image [https://i.imgur.com/b7pKNTR.jpeg]

When things had all settled, Renna just lay back down on the floor and quietly stared at the stones. We were really lucky Morpo didn’t see them; that would have opened a big, old can of worms.

Earlier she had asked me if she could keep them. I didn’t get a chance to answer her at the time, but even then, she had my blessing. I don’t know why, but I trusted her. That’s saying something coming from someone who was in my line of work.

I admit that I might have been a tad irresponsible with those stones. I had no idea what they were back then. If I did, I would have thrown them in the deepest part of the ocean. That’s not what happened, though. What's funny, Mr. Dormand, is that things always happen as they should. There are many things I don’t know, but what I do know is that the hands of fate work in ways that we cannot ever foresee. Looking back, however, their influence is as clear as day to me.

As for old Mr. Underbrook and myself, we just tucked ourselves in for the night like the good little slaves we were about to be. We didn’t know what to expect from that point on, but no one in the world could have expected what would happen next.

The dwarf, Junk, took position at a desk near the front door and promptly fell asleep. De’nan, the orc, placed himself at a wall facing my cell directly and seemed to have no trouble nodding off either. The wilderkind must have stepped out at some point after I had laid down. He was stealthy like that; there one second and gone the next.

I remember being angry with myself, angry that I could be nabbed by such half-wits like these. Going to sleep was not what the boss had told them to do, but after so long being stuck in the jailhouse watching us, I figure they just got sloppy. If only they had known who they were dealing with. Hell, if only we had known.

That night was the first time it happened. The dreaming. It was the stones, man. They did something to us... I don’t know. I’ll try explaining it the best I can.

I was lying out on my bedding, just about to fall asleep, when I started to hear this kind of whispering sound. I thought it was the dwarf messing with me at first, but when I sat up to look around, the jailhouse was exactly as it had been. As I turned my head and tried to get my bearings, the whispers just kept growing and growing—getting louder, and louder, and louder. Eventually, it was like the sound itself was swallowing me whole. My head was vibrating, and I felt like I was going to be sick. I could feel this strange pull, and I knew instinctively where it was coming from—right from Renna’s cell. Right from the stones. She had been right. There was something deep and ancient contained in those things, and we were about to meet it.

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The voices started to splinter and crack. Where one voice had been, soon there were many. Those voices then too started to multiply, and soon there were too many to comprehend. There were a million choruses all speaking to me at once. Some were still whispering, others were shouting, and some were singing. There were voices of the old, young, rich, poor, and powerful.

Everything around me started to spin, warp, and wrap in on itself. The cell I was sitting in twisted into something entirely new. I was seeing shapes I could never draw on a page. Eventually, everything started to go white, and then there was silence.

Suddenly I was standing in the middle of nowhere and gazing out over absolute nothingness. The area before me seemed to stretch for all eternity.

In the distance, I hear the sound of Mr. Underbrook’s voice. Something was different, though. It sounded far and near at the same time. Like he was right next to me but a million miles away simultaneously.

I turned around, and there he was. Truth be told, this was the first time I had actually seen him properly since they carted him into the jailhouse on day 13.

It was quite a sight too. There he was, shouting and waving his hands around, trying to get the attention of something unseen.

The sound of Renna’s voice then caught both of our attention. She was standing some ways off, waving to us with a confused expression on her face. She looked exactly how I felt. I was glad to see them both there. I felt safer knowing I wasn’t alone.

Suddenly, thousands of eyes started rushing in from every direction. They were coming in past each of us, joining together, and rushing outwards again. They were creating these intense patterns that formed and reformed a million times over. Each of these eyes carried a voice with it—the same ones from before, doing much of the same thing.

Me and Renna were too busy losing our minds to say or do anything, but Mr. Underbrook spoke up first. He stood fast and shouted exactly one word—"Arkhe".

It was a name that I, of course, was not familiar with at the time. However, we would all come to be very well acquainted with it in due course. To think, Mr. Dormand, that an actual god would have any interest in me just feels like madness. As fate would have it, though, that is exactly what happened.