With a soft squeak, the door unlatched from the other end. It creaked at the hinges as well, scraping an arc across the stone floor. Daiden tapped at the door near its halfway point and hurried inside. He closed the entrance behind him and searched the large room. A lamp rested at the table, a few more across the walls. He counted the faces inside, one, two, eighteen, and then two more next to him. They straightened their weapons at him, some with fear, others with uncertainty.

Daiden raised both hands and hunched a little, to disarm the situation. “Again, I’m here on a formal request from the Lord’s Castle.”

The worried faces looked toward each other, armoured in white and red. Their eyes tremble around the corners, frozen to the memory of the infestation.

“Minister Tyr sent me,” repeated Daiden, slowly. “He never mentioned any survivors.”

“Why would he?” a soldier barked. “We were locked in the moment news got out. And, and…”

With a sigh, Daiden lowered his arms. “I came here with a priest from Sol Sanctum. Let me bring him back to this room. We can discuss our stories after that. Yes? Are we all in agreement?”

Daiden watched the soldiers rest their swords after another moment of thought. He then continued, “Good. I’ll need one of you to come with me.”

“What…why?” a few soldiers asked, in scattered unison.

“Ah, there’s nothing to worry about,” assured Daiden. “I broke my spell of concealment by knocking on this door. Let’s just say that I need someone familiar with the dungeon’s layout in case we run into any trouble.”

“That sounds reasonable,” a voice said, from the back of the room. A silhouette at first, the soldier shifted and waded through the crowd, to the front. “Everyone here is my responsibility. Can’t let someone else take any risk on my behalf now, can I?”

“And you are?” asked Daiden, with a smile.

“Captain Deng,” said the soldier, simply. In a posture of respect, he struck his chest with a clenched fist. He assessed the guest as well. “Young, but well-dressed…and not from Multana City. Who might you be?”

Daiden offered his name. “I’m not obliged to reveal any more than this to the others. Sorry.”

With another step, Deng stood across from his visitor, merely the space of a hand in between them. The light shone on the soldier’s wrinkled skin, across a narrow face with sharp eyes and a pointed chin. He rested his arm on the iron latch, without a sound.

“What’s stopping me from not believing your shit, Daiden Lost?” said Deng, in a whisper. “I can’t trust someone stingy with information.”

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“You don’t need to trust me,” said Daiden, unflinchingly. He removed a bag from his spatial ring and pushed it against the Multana Captain’s chest. “Take a look.”

Deng looked over his shoulders and whistled. He snatched the bag from Daiden and returned to the table, falling onto the chair with a thud. His hands nimbly undid the knot and reached into the bag. He rummaged without shifting his eyes from the guest in the room, but pulled back in an instant. With a gulp, he pinched the cloth from the back and flipped it over, flooding the table with everything inside. The soldiers crowded around their captain, in hushed chatters and broken whispers.

They examined the soft, smelly, flesh-like items first, coated with a strange slime, and then the shards of ash-coloured bones. Deng shifted out from the crowd and moved towards Daiden.

“These remains…” said Deng, hiding a stutter. “You, you…how did you reach this part of the dungeon?”

“Fleshbound Guts, shards from Ashbone Skulls…I’d be an idiot to not collect from the hunt,” thought Daiden, absent-mindedly. He remembered the importance of capital in that moment, especially since working as a craftsman alongside Kir, Anvi and Balder. Aloud he said, “I’m stingy with information, yes. But I know how to take care of myself. I’m here to escort the priest from Sol Sanctum to close the breach, and I plan on doing that with or without your help.”

Deng slumped his shoulders, resigning to the situation at hand. He waved at his soldiers next. “Return the bag and its items to our guest here.” The Multana Captain waited until the exchange and turned towards his soldiers once more. “Seal the door behind us. We’re running out of supplies and this is our chance to return to our families. Let us not fall prey to pride.”

The soldiers acknowledged their captain’s opinion with a formal, disciplined salute.

“I’ll follow your lead then, Daiden Lost,” said Deng, with a softer tone. “We leave our fate in your hands.”

Once outside, Daiden stuck to the walls and followed the path of his return from memory.

“I can tell that you have questions,” whispered Daiden, after some time. “I’m a trainee, albeit a High Ranker. Not the most calming thing to say to a room full of starved and frightened soldiers, yes?”

Deng pursed his lips at the revelation. “Perhaps…but I chose to put my trust in you because of someone else. I’ve met with Minister Tyr, a bureaucrat more focused on optics than the worth of his soldiers. But it’s for that very reason I’ll believe that you were the right choice…his choice for our current predicament.”

With a smile, Daiden made a turn and eased from the tension. “I checked this area on my way to the room. There aren’t any hordes here.”

“Thank you…” managed Deng, after a moment of silence. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy to choose to come here, especially as an escort to someone as important as a priest from Sol Sanctum.”

“You were here from the very beginning,” remarked Daiden, waving formality aside. “What was it like? Minister Tyr strongly believed that none of you may have survived.”

The Multana Captain waded into a spell of silence. His arms trembled a little, in memory of the experience. He swallowed a dry lump in his throat.

Daiden restrained the urge to dismiss his request in that moment, despite empathizing with Deng’s pain from reliving the incident. “Can’t avoid it. I need the information…”

“Rotations…” answered Deng, slowly. He mumbled the words that followed, inaudible mostly. With a shake, he cleared his throat and continued, “We rotate our shifts in the dungeon. Two…two units, general patrol, and a protective detail for the maneater, the Butcher.

“My soldiers and I, well, we had just finished ours. The room, that was…we use that room to rest and change before returning to the city. When the breach opened, the horde rushed the tunnels in a rampage. They were…strong, very strong. And I made a, a…a choice.”