“Stop.” Anne's hand jerked up, the back of her palm slapping lightly into Thomas' chest. He heard more than felt it, but stopped as quickly as his brain could process the command. “Arias.” Her voice was quiet, tense; the torch in Thomas' hand flickered fitfully in the breeze, casting crazed shadows dancing across the pale red stone walls.

Arias' motions were delicate and graceful as she moved past, her feet absolutely silent, where Thomas couldn't help but grind gravel into the dark gray stone with every step. She slipped past Anne and Thomas, who stood at the threshold, Thomas' left hand extended out with his torch, illuminating … nothing. A floor that seemed to stretch out into infinite darkness. Arias moved to the edge of the threshold, and then sank down in a motion like a flower blooming in reverse, hands held out before her and moving in sinuous motions with her descent, coming to rest of the dark gray paving stones before her.

Her hands moving over the floor, Arias proceeded forward, head tilting this way and that as she moved. And then she stopped, and rose smoothly again, turning to Anne, hand raising to tap a finger on her lower lip in an exaggerated gesture. Then, with a shrug, she gave a gentle shake of her head, hair swinging loosely, and turned to walk into the room. Norris slipped past them and began muttering as he examined … nothing at all.

“Alright.” Anne's arm dropped, and Thomas moved forward, trying to flank Arias before she got too far from the group; the torchlight continued to illuminate the floor and nothing else, and Thomas turned to look back the way they had come; Norris stood just past the portal, looking backwards as well, at a wall that stretched out in three directions, disappearing, like the floor, into shadow and darkness. Thomas swallowed, and started scanning the edge of the visible floor around them, watching for anything coming their way.

Huddling around their two torches, they moved forward into the darkness.

“You want to come?” Anne looked surprised. Or maybe drunk. It was hard to tell. She was probably both; first, because Thomas had approached them, and second, because she hadn't stopped drinking in the four hours since they had gotten back.

“I do.” He was somewhat surprised himself, but … he felt like he had gotten a new handle on this. The price had been … well, he was ready.

“Well, alright.” She took another drink, then laughed. “You've got it, don't you?”

“Got what?”

“The need. The urge. You can't not go back out.”

Thomas paused, then, to consider that question. Could he … just not go? Find a quiet job someplace? He raised a hand and looked at it, turning it this way and that. He'd paid his debts; he was his own person, now. Maybe for the first time in his life.

“You should visit Havenhall.” A male voice behind them; Norris and Arias were seated at a table near the bar, eating. “Register.” A pause. “Choose a patron, if you haven't already. The default afterlife isn't bad, but you should really make a decision about it.” Thomas blinked at that. Choose a patron? Default afterlife? He turned around to stare at Norris.

“What?” Norris looked up at him over a spoon full of stew. Real food, while they could eat it.

“A patron. Personally, I went with the White Order of Halei, patron of renewal.”

Thomas blinked. What?

“What?” Arias turned her head towards him, then at Norris, a small smile spreading across her mouth. She had her hood up, so her eyes couldn't be seen. She … was creepy. Anne's hand fell on Thomas' shoulder.

“Right. Your weird …” She paused to take a drink in the middle of speaking, “upbringing. Look, there's Artra, of War. Helei, of Renewal. Mystery, of Destruction. Gray, of Justice. Tenash, of Knowledge. Elder, of Death. Others, too, but those are the big ones. Then there are the others.” Thomas' mouth slowly started to fall open. Oh. Oh! Religion!

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

“So gods. And, uh, goddesses.”

“That's cultist talk.” Norris took up the conversation, as Anne had turned back to try to get the bartender's attention for a refill. “There are no gods, just the pantheon, and the others.”

“Others?” Thomas considered asked what the heck it was a pantheon of, if not gods, but decided against it after some reflection.

“Like Elder. The natives of the substrate. Only Elder is considered part of the pantheon proper.”

“Substrate?”

“The reality underneath reality; the reality of laws and concept.” Thomas took a moment to process that.

“So, what, like … math?”

“Mathematics, I assume. They are a concept, yes.”

“Enough talk!” Anne interrupted, words slurring slightly. “More drink! Thomas, you can come with us, if you just shut up and start drinking.

And thus they had found themselves here, now. Stepping into a dungeon. A fucking dungeon. Arias preceded them into the room, moving with weird, inhuman grace to check floors and walls for physical traps; Norris searched for magical. Anne, for her part, stayed armed and vigilant towards the rear, while Thomas was to be stationed towards the front, to delay any creature that might attack with his body.

The dungeon entrance had been a shack, the dimensions of which were small enough they they might have let Thomas lay down diagonally, the door to which had opened up into an immense and oppressive darkness, from which a cool breeze had immediately begun blowing. Norris had given Thomas and Anne both odd gray torches, which felt dense in Thomas' hand, more like stone than wood.

The sunlight stopped far shorter than it should have, as Anne's hand moved from Thomas, and he stepped further into the darkness. The air dropped several degrees, and simultaneously grew heavy and dense; their torches flickered in the wind as it blew past them. Thomas found himself having to force himself to breathe, as he continued forward behind Norris and Arias, who didn't react to the sudden and oppressive atmosphere.

“What is that?” Thomas stage-whispered, feeling uncomfortable speaking out loud. The echoes came back to him anyways, voice bouncing off walls he could not see. Anne's voice responded from behind him.

“The air? It is denser in dungeons.” She didn't bother to lower her voice, and chuckled raspily when he winced. “You don't need to be quiet, Thomas. If anything hears us, we fight it here. If it doesn't hear us, we just fight it somewhere else.” Thomas considered that.

“You're not the one who is going to be taking the hits.”

“Ideally.”

Thomas hesitated only a moment more, trying to come up with some kind of retort, before continuing forward again, Arias having stood up to examine a pair of doors, a black against the ugly pink walls, that looked at first like hallways, until the torches grew close enough for the light to glint off the woodgrain. Thomas' eyes were drawn up, to the walls extending up, up … if there was a ceiling he could not see it.

“Uh. Hey. What if something is above us?”

Anne stepped beside him, her head on a swivel, spending as much time looking behind as in front. It was Norris who answered.

“Then Arias didn't do her job very well.” The woman paused, glancing over her shoulder at him, before continuing. Norris chuckled to himself. “Don't worry. She's good at what she does, or else we'd already be dead many times over.”

It was … uneventful, once he got past the creepiness factor. Arias had chosen one of the two doors, opened it, and they'd gone through, to another dark room. That had opened up into a hallway, which was made horrifying on some level Thomas couldn't quite identify by the pale red stone walls rising up into an infinite darkness. They had spent some considerable time in the hallway, Arias checking doors placed on either side of the wall at irregular intervals, before she had chosen one, and they had proceeded into another room.

Here, Arias made a sharp gesture, and everybody waited in the hallway while she … poked at one of the gray floor tiles. Slabs. Whatever they were called. After a few seconds, there was a rasping noise, and she leapt back out of the room, Thomas nearly tripping over Norris to get out of her way, shoving the man back out of the way of the door; Arias shoved Anne the other direction, and a second later, an oppressively loud, yet somehow dull, thump reverberating through Thomas, less heard then felt. He blinked, suddenly blinded by a fireworks show in his eyes, which only gradually subsided. There was a grunt, and he felt Norris push by him, while he was still trying to blink his vision back into focus.

Somebody guided his steps while his vision recovered, and he heard the door close behind him. There was a weird, muted keening noise, which was growing louder … and then a pop, and then voices.

“-ardy, you have the lore, don't try something that challenging again.” Anne's voice.

“Anne. Trust.” Norris' voice. His vision was still blurry, but he could see what he guessed was Anne, her shape wobbling a little bit. Another blurry shape made a shrugging motion – Arias, he guessed – and turned to move into the darkness again. Thomas slowly realized his torch had been extinguished, and, feeling sheepish, moved forward, to relight it off of Anne's. She turned to him, a conflicted expression turning briefly to annoyance, before settling back on her more usual amusement.

“You should probably put some more points in perception, or increase your alertness, if it took you that long to recover. All the constitution in the world won't help you if you can't see.” Thomas just blinked at her.