A wall of hot, wet, humid air struck us like a savage maul.
It carried with it a terrible smell, a stink of rotting corpses and decaying matter. I staggered, rushing to circulate the song around my head, creating a pocket of clear air.
Quarrel and Thaum were far worse off. The two women choked instantly, gagging on the fetid stench, each rushing to pull thick fabric scarves from their cowles over their mouths and nostrils. From the look on the faces of the two, it didn’t help much. Even Vox’s nose scrunched in distaste, a faint ripple distorting the air about him.
“HOAAUUUURGHHH!” Rover outright vomited, violently ejecting what little contents of his stomach remained after the nauseating teleportation, falling to his knees and dry heaving again and again, wretchedly.
His enhanced senses doubtless made the smell positively horrendous.
“Easy there, soldier,” Glare kneeled down to grasp the wolfman’s convulsing frame gently by the shoulder. His body was glowing slightly, but otherwise he seemed the only one unbothered by the fumes.
“Fuck, there goes our tracker.” Quarrel cursed, voice muffled by her makeshift mask. Glare ignored her, still focused on the lycan.
“Easy, now,” he repeated, gently, as Rover’s shudders lessened. “Easy, easy.”
The wolfman spat one last time, before forcing out a response, still panting heavily.
“Can…filter…scents,” he ground out, each word a conscious effort. “Just…need…a moment.”
The Immolator nodded readily, before standing once more, and taking a look around. The others were doing the same, warily examining our surroundings with more than a little apprehension.
The first room of the Maw was no room at all.
It was a jungle. An unbelievably dense one. Dense, and dark. I could barely see twenty feet in any direction. The thick foliage suffocated me. Impossibly tall trees towered over our party, clustered tightly together, their wide tops blanketing the sky hundreds of feet in the air, occluding nearly all sunlight. Stout creeper vines dangled and looped from every bough and crawled through every bush like inanimate snakes.
The ground was wet and marshy. Tepid, almost certainly contaminated water flush with deep green algae formed a skein below our feet, soaking my boots. The shrubbery was hostile in appearance, fruits covered in pointed spikes and wide leaves in serrated edges. It was damp, and dark, and oppressive.
And miserable. If the smell hadn’t already put us on edge, then the atmosphere did. But, most strangely of all, it was absolutely quiet.
There were no sounds of life.
“This is…,” Thaum muttered, pacing anxiously around the small clearing into which we’d entered. “Not a room.”
She turned to Quarrel questioningly, apparently willing to defer to the archer’s greater experience, the latter frowning in reply, eyeing our surroundings with concern.
“Outstanding grasp of the obvious, ‘Crat,” she murmured, brows furrowed. “We’d be lost without you.”
“Well?! Look above us!” Thaum persisted, gesturing upwards. “Look around us! You’re the expert? Fine, then! Explain this!”
“Dungeon’s a weird place. Rooms come in all sorts,” Quarrel replied.
“That doesn’t make any sense. There’s no Gods-forsaken ceiling! It’s not a room!” she shouted, shrilly, nerves beginning to show through her facade.
“Maybe we just can’t see it through the trees,” Quarrel shot back, equally tense.
“I’ll go take a look.” Glare suggested, abruptly.
“Wai–,” I turned towards him, reaching out a hand, unable to gain his attention before he rocketed into the air.
“–t. Gods damn it.” I growled, quietly, pinching the bridge of my nose. We shouldn’t be splitting up, least of all now. We’d barely begun the delve and already our organization, if such a thing ever existed in the first place, was falling apart.
Quarrel and Thaum didn’t notice my actions, still arguing. Vox’s eyes were shut tightly, a look of intense concentration on his face. Slowly, Rover was dragging himself to his feet. I walked over to him.
“Any improvement, lord Rover?” I asked. The wolfman grimaced.
“I’m no Lord,” he growled, standing and working his mouth, spitting a couple more times. “Fucking rancid, this place. Priest above, shit’s still coating my throat. Senses are a blessing and a curse, sometimes. Had problems before, but never as bad as that.” He shook his head, in part anger and part shame.
“Fucking embarrassing,” he said, sighing heavily, ears flattened across the top of his head. “Sloppy. Should’ve known. Now I look a fool.”
I reached out hesitantly, about to pat the massive downcast beast on the shoulder, but then thought the better of it. Likely the last thing he needed, or wanted, right now was my pity. Better to just move past it. So I shook my head.
“No way you could’ve known,” I replied, forgoing honorifics.
“And smells notwithstanding, look around us,” I said, spreading my arms broadly.
“We’re in a jungle. And not a particularly well-lit one. There are few places, I’m guessing, better suited to demonstrating your skills. Tracking, scouting, bushcraft, sensing danger before it strikes? Not to mention that with that coat of fur, you’ll blend right in around here.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Any faith you’ve lost from our companions, I’ve no doubt you’ll gain back swiftly.”
The wolfman perked up at that, ears straightening in an adorable manner that was greatly at odds with his appearance.
“You speak reason, lord Hero” Rover admitted, meeting my eyes. “Not for the first time,” he added, granting me a small smile. This time I did clasp his shoulder, the gesture no longer condescending, but comradely.
“Just Hero. If you’ve no need for ceremony, then I’ll not stand on it either. I’m just barely an Aristocrat, myself. And the way I see it, we’re all equal in the Agoge.”
A corny line, but I really believed it, and Rover didn’t seem bothered. In fact, quite the opposite. His lupine grin broadened, tail wagging slightly, and I returned the gesture in kind. It was hardly the raptured awe with which he treated Glare, but at least this was a start. And when it came to keeping us united, every little bit helped.
The wolfman looked around, sniffing the air once, twice, experimentally, nose twitching cautiously. Experiencing no adverse reaction, he took a deep, drawn-out breath.
Then, almost instantly, his smile dissapeared. His brow furrowed, hackles raising, digitigrade legs tensing up. He locked eyes with me once more.
“Something’s wrong,” he warned, “There’s no–”
His voice was overshadowed by a furiously escalating argument that drew our attention. The confrontation I’d forgotten over the past moments, between Thaum and Quarrel, had reached a fever pitch. The latter had recapitulated her demeanor from back in the auditorium, the Blessed archer just as I’d seen her look before, bearing down on the smaller sorceress with murder in her eyes.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Thaum was similarly at her breaking point. Shadows churned disconcertingly beneath the sorceress’s feet and within the folds of her leathers. Her song exploded outwards, throttling my mind, screaming anxiety and fear and helplessness and rage.
I winced as it pierced my skull, unprepared for the sheer magnitude of emotion that set upon me. I frowned. This…wasn’t normal. This was even worse than before. Somehow…she’d deteriorated over only the past few hours.
Something was wrong here.
Either Thaum was…unstable, in a way I hadn’t realized before, or there was something else at play. Or both. I hoped it wasn’t both.
“–dare you?!” Quarrel snarled at the smaller girl. “You don’t tell me what I know, Slaver, and you don’t tell me what to do, you never–”
“Tell you what to do?” Thaum shrieked back, face pale, fingers curled viciously around the shadows that slithered around her. “Don’t tell me how the Dungeon works when you don’t even know!”
She leaned in close to the archer, intimidation betrayed somewhat by her smaller stature and drained complexion. Her voice became a venomous whisper.
“You may think my birth a Blessing, but you’ve no idea what I’ve been through. Don’t act all high and mighty with me.”
Quarrel reared back, eyes widening, visage purpling in rage.
“High and mighty.” Quarrel muttered with slitted eyes, abruptly quiet in a manner more menacing than any of her prior snarls. She chuckled mirthlessly, this time without any sign of a smile, hands drifting to her weapons.
“Oh, princess.”
I dashed forward as Thaum’s arms raised before her, palms facing outward, shadows poised to strike. I wasn’t going to make it in time. Fear spiking, I realized that in order to intercede, to stop them from killing one another, I’d have to reveal the powers I’d hidden.
Was it worth it? If I did nothing, one of us would surely die. Maybe more. Our unity would be forever broken. Then again, my acting could result in an even worse outcome. As I agonized over the decision, teeth gritted tight, salvation suddenly came from above.
Glare plummeted to the moist jungle floor, landing between the two murderous Blessed like a falling star.
The Immolator struck a cool, practiced pose as he touched down, raising a thin cloud of water vapor in the air around him. He stood up and immediately spoke, brushing himself off calmly as he did so.
“I’m afraid, my friends, I’ve little good to report,” Glare said, shaking his head while eliminating the last few specks of dust from his robes. “There’s–,”
The mage ground to a halt as he looked up, finally noticing all of our expressions; Rover’s astonishment, my concern, Quarrel’s cool but lethal stare, and Thaum’s tense, outright panic.
“Um…,” he said, glancing from each of us to the other, eyebrows raised in confusion.
“Is, uh, is everything…alright?” He asked, hesitantly.
There was no answer to his inquiry. Rover was still gaping at the two women, in disbelief that they’d so quickly resorted to near murder. Quarrel, despite her name, seemed for once uninterested in conversation, content to simply continue staring unnervingly at her companion.
Thaum’s song remained quite clear to me. She was, as I noticed becoming a theme, altogether unsure, torn between defending her actions, continuing her argument, and apologizing to Glare, whom she respected. Above all, though, she was afraid of how this incident might impact her leadership.
Which, at least in my mind, was becoming a more distant prospect with every passing hour.
As the silence stretched further and further, I eventually took it upon myself to reply.
“Everything’s fine,” I said firmly, ignoring the venomous look Quarrel shot my way, more than happy to distract her attention from the other girl. I’d no idea how to resolve this situation, to be frank, and right now was eager to simply move past it. No matter what she may have said to the other woman, Thaum was clearly in no condition to settle things herself.
So I changed subjects.
“Listen, High Inquisitor, you can’t just run off like that,” I continued, chastising the Immolator, hoping he’d be at least slightly more receptive to criticism than my other comrades.
“At least, not until we have a concrete plan. Scouting’s all well and good, but what if we’re attacked while you’re gone? We’ve no way to contact you, and no notion of what else the World Titan may have in store.”
Thankfully, Glare was apparently the sole individual in this party who possessed not only power, but humility as well.
“Of course…” he muttered, rubbing his brow frustratedly. “Of course, you’re right. You’re absolutely right,” he apologized, shaking his head.
“I…I didn’t even consider it, to be honest. I’m quite used to working with those who know one another well, you see. The Inquisition is small, and the chain of command clear. I’ve spent so long…”
He scowled slightly in concern, still rubbing his forehead. “Even so, I should’ve…I didn’t even think of it…why…?”
He trailed off for a moment, before fixing me with an appropriately steadfast glare.
“No matter. It won’t happen again, I promise you that” he said, nodding at me seriously.
I nodded back, gratefully, internally sighing in relief.
“So, your news?” I asked. Glare grimaced.
“The jungle spreads for miles,” he explained. “As far as the eye can see. There are no landmarks, no distinguishing features of any kind.”
“Only a sea of green,” he finished, forebodingly.
“That’s not all,” Rover cut in, drawing our attention.
“There’s no life,” he said grimly, confirming my earlier suspicions. “I can’t hear anything. I can’t smell anything. It’s like the whole ecosystem is…abandoned, I suppose.”
We all looked at one another, the seriousness of the situation apparently at least enough to forestall what animosity remained between Thaum and Quarrel.
Our problems were swiftly mounting. Not only was this room like nothing any of us had encountered before, if we didn’t have a clue how to progress forward, then we were stuck here indefinitely. Forget the Agoge. No life meant no source of food, and our provisions wouldn’t last forever, even my time-locked ones.
“It appears, then, as if I am the bearer of good news.”
Vox’s syrupy tone interrupted us for the second time that day. The thin, well-dressed man was striding gracefully towards our group, seeming not the slightest bit perturbed by the current situation. He spread his arms wide, palms facing upwards.
“Our salvation lies not in the tangible or the visible, but what hides beneath the two,” he said, tapping a single earlobe lightly.
Rover frowned. “What, you mean sound? There’s nothing. I just told you, I can’t hear anything at all. The jungle’s noiseless.” I, myself, couldn’t hear anything, either.
But then, Broadcast wasn’t my primary Blessing.
“Perhaps then your hearing, my canid comrade,” Vox intoned, “is not quite as advanced as mine.” He smiled at Rover in that soft way of his, where you were never quite sure if he was being compassionate or condescending.
“There’s no shame in it, of course. After all, you are a Brute, are you not?” He asked rhetorically, still smiling, still staring eerily at Rover. Again, though, the way Vox said the words just didn’t feel quite right.
Was he merely stating fact, or insulting the wolfman?
“You may not detect it,” he continued, “but there is, in fact, a path forward from here.”
Vox pointed in a direction more or less perpendicular to the straight path forward from our entry point, leading to the east of our current location. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the horrid jungle air with no apparent displeasure.
“A hum,” he sighed.
“A hum?” Quarrel questioned, her anger now mostly replaced with incredulity.
“A hum,” Vox confirmed.
“To be specific, a clean sinusoidal wave at approximately 5.5 hertz emanating from precisely that direction,” he explained, gesturing once more to the east while grinning at us. We stared back at him, speechless.
“And?” Thaum pressed.
“Of course, my apologies, leader” he said, once again bowing semi-sarcastically to the girl.
“Clean, meaning pure. Meaning, lacking any manner of noise. Meaning, unnatural. Meaning, in a sense…,”
“Mechanical,” he finished, still grinning. “Have no doubt, my dear comrades, whatever test awaits us, it does so there.”