“Something you would like to say?” Kur asked.

“Is there a point?” Mul replied.

The party stood by the first gray arrow, facing the long corridor of dead people.

“You can voice your opinion,” Kur said. “I don’t want any resentment to fester.”

“What’s there to fester? Here we are and there are the arrows. I wouldn’t resent you anyways. Unless you’re secretly an arrowmancer…”

“What do you think happened to them?” Cen asked, ignoring her brother.

“I think they were burned,” Tuk said, in a hushed voice. “Like on the bridge…”

Nar cast a worried glance at the ring tosser, but Tuk, catching him, offered him a thin smile and shook his head.

“They were all burned?” Mul asked. “By what?”

“By whatever broke through the wall,” Gad said. “I think they were attacked.”

“But who are they?” Tuk asked. “I don’t think this is a cubeplant. I mean, it could be, but…”

The trugger gestured at the long, tall corridor, and Nar nodded in silent agreement. Wherever they were, that place did not look like a cubeplant at all.

“Cannibals wouldn’t have left the bodies,” Rel said.

A collective shiver ran through the party at the mention of the fallen Climbers.

“Please, no more cannibals,” Mul muttered.

“We won’t really find out anything by just staying here,” Kur said. “We have 14 days left. At this stage, we just need to hurry, and hope that these arrows will point us in the right direction. And that we can still make it in time.”

He called Cen over with a gesture and whispered something in her ear.

“Alright,” he said afterwards. “Not sure how well we can keep up the formation, but let’s give it a try.”

Cen walked towards Viy and exchanged a look with Gad.

“Why don’t we walk together?” Cen asked her, taking Viy’s hand gently in hers.

Nar barely noticed the spear woman’s nod. She was staring, wide eyed, at the corpses, and hadn’t made a sound since entering that strange place.

Crystal, please help her, Nar muttered. Because, who else was he going to ask?

There was nothing he, or any of them for that matter, could do now for her. If Viy had another breakdown, all they could do was try and help her the best they could. But that was not a lasting solution.

“Come on, let’s go,” Kur said, bringing Nar out of his thoughts.

The party waded deeper into the corridor, slowly, and being careful not to disturb any of the dead.

Not long after, Gad looked back at them.

“There are rooms up ahead. Big ones.”

They gathered again to have a look.

The gray light offered little brightness to see what was beyond, but it was enough to see what lay within.

“Let’s take two minutes to look,” Kur said. “Don’t touch anything, and one tank per room. Jul, stay here with me and keep an eye out.”

Gad nodded at Nar and took the left room.

Nar walked into the one to their right, followed closely by Tuk and Rel.

“Crystal Above All, what could have done something like this?” Tuk whispered.

The room they were in was long, and disappeared into the unknown darkness. The ceiling above them was arched, and it too, was marked and marred by blackened spots, possibly burns, and there were plenty of broken bits and cracks across it.

The room was filled with wreckage of various materials, things he couldn’t identify, and more bodies. Piles and piles of them.

“And why?” Rel asked. “Why do all this?”

Nar stepped over to one of the walls. Here, he found rows of alcoves, built into the wall. Each of them had a string of numbers and letters right below them, under their left corner.

“I think people slept here,” he said, passing a finger over one such indented string. “I think these are IDs. Like in our status tab.”

All of the beds he could see were empty, and on the opposite wall, there were identical rows of them.

“If that’s the case, they didn’t die in their sleep. That much we can tell,” Rel said.

“How long ago do you think it was? Whatever happened to them?” Tuk asked.

Nar shook his head.

The dead were recycled and their family given extra food as a means to ease their suffering and the sudden loss of a worker in the family. That was the way in the cubeplant. He knew that bodies went bad quickly after people died, but what happened to them once they went into the recycler? He had no idea.

This before him was something completely beyond him. Any of them.

He had seen the burning corpses on the bridges, but they had been taken down into the darkness when the bridges had been lowered. He had no idea what state a burning body ended up in. For all he knew, those bodies could’ve been there for days, weeks, months, years or even a lot longer than that.

“Come on, I don’t think there’s anything in here,” he told the others.

With that, they met up with the rest of the party, back at the corridor.

“Beds,” Nar said. “Bodies.”

“Same on our side,” Gad said. “These people slept here. Lived here. No idea why though. This can’t be a cubeplant.”

Kur rubbed his chin. “Hmmm. Let’s keep going for now.”

As they continued walking further down the corridor, the cold breeze buffeting them at every step, they found more and more rooms, each of them just as destroyed and filled with burned bodies as the first rooms.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

A couple minutes later, they surfaced in a much bigger room.

Here too, bodies were strewn all over the place, but the room was also filled with tables and chairs and benches.

“This keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Mul said.

“Over there,” Jul said, pointing.

Nar followed her finger, and found a set of about ten familiar looking cylinders, half build into the walls.

“Are those facilities?” Tuk asked.

“Let’s go check it out,” Kur said. “And keep your voices down. Whatever did this, might still be around.”

“Please don’t say that,” Cen whispered.

They walked past the broken furniture and corpses, careful not to touch anything or make any loud noises, and reached the cylinders on the other side of the room.

“Blasters?” Tuk said. “They look a bit different… More squarish.”

“Toilets and dispensers too,” Nar added. “All broken though.”

“These people were definitely living here,” Gad said.

“There has to be hundreds of them,” Tuk said. “Just look at all those chairs!”

“There was probably more,” Gad said. “I doubt they all ate at the same time.”

“Oh…”

“We should keep going,” Kur said. “The next arrow’s over there, by that exit.”

“Are these arrows even meant for us?” Mul asked. “They don’t disappear behind us. Maybe we’re not meant to follow them. Maybe we shouldn't be here.”

Kur looked at him and Mul raised a hand.

“I know. A way forward is a way forward. I’m sorry. I’ll shut up.”

Kur was taken aback. “It’s… Fine. I honestly didn’t expect us to find an unknown, livable place, filled with hundreds of corpses. But we’re here now. We might as well see where these arrows take us.”

In silence, they walked out the door.

“Fucking Crystal…” Mul said. “What is this place?”

Nar leaned cautiously over the handrail, unsure if it would hold his weight, and peered down.

They stood in massive space. The enormous circular walls curved and disappeared in the darkness on either side of them, and above and below them, was a massive chasm whose height was impossible to tell.

“This can’t be a cubeplant,” Kur said.

“What else would it be, though?” Cen asked him. “I thought there were only supposed to be cubeplants in the B-Nex.”

Wind blew down from above, ruffling Nar’s air and making him flinch from its coldness. He pulled back away from the edge.

I don’t think I like cold….

“I can see more openings,” Jul said. “On either side of us.”

Kur frowned, looking down at the darkness.

“I know we need to hurry, but at the same time, I think we shouldn’t just rush,” he said, squinting into the dark.

“Agreed,” Gad said. “We should try and understand where we are. And in what we are.”

The party leader nodded. “Jul and Nar, can you go check one of those openings? We’ll stay here and have another look at this room.”

“Okay,” Jul said.

“And weapons out,” Kur told them, as they turned to go. “Just in case.”

Nar traded a glance with Jul, then they both took their weapons from their inventories.

“Come on,” Nar said, stepping in front.

It was a good while before Nar was even able to see the opening they were aiming for in the darkness. While his [Sight] had improved, what he saw in the dark was still pretty much just lines and impressions. It was actually surprising that his brain managed to make sense of what he saw, almost tricking him into believing that he could actually see without issue.

Jul however, never hesitated, and never appeared to be bothered by the darkness at all.

I wonder just how high her senses are. Or maybe it's a rogue thing?

They reached the opening and Jul peaked inside.

“It’s the same,” she said, and stepped in.

Nar followed after her and looked around.

Chairs, tables, corpses. Broken down toilets, dispensers and blasters. The room was an exact replica of the one they had just come from.

“It’s the exact same,” Nar said. “This is just getting weirder and weirder.”

“Should we keep going?” Jul asked.

She pointed at the other opening, at the back of the room, which stood exactly where the corridor they walked in from had been.

“I’m guessing it will just be the sleeping rooms again. But it’s worth having a look. There could be an exit, or another hole leading somewhere else.”

“You think the attackers could’ve come through here too?”

Nar shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just hoping that we can find our yellow path again.”

“You don’t trust the gray arrows?”

“It's not that I don’t trust them. I’m sure they’re taking us somewhere, I just don’t know if it's where we want to go,” he said. “Mul could be right. They could be meant for someone else.”

Jul made a thoughtful expression.

“You think we should have gone backwards instead? Look for a different path?”

“I don’t think that would’ve worked. Our path has never changed, other than that one time with the purple arrows.”

“The cubeplant that failed their quota,” Jul said, nodding. “But there was that time after we escaped?”

“We were forced off the path, then. Maybe the System knew that. Now? It might just keep pointing us here…”

They had walked to the opening, and just as they suspected, a straight corridor, with openings on either side of it, stretched into the darkness.

“Nar,” Jul suddenly said. “I’m angry at you.”

Nar stopped dead in his tracks. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re doubting me.”

“What in the pile? When? How?”

She looked at him, her face a black and white representation of the real thing. He could just picture her frowning at him.

“When we were running from the giant guardian, you didn’t want me to fight. When we were checking the blocked path, and then when we were checking that broken corridor too, you told me to stay back, because it was dangerous.”

“Yes, and?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“You’re doubting my abilities. I can take care of myself.”

Nar sighed. “Jul, I don't doubt that at all.”

“Then?”

“Then what? I’m the tank! I’m the one who takes the damage. Not you!”

“Is that why?”

“Y…”

The word died in his mouth.

Crystal damn it.

“No… Fine! I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he muttered.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“I mean, why now? What changed?” she asked.

“What do you mean? Nothing changed!” Nar said.

“Then?”

“Are we really talking about this here? Now?” Nar asked, gesturing at the bodies around them.

“Yes. I need to know that you, above all people, trust me.”

“Ugh!”

Nar paced around. Truth be told, he wasn’t exactly sure why he had behaved as he had.

“I don’t know,” he said, revealing as much. “That Pressure on the guardians was too strong. If it could eat through my aura it was going to eat through yours as well. I didn’t want you to get burned.”

“And then? Afterwards?” she pressed him.

“Afterwards I… I don’t know, Jul. I really don’t know. I just didn’t want you to get hurt…”

Surprisingly, he heard her muffled laughter.

“What?”

“Yeah, you do. You just don’t want to say it.”

“Say what?”

She elbowed him. “Come on, Gad says it all the time. It’s not that embarrassing, is it?”

“You mean about us being fam…”

He sighed and Jul laughed again.

“When were you born?” she asked, surprising him by the sudden, seemingly random question.

“Uh? Near the end of the third season. Why?”

“Ah! I was born in the second. That makes me the older sister. You have to do what I tell you to do from now on!”

Nar stared at her, flabbergasted.

“I refuse!” he said, still in shock.

“You can’t!” Jul said. “My first order is, don’t do that again! I can take care of myself. I’m strong!”

“Wait! I never doubted that!”

She laughed again and started walking.

Oh, for the love of…

However, he couldn’t deny the little smile on his face.

Party. Family. Siblings.

Maybe they could all find a home where they could live together, in the O-Nex.

That wouldn’t be so bad, Nar, now, would it?

They continued walking down the corridor. They looked inside a few of the rooms, but it quickly became obvious that they were all identical, and that there was nothing in them except debris and more bodies.

Eventually, they reached what Nar had been hoping not to find.

“Dead end,” he said.

“Do you think there’s a corridor behind this wall?” Jul asked, laying her palm against it.

“It doesn't matter. We’ll never be able to break through,” Nar said. “I’ve never seen anything damage these walls other than those spear things. Not even Cen’s explosions have managed it. Crystal knows what they used to break through that wall back there.”

Jul nodded. “Let’s go back then. And by the way, I counted forty rooms on the right side.”

“Which means eighty in total,” Nar said. “If we counted the beds in one of the rooms, we could have an idea of how many there were in one of these corridor/living room dwellings.”

“Not sure how much help it would’ve been though,” Jul said. “We have no idea how many of these living places there are. There could even be a lot more levels…”

She froze, and by now, Nar knew enough to not ask any questions.

He pushed her with his body against the wall and raised his sword before him. Whatever they had spoken about, he was still the tank.

“Nothing…”

“You don’t sound too sure,” Nar said.

“I did think I heard something.”

“Maybe you did. [Instinct]?”

“Nothing.”

That was somewhat of a relief, but he wasn’t sure they could discount what she had heard so easily. After all, everything here was dead. Or so he supposed, and Jul had never been wrong.

Nar was suddenly very aware of the silence that surrounded them, and of just how heavy and absolute it was. More than that. It felt almost foreboding.

A shiver ran down his spine, spreading goose bumps all over his body.

“Jul?”

“Something’s not right,” she whispered.

Danger!

Nar cut the air in front him, meeting the projectile head on.

Something exploded, expanding around his sword and himself.

“What…”

Everything disappeared in a brilliant flash of blue and he went down.