by C G Gaudet
“Aren’t you supposed to be able to understand all languages?” I ask half-heartedly, even though the group is spending a lot of time thinking about a door and not enough time walking through it. “Did your skill break or something?”
Willow scrunches her face as she tries to examine the symbols with all her might. Shaking her head, she says, “I don’t think so. I can still read this book, but those don’t make any sense.” She flips the book open to a random page as though to prove a point and her eyes instantly sparkle with delight. “Oh look, Jenny. Your scythe is in here.”
“Really?” I lean over to find a sketch of my ivory weapon in the top corner of a page full of drawings and words I can’t understand. “Look at that. It’s so pretty. What are the symbols next to the drawing? Do they say anything useful?”
Jameson brushes past to get a better look at the door. He touches what might be a quill. “You don’t understand it,” he says, “because it’s not a language. Not really, at least. They look more like the notes I keep in my journals. To keep people from stealing my inventions, I write in symbols only I can understand.”
“So, what does this say?” I ask.
Jameson gives me an odd look as though to tell me he thought I was being stupid. I know the look. I give it often. “I don’t know. These aren’t my notes. I’m assuming whoever created it has their own code.”
Talie turns the handle and the door opens with an ear-piercing screech and a blast of stale air. I rub my nose to try and get rid of the musty smell, but it doesn’t help. My hands just smell of a different sort of filth.
“Looks like it opens, regardless,” Talie announces proudly. “Doesn’t seem too mysterious to me, just a forgotten door. The place is so big, it’s hard to remember where every room is located.”
“Keep telling yourself that, white knight.”
I push past her to look inside and discover it’s not a room behind the door, but a grand set of stairs that lead down into the dark. Ominous. Also intriguing.
“Sorry Willow,” I call to her, “looks like you’re going to be blind again for a while.”
“Blind?” Jameson asks. “From the darkness, you mean? I actually have something for that.”
He pulls out a small vial and holds it out to Willow. I stare at it and then give him a doubtful look. It won’t help anyone if Willow is turned into a monkey, or worse, something without thumbs. Either she doesn’t notice my concern or doesn’t care. Willow happily takes the vial and swigs it back in one swallow. I hold my breath and wait for a tail, but nothing visibly happens.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
Are her ears a bit pointier? They look a bit pointier to me.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Nothing seems different, but there’s also light up here. Let’s check.”
She bounds down the stairs forcing us to follow.
“Oh, wow!” Willow spins around in the grey stone corridor at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, wow! This is amazing. Do you see all of this? It’s breathtaking.”
I guess Jameson’s potion worked again. Maybe he has his uses after all, though there is something about the smug look on his face that makes me still distrust him.
“Amazing,” I say unenthusiastically with my focus still on Jameson. “These stones are so interesting.”
“Look.” Willow stops and points to a particularly large brick about three times the size of most of the others. “These are all graves. The inscription of the name and date are carved into the stone. Behind each marker stone, you might find whatever remains of the person buried. Though some of these are so old, I doubt anything but possibly the rusted remains of their possessions would still exist. The rest would be dust.”
“Possessions?” Jameson perks up and starts running his hands against the stones, presumably looking for a latch or some other easy way into the grave.
“Leave it, Collector,” Willow warns. “Disturbing the dead is a line I’m not willing to let you cross for your lust of items.”
There sure were a lot of those large stones with carved symbols around, I can see now that they’ve been pointed out. There must be hundreds of people buried down here, especially if the numbers continue this way all the way down the path before us. The corridor occasionally twists and turns in on itself, but it always leads further underground, and it seems to have no end.
“Well, this has been nice,” Talie announces over Jameson’s argument about the people no longer needing the items they rest with. “And yay! We solved the mystery of what’s behind the forgotten door, so that’s good. But we really should be going back now, I think. Don’t you guys agree?”
There’s a nervous edge to her voice and her gaze keeps darting around as though she sees something out of the corner of her eye. It makes me uncomfortable just looking at her. I also don’t disagree with her. I have no interest in being surrounded by dead things, especially when we could still be in the room of magical artifacts ripe for stealing.
“It’s okay,” I say while the others continue their argument, pulling us further down into the depths of the catacombs. “We’ll just take a quick look and then get out. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Don’t you feel that?” She twists her head around to look back in the direction we’ve come and pauses for a moment. Her fear has me turning and looking with her, though there’s nothing there. Of course there isn’t. Nobody but the four of us are alive down here. “There’s an energy that’s not like anything I’ve felt before. I truly believe we should go back upstairs. There are plenty of other areas of the temple I can show you.”
When we turn back to see what the other two think, we find Jameson with his arm shoulder deep in a hole in the wall and Willow nowhere to be seen.
“Please tell me you aren’t trying to steal something from that hole in the wall.” I know the truth. I don’t know why I’m bothering to ask.
“Steal? No,” he says. “I’m just making sure nothing of value is going to waste.”
He stares at us and awkwardly smiles, his arm still stuffed in the wall.
“You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
“Very much, yes.”
I sigh and shift my weapon into a large hammer and close the distance between us before Talie realises what I’m doing. Just as I’m about to bring the hammer down on the already broken stone next to Jameson’s arm, Talie stops me.
“Wait! You can’t do that.”
“I thought about that.” I examine how close Jameson’s arm is to the stone, and it’s wedged in there good. His head is covered by his other arm to protect it from the debris that’s clearly about to go everywhere. “Yes, in a normal situation, this would probably break his arm, but we’re champions of a god. Our abilities to withstand trauma is clearly different than it was before. I mean, Willow nearly got eaten by a giant rat yesterday and where is she now? Running off getting into more trouble. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“I mean you can’t destroy one of the tombs of the people who served our goddess,” Talie clarifies. “It’s sacrilegious.”
“Oh, right.”
I smash the hammer against the already weakened stone, shattering it with a single strike and making the hole twice as large. Jameson groans in pain, rubbing his shoulder, but he’s able to rotate it around and there’s no sign of it being broken, so I guess I was right. We are much stronger than we would be normally. Not that I’d want to test that theory on anyone else. I’m just not too impressed that Jameson fed Willow a strange liquid and now she’s missing. I swear, if she’s turned into a bug, I’m going to murder him.
“Not my god.” I shrug to Talie when I notice her staring at me in disbelief. “Did you at least get anything good for our efforts?”
Jameson waggles his eyebrows and opens his fist to show me a handful of gold coins. A life’s worth of savings it looks like. Not bad at all.
“I’m very happy you were able to find something of use,” Talie says, “but I truly think we should find Wil
low and get back upstairs. There are much larger treasuries if you’re in need of coins.”
I get the feeling she really would show us the treasuries and let us take whatever we wanted from her people. This white knight thing was so off-putting. It makes me almost feel bad for accepting half of the coins Jameson collected when he offers them to me for my help.
“You’re right, we should find Willow.” Although the catacombs don’t bother me the same way they clearly do Talie, it does feel like we probably have better things to do than spend our time wandering around down here. “You didn’t turn her into anything invisible or squishy, did you, Jameson?”
“Of course not.” He feigns being shocked by the accusation for only a moment before admitting, “I’ve yet to figure out the formula for invisibility. Besides, I saw her wonder off in that direction while muttering something about her shadow.”
I believe him only because I think he would likely be happy to brag about the effects of his potion if they did something more dramatic than make her go crazy.
“Shadow?” Talie says. “But it’s too dark down here. There’s no light to cast a shadow.”
She also wasn’t stupid enough to leave us when she knows she can barely defend herself. Clearly, she’s not thinking straight, and I have a pretty good idea why.
I glare at Jameson, but there’s not even a hint of shame on his face as he smiles back.
“Let’s find her,” I say. “Try not to get yourself stuck in any more holes, got it?”
Jameson bows his head graciously. “I make no promises.”
Chapter Twenty
Shadows
A sound follows us as we walk, which I dismiss as wind echoing against the stone walls at first, but there’s not so much as a breeze down here. There are only endless corridors that split and twist around, some coming to dead ends and forcing us to backtrack, while others lead us further into the endless labyrinth. It’s when we’re most lost the sound rises until I finally recognize it to be laughter.
“Son of a…” I throw my head back to stare at the black ceiling. “We’re being watched. Of course we are. This is probably the game of some crazy champion, and we’re in here looking like idiots for their entertainment.”
The laughter is clear now as it bounces about as though it’s running circles around us. Which would be impossible for a person since there’s not enough room between us and the walls, especially when we stand back-to-back as we’re now doing.
Talie and Jameson spin around as though they expect to see a set of eyes, but I’m sure this is more complicated than that. We won’t be able to see the person or thing following us. Not unless Jameson has more of the potion he gave Willow. It must be the drink that allows her to see a shadow while we can’t, though I still don’t understand what we’re dealing with. Whatever it is, not being able to see it’s going to make this fight difficult.
“None of the Champions of Regine would do something so sadistic as to taunt people in this way,” Talie says over the ever-growing sound of laughter. It’s like he’s trying to drown us out so we can’t even communicate with each other anymore.
“I don’t think this is your people,” I admit. “I think that’s why it feels odd down here for you. This might be the domain of a different god. Probably one related to death from the darkness and endless graveyard.”
‘My clever little Reaper,’ Kesarre says in my mind. ‘Maybe I should have made you a scholar instead. But oh, how I’d miss watching you with your scythe.’
‘Plan on telling me where Willow is, or who’s domain we’ve stumbled into, or really anything useful? Or are you just going to flirt awkwardly inside my mind?’
‘Sorry, love.’ He purposely emphasis the word love in a way that makes me shiver in discomfort, ‘It’s against the rules to interfere within my family’s domains. But,’ he adds just when I’m about to call him a useless bucket of something unpleasant, ‘I can tell you Willow is still alive and healthy, though I can’t say how much longer that will be true.’
And then he’s gone. Not even a helpful hint of left or right. Or even a suggestion of what might be tracking us.
‘I hate you,’ I try to shout to him, but either he’s not listening, or he can’t be bothered to respond with so much as a condescending laugh.
“We need to find Willow,” I tell the others.
“That’s what we’re trying to do.” Talie has a sword in her hand, pointed toward the empty hallway as though it might help against a disembodied laugh. “But what about the person following us?”
I do a full circle to be sure there’s no one somehow hiding in the straight section of hallway. “If he could attack, he would have already. He’s just trying to distract us. Let’s go.”
Hopefully I didn’t just taunt the disembodied voice to ambush us, but I also sort of hoped he would. At least if he started swinging, I would know what to do. This walking around in a maze is more Willow’s thing. Which is why I’m getting more annoyed with each turn that she left us to deal with it on our own. She didn’t even have the decency to say anything before wandering off. Or maybe she did, and Jameson was so struck with loot lust that he wasn’t paying any attention. For all I know, she was kidnapped, begged him for help and his response was to stick his entire arm into a mysterious hole with a body inside.
Not that I’m any better. I didn’t even notice her leave.
I never want to go into another dungeon again.
“Oh, hey guys,” Willow’s head pops out of an otherwise solid looking wall, followed by a waving arm. “Was wondering what was taking you so long. Look, I found a secret chamber. Come on.”
She slips into the wall, leaving us staring at stone in confusion. I timidly reach out to touch the space where Willow’s face had been only seconds before. Her head pops out and my finger smooshes into her nose. I yank my hand back, but it’s not quick enough to get the strange feeling of flesh on my finger when there should have been stone to go away.
She barely flinches at the touch, turning to each of us. “Are you coming? I’m pretty sure the shadow who’s following us has one of the items in this book.” She holds out the book she took from upstairs for us to see before tucking it back into the stone. “I think if we go this way we can catch it and take the weapon.”
I want to scream at her for making us walk around in this maze for hours all for a vague hope of getting a weapon, but when I look around Talie and Jameson don’t seem bothered at all. Jameson’s loot lust is back and Talie’s concern about Willow’s safety is clear.
Talie nods solemnly as though accepting her own fate before closing her eyes and walking into the wall. She slides through as though there’s nothing there at all. Which I guess there probably isn’t. This must be some sort of an illusion or trick of the mind, but I have no idea how that sort of thing might work, and honestly it makes my skin crawl thinking about it. Bad enough I have a god digging around in my head, but to have something tricking my eyes and mind to see what doesn’t exist is just unnerving.
I turn to see if Jameson’s brave enough to go next, but he’s too busy scribbling frantically in his notebook to take any notice of me.
Even if I wanted to leave them all behind and go back to the surface, I have no idea what way to go. I shake my arms and shoulders out, loosening up in case my next step ends with me being smashed in the face and knocked back on my ass, and then I walk through the stone and into a large room with blue flames flickering on the walls as though held by invisible torches.
“Fascinating,” Jameson mutters from beside me as he too steps through the illusion. Even while looking around, his hand is darting across the paper, making neat little symbols I don’t understand.
Willow and Talie are standing on the far side of the room at a large door like the one we found upstairs leading us into the basement in the first place.
“I was kind of hoping you would touch the handle and it would open for you like last time,” Willow admits to Talie as the other girl at
tempts to wiggle the door handle with a bit of strength as though she’d already tried it normally.
Talie grunts and takes a step back to examine the symbols covering the wood and surrounding stone. “Looks like this one is actually locked. I wonder what’s behind it.” She adds the thought quietly before shaking it out of her mind. “Doors don’t get locked in the cathedral unless there’s a very good reason. We should leave it and go back upstairs.”
As I make my way toward them, my toe stubs against a strange dip in the floor. It doesn’t hurt because of the extra thickness of my glorious new boots, but I do stumble and nearly fall. I glare down at the stonework as though it was the floors fault I tripped and notice it’s not just an uneven bit of stones. There’s something carved into the floor beneath our feet. Something circular that spreads out in odd shapes and symbols across the entire room.
“Guys,” I call out to the others even though I can still hear Talie and Willow talking to each other and not paying any attention to me. “I feel like we shouldn’t be in here.”
When no one responds, I search for Jameson to convince him to look. Maybe he’ll see something else, but to me, the decorative symbols look a lot like they form a large skull when put together.
His attention is focused entirely on the blue flames, and as I turn to him, I watch him attempt to capture one of the strange fires in a bottle like it’s a spider he’s trying to get out of the house.
The moment the glass presses down on the wall, trapping the flame, the fires all go out at once and a grinding noise fills the room, followed by a slam.
No one moves for a moment while our eyes adjust to the fresh darkness. A puff of dust settles back to the floor in the area where we just came through the fake wall. As I rush over, I already know what happened. My fists slam against solid stone and no matter where I place my hands, I can’t find any way back into the corridors.
“The wall is solid,” I tell the others, but they aren’t paying any attention to me. Their focus is on Jameson’s bottle which is slowly filling with blue lava that’s seeping out of a small hole in the wall the flame hid. In fact, every spot where there was a flame, there’s now liquid fire trickling out over the wall to pool on the floor.