Max followed closely behind Markus. His body was going the way that he intended, right behind Markus, right behind possibly the only person he knew wasn’t going to just outright kill him, dispose him right then and there and leave him with the dogs. Or at this moment, he wasn’t sure if it would be dogs, or some kind of genetically-modified kind of dog. Two-headed dogs. Three-headed dogs. Max shuddered at the thought of it.
Walking down along the path of the hallway where the dimly-lit walls barely provided any sense of direction didn’t help to lift the unease that continued to bristle in Max’s emotions. He had questions, boiling questions. All of them needed an answer right now, and unfortunately, at the top of his list, is whether he’d even be able to survive being in this new place at all.
The Underworld could eat him up. The Underworld could swallow him whole, crush him in between the gaps of its disgusting teeths, then spit him out whenever it wanted. That was the problem, as Max identified. He didn’t really have a choice in all of this. It was go along or be killed, or be killed anyway and not return home…
“You should speak up now,” Markus said. Max turned to him, a little bit confused. Markus had been sending too many mixed signals, and he just wasn’t sure if even he knew what he was doing with his new prisoner. “Maybe speak up not in front of other people, or when I tell you to,” he explained.
“What exactly will I be doing here in the Underworld?” Max asked. That was just one of the top burning questions he had that needed to be asked. “If there’s no way back, as you say-”
“You’ll be doing a lot of things. It depends on what Miss Ravenloft deems you fit enough to be. I was a Detected, seven years ago. She had seen me as some sort of killing machine, decided that I was ‘good enough’ to be a hunter and sent me out on missions to retrieve items and people. Others were just here to be different things.”
“Like Penny?”
“Yeah,” Markus said. “Like Penny.”
“Then why did she lie?” Max asked.
Markus glanced quickly at Max. “Lie about what?”
“About returning home?”
Markus scoffed. “She didn’t lie. She needed you to be better, yes, but being better for the betterment of her, you got it?”
Max shook his head.
“Think of it like this: you had a choice in the other world, and then you were whittled until you were nothing. And somehow, you end up here. The second chance. The last resort. ‘Make something of yourself’, she says, but not because it’s a good thing for you, but because if you do make something of yourself, you’ll stay here and be hungry for more.
“And including all of us who has been here before, some just the beginning like you, we don’t really know a whole lot of what’s going on. The top scholars do, but Miss Ravenloft keeps them away like leashes to pets. They tell us what to do and we do them, whether or not we’re actually happy about it.”
Max nodded. “What if I die?”
“Then the bond breaks. Something supposedly happens, but nobody knows,” Markus said.
“Has nobody died in the Underworld before?” Max asked.
“They have, but they’ve also been resurrected. Sometimes as creatures that continue to roam and live in the Ravenloft Mansion, here, and sometimes as happy ghouls or sad ghouls that roam the Underworld. You might happen to find some of them, you might not. They might tell you their side of the story, they might not.”
“And have you heard of anything?”
Markus smiled. “I’m a hunter, Max. Sometimes it’s best for you to do what you’re supposed to do and get out of there before something consumes you whole, be it the Underworld or just your thoughts. And trust me, your thoughts have a different way of life in the Underworld.”
Max nodded. Being in a new environment wasn’t his forte. After all, he wasn’t all that good at being in his old environment too, and that was why he ran in the first place. Not to get out of a decrepit rut, not to get out of just being lonely, or being alone, but to be… better. But when he ran, far and fast, he knew he couldn’t get there. And that must be how he ended up in the Underworld.
Max and Markus approached a bright, maroon double door. Markus grabbed the door handle.
“Wait,” Max said, just before Markus pulled the door open.
“What is it?” Markus asked.
“Could I ask what happened to your leg?” Max pointed to the blight that had clutched Markus’s leg.
Markus sighed. “It’s a long story, kid. I wish I could tell you, but certain forces restrict me.”
“Magic?” Max asked.
“Curse,” Markus said. He watched as Max thought to himself. “Is that all?”
Max nodded.
“Alright.” Markus pulled the handle on the door. “Welcome to Ravenloft Bar.”
As the door swung open, inside, a delicate variety of smells wafted around the room. Some of them had even reached where Max was standing, at the very top of the bar, where there were steps and steps that lead down into the bottom flooring where everybody was.
And by ‘everybody’, Max was sure that it was indeed everybody.
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A whole host of creatures and regular humans littered the pit of the floor. Some camped in little corners, some huddled around tiny tables. Some of them look like deformed rats with human bodies, some with a tentacle body and an elephant’s trunk for a nose.
The cacophony of sounds stayed roughly the same, like one would at a local pub or down at a festival. Max wasn’t used to all of this, for sure, but with an array of special-looking creatures and things interacting with each other like the 300th Saturday that they had been together.
Max took it all in, as much as he could, before Markus nudged at him.
“Come, we need to go down there,” Markus said.
Max nodded. He followed Markus as he passed by all the beautiful creatures that looked disfigured, nothing like human, and then he passed by one, a woman who had looked ‘correct’, until she smiled, and her normal-looking teeth were now replaced by that of a snake.
“Why is everybody… different?” Max whispered to Markus as they passed by even more strange-looking things and people.
“They’re different, but that don’t make them any less people. Just like you, they have emotions, they have goals. And just like you, they have all of it stripped here when they entered into the Underworld. Don’t speak to anybody unless they speak to you. And let me know when they do.”
“Alright.”
Max and Markus continued down the stairs until they reached the bottom. It was so… crowded. Max had finally realised what it was: the bar room was a ballroom, about four times bigger, and now filled with everything. He wasn’t quite sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Markus lead Max to a special bartender that resided in one of the little areas. Him, or what looked like him, seemed to be an elf that stood tall underneath the little chandelier that hung overhead.
The elf looked old with his tilted, white-rimmed glasses. He had white hair that parted sideways, a lock and a pair of earrings that brimmed a dimly lit blue. His eyes, crossed on his left, had looked to be out of place for such a tall-looking elf. Furthermore, with his attire: a worn-down leather armour, a sling bag that hung on the side, and a couple of knives in belt, meant that the elf might not look the way that Max had expected.
That wasn’t all that surprising for Max. So far, in the Underworld, he shouldn’t have expectations in the first place.
Markus and Max reached the counter, and with a gracious smile, Markus barraged his fist on the top of the counter. The elf had been working on fixing up a sword behind him, and when he had heard the knockings on his counter-table, he offered a look. He placed the sword aside and lowered his glasses at Markus.
“Ah,” the elf said, “Markus Dunne. What brings you here to my humble abode?”
“Cut the crap, Elias,” Markus said.
The two looked at each other for a longing second. Then they broke out into a slew of laughter and abhorrent handshakes. Max stared blankly at the exchange.
“So,” Elias said, pulling back from a tight hug after all of the handshakes. “Really, what brings you here to my humble abode?”
Markus pointed to Max. “New Detected,” he said. “Miss Ravenloft’s tasked me to get him a few things. A compendium for a start.”
“A compendium? Hm. Miss Ravenloft does like things to roll quickly, doesn’t she?” Elias pushed up his glasses and searched below his counter.
“I’ve heard from the guard that there’s some news regarding a contact.”
Elias stopped searching. He looked intensely at Markus, almost looking to see if he was telling the truth. “A contact?”
“Yes,” Markus said.
“Does she even know if it’s real?” Elias said, returning to searching.
“Does anyone? The last dozen or so contacts we’ve had have been duds. Miss Ravenloft is probably used to this significant disappointment.”
Elias laughed and nodded. “Disappointed, she is.”
Max watched the two of them, but the sounds of the bar were a little too loud for him. He didn’t like it. The hustle and the bustle, the sounds of water sloshing in little cups and mugs, the chatter and the sharpening of swords.
When he had looked over to one of the other bars, a girl had stared back. Unlike the others, she was visibly human, though to Max, he could only see from her waist up. Could she possibly be human? Penny was. Perhaps she was, too. But…
“Ah,” Elias finally said, picking out a small red book and dropped it on the top of the counter. “It might not be win the best-looking compendium award, but it’ll do.”
He blew the dust off the compendium, hovering his hands over the small red book. Slithers of blue ethereal tendrils glowed and made their way into the book. In a matter of seconds, the red book smacked open, pages flying and flipping all over the place. Then, all at once, the book slammed shut.
“Was that…?” Max asked. He wasn’t sure what to ask, and he wasn’t sure if he had even asked a question at all.
Elias picked up the compendium, and with a big smile, handed it over to Max.
“Here you go,” he said. “It’s your bread and butter.”
“Bread and butter?” Max asked, at least having thought about this question. He picked it up, and proceeded to check if it was broken or messed up.
On the cover page of the compendium, what was once empty, had now been titled with:
NAME: MAX MERCIER
ROLE: UNKNOWN
BOND: LOCKED
PARTY NUMBER: UNKNOWN
“What does Bond mean?” Max asked.
“Your bond to the Underworld, Max,” Elias said.”Locked means your current connection to it. Locked is the current condition for all of us, in fact. If it ever changes, if it does,” Elias waved a single finger around, “then it would be changed to Unlocked.”
“How does that happen?”
“Well, in a lot of ways,” Markus said. “Dying, getting mauled, getting dismembered, and a hundred others. Your bond, when broken, just severes your tie to the Underworld. That means everything I’ve just said, and maybe, getting out of this place.”
“People who have been here long know of two things: one, that bond isn’t going to change. Two, the bond means nothing on the cover page. We know that, I know that, you know that,” Elias said. “Miss Ravenloft just wants to remind you of your service to the Underworld, your loyalty. Everytime you forget, it’s there, before you open it, before you see anything else.”
Max nodded. Somehow, he could finally see some of the big picture of the game that Miss Ravenloft is playing. It’s not an illusion of choice to work hard in the Underworld. There is no choice at all.
Elias sighed, looking at Max with his compendium. “Does the kid need anything else?”
“Well, he still needs lodging, still needs equipment, still needs a role, and still needs a party,” Markus said.
As Markus finished saying his sentence, a cold breeze begin to swirl around the compendium that Max had held in his hand. It swept up and down his wrist, finally digging it’s way into the cover page of the compendium.
“What?-” Max said.
The compendium shook a little, and then, like a typewriter in action, the UNKNOWN on PARTY shifted and changed. A new number began to form on the cover page like drips of paint attacking a wall.
The number that emerged was: A2665.
“Well, there goes everything that you needed for your stay in the Underworld,” Markus said. Elias laughed, returning to his sword.
Max looked at the compendium, a sense of dread forming overhead. It seems that his role in the Underworld had come. Perhaps it was time to make some use of it.
After all, there was no going back.