Ihra bent down, examining the mural closely. The faintest sliver of a crack ran down the middle, almost undetectable to even her sharp eyes. “It looks like the mural opens.” Somehow.
She followed the crack across the mural, looking for any sign of a button or trigger that would open it, but there was nothing. With a sigh, Ihra stood up, brushing the dust off her hands, as her eyes swept over the mural one last time. It was a map of the upper city; all ten sectors of Dūr-Yarha, one for each of the ruling Houses, were clearly marked, but there was an eleventh sector as well, centered over the very area where they were standing. And, Ihra realized, each sector contained a large, clear crystal that stood out from the rest of the mural. Could they be the triggers? But how do they work?
Her eyes scanned the room again, looking for any sign of a switch or button. Nothing.
“No luck?” The silent darkness of the room was broken as Jasper joined her, staring down at the mural intently.
“Nope." She pointed out the crystals to him. "I bet they're the key, but I don’t know how to activate him. Maybe we’ll just have to go get a rope." She frowned at the thought, not relishing the idea of having to brave the hostile streets a second time.
Ihra plopped down on the floor, sprawling her legs out across the mural. And as she stared up into the darkness, her mouth dropped. “Look at the ceiling.”
She bolted upright, her eyes darting back and forth between the ceiling and the floor. “One, two, three…there are eleven lamps and eleven crystals - that has to be the key.” A series of glass globes clung to the ceiling, their rippled glass glistening weakly in the dim light.
“Here, help me up.” She scampered up on Jasper’s shoulders, the two of them together just barely tall enough to allow her to get a look at the fixture. The globes were larger than they looked, at least twice as large as a person’s head. Near the base, hidden by the curve of the globe was a small opening and inside was a partially melted candle. “We can light these up!”
Ihra hopped off his shoulders jubilantly, although her smile faltered as a realization struck her. “I guess you’re going to have to stand on my shoulders, though.”
To say Jasper was heavy proved to be an understatement. He was certainly not fat, but while elves tended to be light and airy, Djinn had thick bones and tough skin, which only hardened further as they leveled up. Ihra could have sworn she was supporting a full-grown tiger on her shoulders. But she toughed it out, her mind firmly set on the reward waiting for her.
As each globe was lit, the corresponding crystal in the mural begin to shine in response. Slowly the darkness in the room was pushed back by the lights above and below, and when the last one was lit, the floor begin to rumble. The mural rose a few inched up above the floor, the crystal shining brightly. Then it split down the center as each side slid across the floor, revealing the staircase beneath. They had found their entrance.
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Nothing had bothered them thus far, but as they crept down the stairs into the hidden city, Ihra found her eyes constantly drifting to the shadows, sure more than once that she had seen a flicker of movement. The buildings were dug into the side of the cliff, but a ledge had been built out over the void, containing a road that spiraled down the slopes.
“So where are we headed to?” Jasper asked.
Ihra consulted Arutû’s map again. "It looks like Kaksû’s Sepulchre is near the bottom of the pit.” She leaned over the edge of the rampart, peering down into the darkness. “Guess we’ve got a ways to go.”
The temperature in the cavern was surprisingly warm, closer to the tropical temperatures Ihra was accustomed to than the mountainous terrain of the Harei Miqlat, and the architecture of the homes reflected the balmy warmth. Rows of large windows opened up onto the street. In some, ancient, rotting wooden shutters still hung in the windows or clung to their fixtures, but most of the windows now stood wide open.
Along the street, stone stalls, where vendors once must have hawked their wares, faced the open windows. It was impossible to tell how long the city had been abandoned - the lack of weather in the underground realm preserved vulnerable materials far longer than the natural - but the complete absence of any signs of life was deeply unsettling to her.
She peered over the edge of the road, looking into the depths of the pit that was lined with thousands of small homes. “This must have been a bustling city once.”
“Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?” Jasper flashed her a grim smile. “How does a once beautiful city like this, right beneath the thriving heart of another city, get abandoned? Something must have happened. Something catastrophically bad.”
Jasper hesitated, the words clearly on the tip of his tongue. “Have you....seen anything odd?” He quickly hastened to add. “Not ‘seeing things’ like you’re crazy, it’s just…” he trailed off. “I keep thinking I see something out of the corner of my eyes, but whenever I turn to look, it's vanished.”
Ihra gripped her bow more tightly, pulling back from the ledge, as she hastened to catch back up to him. “Yeah, I've thought I've seen something a couple of times. I don’t think we're entirely alone." She swallowed hard. "Something's lurking in the darkness.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He chuckled weakly. “Well, at least I'm not going crazy or if I am, you're coming with me." He winked at her, trying to lighten the mood, but the tension weighed heavy on her shoulders.
Their trip into the depths slowed the further they got. The homes and streets close to the surface had been in largely excellent condition, but the lower they descended into the city, the worse its condition grew. Large chunks of the road had crumbled away in numerous places, forcing them to find alternate ways around.
Some were easy enough to cross. For short gaps, they were often able to find a way through the abandoned homes. The homes extended far deeper into the sides of the cavern than was immediately apparent and were often connected to the homes on either side.
Ihra suspected that if they ventured deep enough there might be another, interior, road that paralleled the one they were following. But every time they set foot in the homes, a deep sense of unease hung over them, a persistent feeling that they were not alone. She and Jasper never discussed it; the two of them just weren’t willing to spend any time longer than necessary within the homes, let alone search for the interior road.
In other places, the gaps were wider, too long to be quickly detoured around through the homes’ interiors. Jasper had thus far gotten them across those gaps. With her latched tightly onto his back, Seraph’s Burst had been enough to close the distance, but as Ihra stood at the edge of another crumbling precipice, she knew their run of luck had come to an end.
A large stretch of road had collapsed, at least two hundred feet of rock and stone that had crashed down into the city, taking with it a section of the road beneath it as well. “Any chance you can go that far?” she asked hopefully.
“That’s like four times the distance I've gone with you on my back thus far, and the drop if we don’t make it?” Jasper shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ihra, but I've already died once and I'm really not looking to repeat the experience.”
The two of them turned to face the cliff. A nearby home welcomed them, its rotting wooden door swung wide open, but an inscrutable darkness pooled within. With a sigh, Ihra wiped the sweat off her brow. It’s getting ridiculously hot, even for me, she noted. “I guess we have no other choice then. We have to go through the houses.”
Reluctantly, she slid her bow back onto her back as she stepped into the home, unsheathing Aphora’s dagger instead. Bows just weren’t made for close-quarters combat. She clutched the dagger possessively, welcoming the familiar warmth that rose up her arm. Jasper went before her, his hands wreathed in a halo of blue flames that lit the way.
The darkness retreated obstinately, as if reluctant to give way to the light, and the shadows clung to the corners of the room. The homes had been carved out of the solid rock, and despite the many years that must have passed since their abandonment, there were still traces of their furnishings. A tattered rug, more holes than whole, led down the dark passageway which was lined with dilapidated bookcases.
Idly, Ihra pulled one of the books out. A cloud of dust rose to greet her as she opened the cover, and as she thumbed through the pages, they crumbled beneath her touch. She could glean a small fraction of what it once recorded, but it was nothing special - indeed, nothing more than a cookbook. She placed it back on the shelf and moved on. Whatever secrets this place was hiding were not going to be found in rotting books.
“Hey, over here.” Jasper had kept walking as she examined the books, but he was now frozen in place as he bent over something in the far corner. She walked over to him, almost tripping over the broken remains of a table that was hidden in the gloom.
“What did you find?” The words died on her lip as she peered over his shoulder. A corpse was curled up in the corner - the first definitive signs of any creature, dead or alive, they had encountered thus far. But it was no normal corpse.
The body was almost mummified, the skin dried and shriveled but still preserved. It was a woman, and from the pale silvery tint of her now leathery skin, it was clear that she had once been a woman of some power amongst the Moon-kissed. But she had clearly met a grisly end.
No clothes were on her body, but her skin was covered in scrapes and cuts from head to toe which - from the dried blood that still coated her fingernails - appeared to have been self-inflicted. None of her wounds, however, seemed to be deep enough to be life-threatening. “What do you think she died of?” Jasper asked. “Some sort of disease? Drugs?”
Ihra reached out with her misericorde and gently prodded the mummified corpse. After a moment of resistance, it plopped forward unto its face. The corpse's back was similarly covered in cuts, except for the base of her neck. As she nudged the Moon-kissed’s long black hair out of the way, four large fang marks, two on each side of the spine were revealed. “I’d guess these have something to do with it.”
But Ihra couldn’t help but notice that the fang marks were partially scabbed over. Whatever had caused them must not have killed the noblewoman, or at least not immediately. A shiver ran down her spine as she swept her gaze across the dark room as a vision of fangs burying themselves in her neck raced through her mind.
Jasper walked over to the broken table and set the dried wood alight with a wave of his hands. The eery blue light of his fire was quickly replaced by the cheery warmth of natural flames, but the shadows were still not entirely chased from the room. Bending down, he picked up a broken table leg and held it out to her. “We need more light - whatever did this to her must have attacked her from behind.”
Their progress halted to a crawl as they slowly tunneled deeper into the cliff’s interior. Not only were they forced to stop frequently to gather new material to use as torches, but the number of corpses continued to pile up. They were always the same - naked Moon-kissed covered in cuts and scrapes, with fang marks on their neck. Eventually, they stopped examining them, numb to the landscape of death that surrounded them.
But Ihra’s earlier intuition proved correct. The homes did indeed connect to an interior road. A broad avenue spiraled down into the depths and to her surprise, in the red light of her torch she could see rows of windows and doors lining the far side of the road. Just how big was this city? If we cut through those homes would there be yet another road for us to find?
And then she saw it. It disappeared as soon as her eyes fall upon it, but this time she was sure she was not just seeing things. A face so pale that it put the pure snows of Arutû to shame had been illuminated in the light of her torch. On reflex, she slashed out with her dagger, meeting nothing but air, and she waved the torch back and forth as she spun in a circle, looking in vain for any sign of the creature.