Zola couldn’t stop laughing as they ventured into the Underhall that night. She used a card called Thread to keep track of their positions, assuring that they wouldn’t get lost this time. “So you’re a snake boy now, yeah?”
“I’m not a snake boy,” Juno said. “I just have the benefit of being able to bind with my basilisk and get a really long neck. If anything, I’m a badass snake bro.”
“Badass snake bro? There have to be more attributes than that.”
“I noticed my skin hardened a bit, that it sort of got scaly.” Juno turned his arm around. “Pretty cool, actually. Next time I see Melissa, shit should be funny. Don’t tell her if you run into her. I’m going to send my long neck into her room just when she’s about to fall asleep.”
“Don’t do that.”
“And it’s definitely something I could use to impress a date.”
“Do you happen to have one of those coming up?” Zola asked as they turned down a hallway that Alistair was certain they hadn’t been before. Aside from the Thread attached to her boot, which left a line of light behind Zola, she carried Professor Halor’s book, the ink changing every time she used her archivian power on it.
“No date planned as of yet,” Juno said. “But that will happen. And yes, of course, I wanted to bind with Piglet so Alistair and I could be tank bros. Obviously. I would have binded with Desolara too, simply so I could have a stinger. But a basilisk will do. I think. Snake Eyes sort of chose for me.”
“And that name,” Zola said.
“Well, it does have snakey eyes. I thought it sounded cool.”
“He’s going to see Professor Yuber tomorrow,” Alistair said before Zola could tell Juno anything else.
“A professional opinion. That helps. And how will you explain the card that helped you bind? He will ask, you know.”
Juno shrugged her question off. “I’ll say I bought it in Solaria. No, that makes me sound like a little rich brat. I’ll say Melissa got it from somebody, but I don’t know who because she didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. Happy?”
“With what?”
“My answer. It makes sense, right?”
“Let’s just see what we can find,” Zola said as she looked down at the cover of the book. “Something is ahead.” They came to a solid wall blocking the way forward. “It’s right behind this wall.”
“Is there another door?” Alistair ran his hand along the wall and checked for any grooves.
Juno looked to the left. “It seems the passage just continues on that way.”
Ghost: Fondle the Underhall.
Alistair: What?
Ghost: Are you unfamiliar with this term? Fondle it. See if you can’t get the walls to open for you.
Alistair let out a deep breath. “What if we… tickled the wall again.”
Zola gave him a disgusted look. “Gross.”
“There’s nothing gross about it. The Underhall is a Mechanical Summon that needs love just like anyone else.” Juno gestured to a place directly in front of them. “This spot here?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, Zolski. You don’t have to get your hands dirty. Alistair and I can do all the heavy tickling. You up, bro?”
“I… yeah.” Alistair joined Juno and the two started drumming out a pattern.
At first, the Underhall was casual about it.
Uh?
Uh, uh, ummm…
But after the boys started an alternating percussive rhythm, it finally gave way.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuummmmmm…
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
The wall split open. Dust fell from the ceiling as Alistair and Juno stepped back.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Uh, uh, ummm…
“See? It wasn’t that bad,” Juno told Zola.
“No comment.”
Ahhh…
Juno grinned at her. “No comment is a comment.”
Once the Underhall had stopped groaning, the three stepped inside the new chamber.
“Dang, what is this place?” Juno asked as he peered up to glowing carvings on the ceiling. They all channeled toward a dusty altar at the front of the room.
Ghost: A mysterious wooden box of cards. My sort of find. Let’s hope there are more than one card.
Juno and Zola approached the box. “Should we open it?” he started to ask.
“Let me check the area first,” Alistair said as he scanned the box with Gem Gaze. “I’m not detecting anything abnormal aside from the usual Resonant Mana. And—” Alistair almost let it slip that he had received a warning from Professor Halor when he got the Card of Rumors. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I think it’s fine.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Juno grabbed the box. “Let’s pop this bad boy open.”
****
Alistair expected that they would exercise on campus the next morning. Yet upon waking, Ghost pulled Alistair through to his own mind, where he found the troubled assassin with the golden eyes stepping away, hand on the hilt of his sword.
“What the hell?”
“Training is important,” Ghost reminded him. “Since you’ve been going on excursions every night this week, we have missed our sword fights.”
“Maybe you have missed them,” Alistair said as he turned his hand around. The sword he liked to conjure appeared.
“I keep hoping you’ll transition to an assassin’s blade, but you’re still stuck on that boring blade. In any event, I figured two would be good for today.”
“Two?”
Another sword appeared in Ghost’s hand.
The assassin was several heads taller than Alistair, with broad shoulders and dark robes that hid what Alistair knew was an incredibly coiled strength.
Ghost could hit hard.
He would have been beyond a force to be reckoned with when he was alive, Alistair was certain of it, especially wielding two blades.
“We could have done this last night,” the assassin reminded him, “but you seemed tired.”
“We didn’t get back from the Underhall until really late.”
“I was there. I know.”
“But we got cards, each of us. Attribute Cards, but cards none the less.”
The box of cards they had found contained a dozen Attribute Cards, each of them selecting four. Alistair had gained an additional point in STR and CON, two points in DEX. It wasn’t quite what they had been hoping for, but Attribute Cards were always good to have as well.
“Again, I was there,” Ghost said. “We also chose to escort Zola back to her dorm and then return here with Juno, rather than go it alone.”
“Because of Caidan,” Alistair said as he got into position.
“You’re not going to train with another sword?”
“Um…” Alistair tried his best to imagine a sword. He thought of Ghost’s blade and the weapon that Senka had used with its blackened blade. He turned his other plan around and a sword that seemed like a combination of the two appeared.
“Not a bad one,” Ghost said, which was just about the best compliment Alistair knew he would get from the assassin. “Let’s begin.”
Alistair rushed Ghost, just as he had been training to do. He tried to keep his stance in mind once he reached the assassin, but was easily taken down by a powerful strike that Ghost doubled with a horizontal cross-slash that would have taken Alistair’s head off had this been the real world.
“Fuck,” Alistair whispered.
“Fuck, indeed. I’ll teach you that move, but it’s more of a last resort thing. Let’s switch positions and I’ll show you what I mean.”
They did just that, Ghost pretending as if he was Alistair after showing the young mage how to attack in the same pattern Ghost had just used.
“I see now,” Alistair said after Ghost taught him how to break out of the attack. To break the attack produced quite the risk, Ghost throwing both arms wide and blocking any potential attempts from Alistair.
“The biggest problem in doing something like this is lack of confidence. If you don’t have the confidence after parrying the first strike, if you don’t follow through and bring your swords in an arc away from you, you die. You die, Alistair. And if you die, I die. And you are reborn. Reborn orphan. Or orphan reborn. That sounds better.”
“Why are you telling me that part?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I get that way when I’m in here, and since I’m always in here, alone, I am often that way.”
“What do you want?”
“Want?”
“If we do this, if we deal with the people that killed you and stop the Dracolichs, then what?”
“Then?” Ghost seemed to glance beyond Alistair. “I don’t know yet. Perhaps we’ll have an answer closer to that time. Or perhaps, as I’ve already seen play out numerous times, things will solve themselves.”
“If you kept that philosophy, there wouldn’t be a need for revenge.”
“Truer words have never been spoken by a goddamn sixteen-year-old.” Ghost flourished both his blades.
“Okay.”
“I’ll be damned if I let someone kill me. Now. Let’s get back to it. After more training, take a shower, deal with your friends, and let’s get the Duel Duet part of the tournament finished.”
“How do you think I should do today? You never really commented on what Professor Yuber told me.”
“I think you should stick to the plan. Dominate in the team battle tomorrow. Throw the match today. Doing so will be to your advantage. Your peers will start to think you’re weak, and if they see you coming with incredible force in the matches tomorrow, they’ll be taken off guard. At least the first round or two.”
“So throw the matches, pretend I’m weak, and then kick ass tomorrow.”
Ghosts’s golden eyes lifted as if he was smirking at Alistair. “You’re sounding more and more like Juno.”
Alistair got into position and brought his sword up. “I’m ready when you are.”