Following the chilling success of their first collection, Lady Eckland, Glenn Riley, and new collaborator, Bella Darkwood return to guide you through the shadowy corridors of fear with their second compendium, *Whispers In The Dark 2*. These master...
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The morning sun filtered in fractured beams through the lush canopy, casting the forest floor in a mosaic of light and shadow. Captain Rodrigo Alvarez stood at the prow of their hand-carved dugout canoe, scanning the snaking river ahead through the mist. Forty Spanish soldiers and explorers sat behind him, their steel armor and muskets a jarring sight amid the bursts of vivid flowers and twittering birds.
They had been traveling upriver for three weeks, charting this tributary in search of rumored native cities laden with gold. Rodrigo could feel the prospect of glory within his grasp. As the most ambitious son of a minor noble family in Seville, he knew this jungle expedition could make his name.
A branch snapped on the riverbank, and Rodrigo saw movement - a fleeting glimpse of a human form. “There!” he shouted, pointing. The men stirred, fumbling for their firearms.
But the figure - if it had been anything at all - did not reappear. Rodrigo frowned. They had not encountered any natives for days. He did not like traveling in what felt like an empty forest - it unsettled him. He longed to return to civilization, to emerge from this accursed jungle.
“Onward, men,” Rodrigo barked. “To glory and gold!” The soldiers took up a chorus of cheers and they paddled deeper into the writhing green maze.
By late afternoon, the river had narrowed into a stream choked with fallen trees and hanging vines. Sweat-drenched and frustrated, they carved a way forward inch by inch with axes and machetes. Rodrigo stared ahead, doubts churning in his mind. Could native guides have deceived them? What if there were no riches here at all?
“Sir!” A scout on the bank waved urgently. “There are ruins up ahead.”
Rodrigo leapt from the boat and crashed through the brush behind the scout. He stumbled into a small clearing and froze, awe-struck. An ancient stone temple, covered in moss and flowering creepers, loomed out of the jungle. Intricate carvings of animals and men adorned columns and walls carved straight from the living rock. A sunbeam shafted through the canopy, illuminating the entrance to the shrine. To Rodrigo, it looked like the very mouth of El Dorado itself.
“Search the area!” Rodrigo shouted. “Establish a perimeter.” He strode towards the temple, pulse racing.
As the soldiers fanned out, machetes whirling at the encroaching vines, a young private named Luis Ortiz hung back near the dugout canoes. He alone had removed neither his helmet nor monogrammed breastplate despite the smothering jungle humidity. His armor and gun felt like feeble talismans against the spirits his mother had warned him dwelled in strange lands.
Luis did not share his comrades’ thirst for gold or glory. The youngest son of a cobbler, he had fled his hometown to escape another year of drudgery at his family’s stall, naively dreaming the army would bring adventure. Now he longed for the safety of familiar streets over the perilous beauty surrounding him.
