The day that followed Dion’s realization passed more quickly. He still wasn’t certain Ash had left the food for him on purpose, but he was confident enough to risk working his way through his fruit supply more quickly. He expected—or perhaps hoped—his captor would make another ‘mistake’ when he finished.
Rationally, he couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t exactly just ask. Even now it made sense to ration. But that was much easier in theory than in practice. The hunger nawed on him. It had only been a day or so. The hunger wasn’t deep or impossibly painful. It was simply unending. There were no distractions to whisk his mind away from the terminal dread of starvation. Still he rationed, just not as strictly.
Throughout the day he battled the twin terrors of hunger and boredom. And at night he and Ash continued their chats.
___
“How did you not realize the cage had purification runes? You’ve been here for what, two days? Surely you had to… relieve yourself at some point.”
Suddenly everywhere but Ash’s eyes became very interesting to look at.
“I don’t know. I just never had to go…”
“Even if I perchance believed you had gone two days without defecating—and I don’t—there’s no way you went two days without needing to urinate”
“I guess I just really didn’t have to go. Nature works in mysterious ways.”
Ash’s face pinched in suspicion.
“Ahem. So you were saying there are runes on the cage that magically make it clean? That’s super cool.”
Ash shook his head.
“Don’t think I don’t see you changing the subject. Whatever. They don’t make things clean, they remove certain… undesirable substances.
“So what—the magic just selectively disintegrates the right substance? How does that work?”
Ash stared at him like he was looking at an idiot. He was pretty sure he was.
“It’s magic.”
“You said you were a runic scholar. Doesn’t that mean you—I don’t know—have some clue how runic magic works?”
“Of course not. I understand how to use runes. Not how or why they are magical to begin with. How are you so clueless about magic?”
Everyone I’ve ever known and loved is on an entirely different plane of existence and they couldn’t possibly have prepared me for getting kidnapped by magic snake-vampires that expect me intuit the nuances of their world’s bizarre game logic, all while trying to avoid starving to death in a pisshole of a cage that’s enchanted with runic bidet magic.
Dion gave a placating shrug.
“I don’t know.”
Ash grumbled.
“Here, It’d be easier to just show you.”
Ash pressed his hand up against the cage, and Dion felt something—shift in the air. Nothing happened for a second, then two, until slowly a ring of engravings lit up in phosphorescent blue along the cage floor. The runes had a hint of the same depth as the summoning circle he’d encountered, but while that was a hideous thing of blood, these were beautiful.
Dion’s eyes widened.
“Wow—this is incredible. So runic scholars make these?”
Ash’s lips pursed in a prideful smile.
“Actually, normally no. We specialize in learning the meaning of runes. Rune work like this is normally the work of an enchanter; though I am a bit adept at both.”
Dion pointed at the runes and his brows furrowed quizzically.
“Why do you need to be a runic scholar to understand the meaning of runes? I can read them just fine. Are translation skills really that rare?”
Like a coiled spring, Ash exploded in a flash of motion. He shoved his face up against the bars, as if trying to squeeze himself through them. He was practically hyperventilating.
“You can read them?”
Dion recoiled.
“Y—yeah . This one, for example, says: ‘Ash is a gullible idiot.’ ”
“...”
In a huff Ash collapsed, the momentary energy leaving him. Deflating. Only now did Dion realize how tired he looked. The bags under his eyes were getting thicker and his hands shook as he sat.
“S—sorry, was that an inconsiderate joke?”
“No. Yes? I guess you’re right, I am gullible. If your skill could translate runes… it would change more than you could possibly know. We could finish our task here.”
I could save your life.
Ash shook his head. Some things were best left unsaid.
“...”
Rumble Rumble
A deep rumbling sound resonated from Dion’s stomach. For different reasons both men blushed.
“My stomach really likes to interrupt at the most awkward moments.”
“It does.”
“...”
“I have more questions as long as you’re—”
“No—no, that’s as good a queue to leave as any. I have a lot of work to do.”
With a lethargic sigh Ash strenuously pushed himself to his feet and left.
And as he did Dion questioned his choice. He couldn’t trust Ash—could he? His reaction had been too extreme. They were cultists. He didn’t know what they were trying to summon, but it couldn’t be good.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Dion shook his head. Some things were best left unsaid.
The light in the runes was fading fast. As it did, he pointed at the runes one by one. “Light. Conjunction. Heat. Area. Magnitude.” He traced the runes as he spoke. On and on he read. “Rot. Waste. Blood. Target. Cost.” All he saw were words. There was no structure or syntax. To the human it meant only a hair’s shy more than nothing.
To a runic scholar, though, it could have meant everything. A chance to lift a millennia old curse. A chance to traverse the world beneath the sun kissed sky. For two souls it could have meant freedom. One could be freed from his tiny cage of iron, the other from his much larger cage of darkness.
Two captives, each with the key to the other’s jail. And like ships passing in the night, neither knew how close they’d come.
___
The next day began much like the previous two. Dion was awoken by one of the cultists scouring the storage room for food. The snake-like women opened a bag and briefly paused in consternation. She went from bag to bag, starting from the bulkiest. She searched for several minutes—at times checking the same bag more than once—until eventually her eyes stopped on the one next to Dion’s cage. With a huff, she approached it. Dion tried to look casual, but already he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. She frowned slightly as she opened the bag. She frowned much more deeply when she saw its contents.
Dion knew what she found. It was half empty. He normally liked to think of himself as more of a glass-half-full kind of guy. Right now though—right now the bag was half empty.
Dion stood up. The women focused on him with an icy glare.
“I can exp—”
Dion’s voice faltered as, wordlessly, an intense ball of fire formed above the woman’s hand. Dion had an impending sense of deja vu as he suddenly stopped wondering what had caused the wound on his back.
The woman held out her hand in Dion’s direction, and the little ball of fire shot through the air, tracing a path of sparks as it went. Dion dove to the side, tumbling to the floor. An explosive ‘pop’ resounded as the fireball detonated in empty air. Fireball me once shame on you—
His thought was interrupted as the woman formed two new fireballs, one in each hand. The cage was feeling tinier by the moment.
“Why are you attacking me?”
It was the tried and true method of playing dumb. The method of choice for every child who is ever caught with their hand in the cookie jar; only suddenly, the stakes were much higher. Dion was about as convincing as the cookie-snatching child.
“You know why.”
Her voice came out with a hiss. It was unclear if it was a snake-vampire thing or if she was just pissed. Regardless, Dion found himself diving out of the way as two more balls of fire came sailing towards him.
Pop Pop
Dion barely even noticed the blood pooling from his back-wound. It must have torn open again, but instead, he focused on the monstrosity of flame forming before him. The woman held her hands apart, and between them formed a massive ball of fire—and it was a ball of fire. What she had formed before were just pebbles compared to the boulder of heat she was summoning. She snarled at him, and with a heave, it went soaring.
“Shit.”
With every fiber of his being, Dion dove to the side. He was in a cage. There was no way to dodge the fire in its entirety, but if the fireball was anything like the smaller projectiles it would also—
Boom!
All around him the world went white.
___
In another chamber of the dungeon—and it was a dungeon, just not the type that normally held prisoners—Ash’s hand slipped as the stone shook.
“Damn it.”
That one slip up would take half an hour to fix. The engravings for this magic circle had to be perfect. He’d been making all sorts of errors lately. His lack of sleep was affecting his work, but that one hadn’t even been his fault.
“What in the hells caused that?”
He hadn’t expected an answer, but Shohshal looked up from his book in response to the question.
“Ulti isn’t here, and something just exploded. You do the math, Mr. Genius.”
Ash frowned at the older Azhtar.
“What’s she doing right now? There shouldn’t be anything dangerous this close to our camp.”
Shoshal stroked his beard and gave an unhelpful shrug.
“I think she might’ve said something about grabbing food?”
It took a second for the comment to process. Ash slipped again in his work, adding another half hour to his repair work. Suddenly though, that mattered a lot less. He rose from the floor where he was etching his runes.
“I’ll go check it out.”
The older Azhtar cocked an eyebrow.
“You’ve hardly stopped working for anything recently. You that worried about the girl, lover-boy?”
Shohshal wiggled his eyebrows provocatively. Ash rolled his eyes and walked towards the chamber door, not bothering to correct him.
“I’ll be back in a little bit. Why don’t you actually do some work while I’m gone?”
Shohshal flashed a non-committal grin as Ash closed the door behind him. As soon as the door slammed shut, Ash broke out running. It took less than a minute for him to turn the corner and spot the door to the storage room.
As he arrived, Ulti was walking away from a smoking room, still bristling from whatever transpired.
“Wh—what happened?”
Even from just the short jog Ash was out of breath. Normally he might have tried to hide that fact, but he was too keyed in to care.
“The human was stealing our food. He won’t any more.”
Ash’s face flushed red.
“You killed him?”
Ulti frowned and gave a shrug.
“Probably. If he’s not dead already, he will be soon.”
Ash’s mouth gaped, struggling for words. Ulti ignored him, and with a disgruntled shove, she pushed past.
Ash watched her exit for only a second before snapping out of it and rushing towards the storage room. He tried to prepare himself for the sight he would see, but it was even more horrifying than he had imagined.
Dion laid face down in a pool of blood. His clothes had been burnt to a crisp, all of them. His skin—or what remained of it—was burned in a mix of red, white, yellow, black, and brown. In the less damaged places, boils populated the poor human’s skin. In others he had been scorched down to muscle; tendons; and in a thin spot, even bone. He was a husk of what a person should be.
Ash’s knees wobbled and failed him. He collapsed into the stone floor. His breathing grew ragged. His mistake had led to a failed summoning. His mistake had drawn the human into this.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
He punctuated each curse with a punch to the ground. His knuckles bled from the force, and yet he hardly noticed. The trickle of pain was swept away in an ocean of guilt.
He hugged his knees; curled into a ball; and wept, days of exhaustion finally catching up to him.
Eventually an older man wondered what was taking his pupil so long, found him, and pulled him away. There was no reason to lay witness to a dying man.
And that is what he was: dying—not dead. It was a distinction without difference—or so it was easy to assume. The traveler would die soon, to anyone with eyes it was certain. Those that answer the siren’s call are promised nothing but danger, and that is what he got.
And yet with risk often comes reward. For those far from home, often they will be forced to put their trust in the kindness of strangers.
And often they will find friends in the most unlikely of places.
As the husk of the traveler smoldered, a creature slinked through an ethereal sea of nothingness—not to be confused with slinking through shadows or darkness. She was not a simple skulking predator. She was a creature of the ethereal, and she didn’t exist until she chose to. The creature came to a stop, peering through the thin veneer of space. She would have wept if only she was capable. The creature slipped through the veil and caressed the dying child. Slowly she stroked the dying boy’s carapace. To any that might have seen them they looked nothing alike, and yet she sensed the Ethereal on the boy. It was the mark of her kin. She shook her head. There was no reason to question herself.
With that thought, the two blinked out of existence.
Meanwhile in a deep slumber, a dying mind briefly stirred.
[Class Obtained: Adventurer Level 1]
[Skill Obtained: Phase Shift]