Chapter 35: In Lucid Reverie

The Key will appear in the coldest night

The gate will open and 6E12 will arrive

He will lead us to the edge of existence

He will overcome the final challenge

And the prize he will earn

Is our freedom

-Teachings of the Guild of Truthseekers.

----------------------------------------

The sunflower pointed toward the east. It told us that there, we would find 6E12.

I picked up the flower pot. I walked out of our door, then followed the lead of the flower.

"Sophia," Hei called out to me from behind. The rest of my team followed as well.

I had heard the story of the Pied Piper and his magic flute. With his music, the piper enthralled rats and children alike, leading them along wherever he pleased. That story came to mind as I followed the lead of the flower, as though it had put me in a trance. But I knew no magic had charmed me. My own desire alone puppeted me along.

I had to know.

We walked away from the town center, past the restaurants where we used to eat, past the bridge of our daily commutes, past the farmer’s stalls near the edge of town. We passed our neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers on the road. They receded behind us, one by one, until we had passed them all.

We followed the flower into the wilderness outside of town. I glanced back. At this distance, I saw Silvercreek from afar and in its entirety, with its grids of farmland, serpentine rivers, miniscule buildings, and plumes of ashen smoke. I remembered what it truly and fundamentally was.

We didn’t come here to live. We came here to die.

The Seekflower's blossom bowed as we followed its lead. It still pointed east, but now diagonally down. We didn't know what that meant, but we followed it. To where?

To salvation, to disaster, or to something else entirely?

Uncertainties tugged at me from every direction. Yet I stopped not for the briefest moment. And neither I, nor my teammates, spoke.

We soon arrived at the entrance of a humble, earthen cave, at the foot of a hill perhaps a mile outside town. The cave's mouth sloped down into the earth, and stairs of stone and dirt paved the way down, wide enough for us to walk down single-file. At the bottom of the stairs, about ten feet down, an iron-grate door barred further passage. Beyond the door was darkness.

I took a step down the stairs.

"Sophia," Hei said. "What are you doing?"

Good question. I stopped in my tracks to look back at him. At my team.

Hei knelt and shielded his eyes from the gray, winter sun. He squinted down at the rusted iron gate, and into the shadows on the other side.

"There might be traps," he said. He stood back up and took my hand, and tried to lead me away from the stairs, but I stood in place.

"Shh," I said. I thought I heard something. Footsteps from within the cave?

Thump. Thump.

A flicker of torchlight shone from the other side of the gate.

"Who's there?" a deep voice boomed from inside. Before I could decide whether to stay or run, the figure of an armored man had shown himself behind the gate. He looked straight up at us. Or I thought he did; his visored helmet concealed his face and eyes. Heavy plate armor covered him from head to toe, and a curved sword with a basket-hilt hung at his waist.

"Greetings, fellow swordsman," Saber said to him. "To whom may I owe the pleasure today?"

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"I am the guard here. Why are you here? Anything you're looking for?"

Saber nodded. "We are in search of –"

"– Herbs," I interrupted. "The hills here are where we forage for wild roots. There's plenty of stuff we couldn't find in the markets."

I didn't know if Saber was gonna straight up tell him we were looking for 6E12. I doubted she'd be that careless, but why take the chance?

"Well, go look for your herbs," the guard said to me.

"That's what I would be doing," I said, "but you do realize how weird it is to have a random basement here, right? Can't blame me for being curious. What's this place for? Prison?"

"No prisons here. This is private property. Please continue with your personal business."

"Come on, let's go find our herbs," Jack said to me. Then he shouted to the guard, "Sorry for bothering! We'll be on our way now."

I took one last glance into the cave entrance. The iron gate had not one, but three locks on it. And with that, we departed, and walked away until the guard and gate were out of sight.

"Might as well forage a bit," I said, bending down to examine the grasses, which were flattened against the earth and half-alive in the cold. I wanted to stay here, close to the cave and the answers it held. I knew it'd be unwise to press our luck right now, to force answers from the guard. But still, it felt wrong to return home empty-handed.

Not far in the distance, a patch of baby-blue dandelions grew, still vibrant and thriving. I had seen them when I entered the arena for the first time, way back at the beginning of our adventures in this world. I didn't think they'd exist outside the arenas as well.

"What do those do?" I asked, pointing at the dandelions. "Are they edible?"

"Mild sedative," Jack said casually. "It's what they use for sleep-syrup at the drugstore."

None of us brought up the elephant in the room, which was 6E12's presence here in Silver. I wanted to. But everything we had just discovered, all of it happened so unexpectedly, I didn't know what to say, or even where to begin. We needed to talk about it all, absolutely, perhaps later tonight. But right now I could scarcely form proper thoughts about the situation, much less sentences to express myself. Same probably applied to my teammates.

I strolled over to the blue dandelions, then squatted down. Their stalks were delicate and frosted. I dug at the dirt from where one of them grew, until the root became exposed. I made sure to pull the whole plant out gently, so the branches of the root would stay attached, in case those happened to be the medicinal parts. Maybe we could plant a couple of the dandelions on our windowsill.

"Hold on," Hei said.

I stopped halfway through excavating my second flower. "Yeah?"

His brows furrowed, and his lips pursed together tightly. But he said nothing.

"What is it?" I tried asking one more time.

"I've seen the guard before. I know that sword."

I blinked dryly. "You're kidding me."

"It's a basket-hilted scimitar. They don't make swords like that."

"You wouldn't know. Maybe they're just relatively uncommon, and –"

"That basket-hilt was for a left-hand grip. I've only seen a sword like that on one person before. Sophia, what's the chance that it's someone different, with the same kind of sword, but they also happen to be left-handed? No one in town makes basket-hilted scimitars. It's completely unheard of. That's a European hilt, with a –"

"Do you know him?" Mr. Atlas asked. "Is the guard someone you know?"

Hei took a deep breath. "We...I remember seeing a man with that sword on my way to work. I've seen him at least twice."

Mr. Atlas scanned the area. We had more than cleared earshot distance of the cave, and no one else was here. Around us, the fields stretched out, vast and vacant, damp and chilled with molten snow.

"Does he work at the Combat Institute?" Atlas asked in a hushed voice.

Hei thought for a moment. "I wouldn't know."

That night, I asked Hei to accompany me to the Soap Shoppe, where I had met the two black-clothed members of the Guild of Truthseekers. The lady and the teenage boy. Maybe they didn't really know the whole truth about 6E12. But even half-truths could help us right now. I told Hei about everything that had happened between them and me last time.

"We shouldn't tell them about what happened today," Hei said to me as we loitered about the shop's entrance.

"Yeah, of course not. We just need to find out everything they know. Not the other way around."

"Guild of Truthseekers!" I shouted into the night. "Where you at?"

They were nowhere to be found. I considered using the Seekflower to find them. But once again, that'd seem like doxxing and stalking them at the same time. And I wasn't that desperate. Yet.

I returned to work the next day. But my mind was hardly present with me in the solitary room of my research lab. I grew restless, rose up, and wandered to the cafeteria, and helped myself to a steaming-hot cup of coffee. It was the afternoon, after lunch, and few people visited the cafeteria at the moment.

So far, I had a few options forward regarding 6E12. I could continue to look for the Guild of Truthseekers, and I ought to find them eventually. I could try to look for the guard, to get a lead about who he was working for. Or maybe…

"My dear Sophia!" Tanin greeted me as he walked up. I had been so lost in thought, I didn't even spot him in his dazzling orange blazer.

"Hey Tanin," I said. "Looks like we both made it. Alive out of the challenge, I mean. Nice seeing you again."

"You probably won't be seeing me for much longer," he said with a tilt of his head. "It's about time I got promoted to Gold. Didn't happen this time, so almost certainly it will be the next challenge. If I survive, that is."

I smiled. "Good luck. I'll try to catch up to you one day."

Hold on. What if I asked Tanin? Was this a horrible idea? A decent idea? At this point, it felt like I couldn't quite think clearly.

"Do you know about the cave outside of town?" I blurted out. "The…the one to the east."

Tanin gave me a surprised, friendly chuckle. Uh. Should I really have asked that?

"Oh yeah," he said. "I think that's an outpost of the Expedition Division. How did you find it?"