~~~

The four comrades carried on walking down the corridor until, about fourteen minutes later, they made it back to the door leading to the tunnel, which in turn led all the way back to the graveyard. Wu Dog Yan paused by the door, getting her phone out, then turned the handle and went back out into the dark tunnel. Turning the phone light on, she checked the green-stained walls.

‘Careful of the steps,’ said Cha Cha, gesturing at the ground.

‘Ka, I know.’

‘They’re quite steep.’

‘Ka…’

Cha Cha moved next to Wu Dog Yan’s legs and held her paws out, ready to grab in case her idol lost her footing.

‘You think there’s a door here somewhere?’ asked Luco, tapping on various parts of the walls, avoiding the grubby-looking green patches.

‘I’m not sure…’

‘Two doors in one tunnel. It seems a bit weird.’

‘Maybe. But I’m not sure where else it could be.’

‘Another grave perhaps?’

‘Wah, I didn’t think of that.’ Wu Dog Yan looked down at the ground for a moment then shook her head. ‘Nuut, too inefficient. One tunnel is long enough. And it would be easier just to do two doors.’ She paused again, half smiling. ‘But then…that’s the logic of a sane person. Whoever built this tunnel…’

‘…was crazy?’ finished Cha Cha, still hovering a little close to her idol’s legs.

‘More like paranoid.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Nuut kaata. Depends who’s around you, what kind of characters.’ Wu Dog Yan paused again, making Cha Cha worried that her idol may be suffering from some kind of breakdown. It was a brief worry. The DogTV star clapped her paws together again, smiling for her audience. ‘We should keep searching, try and find that second door.’

‘Right, boss,’ said Cha Cha, mock saluting.

‘No need for boss.’

‘Got it. Won’t happen again, I promise.’

‘No need for promises either.’

Cha Cha opened her mouth to repeat got it, but changed her mind and went with hmm instead.

Luco stared at Cha Cha and shook his head, waited for her to say stop staring then lifted up his phone and joined Wu Dog Yan in looking around the tunnel walls. Zade followed suit, using his superior height to check the higher places. There wasn’t much to see, just stone walls and random candles. Oh, and a spider crawling along the cracks between the stones, heading towards the open door.

Zade followed it, making sure it didn’t jump down onto his body. They weren’t as bad as the police, but they were still quite bad, especially if you looked at them through a microscope.

‘Seems like there’s nothing here,’ said Cha Cha after a while.

‘You’re right,’ said Wu Dog Yan, stroking her neck. ‘I guess we’ll have to head back down the tunnel, see if we missed anything there.’

‘All the way back?’ asked Luco, his tone barely hiding the annoyance.

‘I don’t see that we have much choice.’

‘Grrr…’

Wu Dog Yan started treading carefully down the stone steps, followed by Luco and Cha Cha, but Zade stayed where he was. The spider was close to the door now, and he was wondering if he should close the door so the spider couldn’t get through to the corridor. But as soon as he decided to step forward and close the door, the spider disappeared.

‘Wah…’ Zade gasped, loud enough for the others to hear.

‘What is it, big guy?’ asked Luco, turning his head back impossibly fast.

‘The spider…it vanished!’

‘Vanished?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Which spider?’

The other three rushed back and pressed Zade to explain exactly what he’d seen. Zade nodded, stepped forward to the wall and jabbed at the stone with his paw. ‘There was a spider crawling along the wall here…going towards the door and…I was watching him all the way but he…he just vanished, right here, at this spot.’

Zade touched the part of the wall where the spider had vanished and watched as his paw disappeared too.

Now it was Cha Cha’s turn to gasp. And shriek too.

Zade quickly pulled his paw back. It was still compact, no injuries, so he tried again, this time putting his paw farther into the wall. Just like the previous time, it vanished.

‘A holographic surface,’ said Wu Dog Yan, whistling.

‘A fake wall…’ said Luco, rolling up his jacket sleeves.

‘Magic,’ whispered Cha Cha.

‘Out of the way, Zade, let me go first.’

Luco took a few deep, loud, ridiculously dramatic breaths, slapped the side of his head, roared then ran forward as fast as he could towards the fake wall. As soon as he hit the part where he was supposed to vanish, he stopped, flipped backwards in the air and landed with a thud on the top step. Luckily, the top step wasn’t small enough to let him roll off the edge.

The others rushed over, fanning him and checking his head for cuts and bruises.

‘Are you okay? Can you hear us?’

‘It’s hard…’

‘Can you hear us now?’ Cha Cha repeated, raising the volume.

‘Arggh, not your voice, that wall, the wall is hard…rock solid.’

‘Ka…that’s weird.’

‘Maybe it’s only a temporary fake wall?’ said Cha Cha, helping Luco back onto his feet.

Wu Dog Yan walked forward and gently kicked the bottom part of the fake wall. It was solid. Then she lifted her leg about 50cm in the air and kicked again. Still solid.

‘Try going higher…’ said Cha Cha, raising her own leg about an inch off the ground.

‘Ingenious,’ answered Wu Dog Yan, not hiding the sarcasm.

‘It is?’

Smiling at the others, Wu Dog Yan raised her leg up another 50cm and prodded it forward. This time the entire foot and half of the calf vanished through the wall.

‘Aha, it’s a fake hole in the wall, not the whole thing,’ said Cha Cha, letting go of Luco and clapping.

‘Actually,’ said Wu Dog Yan, lowering her leg until her foot landed on something solid, ‘I think it’s another staircase…with a giant first step.’

‘This must be the way into the castle,’ said Zade, not moving forward at all.

‘What are we waiting for?’ yelled Luco.

Wu Dog Yan put out a paw to stop him jumping like a nihilist through the fake wall. ‘Let me check it out first. See if it’s safe.’

‘No need, it’s a staircase.’

‘Could be someone on the other side, waiting…’

‘Wah, don’t be dense. This place is deserted, who would be waiting? They’d be there for years, standing in a stairwell…’

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

‘They might’ve spotted us on CCTV,’ said Zade, curling his toenails and practically digging them into the ground.

‘Quiet,’ said Cha Cha, pointing at the space where Wu Dog Yan had been standing a few seconds earlier.

‘Wah, she’s gone in already. When did that happen?’ asked Luco, annoyed.

‘While the two of you were arguing.’

‘She’s not coming back.’

As soon as Luco said the line, Wu Dog Yan’s face popped back through the wall, making all three of them jump back and wave their arms around like three kids being attacked by a well-trained army of irate wasps. Wu Dog Yan waited for them to regain their composure then gestured for them to follow her in.

‘It’s safe?’ asked Zade, uncurling one solitary toenail.

‘Seems to be.’

Wu Dog Yan disappeared into the wall again and the three factory workers quickly went after her. On the other side, Zade turned back straight away [the only one to do so] and checked what the wall looked like. Turned out it looked pretty much the same as the one on the other side. Frowning, he spun back around and scrutinised the staircase in front of him for any more surprises, as well as the spider he’d just seen…

The staircase was made of stone, like the others, but instead of running up straight, it curved right. After taking a few steps and seeing a continuous bend, Zade deduced that it was one of those spiral staircases that just took you straight up.

‘Stop lagging, Zade,’ shouted Luco, already many steps ahead and out of sight.

‘Coming.’

Zade trudged up the steps, not increasing his speed at all. Half of him expected this whole situation to be one elaborate trap designed by the police in order to shoot him or deport him back to Raaaa. But that would mean his friends were part of the trap too, and he couldn’t believe that they’d ever do that to him. Not even Luco was that cruel.

The steps came to an end in front of a long dark corridor, with around half the candles of the corridor below hanging from the sides of the walls. They were still lit, which meant someone had been in there, maintaining them, but it was hard to say how long ago it had been.

Maybe they were still in there, spying on them…

‘Looks like some kind of dungeon area,’ said Cha Cha, standing next to Wu Dog Yan halfway down the corridor, both of them staring into a room.

Zade walked forward and, looking into the same space, realised it wasn’t just any room, it was a cell.

‘Someone’s been in here recently…’ said Wu Dog Yan, nodding at a mess on the floor. Zade peered closer and narrowed his eyes. It was unclear at first what he was looking at but, as he moved farther into the room, he got it.

‘That’s…’

‘Someone’s teeth…’ replied Wu Dog Yan, grimly.

‘And a bone…’ added Luco, appearing behind them. ‘I already looked ahead and there’s other rooms with the same stuff. One of them has a table with blood stains on it too.’

‘Blood?’

‘I think that’s what it is. Could be paint, I guess.’

‘This doesn’t seem like an art studio to me,’ said Wu Dog Yan, stepping into the empty room and bending down by the teeth on the floor. She counted them out. Eleven in total. Next to them was a set of chains connected to manacles on the wall.

‘You think this is Dog Lee’s…stuff?’ asked Zade, staring at the bone next to the teeth, trying to guess which part of the body it was from.

‘Better fucking not be,’ said Luco, almost growling.

Wu Dog Yan scanned the rest of the floor. ‘There are crumbs over there.’

‘What kind of crumbs?’

Wu Dog Yan got up and walked out of the room.

‘Am I supposed to guess?’ asked Luco, glancing at the others.

‘This way,’ Wu Dog Yan shouted, and the three heroes followed her back out into the corridor. ‘I think from this point on we should be carrying weapons.’

‘Weapons?’ asked Cha Cha, confused.

‘If my phone had any signal, I’d call the police, but it doesn’t, so I can’t. Which means-…’

‘Weapons,’ said Luco, rubbing his paws together.

‘Ka.’

‘But…’ Cha Cha’s voice stumbled a little, ‘we’ve got Zade, isn’t that enough?’

Luco laughed. ‘He’s about as useful as a foam pencil.’

‘Hey…’ said Zade, folding his arms.

‘I’m serious, you’re scared of almost everything.’

‘I didn’t even say I wanted to fight. And I’m not scared, I’m cautious. There’s a difference.’

‘Cautious animals don’t save Satfus…’

‘Neither do reckless hamsters.’

The seven hundred and twenty-third argument of the day between Zade and Luco was ended abruptly by the clinking sound of metal hitting stone.

Both animals looked down the corridor and saw Wu Dog Yan holding two swords in her paws.

‘Where’d you get those from?’

‘Polo Home Store.’

‘Huh?’

‘The wall, pokkah. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are weapons hanging all around you.’

The three animals did a quick spin and saw that she was right, there were swords, spears, sticks, other weapons they didn’t know the names of, all propped up on the walls farther down the corridor.

‘Zade, you can take that hammer, it’s probably not that heavy for you. Cha Cha, try the spear, it’ll give you good reach. Luco…’ Wu Dog Yan checked the weapons again, biting her top lip. ‘Okay, don’t get mad, but there’s nothing hamster size here. You can just stand behind Zade and shout encouragement.’

‘I’m not a cheerleader, I know dog fu.’

‘Great, use that.’

‘I will.’

Cha Cha and Zade took their designated weapons down from the wall and tried out a few fighting poses. Neither of them had ever been in a medieval battle before, so they had to improvise. Zade spun his hammer in circles very slowly, while Cha Cha jabbed her spear forward at knee height. At the same time, Luco jumped in the air and tried to kick a candle flame, missed completely and landed as if he’d been successful.

‘Okay, enough practice, time to move.’

The three factory workers stopped their ridiculous fighting routines and walked down the corridor until they were standing next to the final door. Wu Dog Yan opened it slightly and peered through, then, when she was sure there was no one waiting for them on the other side, pulled it fully open and walked forward.

‘Another one?’ she said, her voice exasperated.

‘It looks just like the last corridor,’ said Luco, appearing beside her with his paws out in a dog fu pose.

‘Only darker,’ added Zade.

They all took a breath and walked forward, passing each door and briefly looking in, seeing more chains and blood stains, and moving on until they were standing next to an open door at what they hoped was the entrance to the actual castle.

‘Wait, look,’ said Luco, pointing into another cell on the right-hand side, the words SEA VIEW stamped on a sign on the wall next to it.

‘Where?’

‘In here, there’s some rope hanging down.’

They all entered the cell, checking the sides and behind the door before heading deeper in. In the middle of the space was a hole, and hanging from a hook stuck in the ceiling above the hole was a long, half-worn piece of rope.

‘What is all this?’ asked Cha Cha, too afraid to move any closer.

‘Nuut kaata…’

Suddenly, there was a sound from the hole, a kind of whimpering noise. Wu Dog Yan was the first to dart forward, looking down into the dark abyss, gasping, and then pulling on the rope. However, it was apparently too heavy for her to manage by herself so she called for Zade to come over and help.

Nodding almost imperceptibly, the giant tiger grabbed a part of the rope closer to the hole, catching sight of what it was they were pulling up. ‘This is insane…’

‘Pull.’

Zade obeyed and, possibly thanks to Luco saying, ‘pull, pull,’ right up into his ear, they soon had the shabby-looking dog on the other end of the rope out of the hole.

Was it a dog?

It had all the main features, ears, nose, mouth, fur, but all of it, every single part looked like it belonged to a prisoner of war. From a prison run by armadillos. Right wing armadillos[1]. With domination fantasies.

‘I believe, I believe…’ the dog blurted out suddenly, looking around the cell without focusing on any one thing for more than half a second. ‘Prosperoro, Prosperoro, sun, sun…’

‘What’s he saying?’ asked Zade, looking at the DogTV star.

‘Why is he saying every word twice?’ added Luco.

‘I think he’s been down there a long time,’ answered Wu Dog Yan, who leaned closer to the dog’s face and put her paws on his cheeks. ‘Who did this to you?’

‘Prosperoro, Prosperoro…I believe, I believe…’

‘Who’s Prosperoro?’

‘Sunlight, sunlight…’

‘Nuut. I said, who’s Prosperoro?’

‘Upside down, upside down…’

‘Ask him if it was Dog Hood.’

‘Quiet, Luco…’

‘Did Dog Hood do this?’ Luco shouted at the torture victim. ‘Dog Hood, the arrows dog…did he do this? Is Dog Lee here too? Is he hurt?’

‘Luco…you’re scaring him.’

‘He’s already scared, what are you talking about?’

Wu Dog Yan nodded at Zade, who swiftly put a paw over Luco’s mouth. Satisfied with the newfound silence, she turned back to the hanging dog and asked him again who Prosperoro was.

‘Giver of Truth, Prince of Lies…’

‘Sorry?’

‘Giver of Truth, Prince of Lies, no things false, emotional sky.’

‘That makes no sense.’

The dog closed his eyes and then opened them dramatically. ‘You’re upside down, brown goddess.’

Wu Dog Yan looked at the rope attached to the ceiling, then at her sword, then at Zade. ‘I’m gonna cut the rope. Zade, hold onto him.’

‘What about Luco?’

‘Let him keep complaining…’

Zade let go of Luco, who immediately said, ‘hey, I don’t complain, you made him gag me, and I wasn’t even doing anything wrong,’ but Cha Cha took his paw and told him to relax for a moment. Surprisingly, he did, but not before mumbling about how mature he was for not complaining.

Zade took hold of the dog, who screamed when he saw the burnt circle of fur on Zade’s neck, while Wu Dog Yan calmly placed the edge of her sword against the rope, about 20cm above the dogs feet. After performing a few practice swings, she swung for real and cut the rope clean through in one go.

‘Wow, that was amazing…’ said Cha Cha, preparing to clap but stopping herself when she recalled the disgruntled looks Wu Dog Yan had given her earlier. ‘Relatively amazing.’

‘I’ve made a lot of historical dramas,’ Wu Dog Yan replied, this time not annoyed by the praise. ‘In fact, this is quite similar to one drama I did when I first joined DTV. There was a castle and the lord of that castle was worshipping some old sorcerer and…to do the worshipping he caught local dogs and put them in his dungeons and…’

‘Sounds very similar.’

‘…the sorcerer…now that I think of it, his name started with a P too. At least I think it did.’ Wu Dog Yan paused, looking at the dog they’d just let down from the rope. ‘But…they made up that story…it wasn’t based on real history…was it?’

‘Nuut kaata, nuut care,’ said Luco, stepping forward. ‘Slap this weird dog in the face and ask him if Dog Hood did all this.’

Wu Dog Yan didn’t slap the dog, but she did shake him a little bit. Then she made her voice soft and gentle and asked him how he came to be locked in this castle.

‘Castle?’ The dog said, confused. ‘I’m from the hole.’

‘What?’

‘The hole, the hole, I was born in the hole, I am from the hole, he is in the hole, I need to return to the hole. Eat the hole, absorb the hole, in the hole, find the sun, sun is death, rocks are life, hole is hole.’

‘This could be a long interrogation,’ said Zade, picking up his hammer again.

‘Ka, we know you like the hole, but who put you in the hole? Who brought you to this castle?’ asked Wu Dog Yan, her voice a little sharper.

‘The hole can’t be liked. The hole is obeyed. Stay out of the hole, that’s bad. Too bad. I need to return. Where? To the hole, you fool. Hole leads to sun, sun is death, rocks are life, hole is…’

‘Hold him, Zade,’ said Wu Dog Yan, ‘Cha Cha, get his feet.’

Zade shrugged and made a move towards the dog’s arms, but before he could grab them, the dog flipped around and crawled like a rat on fire back towards the hole.

‘Wah, stop him…’ shouted Wu Dog Yan, but it was too late. The dog had already slid halfway into the hole, laughing like an armadillo, and, a second later, disappeared down into the darkness. Zade leapt to the edge and swung a paw down, but there was nothing to grab onto. He listened for the sound of the dog hitting the ground or, heaven willing, some water, but nothing came.

Not even a scream.

~~~

----------------------------------------

[1] Armadillos don’t like foreigners, want everything to either stay the same or go backwards to medieval times, and have no sense of rhythm