CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
SURVIVORS
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Rio
Eli and Layla had been reluctant to go, and doubly so when they realized they’d be taking portals to get out. We convinced them that they were safe, but all the convincing in the world wasn’t exactly enough to prove it when the blue hole sliced its way through reality, lighting the cave in a different glow than all of the unique equipment and flashlights.
In the end, they’d both walked through the portals with their hands in the air, just in case whoever was on the other side was holding up guns at them. Theo had pointed that out rather emphatically before they left.
Soon enough, there was no more sense in delaying. We continued on into the prison.
The bottom floor was empty. It seemed logical that a demon holing up in a cave like this would’ve preferred to be at the deepest point, but at the moment, I saw no way to go further down. Fortunately, down wasn't our goal. The ornate staircase leading up to the cell blocks was our direction.
We didn’t even know if this was where the big demon or the seal would be. Not for sure. For all we knew, there could be a whole city down here and we just happened to keep finding the prison. That rang hollow, though. All roads seemed to lead here. The demon needed human sacrifices to destroy the seal. This was where he was getting his fuel. He was probably here, but I was not eager to fight him, considering how strong the knight had been.
The second floor brought back grim memories as we saw the magma pillar and the basins. There were molten bones everywhere, evidence of our battle to escape when I’d first been kidnapped.
We’d killed all of the newly risen skeletons outside of the prison, and I hated the thought that any one of those could’ve been Sebastien, Todd, Chester, Tessa, or even Jody. Though, I got the impression that the Classers were sacrificed in a different way. Only Todd had made it to the Knight while still not having a class. He’d focused on pushing the makeshift door cart and avoided directly fighting.
“So… your names are Rio and Theo? Like… is the rhyme intentional?” McCarthy asked, interrupting my grim musings. He seemed to do everything boisterously. A Barbarian class fit him perfectly.
We both groaned. A conditioned response at this point.
“I really should start introducing myself as Theodore,” Theo said as we both chuckled at the routine. McCarthy wasn’t the first to ask and wouldn’t be the last. My mood lifted a tad. Perhaps the Barbarian had seen my flagging morale and decided to say the first funny thing he’d thought of.
“You said you were here before. You escaped this place?” Nick asked, completely missing the moment as he surveyed the horrible room. At its best, this felt like being an explorer, discovering a freshly unearthed mummy’s tomb, long buried and forgotten. At worst, it was like walking through the remains of a tragic fire.
I nodded somberly.
“This seemed to be where all the skeletons come from. The lava flows into the basins. They were using it to burn people. Not all of them, though. There were also some dead people who…” I grimaced as what I was about to say crossed my mind. “They were bleeding people. Like you would a deer. See… see the holes in the bottom of the basins?”
“Lovely,” McCarthy said, looking a little green himself. There were plenty of examples spread across the large chamber. Some of the basins had Lava, while others held dead bodies that hadn’t risen like the skeletons.
“The outside ring is where they keep the prisoners. There are five or six… uhm. Cell blocks. Dungeons feels more appropriate. We were kept in one of them, but we escaped pretty fast.”
“That’s where we need to go,” Nick said. There were five hallways leading out towards the cell blocks.
“A big circular hallway connects them in a ring around the outside,” I said. “At the time, the only exit we could find was the big staircase.
“Alright. Let's take that one,” Nick said, pointing to a hallway heading sort of toward where we had entered on the floor below. “The chunk Eli’s meteor carved out of the wall might be a decent escape route if we need to get out in a hurry.
Sudden horror filled me. The meteor had carved a chunk out of the second-floor wall. What if it had hit one of the dungeons!?
I shook my head. No. We’d have heard it if people had been in there.
I needn’t have worried. We arrived at the section of missing wall where the meteor had hit, and it wasn’t near the cell door. It seemed the dungeons extended out into the rock of the cave.
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We reached the door but thankfully didn’t find any jailers, gorilla dogs, or imps.
“Anyone in there?” I cried through the small peephole. I heard a tense scuffling noise before utter quiet. Definitely not empty.
“My name is Rio Tande. We’re here with members of the Special Activities Center, a branch of the US Government, to try to rescue anyone alive down here. We’re coming in. If you have the ability to attack us, please don’t! We mean you no harm!”
Theo blinked as I produced one of the big metal keys and inserted it into the lock. I’d picked it up from one of the dead jailers outside the prison.
Nick was also surprised and seemed a little annoyed that I’d taken the lead on this, but... well... he hadn’t picked up one of the cartoonishly large keys.
I opened the door and was happy to let him take the lead into the cell.
It was worse than I’d feared. Four fearful people were in different cells in the cell block. A mangled corpse lay in one of the empty cells, somehow making the room smell even more awful than the sacrificial chamber.
“Oh, thank god!” one of them wept.
They were a bit more ragged than the bunch I’d been thrown with initially. If anything, they were more frightened, though. I didn’t recognize any of them.
“Only four…?” I asked dismally. One of them cringed, and Nick shot me a harsh look. Theo was right behind me. He looked revolted but was trying his best not to show it.
“Can you get these gates open, Mrs. Tande?” Nick asked politely.
“Oh, of course!” I exclaimed, moving forward with the key to unlock all of the iron gates. I actually locked the one with the dead body. There were zombies down here, according to Theo. I hadn’t seen any yet, but they had to come from somewhere. Decaying corpses seemed to fit the bill.
There was no similarity between the prisoners. A man in his twenties who made Theo look skinny, a woman in her fifties whose hard eyes made me wary of her, a teenager who was shaking in fear, and another man in a tattered business suite, weeping in joy as he hugged McCarthy.
“So-kay, man. It’s all right. We’re gonna get you out of here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just… I’m sorry,” he kept babbling, completely embarrassed but unable to hide the pure relief from his voice. “Thank you. They took so many of them. The screams from outside and… just… Thank you…”
We went around to the other cells and found more people in similar states of distress. Usually, they weren’t hurt, and if they were, Nico’s skills were more than capable of getting them on their feet. The number was distressingly low, though. Eleven. Eleven people. After the hundreds of skeletons that had ambushed us during my escape and the dozens that attacked us below, I’d hoped to find more people still living.
None of them were faces I remembered, though. It was too much to hope that any of them had survived.
It was shortly after we’d freed them all that I felt something change. A chill hit me, which struck me as odd. There was a pillar of fucking lava down the… hall.
“Something’s wrong,” Theo said. The red glow no longer emanated from the center of the prison. Something had changed.
“What is this place?” came one of the questions, but none of us really had time to answer them. Demons had invaded. We were getting them out.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nick replied concisely. “We’re getting you out of here. Right now.”
He grabbed one of the portal stones from a bag and threw it against a wall. The prisoners gasped, but most of them bore it stoically as another portal ripped its way into existence.
“It’s time for us all to go,” Nick told the gathered crowd. “This should take us back to the surface.”
“Go?! But we haven’t… we haven’t found any of them!” I protested. “What if they’re still down here somewhere? I…”
“Accursed fodder. Come willingly to the fold. Your souls will be fuel for the end of your pitiful race.”
I screamed and fell to my knees. The prisoners all panicked immediately, affected by a terror so profound that animal instinct took over.
One man ran directly into the open portal, but it winked out of existence only a moment after he entered. The rest ran wildly, fleeing in any direction.
It wasn’t a natural terror. It… almost felt like a skill, the same as the knight’s nausea. Sheer panic almost completely overwhelmed me, but I just barely managed to keep my wits. I phased out of reality, but the terror didn’t lessen in the slightest. Something about this creature struck a primal fear so deeply ingrained in my bones that I couldn’t help but quiver.
It wasn’t even nearby. Nothing had changed. Every bone in my body screamed at me to run, to hide, to flee. I would have no chance of surviving this if I had stayed here. I had to run, run, RUN!
I didn’t, though. In the end, logic was stronger. Running served no purpose. We didn’t even see the demon. What if we ran right toward it?
Nick and Nico both remained steadfast. Theo, too, weathered the terrifying voice without trouble. He’d been growing more and more solemn over the last few hours. I… thought killing that knight head might’ve affected him more than he was letting on. Whatever had come over him, though, it was certainly good now. He didn’t seem affected by the terror in the slightest.
McCarthy was screaming like a banshee, his massive glowing sword drawn as he panicked.
“Get ahold of yourself, Shannon!” Nick barked, and to my shock, the Barbarian immediately calmed down, terror replaced with a heated glare at the rogue.
“My name’s McCarthy,” he hissed angrily. He actually looked a bit betrayed.
“Good. Now stop pissing your pants and get it together,” Nick retorted to the surprised man.
McCarthy blinked.
Aaron hadn’t remained still either. A rotating wall of bones began to circle him. Disgusting but effective. The bones surrounded him in a sphere of protection that somehow seemed to filter out the terror.
I was a gibbering mess, but Theo stepped toward me and put a hand… no, a bear paw on my back. I grinned as I felt his healing aura sweep over me, no longer quite so terrified. I didn’t know if it was a skill or just his presence, but the comforting paw gave me the strength I needed to get back to my feet.
Another wide area impairment attack. We’d dealt with something like that before now. We… we could handle this.
“Everyone! Go that way! There’s a hole in the second-floor wall!” Nick called, pointing down the hallway as we all recovered.
‘Or not…’ I thought as the SAC team members immediately began sprinting down the hall.
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