Dirt hesitated, unsure he really wanted to go in there. Well, he did, but it was dark, and something down there was moving. Socks could probably still hear it scratching, scratching…
He descended the stairway slowly, watching the darkness recede inch by inch.
-I am nervous having you go in there. You have already gotten into trouble twice today,- said Socks.
Dirt paused, resting his hand against the smooth stone wall, curling his toes to feel the polished stone stair he stood on. He was only a few stairs away from the bottom now, and only a couple steps from there to the doorway. The sunlight lit up the interior, which was a hallway as wide as the doorway—just wide enough he could touch both sides with his arms outstretched.
Socks added, -Mother said not to go in old human places, but all the ones she showed me were above ground so I don’t think this counts. But I am still nervous.-
“I’m nervous too, but I won’t be able to see very far because I can’t see in the dark like you can, so I can only go in a little bit. And if I see something I’ll come running back out, so wait right here,” he said. “But if you really want me to stay out, I will, and we can go do something else.”
Dirt hesitated, somewhat hoping Socks would tell him no. But the pup was just as curious about it as he was, and only said, -We will meld our sight again first so I can help keep an eye on you.-
“Okay. And I want you to see all this anyway, since we’re exploring it together.”
The two of them opened their minds fully and connected their sense of sight, but this time Socks kept his hearing to himself, probably so he could listen carefully without Dirt’s clumsy senses interfering. Socks closed his eyes and they both watched through Dirt’s.
Dirt paused again in the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the darkness and listen for any sound. He couldn’t hear the scratching yet, but the air felt heavier here. Cooler, too. The stone was cold beneath his feet and looked remarkably different from all the weather-worn stone outside. It was all flat and smooth, showing very little sign of wear, even down the middle where people once walked.
A few steps into the shadow and Dirt’s eyes adjusted further to reveal a long hallway, decorated with plaster molding along the ceiling, which was square on top instead of arched like the doorway. He went slowly, giving Socks time to listen for any changes or smell a creature before he got too far.
-I bet I am the first wolf to ever see in there with eyes,- said Socks. -Maybe not even Mother or Father have seen under there, because the door was hidden, and why would they look?-
“Everyone is going to swarm us for the story when we get back. Too bad there’s nothing new for them to smell on me. At least, nothing yet.”
A dozen paces ahead, Dirt saw something set into the wall, and once he got closer he found a heavy door made of dark-colored wood with age-blackened hinges and a big latch.
“Look, Socks, this is a door! And it’s got all its parts, I think. It was to… keep the inside in and the outside out, I suppose. But watch, let’s see if it opens,” said Dirt. With feigned confidence, he grabbed the latch and hoped he could figure out how it worked before looking silly. This was a human place, though, and he was a human, and should know all this.
The latch didn’t move at all and it took him a moment to realize that it was just old and stuck, not that he was doing it wrong.
-Come and get some mana, and then break it.-
Dirt considered it, but said, “Maybe later. I don’t want to make a lot of noise yet.”
-Come and get some mana anyway, just in case.-
That wasn’t a bad idea at all, so Dirt ran back out and up the steps, noting the significant change in temperature once he got up into the sunlight. It was much brighter, too; he had to squint and his eyes watered anyway.
Socks bumped him on the chest and pushed a little mana in, and Dirt quickly processed and absorbed it.
-You might find things a human left behind. Keep your eyes open.-
“Oh, wow, I didn’t even think of that! Human things…” Dirt’s imagination ran wild, his mind filling with words that matched nothing he knew. Toys. Clothing. Tools. Weapons. Plates and cups. Things he could hold in his fingers, and use with his hands. Or his toes. He could picture absolutely none of it, not even in the most general way, but the feeling of such things was so close he could almost reach out and grab them.
Dirt sped down the stairs and back into the corridor, feeling his way along the wall all the way to the door before he stopped to give his eyes time to re-adjust. He tried the latch again, and it still didn’t move. But there was another one a bit farther down, and twenty paces past that was a whole row of them, disappearing into darkness. When Dirt tried the latch on the first of those, it snapped off in his hand with a loud crack that made him jump. The door stayed closed, though.
Looking back up the corridor, he judged he was under the plaza right now, perhaps even close to the giant statue’s platform. It was too dark to make much out anymore, even after giving himself time to adjust, but the doors here looked decorated, showing the faintest glints of reflective metal, cool and smooth under his fingertips. The doors were carved, too, and Dirt traced his fingers along the curving grooves of the designs and wished he could see what they looked like.
-Can you still not hear it?-
Dirt stopped and listened carefully, holding his breath. The cold, heavy air rested silently against his skin, thick and hard to breathe, like it was almost a liquid. Through the silence, he finally heard it. Scratch… scratch… scratch… scratch… on and on, in perfect rhythm.
He felt his way along the corridor toward the sound and stopped in front of the door where the sound was. It was right behind the door, scratching on the wood. It was loud now, almost echoing in the silence. The whole heavy door, twice as tall as he was, reverberated with it. Scratch… scratch…
-Did you stop there because you hear it now? We can’t see much anymore.-
“Yeah, I hear it. This is another door, and the scratching is on the other side.”
-What is it?-
The more he listened, the more the sound chilled him. His curiosity gave way to dread, and he dared not even reach his fingertips back out to touch the door.
It was right there, whatever it was. Right on the other side of a few inches of old wood. Locked away in darkness, trying to get out.
Dirt almost panicked at the thought. It was trying to get out, whatever it was. It had been locked away for an impossibly long time, and what if it was a person? Could someone live that long?
He tried to say, “Hello?” but his voice caught in his throat.
-Can you guess what it is?- asked Socks again. He was starting to sound nervous again. He’d probably tell Dirt to come back any second now.
“No, but it’s just a step or two away from me. I’m getting scared, though,” Dirt admitted. The words didn’t do it justice; he was terrified.
Dirt reached his hand for the latch, shaking so hard he missed it the first time. He was trembling from head to toe. Every part of him knew this was a bad idea, but in his mind, he thought to himself, You are being silly. It’s probably a bug.
-Get ready to run.-
“Can you see my hand?”
-No, but I can see your thoughts, silly.-
“Oh, right.”
Dirt looked back up the corridor, which seemed frightfully long now. Well, he had to do it now or he never, ever would. Dirt pushed the latch, and it turned. This one turned. Of course it did. He pulled, but the door was stuck. Dirt surged the mana into his muscles, giving himself a sudden burst of fiery strength, and pulled again.
The door ripped from the wall with a deafening crash, coming entirely off the hinges and breaking into pieces.
Dirt screamed and ran with all his might back up the corridor. He screamed with every breath, unable to stop, desperate to make his legs move faster and faster.
-RUN!- screamed Socks in Dirt’s mind.
The wolf’s warning stunned him into clarity. Why was he running? It was just a door, hiding some little scratchy thing. He’d made a lot of noise and startled himself but that was it.
But before he turned to look back, he heard not one scratch but hundreds echoing loudly up the corridor from behind him.
Dirt had hardly slowed down, but Socks squeezed into the stairwell and poked his nose through the doorway. As soon as the pup could see him, Dirt felt an invisible hand grab him and yank him forward.
Socks stepped back just far enough to get Dirt through the doorway, then leaped away, pulling Dirt through the empty air behind him. Before they landed, Socks set him on his back and Dirt grabbed on for dear life.
The pup landed a short distance away, facing the stairwell with a low rumbling growl. Dirt realized Socks had broken the meld of their sight, probably when he’d come down the stairs to get him.
“What do you smell? What is it?”
-I hear it. It’s big. Mother did not send us to get in a fight, so if it looks dangerous we are running away.-
Before Dirt could respond, a dark purple substance holding countless bones burst from the doorway and shot up the stairs toward them, sending out tendrils full of bone shards and ancient teeth.
Socks leaped backward, but the mass was shockingly fast. It moved like it had no weight at all, bubbling up from below and rushing for them too quickly for Dirt to react.
Somehow the pup was faster and leaped away, a jump with mana in it that shot them fifty paces into the air and landed them a good distance back.
The dark, swirling purple mass rose up from underground like a bubble, the bones from hundreds of corpses spinning within it. It looked even darker against the bright cloudy sky, giving its horror a stark contrast against the peaceful scenery.
The tendrils withdrew as it grew into a towering column, expanding larger and larger until it was three times Socks’ height. It reminded Dirt of fog, but with a skin. It had a surface, all smooth and faintly glossy in the sunlight.
The fat column of purple smoke expanded and coalesced into a face that became a leering skull with empty eyes, staring right at them.
Dirt whimpered and looked away. “Let’s go!”
The thing opened its skeletal jaw, revealing a blackness that couldn’t be explained, darker than night. It drew light in, dimming the air around it.
Then it screamed, a diseased, grating, wretched sound that was so loud Dirt had to cover his ears to keep from going deaf. The sound scraped at his soul, tearing parts of him that had no name. In every way, that thing was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, an abomination. A thing that should not be.
-Watch,- said Socks.
Dirt opened his eyes, close to weeping for horror. The massive skull shifted and rose a little higher and a collarbone began to take shape, like it was a whole person in there squeezing out bit by bit.
A new sound split the air, high and fierce. A wolf’s howl, primal and immense. The sound was full of such terrifying majesty that it filled Dirt with awe.
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Father. Dirt knew that in an instant. Father, the most terrifying being who existed, declared that this was his territory and nothing was welcome except he allowed it in.
The air itself trembled and bowed in reverence. The earth shuddered anxiously beneath them.
Without a sound, the dark skull-shaped mass broke apart with a roaring hiss and faded like a wisp of steam. Thousands of bones fell and clattered noisily to the earth, some hitting the stairs and shattering.
Socks joined the howl, raising his head and singing into the sky.
Dirt stood up on Socks’ back and howled along with them, even though his lungs couldn’t hold the note anywhere near as long. His was more a howl of terror than one of triumph, but he didn’t know what else to do. His mind was still reeling.
He and Socks howled and howled, long after Father had ceased. From there, it only took a moment for them both to notice how silly Dirt’s voice sounded in comparison and Dirt broke out laughing, even though it felt hollow, like a reaction instead of anything true. Socks wagged his tail furiously in amusement.
-You can try and claim some territory but I don’t think anything will be impressed.-
Dirt giggled. “For someone that can’t laugh, you sure make a lot of jokes.”
Socks huffed.
“I claim this spot on your back. See? Nothing is coming in. Who would dare invade the domain of Dirt?”
-My back is already claimed by me.-
“I’ll fight you for it.”
Socks found that hilarious and wagged his tail even harder.
“Hey, Socks, you know what I just realized?”
-What?-
“You caught me with your mind and didn’t smoosh me.”
The pup thought about that for a moment. Dirt got the sense that Socks hadn’t realized it either. It had simply happened from instinct in the urgency of the moment.
“Catch me!” thought Dirt. Then he jumped right off Socks’ back.
Socks turned his head, startled, but still caught him in time.
-Don’t do that.-
“I knew you’d catch me.”
-I didn’t know I’d catch you.-
“Yes, but look, you can do it now. See? You’re holding me just fine. You’re already getting good at this, aren’t you?”
Socks stared, holding Dirt a foot or two off the ground. Then Dirt floated up toward the pup’s face and stopped an arm’s length back from his nose. Socks licked him once, then set him on the ground.
Dirt picked up a bone and thought, “Can you catch this?” He threw it as hard as he could, but it only went a few feet before it stopped in midair.
“Now this one, too!” He threw another in a different direction, which Socks also caught. Then a third, and Socks dropped the first two trying to reach for that one.
Dirt stopped and grew serious. He sat down on the grass and let out a big sigh. “All right, we can practice that later. I’m still so terrified I can hardly think. I… wow. It’s really catching up to me. I think I might throw up.”
-Hold it in,- said Socks.
Dirt tried to breathe deeply and not vomit, but there was so much leftover terror in his blood that he couldn’t make himself feel right again. He felt sick from hair to toes, even in his muscles and bones. Shaky. Hollow.
-Don’t throw up on me,- said Socks. Then the pup picked him up with his mind again and furiously licked his face.
Dirt tried to fight the tongue off with his hands, but to no avail. It was stronger than his arms and kept pushing them away. “Stop, that’s enough!”
-Not until you feel better. And you still taste like dirt.-
“I probably taste like wolf spit!”
-Nope, still dirt. You will always taste like Dirt.”
“It’s no fair that I don’t know any jokes about socks,” said Dirt.
The pup’s good spirits were infectious, leaking out of his thoughts into Dirt’s own. Socks was mostly still fine, with only a little fear way in the back. That fear had to do with Dirt, not towering smoke-skull monsters full of human bones.
“Okay, okay, I promise to feel better. Put me down and let me get some air.”
Socks obliged, and Dirt ran in a little circle, then jumped a few times, and got his blood pumping again. It helped clear his mind.
-It looks like you are not going to throw up.-
“Nope, I think I’m fine now. Thanks, Socks. That really helped. So, what was that thing? Did Father tell you?”
Socks leaned down to sniff him and said, -No, but he said it was from an enemy far beyond me. It wasn’t a thing by itself. It was part of something else that doesn’t belong here, and he will tell me more when I’m older. He also said it was not the reason Mother won’t let me go into that human building we saw. That temple. But he did say it should be safe to go back down there, if you want to take another look.-
“He said it should be, or it is?”
-It is. At least, safe from that.-
Dirt pondered that for a moment, trying to decide if he really wanted to go back down there. It was all dark anyway, and he hadn’t found anything. And beside that, he was still scared.
-I can give you more mana, and you can break the doors and look in.-
Dirt looked up at his friend.
Socks picked him up with his mind, brought him to his nose, and licked him yet again. Then he set him back down.
“You’re never going to stop doing that, are you?”
-Nope.-
Dirt grinned. “Fine. I’ll go look again. Fear with a reason is good, but fear without a reason is just being silly.”
-Good. Take courage, little Dirt.-
He walked carefully over to the stairway, trying not to step on any of the bones that littered the ground. Some of them looked sharp, even if they all seemed like they were ready to crumble. He picked up one, suddenly curious, and sure enough, it ground to powder between his fingers with very little effort. What did that mean, exactly? Were they really old, or had something happened to them?
The staircase downward was covered in shattered bone, far too much to try and walk down, so Dirt had to sweep each step away with his foot before moving. Socks padded silently behind him, nose low to the ground.
“Hey, Socks, do you smell anything with the bones?”
-No. They are so old they hardly even smell like bones. I am curious why I can’t smell anything from that big… stuff. But if it had all those bones together in one place, it must have eaten all the humans, so it must have been there for a long time too. So why can’t I smell it?-
Dirt had no idea, but that was a good question. Socks could smell bug urine, so why not anything from that huge purple mass?
Before Dirt made it down to the doorway, Socks leaned down and gave him a little mana, which Dirt quickly processed. It sure would be nice if he could hold more, especially since his mana body was supposed to have been repaired. Maybe humans just couldn’t hold any mana, but if that were true, then why did the word ‘magic’ hold such importance in his lost memories? Oh well.
-I wish Brother were here,- said Socks, indicating by the coloration of ‘brother’ that he meant the strongest of the litter. -He can make fire, and then you could see down there.-
“Fire? He can make fire? What’s that?” Like so much else, Dirt knew the word, but had no mental picture for it.
-That’s why he’s the first strongest. And fire is this.- Socks sent him a mental image of a little tree all in flames, burning away into ash. It radiated tremendous heat and lit the surrounding little forest almost bright as sunlight. Smoke rose above it far into the sky, filling the area with a rich, complicated, and dangerous scent. Fire. Obvious. How could Dirt forget about fire?
“How would I take it down with me?”
Socks had no reply for that, so Dirt just shrugged and kept going. Once Dirt stepped through the open doorway into the underground corridor, he found it swept clear of bones, except the few that had bounced this far inside. He’d wondered if the thing left a trail, but there was nothing like that. The stone floor looked just as he’d left it. All the commotion had raised a lot of dust, though, which hung in the air and irritated his nose and throat.
Socks reached out for another mind meld, so Dirt shared his vision again. He should’ve done that earlier.
When he reached the first door, his eyes were still adjusting to the dim light, so he paused a moment before trying the latch again. Actually, no, he should go and peek in where the monster came out, and see what was there.
Dirt crept along the corridor, tracing his fingers along the flat stone as he went, walking slowly and opening his eyes as wide as they’d go to try and see better.
He bumped his toes into the fallen door before he saw it laying on the ground and it was so heavy it didn’t budge. He stepped up onto it, surprised that it was resting so perfectly it didn’t make a sound.
The broken doorway stood out in the dim light as a rectangle of even darker blackness, perfectly silent and still.
-I wish you could see better in the dark.-
“Me too. I think I’ll feel around in there for a second and see if it’s a room or something else.”
-What else would it be?-
“I don’t know.”
Dirt crept through the doorway, feeling ahead with one hand and tracing the other along the wall. His body was taut and ready to bolt at any moment, but he went in anyway, walking through and along the wall to his left.
His hand brushed against a thread dangling from the wall, and he traced his hand down to the bottom and found a metal ring in a circle as wide as three fingers. Without thinking, he gave it a sharp tug.
He heard a scraping sound above him and saw a flash of light. Before he could turn and look up to see what it was, the room flared to life.
Lamps lined the huge space, and the three closest had come alight when he pulled the string. He found himself in a wide, circular room that went down several levels from where he stood. A railing in front of him would have kept him from tumbling off the edge, and a solid stairway to his right curved along the wall all the way to the bottom.
Excitement filled him. The flickering lamplight made the room look huge, an effect magnified by how the far end faded into shadow where the lamps couldn’t reach well. Every inch of wall was covered by small, square doors, only a bit wider than his shoulders. Many of them were opened, some hanging on hinges and others toppled to the ground. The open ones were all empty, and the floor down below was covered in heaps of all sorts of things. Vast numbers of bones, but other things too—cloth and metal and clay, all mindlessly strewn around.
Dirt thought, “Wow, look, Socks!” and raced down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he lifted the first length of cloth he found, pale white like most of the rest. It tore apart so easily that he came away with a bit of cloth about the size of his fingertips, and by the time he lifted it to his eyes for a look, he’d crushed it almost to powder.
The cloth looked like it had been draped across a skeleton and then been tossed here in a pile. Dirt squatted down for a better look, carefully lifting here and pulling there, and decided what he was looking at wasn’t clothing after all. The cloths were meant to cover the skeletons from head to toe, and no one would walk around wearing something that covered their eyes, so it was something else.
Dirt pulled open one of the little doors on the wall and looked inside, and sure enough, an ancient skeleton wrapped in the pale cloth.
“I think the humans used to put these cloths on dead ones and then put them in here. I think they put the cloths on when they still had flesh on them, because look, it doesn’t fit right for a skeleton,” explained Dirt.
-Why?-
“I don’t have any idea.”
-What is that shiny thing? Back there, on the ground behind the arm.-
Dirt looked down at something that had caught the pup’s attention but not his. He pulled up a delicate length of gold chain as long as his arm, made of links so fine he could barely see them unless he looked closely. Near the bottom end of it, a golden clasp held a polished purple gemstone.
He collected the chain carefully in his palm and carried it up the stairs to a lamp to get a better look at it. Its golden surface was perfect and clear and gleamed brightly in the lamplight. The tiny, miraculous links of the chain were so small he wondered if a human had made it at all, or some tinier creature. The purple gemstone wasn’t as impressive as the rest, but Dirt guessed it must have been important to be worthy of the chain.
-What is that?-
“It’s a necklace. It used to make a loop so a human could wear it around their neck for everyone to admire.”
-Why? It seems useless.-
“Yeah, it does. I only remember that it’s a necklace, but not what it was for. Maybe the gemstone was good for something. But it’s pretty. How do you think we made the links so small?”
-I cannot imagine how. Maybe Mother will tell us. Do you think it’s here because you can’t digest it?-
Dirt wasn’t sure what to make of that. Socks assumed that these bones were like the ones outside the den—uneaten leftovers. Dirt didn’t think that was it, but the more he mulled it over the less he could guess what this place actually was. What were all these bones doing here, wrapped up in cloth? Why would anyone do that? Did that purple smoke monster eat them all and leave some portion of bones here?
“Oh! Socks, I bet I know! There were so many humans, that they had to put them all somewhere when they died, so they stuck them in here. They put these cloths on them and put them in the walls. I guess you have to put them somewhere, since, for example, I couldn’t eat a whole adult. So I think what happened, is when someone died and no one wanted to eat any, they wrapped them up and put them down here. And maybe humans never eat their dead at all, so there were lots of them around.”
-Wolves don’t eat other wolves except for when Mother eats a pup. But there are also not enough of us to matter where we lay when we die, so I think you’re right. Humans seem to make lots of little places for all sorts of things, so why not that? Keep looking around. Maybe you will find something you want to take.-
Dirt set the necklace down on the ground and hurried back down the stairs. He picked around through the rubble, tearing ancient cloth and crushing bone with every step. There was nothing he could do about that, though. The entire floor of the room was covered in litter and there was nowhere else to walk.
Digging into a pile taller than he was, he was surprised to find a table, and after clearing more of it away, a chair to go with it. Both were made of carved and polished wood, stately and square in perfect symmetry. He cleared off as much of the table as he could, tossing aside handfuls of old garbage as fast as he could get his fingers around it.
The table was inlaid with little white squares around the edges of the surface, making a handsome decorative border. The thing seemed sturdy enough, so he carefully sat on the chair, which creaked but held up, and rested his arms on the table.
“Look, Socks, this is called furniture. I think humans had a lot of this stuff around.”
-Why not just sit on the ground? Is that more comfortable than the ground?-
“No, honestly, it isn’t. I don’t know why I’d want one. I’m starting to think humans make lots of stuff they don’t really need.”
-There was a big pile in the middle. Go see what was under that.-
Dirt slid off the chair and gingerly made his way to the center of the room and started digging through the garbage. He found more bits of jewelry and a few little clay pots painted with bright patterns of red and black, but the real prize was a fallen statue underneath it all, half again his size.
He threw all the old bone and cloth and whatever else aside in a flurry to lay the statue bare, but he quickly noticed that something about it was wrong. The arm was twisted and misshapen, like it had been carved to resemble a broken one. The face was a beardless man, screaming in unmoving agony for eternity. Red paint dripped from the eyes to make it look like he was suffering. The other arm was twisted at an impossible angle too, and the torso had deep gashes that bled and exposed his innards.
Dirt stepped back, growing uneasy. The statue looked more like a man of stone who had been tortured—was being tortured—than just a statue carved that way from the first. The thing’s legs bones were shattered, too, but the stone was intact and Dirt couldn’t see how the statue had ever been able to stand. And it must have been able to once, because the plinth was right there next to it.
It had such a sense of life and reality to it that Dirt felt sick. He stepped back, then back again. He grew more certain the longer he looked. This was not a statue of a suffering man. The statue itself had been made to suffer. It had stood once, right on that plinth, but now was injured and tortured and fallen to the ground.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said aloud, his voice intruding on the silence, his heart aching. Something about it was wrong, so wrong it hurt him inside, so wrong he could feel it like sacrilege and sickness discoloring his soul.
“No, no, that can’t… that can’t be! How could that happen?”
-What is it?-
Dirt tried to answer, and in that moment he knew the word. Just as he knew a door when he saw it, or a tree, or a wolf. “It’s a god!”