Koreth was sitting down in a dressing room at the banquet venue. The room was an add-on designed to accommodate “people of all sizes”, but Koreth knew it was meant for his people. The room was elegant and simplistic, featuring granite tables, ebony wood tables, and a crystal drinkware.

He was sitting in his chair, which sat as high as a bar stool, as his disciples prepared his garments. Koreth was pleased at their behavior over the course of the trip, as there really hadn’t been any major problems. He was worried that their youth would cause them to be impulsive, but he supposed than anyone who underwent his teachings would be more refined and mature than others their age.

“Preth-Ve,” his head disciple began, “your formal wear has been prepared. We are ready to receive your blessing before we depart for the main hall.” Koreth nodded and gestured for her to step back. She did so and he stood from his chair, his head nowhere near the ceiling.

Koreth flashed one of his signature smiles, “I will say, I did not think I would appreciate the increasing ceiling height as much as I do. It is nice for my lower back to stretch every once in a while.”

He looked to his students, who were all lined up on the back wall. Two of them were holding his robes out so that he could enter them easily. Koreth walked over and the two placed their ends on his shoulders. The fabric was folded up and lashed into a bundle with a rare metal pendant. The clasps on the pendant released and the fabric was free to flow gracefully down his body, flowing ephemerally towards the ground.

“Excellent, now I will begin.” Koreth brought his hands to his chest with his elbows pointed outwards. He pinched two fingers together on the center of his robe as the mosaic patterns on his vestments lit up. He pulled his hand out, and with it came a translucent string of energy.

Unlike when he had communed the day before, this energy was a vibrant red rather than the pale blue it once was. Koreth’s face grimaced as he pulled, using both hands to feed the red string into the air where it swayed in place.

As he pulled the remaining portion free from his chest, his grimace fell, and his expression softened. He closed his eyes and nodded towards his students. Simultaneously, the raised their hands towards the bundle of scarlet energy.

Like a magnet to metal, the energy began to billow and flow into the hands of the disciples. Their faces contorted in pain as the struggled under the immense influence of the foreign energy. Koreth looked on impassively as he watched the ritual unfold.

It wasn’t long before all of it was gone, consumed by the group of young Altum. They all exhaled as soon as it was over, one of them nearly falling to his knees.

The head disciple, Mirah, shot her peers a hard look before looking up expectantly to her master. “We are honored to bear this role for you, master. You are truly great to be able to bear the rebuttal of such a powerful verdict as teleportation. I am in awe of your presence.”

Mirah bowed deeply, and Koreth returned it with a nod. “Have you heard anything from the chairman regarding this batch of initiates?”

Mirah stood up from her bow and nodded her head. “Yes, they are being processed as we speak. No one in the group matches the description master is looking for, but they’re still looking. Master Scalisth is preparing the gate and will inform us when it is ready.”

Koreth nodded, then turned towards the door. “Good to hear. Keep me updated throughout the banquet if they find anyone worth looking into.” He then walked towards the door, where one of the disciples was already there, ready to open it.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Koreth said, looking back to Mirah. “Your nose is bleeding.” He smiled lightly as she clasped her hands to her nose and turned away in shame.

///

This has got to be a bad joke. A huge conspiracy was formed to kidnap a hundred people from around the city, where they were then forced to listen to bad stand-up comedy. That was the only explanation for what was currently happening.

The olive-skinned man had stepped off stage and the guards around each group of prisoners had begun ordering people to stand up and move out of the room. A lot of us were still confused by the entire experience, but our fear of retribution kept us following orders. No one wanted to end up like that one guy on stage, who they had to carry off after the speech was over.

I walked in a single-file line behind the man I talked to before the weird presentation. I used my right foot to gently clip the back of his shoe to try to get his attention. The mass of people was making a moderate amount of noise, so I thought a little conversation wouldn’t be heard as easily as before.

I whispered softly, “Hey, do you know what that was all about?”

He didn’t turn around for obvious reasons, but his head shook slightly from side to side as we walked.

“They didn’t say any of that in the day or two I was locked in that shithole,” he said through his teeth to avoid moving his mouth too much.

“I don’t think they’re going to do anything too bad based on how that guy talked about the Altum,” I responded in kind.

“Nothing too bad? They already kidnapped us and beat a man half to death.”

Regardless of how crazy the man seemed, there were logical reasons for me to think we were going to be fine. First was that, instead of killing the man, they beat him senseless. I believe it was to send a message without actually killing anyone so that we would be compliant.

Second was that, if they were going to kill us, why go through all of this effort to keep us alive? From what I remember of the holding chamber, there were plates of food on the floor, and no one looked malnourished or underfed. They also took the time to organize us into an auditorium to give us a lecture, which would be ridiculous if they were going to kill us.

I didn’t respond to the man in front of me, as the convoy had gotten quiet, and I didn’t want to be heard speaking. We continued walking for another minute or so before we came to a flight of stairs.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

We were forced to go down them, and we all began to carefully make our way down the metal steps. I leaned slightly to the left and looked down into the center shaft of the stairwell.

What I saw was a dark void illuminated that seemed to go down for hundreds of meters, sparsely illuminated by lights embedded in the walls.

“Jeez, are we going to have to walk all the way down there?” I thought to myself. My feet were already hurting from the shuffle we had been doing before, and I didn’t know if I could descend fifty flights of stairs without collapsing from exhaustion.

I didn’t have a choice, though, as we began to make our way down the infinite flights. It wasn’t long before I noticed other people were also experiencing troubles, as heavy breathing and coughing started becoming more common.

I noticed the deep darkness became less deep and menacing the further we went down, indicating that it wasn’t actually going to the center of the earth.

At flight twenty, I was tired. At flight thirty-five, I was exhausted. By forty-nine, everyone was struggling to move. The only reason we got as far as we did was because the soldiers started prodding you with the barrel of their rifles if you didn’t keep a steady pace, and no one wanted to die because of stairs.

At flighty fifty-two, I noticed the darkness became penetrable, as I could vaguely make out the bottom of the stairwell. I would’ve increased my pace to get down faster, but the man in front of me was moving at a steady speed and wouldn’t move a muscle.

We finally got to the bottom and were ordered to sit on the ground and rest. I always thought that going up stairs was hard and going down was easy. Things changed when you had to effectively stop yourself from falling for hundreds of meters. My legs felt like jelly, and my head was still pounding from the blow I received the day before.

My situation wasn’t helped by my empty stomach, as I had slept for the entire day prior. My whole body was aching, and I was overcome by heat from physical exertion. I expected the concrete floor to be cool, but it was surprisingly warm to the touch, which didn’t help me in cooling off.

Thankfully, the guards also seemed to have been tired slightly from this, as they were leaning against walls and taking shifts sitting down.

“This would be my chance to escape if I didn’t have to climb fifty flights to do so…” I decided to sit and watch as I always have, observing those around me to see what was going to happen next.

The majority of guards were watching the hundred or so prisoners, but a few were off to the side, further down the tunnel the stairs opened into. They seemed to be in charge, as instead of going down the stairs with the group, they took an elevator a few meters from where they stood.

The man in the suit wasn’t there, but the group seemed to have a handle on the situation. They were in a small circle talking and occasionally glancing down the hall. It seemed like they were waiting for something else and were only letting us rest until it came.

“Good, take as long as you want while I’m dying and my legs go numb,” I thought to myself. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I finally began to reclaim some of my composure, though not a lot. A lot of other people had also gotten better, but a few were still out of it. One person even threw up on themselves and then fell asleep covered in vomit. Gross.

Our reprieve came to an end when a figure emerged from around a corner in the corridor. The bunker-style lights cast a deep and long shadow of the figure as it approached, its shadow climbing the walls in front of it like a vine crawls up a tree.

The figure emerged. Impossibly tall and with milky white skin, this being was clearly not human. The being, likely a man by the proportions, was wearing a form-fitting black outfit that clung to the alien’s body. Vast and inhuman muscles twitched under the black cloth as he walked forward, his arms hanging lazily to his side.

I whispered to a woman near me and tapped her on the shoulder, “Is that one of them? The Altum?”

The woman, who had her arms wrapped around her head, looked up at me and then down the hall. “I don’t know, lady, I just want to go home. I’m so tired. So, so tired.” She put head in her hands and gripped tightly at her hair.

The soldiers at the end of the corridor stopped what they were doing and bowed deeply. The Altum man slowed down but did not reciprocate the show of respect. The alien then spoke briefly before gesturing to our group at the other end of the hall. The men nodded and touched their interfaces.

All of the soldiers on our end became much more alert as I could hear faint audio emerging from all of their linked interfaces. The soldiers then shouted for us to get up and get moving. There were some troubles, as some of the prisoners had to be dragged to their feet.

I stood up and then immediately fell back down. My legs were flimsy, and I had little to no strength in them. I tried again, clawing at the relief cuts in the concrete to stand up. The last thing I wanted was to be thrown around after I was already injured.

I shakily made my way to my feet and used every muscle in my legs, hips, and back to keep myself upright. I knew if I went down again, there was no getting back up. The soldiers then corralled everyone forward, not bothering to organize us into lines anymore.

The convoy made its way to where the leaders were standings. Two soldiers reported something and were dismissed back into managing the group of weary prisoners. I trudged along, my feet barely scraping along the hard stone floors.

The Altum man had turned around and gone back around the bend in the hall. It seemed like we were going to be following him to… wherever it leads to. We slowly made our way, fighting to take every step, and then rounded the mysterious corner. What greeted me was unlike anything I could imagine.

I believed that we would be moving through more maze-like tunnels with bare walls before eventually landing in a small room to be handled later. What I actually saw was an open chamber that extended for hundreds of meters in all directions.

The first thing I noticed was that it got noticeably hotter when we rounded the corner. Like, a lot hotter. The temperature was probably 50% higher here than before. I started to sweat again, and I began to feel light-headed.

The cavern seemed artificial, as the walls and ceiling had a lot of gentle curves and hard edges. There was a vast array of tubes bolted across the cavern, all of them collecting in the center. In the center, there was a giant circular platform cut from the same stone as the rest of the cave.

There was a monstrous metal structure sitting on top of the platform. It was a tall square of black steel ten meters tall and wide. The Altum was standing in front of this frame, dwarfed by the giant frame. His back was to our group, but somehow I got the feeling that he knew when we had arrived.

The entire room was hazy with heat. Either that or my vision was beginning to give out from exhaustion. It felt like hours, but we eventually made our way to the circular platform. The guards finally stopped prodding us forward. Some of the weaker members of the group collapsed, while others swayed from fatigue.

The Altum man finally turned around to acknowledge us. One of the leaders approached, but the Altum kept his gaze fixated on the prisoners. The giant swept his arm out and pushed the soldier to the side as he made his way forward. He got within five meters before giving us an assessing glance.

I was nervous. I was too tired to think about much, but I started to remember the words the man in the suit used. He said something about us being the children of a bunch of Altum emissaries? I couldn’t speak for everybody here, but I have been an orphan since I was young.

I was raised through a state-sponsored adoption agency where I was passed between various caretakers until I was sixteen. At that point, I emancipated myself and started to work small jobs to stay afloat.

I was a quiet child, but not particularly weird. I definitely wasn’t weird enough to be an alien, right? That’s the kind of thing you would find out pretty early, and looking at this monstrous figure reassured me that the suit guy was definitely crazy.

The Altum finally looked ready to speak. “So,” he began, “You are all the bastard children of my people?” He looked to the soldier from earlier. “I find that hard to believe, Captain. Are you sure it is them. He then looked further into the crowd.

“Master Scalisth, I assure you that we’ve had their records marked since birth. These are the…” he hesitated for a moment, “…bastard children.” The Altum just harrumphed but said nothing else. He turned around and began to walk towards the black metal frame.

“Very well. Bring them within the center of the circle while I prepare to activate the gate.”