.

  “That’s man made? The Germans, the pillar.. Ahnenerbe?”

  As if responding to a correct answer, there was a mighty tug at the tank. Just as Doc was about to scream out his vocabulary of German swear words, he realized that the tank wasn’t falling, but was gradually being lowered. The trailer with the iron oxide was still on the edge, but the connection to the tank was severed with a crunch as the tank sank further down into the darkness below. Vodko’s words were somewhat slurred, but he was still curious and asked a question.

  “Are we currently in a tunnel connected to the russian mining outpost?”

  “I- Well, I don’t know. Probably. There’s- This is gonna sound stupid, but its like something is in here.” Doc said as looked out of the tank.

  There was an ambient rumbling crackling noise in the space where the tank hung in the air. Vodko looked into the periscope, furrowed his brows and waved in Doc to take a look.

  “Looks like a triangle, a rainbow.. those exist.. right? Sinkhole.. triangle-rainbows?” Doc laughed nervously. “I think we tuned in on this... triangle? when we were outside. Let’s see what else happens if we tune the dial some more.”

  “Da. What’s the worst that could happen?” Vodko asked before taking another swig as Doc climbed back down, allowing Vodko to once again climb up.

  Doc moved over to the high end equipment and turned the fourth dial towards ‘89”. The humming noise outside increased in intensity. One end of the triangle grew into a line. A tiny triangle formed at the end of the line.

  “Did you do that?” Vodko asked, surprised.

  “Uh, I think”

  Doc turned the fourth dial towards ‘93”. The line that was previously created increased in intensity. The humming started to resonate with the environment as the sound started to build up in intensity. A tiny triangle formed at the end of the new line. Wispy distortions in the air started vibrating.

  Doc turned the fourth dial towards ‘91.5”. A line grew in a diagonal line from the first triangle. A line from the second stretched toward the same point as the first triangle. A tiny triangle formed at the end of the large triangle. The room lit up. There was movement within the triangle, as if clouds were drifting by past a gas cloud within the space. Suddenly the radio screeched and a voice came through.

  “Hello. Dear. Tell everyone. Hello.”

  “Uh, hello?” Doc answered cautiously as the radio crackled.

  “-ce that. Have us. Lose our. Primality. Hope things there. Same.”

  It was like if the voice chose radio snippets of words to relay a message. Each word a different voice. As if it was grabbing words from different broadcasts to try and make sentences.

  “Who-” Doc began to ask but was interrupted.

  “Listen. Ab Initio. Like the. Instar. Tunneling to the surface.”

  “We must. Shed our own. Circumferences.”

  “What?” Doc raised an eyebrow.

  “3301. Instar. Is. Leave. Possible.”

  “I- Well, No?” Doc asked uneasily.

  Whirring machinery around them began to turn, increasing the spin rapidly as long lines of obscure runes started glowing in the spinning machinery. They radiated an intensity of light that soon became blinding.

  There comes a point when equilibrium is reached, when the shivering stops and the body stops to register the cold. This was not that moment. Drunken memories drifted through Vodko’s mind. As the last of the liquid flowed down his throat, he closed his eyes. Upon reopening them, the smoky environment of the war-torn tank changed to a clear, star-lit sky. The ambient sound of mechanical whirring and rapid Geiger counter clicking gave way to a symphony of crickets chirping and Tiger Frogs croaking. As he laid there sprawled out on the metal floor, staring up at the sky, watching the leaves of a Weeping Willow dancing amongst the stars with a gentle night breeze filled his view as a thought came into his head. ‘Where the hell is the hatch?’. Vodko scratched his chin and kicked with a free leg that was not stuck under a box. The remaining tank shell rolled over the floor.

  The hatch to the tank was missing and in its place, large vicious red cuts littered the sides of the opened hole. He tilted his head to the left and saw a grove of trees in the distance through a gap in the tank armor. There was an eerie red glow around the edge of the gap. He turned his head away from the sight while drunkenly trying to focus and observe the state of the tank. Struggling to raise his head, touching his chin to his collarbone, he saw past his feet to see Doc crumpled up in a corner snoring heavily. He had let go of the tank’s steering levers as soon as they came to rest, the tank from friction, him from exhaustion.

  Vodko felt weakness in his body, his movement, limited. He struggled to raise an arm. Then took another swig, finally emptying the canteen. He belched and shifted around awkwardly as he pulled off the gas mask and used it as a pillow.