Tay found that he was not only quite famished, but absolutely tired, and while Lexorious scoped out the fields upon fields of robonicles in a massive cavern that seemed to almost be as bright as day, Tay simply napped in a massive crack in one of the crystals.

What he really needed was something in his stomach. There wasn’t much in the way of food down here though, and the less he could speak with Lexorious, the better. The one thing Tay recalled about the artificer is that he had a deep, unjust, and volatile hatred of runekeepers and anything Runicka. Tay most certainly didn’t want to explain what he’d been doing down here.

The artificer obviously had a way of getting down here, so once he took his leave, Tay would follow Lexorious back out and into Duskborough. He would survive Rantho’s attack.

Then his breath caught. This whole time he’d been worried about himself, but he’d forgotten that Cari and Sally were back with Amellia in the carriage Rantho had been attacking. Rantho wouldn’t have pressed the attack, would he? He had only been after Tay.

But some part of Tay knew that Amellia wasn’t someone Rantho was neutral with either. Even if Tay was permanently out of the picture in his eyes, Rantho would still try and press the attack upon Amellia. And it wouldn’t matter if Sally or Cari was in his way.

Tay pushed himself out of the crystal, only for someone to clear their throat.

“I would ask what you’re doing down here,” Lexorious said, a pack slung around his back all but glowing red with ruby fire. “But I have a feeling that I already know your mind, my friend Tay.”

Tay stiffened and then began to shake his head when Lexorious finished his own thought.

“You’re here to and nab some of my ley-crystals without paying the premium that you know I charge!”

Tay relaxed slightly. “What makes you say that?” He then chuckled slightly and rubbed the back of his head, but more because sleeping on a crystal had left more than a couple knots in his neck.

“You wouldn’t believe how many of you youngsters I find down here from time to time,” Lexorious said. “Truth is, I don’t own these ley-crystals, but they’re not going to do you much good either. To truly bring out their power, you need to have knowledge of how to bring their latent energies up.”

Tay put his hand on the man-sized crystal to his right, and rubbed his palm against it. It was as hot as a brick next to a hearth, heated up over the course of a night and storing the warmth until tomorrow. It seemed to have flames burning with it, churning and twisting about themselves like the crystal had formed around a hearth itself.

“How do you bring them up?” Tay asked.

Lexorious cocked his head to the pack on his back and gave a long grin. “With very careful breaks.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The good part about following an artificer out of the depths of the world is that Lexorious’s haul gave off an incredible amount of light.

Tay was able to see just how badly he’d shredded his shoes. On his right, there was a huge gash running along the length from his pinky toe to the ankle. Any hard turn and he would be popping right out of that shoe.

His left didn’t seem so bad, until he lifted it up and saw that he was missing about half of the sole on the bottom, around his heel.

“Did quite a number on you down here, didn’t it?” Lexorious said. “I have to say, usually when I find youngsters down here in the Old City, they usually come a bit more prepared than you.”

“The Old City? You mean this used to be a part of Duskborough?”

Lexorious shook his head and kept walking up and out of the tunnel with great strides of his cane. “Nay. Not Duskborough. This city was here long before the first stones of Stormwall were ever set. That goes even for the mighty wall which protects the city from the sea. No, the Old City is much older than that. So old that most don’t even know its down here. Only those of us with an eye for the past.”

Lexorious tapped his fingers against the left side of his head, where he was missing his left eye. Apparently, he meant eye in the literal sense of the word.

But older than the Storm Wall itself? That was said to have been centuries old. Even the origins of the Wall were practically unknown and debated throughout all of Aenkora. There wasn’t a scholar in the land who was absolutely sure how the first Aenkorans managed to set its foundations against the angry ocean waters.

“I saw things down there,” Tay said. “Great lights around a city that stretched off into the distance.”

Lexorious slowed and nodded his head. “I’ve seen it. I wouldn’t speak of it openly. What you saw predates any sort of stories or wisdom we currently possess. Hundreds of years ago is nothing compared to what you saw.”

Tay held his breath, and then added. “There were revenants too.”

“Aye, there were those, no doubt. This is truly their home now.”

Tay nearly stumbled on a slippery rock, but Lexorious, quicker than his elderly age belied, spun about and caught Tay’s leg with the tip of his cane.

After catching his breath again, Tay had to ask. “Home? Who left all their cards down here?”

Lexorious shook his head. “There’s still so much you don’t know, and I pray that you’ll never have to learn. These creatures are not foul, and no matter what you take with you when you leave this dark place, you have to promise me that you’ll never forget that point. Promise me that you won’t speak of this place.”

Lexorious now held his cane up, almost like a blade. It wasn’t quite a threat that he would beat Tay to death if Tay said something that Lexorious didn’t want to hear, but Tay felt that the man would.

The same fire that burned inside the crystals on his back, burned in his single remaining eye, which practically shone behind his monocle made of ruby glass. Tay couldn’t tell if his sudden passion was the fire of greed, of care, or of merely preservation. It was probably a mixture of all three.

Tay held up his hands and said, “I’ll never speak of it. I had no idea what I was seeing anyway.”

Lexorious lowered his cane and then placed a hand upon his head. “I’m sorry, my friend. I forget how terrible my temper can be sometimes. The truth of the matter is that ley-crystals are always becoming hard to locate and I can’t risk any able bodies hearing that there’s a city’s worth deep below Duskborough.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“It’s hard as it is importing ley-crystals from outside the city, and it’s harder still selling to folks who aren’t going to start flinging cards every which way in that abomination of a game.”

They strode on for some time in silence before Tay felt his curiosity winning against his restraint. Then, a sudden gust of bravery forced him to ask the question that Cari would’ve slapped him for.

“Why do you hate Runicka so much?”

Instead of being angered though, Lexorious chuckled. “Aside from the fact that runekeepers spit in the face of history?”

Tay raised an eyebrow when Lexorious turned around. Then he shook his head. “I don’t hate Runicka. I hate the idea that one could treat the past so flippantly. That one could take the valuable resources of our world and turn it into some sort of lighthearted game that centers around coin, wealth, and reputation.

“It sickens me to think I come from a people who care more about their pockets than the souls of the damned.”

Tay’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean by that?” His hand throbbed now, as if Lexorious suggesting whatever he was suggesting was actually strengthening his transformation.

“Come on, my friend. Pull your head out of the shadows and put it all together so I don’t have to spell it out for you. If the Old City belongs in the past, and ley-crystals belong in the past, and you find revenants down here too… Do you just think they migrated down here, after what? Did a runekeeper let them loose and they’ve been breeding all this time? They’re not living creatures, Tay.”

“Revenants come out of the past?” Tay asked.

“Please,” Lexorious said, stepping up to Tay with help from his cane, that fire still burning in his remaining eye. “They are the past, my friend Tay. They’re ghosts outside of time. They’re wanderers without a home. They’re memories from a bygone age where everything went wrong.”

Tay’s hand felt like it was on fire.

Lexorious turned away. “They’re echoes that I weep for.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Tay had so many questions, but the remainder of his time spent getting up and out of the depths of the world was focused entirely on getting his hand to stop hurting.

It was more than a simple uncomfortableness. It was absolute dread. It felt like his blood was boiling just underneath the skin that wasn’t there. By the time Lexorious led him out of a tunnel and into a drab street with a pool of stagnant water off to a side, Tay was wishing for the numbness in his hand to return above anything else.

Slowly, the pain subsided as candlelight found his body again. Tay found himself once again in the slums of Duskborough, but this part of bottomside was far more quiet than any other part Tay had come across thus far.

There were two buildings chiseled into the side of the lowest tier of the city below a city. One had a candle in its window and a shadowy figure looming just behind it. The other had boards over the window and no light to speak of. Over the pool of stagnant water was a ramshackle home with a lady kicking her legs off the side of the porch and over the murky tides.

“Got another haul, did you, Lex?” the woman called out.

“Got two this time,” Lexorious called back, using his cane to steady himself. “Crystal and crystal thief. Don’t think the lad will be returning here any time soon.”

“Best see he doesn’t,” the woman said. “You know we don’t much take to visiting folk down here. There’s not a bone in his body that I can use. Too young. We especially don’t like folk who come back up who have no first gone down though.”

The crystals on Lexorious’s back brightened, or else Lexorious’s dark temper became visible in that moment. The old man turned about and brought his cane into Tay’s side. Tay tried catching the stick, but he dearly underestimated how hard Lexorious could bring it down upon him.

His whole arm ached and Tay fell to one knee.

“How did you say that you came to be in the Old City? If you didn’t wander down through the sole remaining tunnel into the depths, how could you have been there?”

“I—I—” Tay stuttered but he wasn’t really sure how to say how he came there. Except, “I fell,” he said.

“You fell? That’s rich, really rich, my old friend. If that is indeed true, then I fear that which I’ve suspected about you since the beginning has to be true. You are none other than a cursed runekeeper and I’ve made a grave mistake by allowing you to return up to Duskborough. My temper may be fierce, but it’s not so wild that I would do anything I would regret.

“Lex—” Tay started.

The artificer brought his cane down just in front of Tay, and then revealed the bright ruby-colored ley-crystal sitting atop it. It glowed warmth just like that of any campfire, and Tay’s face felt singed.

“Do not speak to me. Now that you know what’s down there, there’s much that I’m going to have to do. I will not hear of it from you. Our business is concluded.”

And just like that, Lexorious was gone. He spun about and ran up a set of steps that took him into a tunnel and presumably all the way back to the Drip.

Which just left Tay with the woman kicking her legs above a pool of sewer water and—No, the shadow figure that had been in the window was gone now. And the candle was extinguished.

Then the woman spoke. “What business do you have with him, Renald?”

Tay cocked his head, and was about to say that his name wasn’t Renald when he heard the heavy footfall of someone just behind him. Then he felt their breath.

Tay spun about to find himself face to face with someone twice as wide as himself and probably four times as strong. His hands tried to go for his deckbox, but the wide man grabbed both of his wrists and shook his head.

“None of that,” the man said. Then he leaned to the side and said, “Nothing much, madam. My boss’ll want to see him is all.”

Then the man named Renald returned his gaze back to Tay. He had a thin mustache of black hair that had no more than five strands of white mixed in with it. His eyes were also black and his face bore three distinct wrinkles—two on either side of his mouth and a third across his left eye. He’d probably gotten that from wincing, which he was doing now.

“Who’s your boss?” Tay asked.

Renald let out a long humph, rolled his eyes, and then yanked Tay on his way. He also squeezed Tay’s right hand more than once, as if making sure Tay had something there underneath his bandages. Could he tell?

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Renald said. And he led Tay out of the slums.

~~~~~~~~~~

It honestly wasn’t all that surprising that Candlecorner was as true to its namesake as Tay had originally expected it to be.

There were candles in every windowsill, and in the lamps, and on the benches in the road. It seemed like a part of town made out of nothing but candles and cobblestone. But for all of that, there was a distinct warmth to the place that reminded Tay of Peace and Quiet.

Except, there folks showed their kindness with words. Here, people just held up a candle to him. Once they saw that he wasn’t a threat, that’s when they sent smiles his way.

What was even more surprising than all of that though was the fact that no one bothered holding a candle up to Renald. They all seemed to trust the giant man, even though he was just about the least trustworthy-looking man in the history of all of Stormwall. He could probably kick down a door just by knocking.

Renald brought Tay to the square and cobbled house with two large, cylindrical candles bordering the door. The one on the right extended to the ground was half-burnt down to it. The one on the left hung from a nail and swayed as Renald swung open the door without so much as a knock.

Renald then looked back and then nodded to Tay. “You’re going to want to enter now.”

As Tay entered through the threshold, the cobble exterior of the house transformed into a wooden interior. Everything smelled like the woods of Tay’s homeland. The table in the middle of the room was of a color that Tay would’ve believed it came from the redwoods near the orphanage. He’d eaten a table much like this whenever Madam Principine had enough rations for a proper meal.

As Renald closed the door behind him, with the large man on the outside, Tay saw by candlelight who exactly was seated at the head of the table.

Gharhell Yizzit had either made sure to keep her hair combed just for his visit, or she always had an eye for keeping herself clean and mean-looking.

In her hands were two Runicka cards, that she flicked together back and forth. Both glowed dark with the familiar auras of Chaos cards. She squinted at them, looked up at him with the same enmity, and then nodded to a seat opposite of her.

“Please,” Gharhell said. “You and I have a lot that we need to talk about.”