Chapter 101: Staircase to Heaven

To my great relief, the front door didn’t open to reveal a small, dingy house fit only for the poorest of itinerant workers coming from afar, without even any windows to let a bit of sunlight inside. With three grown men plus Pumpkin, I could already see living conditions on par with the orphanage, sharing cramped bunk beds stacked high against the ceiling, because the only plausible direction to build in such cramped conditions was upwards. In fact, even the orphanage would have been better, as it at least offered freshly cooked meals to soften the blow. Instead, the door served no purpose except to provide a facade of normality in keeping with the terrace as a whole, and the only thing behind it was a similarly narrow staircase going down into the mountainside.

“What’s the rent on a secret underground lair?”

I joked as we descended, immediately regretting it as I inhaled a lungful of dust in the process, leaving the stonework marginally cleaner and myself in a coughing fit. Harvey had gone first, with myself in the middle and Kyle bringing up the rear. Pumpkin rode on my neck as usual, his paws wrapped around my ears; enough to warm them, but not entirely muffle the sound of the door slamming of its own volition, likely due to some manner of timed release. Harvey evidently hadn’t been lying about secrecy behind this place, given the lack of cleaning, which only made me more curious about the glass jars embedded in the walls, their faint light providing our only safeguard against a long and painful tumble down the stairs. They resembled the lava lamps that had become popular in recent years, as good taste fell victim to one New Age trend or another, except those needed a constant stream of electricity to operate, and I couldn’t recall any batteries that lasted for years at a time.

[Harvey: No idea, I’ll let you know if I ever have to pay.]

Adding insult to injury, Harvey was able to communicate non-verbally, while Kyle had clearly known better, saving them both from suffering the same fate. I almost opened my mouth again before catching myself, deciding that conversation could wait until we were somewhere clean. At the very least, I was able to keep it off my body, passively storing anything that landed on me and disposing of it in my inventory. It didn’t even register a new entry for dust, indicating that the material was worthless, but it saved my clothes, which was something. The stairs ran longer than I’d been expecting, not quite as far as some of the offices I’d had to walk down during mandatory fire drills, where the elevators were shut off to simulate the proper response during an incident, but comparable to some of the more annoying stations on the London Tube when the escalators were broken.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

At least we were going downward, as I’d done enough climbing for a good long time on our way to the supposed safehouse. Part of me wondered why we went up before going down again, as opposed to building a tunnel from the lower level, but there was no use griping about it after the fact. When we arrived, the difference was immediately noticeable; it was like stepping from one scene to another, as the dust simply ended at the bottom, leaving us at the end of a long corridor with six rooms branching off to the sides, dormitory style. Poking my head into the nearest room, I found a small square box, barely fitting a mattress on the floor alongside barrels labelled ‘water’ and ‘hardtack’ respectively.

“Here we are, home sweet home,” Harvey chuckled, now that it was safe to do so.

He pressed his hand against an indent in the wall, and the staircase behind us disappeared, the walls coming together obscure any hint of a passage behind us.

“Deep enough in a mass of solid stone to mask the magic that comes off of passive enchantments. That switch just now collapsed the walls, and closed the trapdoor at the top of the stairs; even if someone thinks to look past the front door, they’ll find only an empty house. This entire living area is warded against communication and teleportation, so the only way in when the tunnel is closed is by digging, which we’ll hear in time to take the other tunnel out. Take a room for yourself, all four of them are the same so no need to fight over it. Bathroom’s at the end, along with the emergency exit. It cost me a small fortune, hiring a Mage with an earth affinity to build all this, and a bigger one to pay him for his silence, but it was well worth the expense, don’t you think?”

Despite the grave situation that brought us here, I couldn’t help but smile at Harvey’s proud boasting, which brought to mind the many estate agents I’d dealt with over the years as they tried to sell me on their particular property.

“Impressive,” I admitted, not having expected this degree of sophistication for a simple bolthole.

“Do you have one of these at every stop?”

“Only the major cities. There’s no room to hide something like this in a small town or fortress, and everyone knows everyone else in those kinds of places so any attempt at deception is doomed regardless.”

Harvey’s expression turned gloomy then, any hint of his previous cheer bleeding away.

“Even the other safehouses were only ever seen by a few people, all of them veterans of the Dead Hand. People I knew, people I thought could be trusted, as far as trust goes in this profession of ours. Losing one of them was expected, two would be an unfortunate coincidence, but three? The entire local branch is compromised, I know that for certain now.”

“What’s the plan?” Kyle asked, sounding a bit tense, which was understandable given he was surrounded by strangers deep underground.

“We all pick a bed and fall over in exhaustion. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep and a hopeful end of the battle above, we pick up the pieces.”