***
“Falco!”
“Over here my friend.” Falco watched Finn fight his way through the vines and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.
“Are you really sure about this? It’s so dark down here.”
Falco laughed. “Haha! Of course! If you want to find a key, this is the place you want to be.”
Finn pouted and ripped the remaining cobwebs out of his hair. “I’m not sure I want to...”
Falco slapped him heartily on the back a couple times. “Nonsense!” He held up the torch in his other hand and made a sweeping gesture with it. “Look what I’ve found, we are in luck this day, my friend.”
Finn jumped and almost knocked Falco over. A shrill scream escaped his mouth. Falco laughed again. “Hahaha! What is the problem my young apprentice, never seen a skeleton before?”
Morbid curiosity seemed to get the better of Finn, and he leaned closer to the skeletons. They had no clothing, only armor, and it was rusted almost all the way through. They sat leaning against the stone wall behind them, three skeletons in all.
“How long have they been here?” Finn asked, wonder in his voice.
Falco shrugged. “Hard to say.” Then he sat down on his haunches and brought the torch even closer. “But look, around that one's neck, what do you see?”
Finn squinted, then his eyes opened wide. “A key!” He looked at Falco in amazement. “But— how did you know it would be here?”
Falco waved the admiration away as if it were a housefly. “Oh, but it was you who led me here, my dear boy. The key called to you, not me.”
Finn didn’t let off. “But we’re a couple hundred feet below the ground. How did you know—,” he gestured to the ceiling, walls and doorways around them, “all this would be here?”
The numerous rooms and staircases gave the eerie feeling of a catacomb. The air was more dust than oxygen and it hung heavy without even the slightest movement of wind. All of the windows and many of the rooms were hidden behind mounds of dirt, threatening to burst the standing walls and cave in on them any second. The place smelled of earth and death. But for Falco’s torch the whole complex sat caked in darkness.
“You said the key called you from here.”
“Yes, but not from down here, I could never have told you the altitude, not in a million years,” Finn interrupted. “I— I just sensed a vague direction.”
“Oh, but naturally it would be here if not above. Where else would it be? In the sky? Hahaha!” Falco laughed. Finn stared at him. “Now! Let’s not put it off any longer, eh? Grab,” Falco pointed and lowered his tone to a dramatic whisper, “the key.”
Finn held Falco’s eyes for a moment longer, but he let his questioning drop. He didn’t breathe and his hand shivered, but he did as Falco asked. He leaned down on his haunches like Falco, and reached out a hand.
The very moment he touched the key, the brittle chain that hung around the skeleton’s neck faded to dust. Finn gasped and stood up in a hurry. Falco laughed once more and brought the torch up to illuminate his companion’s face. Sweat ran down it in long streaks and off his rounded chin.
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“Go on,” Falco urged, “try it.”
Finn looked frightened out of his mind, frightened of what, Falco wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t something worth mulling over. Finn was frightened of everything. Despite his fear however, Finn closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. They’d practiced this for hours, every day. Finn still hadn’t been able to muster even a sliver of resonance, but he was becoming quite adept at using his own key.
There was just that one tiny slightly important detail that whenever Finn activated it, nothing happened. The key was activating, there wasn’t any doubt of that, Falco saw it glow and could feel it warm to the touch.
Much like how Finn’s new key glowed now. The glow of an activated key was hard to spot in daylight, but in the darkness, down in the ruins of his people, below ground it was easy to see.
A spike of metal grew out Finn’s idle hand. Finn turned his head, saw the spike, and screamed. He flailed about like he tried to throw off a spider. The spike shot out of his hand at tremendous speed and burrowed itself in the ceiling where it sat vibrating for a few seconds.
The whole structure rumbled and some sand and dust poured down on top of Finn’s head and formed a tiny pyramid there. Beneath the dust pyramid and the golden locks, Finn’s eyes peered frightened up at Falco.
“What the fuck was that?” Finn whispered.
“A projectile key! Wonderful, hahaha! I knew it, I knew you could do it!” Falco almost celebrated by clapping his hands but remembered the torch and thought better of it. “Draw it forth again, but slower, don’t shoot it off, best not do too much of that down here.” Falco laughed out one syllable. “Hah! It could grow unpleasant!”
“Falco!” Finn complained.
“Yes, yes, it’ll be alright. Go on, do it again, slower.”
Finn looked very pale, but he brought his gaze back to the silver key in his hand. He glanced at the other hand, seeming very apprehensive and perhaps a slight bit queasy. But once more, he closed his eyes.
The spike appeared, slithering out of his open palm, straight out like an extension of the bone in his forearm. The spike was jagged, made up of multiple square and elongated sections melted together to form a bar that started off thin at the top but thickened the longer down your eyes went. At the bottom the spike covered most of his palm. The skin bunched up around it as if to make room for a new nail, or a tooth.
“It is beautiful. Look, Finn, look!”
Finn opened his eyes and at the sight of the metal growing out of his palm he seemed poised to do something drastic but all he did do was to hold it away from him like the spike were a venomous viper that could strike at any time.
Much like every time before however, Falco could see the battle of curiosity and innate optimism win out against the fear. It was perhaps the one single defining trait Finn carried with him that so endeared Falco to this youngster and made him want to take Finn under his wing.
“What metal is that?”
Falco moved closer and peered at the key between Finn’s fingers. “It’s titahnium.”
“You mean titanium?”
“Ah yes,” Falco chuckled, “that is correct.”
“But how do you know it’s titanium, couldn’t it just as well be any of the gray metals?”
Falco grasped Finn’s key hand and brought it closer to Finn’s face, angling the torch to cast its light into his palm. “Do you see where the handle and the shaft meet?”
Finn peered closer, still making sure to hold the arm with the spike sticking out of it away from him. He looked for a few seconds then looked back to Falco again, an amused expression on his face. “There’s an emblem there, with a symbol on it.”
Falco nodded, proud. “That’s right my curious little pupil. Learn the symbols and you will know the aspect of any key you come across!”
“Wow.” Finn gazed at the key with wonder. “So you’ve seen this aspect before?”
“Well, we must be off now, no use in collecting dust down here, haha!” Falco slapped his thigh twice as if to emphasize the greatness of his joke and then scurried off, torch and all.
Finn stood alone watching the darkness creep in on him. “What— hey, wait up!” He hesitated, then started after Falco. The spike protruding from his palm wound its way through vines hanging from the ceiling and entangled itself into a knotted mess. Finn attempted to wring the spike free but all he managed to do was to ensnare himself further.
“Hey, Falco, how do I get rid of this thing?”
“Falco!”
***