People laughed in the hallways as wooden sticks slapped against one another in the background. There was joy, and family, and growth in this underground tunnel system that seemed to spread out further and further the more that Cody explored. Yet each time he returned to the main rooms for a bite to eat or a drink of water, there was always someone waiting for him there to say hello.
It was, in short, nothing like what he had been expecting at all.
Rigid white bodies of bone and armor stood in the edges of the room, but the more time he spent here, the less they felt like guards meant to keep them in, and more like guardians meant to protect this place.
The sands blew around Xei and himself whenever they trained each day, lined on all sides by a motley crew of soldiers that wanted to watch the fights. Yet when the fight ended there was nothing but polite applause for the two, regardless of who won the bout. The men and women who gathered around would clap his shoulders when the sparring match was finally over, then invite him to spar with them instead.
When it all started to seem too good to be true, that's when he started searching for the hidden secrets underneath. Why was this place the way that it was?
He started searching through the empty tunnels, torch held high in the darkness, passing line after perfect line of interconnected blocks put together like building blocks of the gods. He found large multi story rooms carved into the stone, grand displays of power and authority, yet no one there to man them and make them real. It was like an entire city had been plucked up and put here, just under the surface of a long forgotten field that just so happened to be his kingdom. or princedom he supposed.
Cody spent several days like that, searching through every hidden nook and cranny he could find in the caves. And they let him. There was perhaps an unspoken rule that he wasn't supposed to leave the catacombs, but otherwise he was free to do as he wished. To be honest, he never even tested it. Not when he still wasn't any closer to understanding what was going on here.
Eventually after several hallways turned him around so thoroughly that he was pretty sure that he had gotten lost in the maze, Cody found a door.
Two twin guards stood resolute next to the door, white beacons that shined in the dull light of his torchlight. A string of carved words spread out before him, up and down the one unopened secret of the cave system. Yet the fact that it was being guarded told him it must have been important to some degree. Did that mean that Xei was trying to keep this place quiet for some reason.
A single hand reached out from the darkness behind him to touch his shoulder, and Cody jumped so hard he almost dropped the torch. When he looked over his shoulder at the hand, he was only somewhat startled to find Xei standing there besides him, already holding his slate in one hand.
“I've been wondering how long it would take you to find this place. “ Xei wrote.
“Why's it the only room that's locked off?” Cody asked.
“We don't know.” He wrote. Weird, Cody had started to think of him as a he somewhere along the way. It just seemed to fit him, despite the un-alive ness of it all.
“And you still don't trust me enough to tell me?” Cody asked.
“I can't share the answer with you because I don't know it yet Cody. “ Xei wrote.
Cody furrowed his brows. What were the chances this skeleton was still lying to him? Xei seemed to take his reaction to be curiosity since he continued writing.
“Would you like to help me find out?” He wrote.
“You mean the pledge that you make everyone else here make to the ‘goddess’? Cody asked.
Xei nodded, walking forward to run his skeletal palm over the surface of the locked door.
“Why don't you just use a rock mage to get through it?” Cody tried to change the subject.
“We tried that. Didn't work. Something about this place resists the manipulation of the arcanists, just like it repels our blades.” Xei rapped on the side of the stone with his hand after writing the explanation. “And we can't get around it either. It's like there's a magical cube of nothing on the other side of the door.”
“Let me try.”
Xei nodded, and moved out of the way before Cody tried pushing and pulling on the door with his magic. Even latched into place using the nearby walls and floor, no amount of leverage would cause the door to shift even the slightest bit before he gave up. Sweat beaded on his brow as he picked up the half discarded torch once again and the skeleton started writing.
“Why did you interfere when Charity was helping those people the first night we met you?”
“Because it seemed to me that something weird was going on with people going missing and all.”
“But you were alone. You could have just made a report and been done with it.”
“I was on a bit of a break from guard duty and just didn't think of it.”
“A break?”
“Yeah, I was trying to find…well, I don't know exactly what I was trying to find.”
Xei considered that for a time before he responded, and the two started to walk back to the common rooms by the time he chose what to say next.
“I think you'll find that many of the people with us are in a similar situation. Not knowing what they want specifically.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel any better about the possibility of joining you guys?” Cody asked the skeleton.
“No, it isn't. It's supposed to mean that I'm at least being honest with you. Do you know what the purpose of the Prince of Whispers is?”
“The defense of this land. I think.”
“Somehow I doubt you believe that. Otherwise you wouldn't have gone searching for answers.”
“Okay, so what's the end goal of the whole death cult thing then?” Cody asked.
“It's hard to summarize it in writing like this, but I think the primary tenet that comes to mind is growth.”
“You promote growth by burning down farmland and enslaving the workers?” Cody asked.
“Yes, we promote growth by liberating the people from a passive life and encouraging them to become something new.”
“And when those people oppose you, you're willing to just cut them down to pursue your own goals?”
“Weren't you willing to do the same thing back in the clearing the night Lord Tai knocked you out? I had heard you almost killed every single person there to free yourself.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I was defending myself!” The words echoed down the hallway as Cody raised his voice, but his words were met only with the scratching against a board in the faint light.
“It seems to me that this world is quite focused on its value for strength above all. At least when it comes to Lady Dei, she values life more than death.”
“How can you say that after how many people you've killed?”
“Far fewer than I've saved. And souls are a currency worth any price for the goddess.”
The conversation settled down a bit as the two men finished walking back to the common rooms in near silence. Xei out of habit, but Cody was deep in thought. When they arrived a handful of men and women waved both of them over to the nearby tables to join in on a game of dice
Xei declined with a wave of his hand and started walking back towards the sparring pits where Cody knew he would continue to fight until something equally important drew him away from his passtime. As he watched the skeleton walk away, he realized something. The skeleton was going to the pits in order to grow, little by little with each and every fight in the sandy rooms.
And the way that he talked? That wasn't the words of some mindless monster.
The skeleton turned the corner of the wall without looking back and Cody was left looking between the well lit path to the sparring halls and the game of dice that both seemed to be calling to him. Unsure of what to do or where to go.
What did he want?
—
“Gotcha!”
Janette said the words even as she nearly collided with the figure in black standing directly ahead of her. She had been near the apex of a jump over a shallow building when she found the monstrous creature crouched in place on the other side of it despite leading her on a massive chase for the last thirty minutes. The creature slowly turned around and brought its strangely clawed hands together in a happy little clapping motion.
It would be almost endearing if it didn't look so strange for such an obviously non-human individual to express itself in that way. Janette put her hands on her hips and glared down at the beast as she finally talked to it again.
“You let me win.”
The monster simply shrugged in response and went back to its vaguely gargoyle based stance when it wasn't moving. Come to think of it, the creature was more reminiscent of a demon due to her vaguely human characteristics in Janette's mind.
“Do you have a name?” She asked the demon.
It nodded cheerfully at her then calmed down a moment later. Janette waited for it to say something, but nothing came out of the demon's mouth despite seemingly being interested in talking.
“You, can't speak?” Janette asked.
The demon nodded once again then grabbed Janette by the hand. She jumped in place, nearly falling off the rooftop in fright at the sudden speed from the demon, but the creature reached up with its other arm and stabilized her before she fell.
“Thanks.” Janette whispered as the demon held her hand loosely in its grip. While the claws interlocked with one another around her hand, she got the distinct feeling that the creature wasn't trying to hurt her, merely getting her attention. It raised its hand to point at a cobblestone courtyard inside a raised fence holding a manor, isolated within the city. She looked at the large manor, recognizing it as the property of house Brent before the demon released her hand and jumped heavily into the courtyard without waiting for her.
Janette found herself pushing off of the nearby building and flying after the creature with little thought to her actions, rushing to catch up with the beast as it ran across the courtyard. She was already halfway across the clearing before the guards around the area started yelling to one another about intruders. She wasn't sure why she kept running, but when the creature turned around and saw her falling horizontally across the open stone she flashed a thumbs up at the girl. It hardly made sense to her why that mattered to Janette, but it did, and so she kept following, chasing this lunatic across a heavily guarded manor without a care in the world.
The demon took a running jump that allowed it to cleanly glide up and on to a second story balcony where it waited for Janette to catch up. When she did catch up, the creature was bent at the waist tinkering with a small lock on the upper story door which eventually clicked and the monster swung the door open without any fanfare as the alarms bellowed in the background.
“Uh, I don't think that-” The creature ignored her as it went into the room without stopping to hear her out. Janette took one last glance behind her at the swarming guards before tentatively walking into the dark room. She could always just run away if anything happened. Right?
As she walked into the room, she noticed there were two sleeping individuals on the bed, intertwined in one another's arms and mostly unclothed. Janette averted her gaze quickly, and looked at the demon who stood by the side of the room looking back at her.
‘Just what does this thing want me here for?’ She thought, but the creature merely pointed sternly at the couple who had still somehow managed not to wake up despite the noise coming in from outside. Janette closed the door behind her quietly just to be safe, and when she turned back around again the demon had crossed the room and grabbed her by the head. She almost screamed, but held the noise back as the creature forced her to look at the sleeping nobles.
Huh. One of them almost looked like Lady D'elm. She wondered whether the girl was doing alright after what happened to her date with Penton. Although she seemed to be doing just fine if she was sleeping with a Brent lord right now.
Hold on. A Brent Lord?
She took a step closer to the couple to get a closer look, and confirmed that they were in fact the people she was thinking of. Vivian Brent was bedding Lady D'elm? And so openly in his own home as well?
Janette's mind flashed to the face of Julius Brent as he had gone out of his way to tell her that he was the mastermind behind the night's events. An event that was even now causing several ramifications as merchants backed out of trade deals with her father, and their convoys were raided by mysterious unnamed groups. And one of the key players that had led to that fall from grace was the woman laying before her, fucking her way into the great Brent family name.
The demon behind her now stepped up and withdrew a basic looking dagger from a hidden sheath beneath its clothes. It hardly seemed to need weapons like that considering its claws, but then the creature extended the dagger out to Janette, handle first. She grabbed onto the weapon out of mere habit more than anything else, then stood there, awkwardly looking between the demon and the dagger.
“You want me to kill them?” She whispered as they stood over the sleeping couple.
The demon nodded eagerly.
Janette shook her head, backing up away from the prone couple when a heavy knock came at the door.
‘BANG, BANG, BANG!’ The door shook in place, causing the sleeping couple to jolt awake and start looking around. It took the sleeping woman less than a second to recognize that two strangers were standing over the bed, and started screaming, causing the man to jump awkwardly out of the bed and look around awkwardly. D'elm caught Janette's eye in that moment, and the girl noticed a look of recognition in her face as the man merely fled from the room without looking back.
As soon as he opened the door a burly man ran in after him towards the dark strangers. Janette looked over at the demon who merely backed up to the edge of the room, blocking the door out to the balcony. Heart pounding in her head as time seemed to slow down around her, she looked back at the oncoming guard who already had his sword out, running across the room. He would cut her down in less than a second, no questions asked. No trial. No chance at explaining herself.
She pushed.
The dagger in her hand sped away from her and embedded itself straight into the man's neck.
“No!” Janette yelled the words, reaching out towards the man even as his run slowed down and he dropped the sword to try clutching at the rapidly bleeding hole in his neck.
That dagger wasn't supposed to be there. It didn't look right, protruding past the man's hands like an inappropriate gag at the traveling circus. No, that wasn't right at all. She pulled the dagger away, causing another spurt of blood to erupt from the man and spray across her clothing. This time he dropped to his knees, still clutching at the hole but with slightly cut hands as well as Janette suddenly held the bloody device back within her hands once again.
She looked back up at Lady D'elm who had stopped screaming, and the woman bolted away from the bed as fast as she could. The lady looked downright slow in comparison to the man who had charged Janette, waddling across the room in her naked state towards the door.
But she had seen Janette.
She would tell on her.
She pushed. And the dagger shot out from her hand into the woman's back. The lady buckled under the weight of the blow, falling down with a half scream as she reached for the doorway.
More voices were echoing down the hallway, and Janette looked backward at the demon, only to find the doorway was open to the night's air once again.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Janette rushed out of the room onto the balcony, looking around for the demon with frantic eyes, but there was no one there. When the sounds of heavy bootsteps started running into the bedroom behind her, Janette just pushed off against the balcony beneath her, shooting herself out and into the night.
She had to hide. She had to run.
The demon tricked me.