118. Grey Line
The train screeched past a particularly sharp corner, and Isaac gripped the edge of the seat to stay in place. Mortimer, in contrast, was as expressionless as ever, completely unbothered by the jerking of the train.
“How have you been?” the man suddenly asked. Through the abruptness of the question, Isaac thought he could detect faint traces of genuine curiosity. The Traveler glanced over at him, mouth curling up into a small smile.
“I’ve been fine. Nothing too interesting, just more bakery jobs.” He shrugged. “I started decorating cookies.”
Mortimer nodded attentively. He’d always found Isaac’s job a lot more interesting than Isaac himself thought it deserved. But then, maybe Mortimer just liked that sort of thing. He was always fixing clocks and fiddling with little gadgets; perhaps there was some overlap? At the very least, a lot of the pocket watches he sold did have rather intricate designs, so Isaac guessed the half-undead man enjoyed artistic things. Isaac mentally noted to himself to bring some cookies, piping tips, and royal icing sometime to the Underside for Mortimer to try out decorating.
“Other than that,” Isaac continued, voice slowing a little, “Well, I’ve been talking more with my neighbors. And…I started visiting Lloyd’s grave more.”
“Your brother?” Mortimer hummed. “That’s good. I’m sure he would appreciate it.”
Isaac smiled at that. “Is that your professional half-undead opinion?”
“Yes.”
The Traveler snorted. Mortimer looked dead serious, and he found his words at once oddly comforting and also amusing.
“What about you? What’ve you been up to?”
The half-undead paused for a moment, thinking. “The store hasn’t been very busy,” he said. He frowned a little. “There’ve been more people on the streets lately.”
Isaac glanced over at him, remembering what Rosalinde had said. “…Do you think it has to do with the system error?”
“Maybe.” Mortimer cocked his head. “There was a celebration too, after the bodies were identified.”
Isaac winced. He still had nightmares about the corpses, could still barely handle the smell of iron without memories of that alleyway rising. The human victims weren’t popular, he reminded himself. In some ways, perhaps it was to be expected that Solonell City’s residents would be largely happy with the outcome. For him, though, he hadn’t known any of the human victims. When he remembered the killings, he remembered the demons. He remembered Olzu.
“…Did you join them?” Mortimer had been close with the old rebel leader, after all.
The half undead man shook his head. “No,” he said simply. He didn’t offer any additional explanations, simply leaving it at that. Isaac was glad to leave the topic behind, and the two settled into a comfortable silence.
Soon, the subway came to a stop. Isaac looked up, a bit nervous as the door slid open and Mortimer stood. Perhaps he was imagining it, but the air felt drier here.
The half undead man nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, and with a final glance at the rest of the subway car, Isaac stood and followed.
The station looked the same as the ones belonging to the other lines, though here, the emptiness was more prominent. Other stations were empty during odd hours, and most would have at least one other person waiting on the platform. The Graveyard’s station, on the other hand, was always like this.
The two ascended the stairs, their steps echoing across the hard stone. Finally, they entered the realm proper.
A dusty, muted sky halfway between yellow and grey draped across an endless barren desert. Sharp cliffs rose in the distance, forming a hard line across the horizon, and even the few stray trees that managed to grow were bare, their branches angular and jagged.
Isaac carefully turned his head, searching for any sign of the parade Mortimer had spoken of, but the place was as lifeless as ever. He could detect no movement among the clouds of dust and hard stones, nothing but the wind occasionally brushing across the grey earth. Without thinking, one of his hands tightened around the tablet in his pocket, and he immediately let it go once he realized what he was doing. At what point, he wondered, had he started to cling to it for protection?
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Isaac exhaled, mentally preparing himself. He could practically feel the moisture escaping his skin as he stood there, and he suppressed a shudder. Beside him, Mortimer was watching, and maybe Isaac imagined it, but he thought he saw an amused sparkle in the half-undead man’s eyes.
“Welcome to the Graveyard,” he deadpanned.
“It’s, uh, it’s nice.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Mortimer’s mouth. “It’s very dreary, isn’t it.” He turned, eyeing their surroundings himself with a thoughtful hum. “The most dreary realm, I suppose.”
He strode forward without hesitation, and Isaac hurried to follow. A wind blew past, kicking up a cloud of grey dust. Isaac squinted, trying to shield his eyes. Mortimer, on the other hand, didn’t react at all, simply continuing forward.
“I’m sure it’s a grower,” Isaac tried to say. This was Mortimer’s birth realm, after all, and he didn’t want to insult it too much. Mortimer glanced his way.
“There’s no need to mince words. I grew up here and I also found it terribly dull.”
Despite his words, Isaac carefully noted how the half-undead’s shoulders were a little more relaxed than usual, how he strode across the barren ground with more confidence than he’d ever seen before. How, despite his words, there was a soft, nostalgic look in his eyes as he gazed out into the landscape.
“…You seem to like it here.”
“It’s been a while since I last returned,” Mortimer admitted. He turned away. “Even if I haven’t always enjoyed my time here, it’s still my home.”
Isaac nodded slowly. He could understand that. He thought of Chrowall City, with its noisy, smelly streets and overcrowded buildings. He thought of cracked walls and a flickering light. Buried beneath everything, there was still a fondness there despite it all. In some ways, the entire Underside was a bit like that for him, Isaac thought absently.
Ahead of him, Mortimer came to a stop. Squinting up, Isaac saw that they’d paused in front of a tall, sheer cliff. Smooth stone jutted up from the ground in a nearly perfect vertical, and when he glanced around, he couldn’t see any cave entrances or footholds.
“The procession takes place deeper in the realm,” Mortimer explained. “We may need to travel a bit to get there.”
“I’m assuming we have to get over this cliff.”
The half-undead man nodded. Taking a step back, he pressed a hand against the ground. Without any warning, white bones suddenly sprouted from his back, and Isaac jumped backwards on instinct as they kept shooting upwards, extending further and further out.
Finally, once it was long enough for the ends of the bones to touch the edge of the cliff top, they stopped. Isaac thought that was the end of it, but Mortimer’s brows furrowed. In the next moment, those matte white bones shook, vibrating in place.
And then, with sharp, jerking movements, they proceeded to bend in rough angles, snapping and crackling in a rippling pattern from the ends all the way to the bottom. Isaac couldn’t help but wince a little whenever he heard those sounds. Mortimer’s impassive face was the only solace he had, suggesting that it sounded much more painful than it probably felt.
In his pocket, light flashed from the tablet, and Isaac pulled it out to turn off the screen. Before he did so, two skills flitted across its smooth surface.
[SKILL BONE GROWTH LVL 26]
[SKILL BONE MANIPULATION LVL 21]
By the time Isaac had shoved the device back into his pocket, a particularly loud snap marked the end of the warping.
Extending from Mortimer’s back to the top of the cliffs, long white bones formed a crude, rough ladder. They’d been bent in crooked angles, the gaps between different “rungs” varying wildly. Mortimer frowned up at his creation.
“I’m a bit out of practice,” he remarked. Isaac was too busy taking in the whole thing to respond right away. He pointed at it.
“Uh, do you want me to go up that?”
Mortimer nodded, and Isaac frowned, glancing between the bone ladder and Mortimer.
“Won’t that…hurt you?”
“Bones don’t have nerve endings,” Mortimer deadpanned, and Isaac furrowed his brow. He was pretty sure that wasn’t true, though admittedly he hadn’t been a very good student and could be misremembering. It didn’t help that the half-undead man tended to have the same tone of voice regardless of whether he was lying or not.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine, I don’t feel anything from the extensions.” Mortimer nodded at the bone ladder, eyeing Isaac expectantly.
Slowly, the Traveler strode up to the end of the ladder, squinting at it. Despite its misshapen rungs, it did look fairly sturdy from this angle. It took a bit of mental preparation to actually touch it, and Isaac didn’t know what bone was supposed to feel like, but it was a lot smoother than he’d expected. He paused. Actually, maybe he would be better off if he tried to avoid actively thinking about the fact that this was bone.
Just some weird white metal, Isaac told himself. Though he couldn’t see him, he got the feeling that Mortimer had on one of those subtly amused looks of his.
Peering upwards, the top of the cliff was much higher than it had seemed at first. Taking a deep breath, Isaac carefully began to climb up. Better get used to this now, he told himself. Based on what they’d seen of the realm’s landscape from the station, they would be traveling for quite a distance.