"...So, to resume it all, we just need to go there and burn the place down?" Milena asked, her eyebrows creased. Glenn rubbed his chin, before nodding slowly. He had chosen to head directly for the house where everyone seemed to have disappeared into, and explain everything to his team on the way. Sahro and Milena were particularly angry when they heard about the mutilations the Thorn's Church bastards inflicted on the kids.
Glenn was more than happy to let their rage fester. After all, he was also a tiny, tiny bit angry about it.
Just a little bit.
"This took way less time than I thought it would," Sahro commented, his thumb rubbing the pommel of his sword. One of the runaways, probably the second oldest after Kora, turned toward Sahro with wide-opened eyes, amazed.
"Are...Are you the Black Swordsman?" He asked curiously. Sahro looked at the kid, blinking confusedly.
"The Black Swordsman?" The Black Heir rubbed the corner of his eyes, ignoring Glenn's mocking grin and accepting his new reputation as best he could.
"...I am. I don't know many Black Heirs using a sword around these parts."
The kid's smile grew widely and he unsheathed a rusty billhook, before hiding his left arm in his back.
"I want to be like you when I'm older! I heard you fought devils and monsters with one arm, even though..." He glanced at the thunder-blue arm and pressed his lips together. Sahro noticed that and shrugged, before turning away in disinterest.
"It grew back."
The kid sighed in amazement and sheathed his makeshift weapon in his belt, an old string barely holding his pants together. They kept walking silently, going through the dark streets of the Eastern Town guided by the group of kids, Kora as the spearhead of the operation. Glenn was walking right behind the kid, to protect the group from any unwanted meeting with a criminal or any other disrupting force. Thankfully, and to Diamanes' dismay, they didn't encounter anything on the way.
They arrived in front of the house where everyone disappeared. To speak blankly, it was a very normal house. Two windows, a door, a roof tiled with red bricks, and a small overgrown garden. A wooden fence surrounded the house, barely succeeding in keeping the garden's vegetation inside the garden. Kora stopped a dozen meters away from the house and turned toward Glenn, his face hardening.
"That's the place. We...We won't be going any further. But..." Kora looked at the house and clenched his teeth, "...If you find our friends, please, save them. We already have an immense debt toward you, for healing so many of us, but I, no, we're all fine being in debt with you."
Glenn's gaze lingered on the kid for a small silent while, until he finally chuckled and patted Kora on the head.
"Don't worry, I'm sure your friends will be able to save themselves once we've kil—got rid of all the Thorn's Cult forces. And that's not counting the forces of the Church of Onnea!"
Kora's tense face relaxed and his shoulders slumped slightly. It was as if the kid considered himself very responsible for the lives of all his little friends. Maybe he thought it was because he was the oldest, or maybe for some other reason. Whatever the answer, Glenn deeply respected Kora. The boy would probably go far in life.
'Farther than you, that's for sure,' Diamanes quipped. Glenn dismissed the nasty remark with a wave of his hand and turned back towards the house as the children ran off. Sahro, Milena, and Javier came to stand beside him, watching the house with him.
Even though it looked normal, Glenn couldn't help but find something uncanny with the location.
No matter. Glenn drew a deep breath and, with his hand on his sword, ready to unsheathe it any moment, he approached the house. The scent of rotten eggs made him stop for a second, but Glenn ignored it.
"Of course, there had to be something rotten somewhere..." He hissed through his teeth, keeping his eyes on the house's door. A few beads of sweat rolled down from his forehead, the sun's heat particularly unbearable today. He caught a movement from his peripheral vision and hurriedly turned his head, finding a two-tailed rat scrambling away through the garden's plants. As he looked at the rat fleeing away, the young man noticed that many of the plants had blackened leaves, and were extremely thorny.
That last fact confirmed Glenn's suspicion even further. Thorn often meant "Cult nearby", that, or Moon Grass. He didn't have time to waste trying to search for them, but he was sure that if he looked a little, he could find a bush or two, or however it grew to be like. Glenn pressed his hand against the door, examining it quickly with Diamanes' help. There was no magic cast upon it, letting Glenn try and open it.
Strangely, it wasn't locked. Glenn looked back at his friends, who nodded at him wordlessly, ready for what was to come. The young man gritted his teeth and pushed the door open, revealing a dark room, with barely any light. The young man stepped inside and looked at the windows should have been, finding them missing. He almost wanted to step out of the house and try and see through the windows, but he didn't have time to waste.
"It's probably illusion magic, anyway," Nelg added dismissively. Glenn pressed his lips together and held his right hand forward, casting Sun's Touch to light the room. The darkness crawled back and pushed Glenn's light. It was a plain room, with nothing but another door. There was no floorboard, only dry dirt, and no traces of any recent human passage. The scent of rotten egg intensified, forcing Glenn to press his sleeve against his nose. Sahro and Milena, upon entering the room, followed his example. Only Javier seemed impervious to the smell, but no one was surprised by that.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Glenn walked up to the next door and opened it up, feeling a strange sense of tension. He entered the room, finding it to be the same as the previous one. Milena, Sahro, and Javier followed him until they realized there was something wrong.
"...Weird architectural choice," Milena commented, barely voicing everyone's concerns. Glenn's nose creased and he went to the next door, choosing to kick that one open. And there, exactly like he was scared of, was another dark room, windowless, and with the dry dirt ground. The young man glanced back at where the exit should be, but sure enough, the previous door was gone.
"Great. A loop, then?" Glenn muttered, looking at the ceiling and the walls for any other explanations, but besides the fact that they were weirdly warm, the walls were common enough, and the ceiling simply ceiling. The young man clacked his tongue and aimed his left arm forward. He had seen this trope way too often back on Earth, and besides making him annoyed at the characters, it generally didn't bring anything to the show or book.
"Sorry, but I don't have time to lose on this stupid trick..." Glenn apologized with a fake smile and shot out a Carbon Blade, slicing right through the wall, door, and anything in front of him. Reality seemed to tremble for a few seconds, and the walls suddenly changed shape and form, transforming into moldy, red rocks.
Why bother with some bullshit enigma when he could just destroy the way through?
"...Well, thank the Gods we weren't planning on being stealthy," Milena commented as the wall Glenn sliced crumbled further, revealing some sort of cave with stairs going down. There was still no light, besides the one Glenn was producing with Sun's Touch. Glenn approached the stairs and gazed down, finding it impossible to peer through the darkness. Without much care, he aimed his hand at the stairs and concentrated Sun's Touch into a beam of light, successfully chasing away the shadows. The stairs looked like they were going down for a while.
"Lots and lots of stairs. Great," Sahro complained as he flexed his thunder arm, blue electrical sparkles crackling around it. Milena unsheathed a dagger, as did Javier. The lady was a mag, apparently specialized in illusions, but she knew how to use a knife better than most. Javier was also much more competent with a bow and arrow, but in a small and narrow staircase like this one, it was wiser to use short melee weapons. Glenn simply held his hand forward, ready to blast anyone or anything with a nice use of his Gravity Manipulation.
"...Watch your step, I suppose," Glenn warned as he walked down the stairs. There were quite a lot of steps, too many for him to count. What Glenn did know, though, was that the staircase walls were becoming redder and that a scent of rotten flesh had joined the smell of rotten eggs. Lots of rotten stuff down there, that was for sure.
So far, they still hadn't found any traces of human passage, and since there wasn't a speck of dust, they couldn't judge how long it had been since someone last came here. The whole place was clean, eerily so. Even more so when considering the red rocky walls. There should have been at least a little bit of stone dust, but no, nothing. Either someone was thoroughly cleaning the staircase every five minutes, or something else was going on.
A permanent Mundare? Glenn shook his head, leaving the question for later. Something was more important right now.
"I'm seeing light. Ready yourselves," Glenn whispered as he squinted, dimming down the intensity of his Sun's Touch, before shutting it down entirely. A dozen steps down or so, crimson light, not unlike the one he had seen back when Glenn fought the Heart of Darkness, was pulsing slowly. The young man felt a dreadful feeling creeping up in the back of his neck, but nothing hinted at a potential Heart of Darkness. The "radar thingy" Onnea gave him wasn't switching on either, so it probably wasn't that.
Hopefully. He couldn't know until he verified it with his own eyes, anyway. Glenn silently opened his left palm, placing his team under the veil of the Silence Curse, while keeping everyone's ability to talk. They proceeded without a noise down the stairs, stopping in front of a thick wooden door. The red light, shifting and moving like a sentient being, was coming from cracks in the door as well as the keyhole. Glenn pressed his left hand against the door, finding it yet again devoid of curses or spells, thanks to Diamanes, and gently opened it.
Well, he tried to, but it was locked. He glanced down at his teammates who were watching with a tense look, and grimaced.
"...Anyone can lockpick? Javier?"
The silent hunter looked at the door, then at Glenn, then back at the door. He made his way through, placed his knife in the interstice, and sliced through the lock. Glenn rubbed the back of his head, before shrugging.
"That works."
"Let's go," Sahro echoed, his blue arm brimming with power. Glenn pushed the door open and slipped inside the next room, frowning deeply as the thick smell of blood reached for his nose. It was nauseating, but Glenn quickly continued on his path. The more he progressed through this place, the more flashbacks he had from the Thorn's Church prison, and the more uncomfortable he felt.
But this time, he wasn't alone.
'...So I just don't count, then?' Diamanes shot out with a hurt tone, making Glenn's eyelids twitch.
'No, you don't. And you weren't there for a good while, so shut up,' The young man snapped back, not in the mood for joking around. Diamanes remained silent, not replying. The team entered behind him, all frowning at the smell.
"...What's happening here? This is creepy!" Milena whispered through her teeth, a sickly tone to her skin. Glenn looked at her, remembering it was her first time dealing with this kind of...adventure, and shot her a thumbs up.
"Don't worry, you'll get used to it!"
"What?!?"
Glenn proceeded without giving a chance to Milena to understand anything. They were in a large, empty hallway, with walls of the same red, ochre-colored stone. There were archways every ten meters made out of a black, dark material, and a few torches were burning with a fire that seemed eerily red. If a fire was usually warm, these flames, in comparison, felt just...hostile, somehow. No warmth, just... burning.
The young man ignored the torches, accelerating slightly as the feeling of discomfort worsened. There was something wrong with this place, but he couldn't tell how wrong.
Until he stepped into a larger room. His heart stopped when he arrived in some sort of large underground facility, with nothing but cages. There was no one here, seemingly, but the ground was tainted red. Whether it was the original color of the stone here or dry blood, Glenn couldn't tell. He walked in front of the cages, finding them all empty, with no traces of their occupants.
"It's too empty. Way too empty." He hissed through his teeth, following a path between the cages. Sahro suddenly stopped, and everyone turned to look at him.
"Do..." He frowned, "...Do you guys hear that?"
Glenn and Milena traded a glance, confused, but Javier nodded slightly.
"...Hear what?" Milena asked with a trembling voice. Sahro's eyebrows creased as he concentrated on the noise.
"I think they're...chants?" He pressed his lips together, trying to listen as best he could, before suddenly paling, "...and there's something else..."
The Black Heir drew a deep breath and exhaled before unsheathing his curved sword with a dark expression.
"Something...horrible."