Chapter 5: Chapter 5 - No Mice

The descent into the dungeon was a round, spiraling staircase, a slow sink into the bowels of the planet. Before the first turn, the light of the day revealed delicate carvings inscribed in the bricks of the structure, some places more faded than others, some chipped away entirely.

At the first turn, Axen pulled out one of his swords. It was shorter and fatter than Daniel had expected based on the sheath length. He turned back to Mayline, an unspoken practice occurring.

She obediently dipped her head, then reached down to her leg, parting a long slit in her robes that exposed her legs. With her magic hand, she picked one of the strings of spirals and pulled it off her leg, using delicate precision to place it along the length of Axen’s sword.

She whispered something to the spirals and their vibrance increased tenfold, banishing the darkness of the stairs.

Axen continued the descent without a word, but Daniel heard passive grumbles behind them, and a shuffling of bags. Flame roared to life behind the primary team. Torches.

As they progressed on the staircase, the spiral runes on Axen’s swords waned, the tails closest to the tip of the sword falling away in slow increments. Daniel was reminded of a nightlight his mom had gotten him when he was a boy, when he didn’t have to pretend the dark wasn’t terrifying. It had a timer too, a countdown to when he would be submerged into black, a countdown he had to fall asleep before. He hoped Mayline didn’t run out of her glowing runes.

On the last stint before the bottom of the stairs, Daniel sought out the eyes of his better-known companions, but both were entirely preoccupied.

Theo was walking blind, her eye closed, one hand extended and tracing the brickwork of the staircase’s walls. Kire’s eyes were open, but deep pits of shadow, no light able to reveal the already faint color. The only sign they were moving were the slight shifts in the whites and his tense brow. The group of Crawlers may have been bored, but the Reborns were pouring focus into each step.

“Axen, halt,” Kire commanded before the leader’s foot could cross the second to last step of the staircase. He slipped past Daniel and Mayline, turning his left forearm outwards to grab a small metal tool that was strapped to the inside. Daniel noticed for the first time that his bracers were asymmetrical — the right was hardly more than a few straps, leaving the glimmering scales on his arm exposed.

Kire crouched down beside Axen, feeling alongside a brick that looked no different than the others, to Daniel at least. A tight frown lowered Kire’s long face, and his deft fingers moved along to the wall on his right. He used the tool to pry a brick off and Axen lowered his sword to give the trap-spotter more light.

After a few seconds of fidgeting and fishing, Kire’s hand returned from the hole he had created, pulling a thin silver wire. As he moved it, Daniel finally saw that the wire had been stretched tight across the corridor the entire time, near invisible until Kire had put it in motion.

But the scoundrel wasn’t pleased. “Canisters empty and undamaged, you’re good to move forward, but…”

Axen traced the wire with his eyes. “But?”

”I mean, why would a wire this close to the entrance be in place? Why would they reset the wire, but not the fluid?”

”A reminder to keep us on our toes?” Daniel suggested, earning a surprised look from the entire primary party. His cheeks flushed. Perhaps it was better to stay quiet, virtuous silence and all.

Mayline nodded in agreement, Theo shrugged, and Kire looked unconvinced. But Axen bore no emotion at all, he simply stepped over the limp wire and continued on. The party followed.

After the staircase, the dungeon spread into a wider-but-still-cramped hallway. They could walk in groups of two, though, shoulders near touching. The landscape remained otherwise unchanged, absent of any deviation from the brickwork that led them there.

With little to look at, Daniel had no choice but to pay attention to finer details. He had expected some life down here, despite Axen’s comment, even if just in the form of moss or mice. But the place was hollow and cold, a gaping mouth of a long dead man.

Each step, echoed by the steps of every splinter group trailing behind, was like a drop in the bucket of his anxiety, the water tension building with each passing second. His vision felt muddy, a swampy pond that had been stirred until he couldn’t see what his goal had been.

He was down here to learn, he told himself. Theo had seemed so confident, so right when she invited him. But what was there to learn from a place like this? If mice were too smart to be here, why were they?

Against every human instinct, he looked down at his left hand, traced the scars with a finger. He wished for it to hurt, if only for a second. He wished for the pain to chase away his fear. But the scar was silent. Svel only watched.

When the long hallway finally changed, Daniel shook away the bizarre thoughts, mind cleared of the daze by Axen’s smooth voice.

“First splinter,” he called, standing before a sharp fork in the road, the brick work cut in perfect, unnatural angularity.

The primaries stepped aside, a four man group of Crawlers pushing past to stand near Axen.

“See any differences?” Axen asked, tapping his glowing sword on either side of the fork. The leader of the group, a scruffy man with a nervous twitch, picked at his nails.

“Uh,” the Crawler floundered, looking back at his group for support. Daniel couldn’t see a difference, and wondered if Axen was looking for confirmation, or testing them. The Crawler seemed to have the same worry. “Ah, no sir. No difference.”

Axen pointed at Theo then beckoned her forward with a curl of the finger. She obliged. As she passed by Mayline, the golden woman muttered, “Heretic…”

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Theo didn’t react to the word, focused on the job she’d been hired to do. She worked her hands around the edges of each path, knocking, tapping and flicking the stones in various ways, feeling out each with her eye closed.

Finally, she stepped away and looked to Axen. “The right breaks off into two paths down a ways. The left doesn’t, so far as I can tell,” she explained, then returned back to the line of Reborns, not waiting for a response.

Axen gestured to the left. “Splinter to the left, primary to the right. Sending stones out,” he ordered, then continued down the right, confident he would be obeyed.

He was, and the party fell in line once more, eerie silence smothering the group as they continued down a hallway that was, again, identical to every other inch they had already seen.

A minute more of walking and Kire, who had been in step with Daniel most of the journey, fell back to walk beside Theo. The two spoke in broken, hushed whispers, voices soft enough that even Daniel, who was closest, could barely hear.

Mayline looked back at the change in formation and fell back a step herself to walk beside Daniel. Axen made no complaint.

“Our Bountiful Mother is a lovely patron, you’re quite fortunate,” Mayline said between mumbled chants. She fit her prayer between sentences like they were uncontrollable impulses, compulsive worship.

Daniel had no idea how to speak to her. At first he thought to say thank you, but he pivoted at the last moment. “I am very fortunate,” he agreed.

Mayline smiled, teeth catching the light of her body’s runes and shining as stars. He was close enough to see the spiraling lines in better detail and, as she prayed, he watched the lines construct themselves, building in the tiniest of increments, but compounding over time with her devotion to prayer.

Soon after, they reached the next split in the hallway, this one a proper door on the side rather than a strange fork.

Theo repeated the same process she had at the fork, but took twice as long. At the end, she could only shrug at Axen.

“Can’t tell, boss. Seems to be a straight shot for both, but they’re missing chunks. Think the stone’s been damaged further in,” she explained, placing open palms against the wall when she was done, searching more while Axen made his decision.

“Fourth splinter,” Axen called, and Daniel heard Kire suck in a sharp breath. The second and third group had been skipped.

The leader of the fourth group, a sour-faced woman, stood her ground, hands on her hips. She beckoned Axen closer, away from the Reborns.

They spoke in a quick and sharp language, R’s rolled and phrases short. Near the end, Axen lifted his glowing sword, examining the woman’s face in clear light. Then he turned, speaking as he returned to his position as point.

“Kire, you’re with them. Two scales,” he ordered, pausing next to the other man and holding a hand out expectantly.

“Two?” Kire looked offended, but plucked two scales from his skin. He chose the largest variety of them, selecting the ripest berry. “What do you want?”

”Sheep and bat.”

Kire gave each a kiss and dropped them into Axen’s hand.

“Do you have to do that?” Axen sighed, disapproval the strongest emotion he had expressed thus far.

Kire slapped his hand to his lips and blew Axen a sloppy kiss before joining the fourth splinter group. Theo covered a smile with the back of her hand, but Mayline looked ready to kill.

Axen rolled his eyes and directed the now five-man Crawler group to the door. “Take it slow in there, sending stone out at all times.”

The fourth splinter disappeared behind the frail wooden door, and the primaries continued. Daniel stuck near Theo.

”What were you guys talking about?” He asked.

“Nothing,” she answered too fast. “I need to focus.”

They continued in silence. Walls of brick rolled by, unchanged, undeviating, boring to the point of sickness. Daniel pulled at the skin around his nail beds until one ripped free and bled.

When the minor wound ceased bleeding, Theo spoke again, eyebrow pressed lower. “Axen, abnormality ahead. Watch the floor.”

Her warning wasn’t necessary. A dozen more steps and the problem revealed itself. Cut into the ground was another doorway, the door itself gone but the hinges remaining. The abyss below was perfect darkness, and Daniel felt the uncomfortable urge to step in, not knowing where the bottom might be.

The silence stretched as Axen examined the path, such as it was. He crouched beside it, setting down the helm he had never put on, for better vision, Daniel guessed.

Axen kicked a piece of chipped brick down the vertical hall. After a few seconds, it clattered against something. He stood, satisfied.

“Second,” he ordered, stepping aside to allow the group to approach. “Mayline, light one of their weapons.”

The second splinter leader offered a blackened mace to Mayline, who plucked another set of spirals off her skin and plastered it to the weapon. The wiry man eagerly took it back, but when he faced the pit of black, drips of sweat plastered blonde and white hairs to his forehead.

“Ah, is it really necessary—“

The skinny man didn’t get to finish his sentence before Axen ripped the mace from his hands and dropped it into the chasm. It clattered against matching brick work, creating a small bubble of light that did little to reveal what else could be down there.

Axen stared down the other man, pale eyes unblinking.

“R-right,” the second leader gulped, peering down at his only weapon. “How do I, ah, go about… getting down?”

Daniel thought Axen might shove the man, but he resisted, pressing a frustrated thumb to his temple. “You didn’t bring rope?” Axen asked incredulously.

“Well we didn’t think—“

”Oh, that much is apparent,” Axen snapped, looking to Theo who in turn looked at Daniel. Eyes settled on him.

Daniel could see out of the corner of his eye the third splinter leader was shuffling through their bags, searching their own supplies, but Theo nodded encouragement and he slung his bag off of his back, pulling out the shorter spool of rope and handing it over.

“Less prepared than a newborn…” Axen muttered, taking the rope from Daniel and handing one end to Theo. “Anchor it for them.”

Theo took the end she was offered, flattened her hand as she had done countless times, and snaked it forward to pierce the stone.

But her hand crashed into the brick work, a sickening crunch followed by a screech-turned-hiss of pain as she tried to downplay the damage. She cradled the wounded hand, sucking in short, quick breaths.

Axen was still as the stone, color drained from his face. Fear looked unnatural on his features.

“Spike and hammer method,” he ordered and the third splinter leader approached with the appropriate tools.

The Crawlers set to work while Theo tended her own hand, tying two of her fingers to the neighboring ones with spare shreds of cloth. Her face was twisted, but her breathing was stabilizing. Axen’s mood had only worsened, and he said nothing else to Theo.

Even as the second splinter group descended into the vertical hallway, Axen remained pale and tense. Something in his plan had changed, and not for the better.

“Onward.”

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Time slinked on, slow and dragging, its weight a burden on the team.

Theo’s breathing was tight, peppered with sucked in hisses of frustrated pain. She had started holding all four of the sending stones, circling them around the palm of her good hand, touching them for reassurance. She pressed her thumb against the stone with Kire’s group the most. No one had sent news, good, bad, or otherwise.

Daniel had taken to counting to steps to soothe the creep of fear. The inability to track time made him queasy, and there was a pattern to their party that comforted him. First Axen’s heavy but considered movements, then Mayline’s supporting patter, then his own, and finally Theo’s labored steps. Further in the distance, the steps of the third splinter party echoed in the long hallway, trailing behind.

Axen. Mayline. Daniel. Theo. Echoes.

Axen. Mayline. Daniel. Theo. Echoes.

Axen. Mayline. Daniel. Theo.

Daniel stopped walking, turning back to gaze into the darkness behind them. The light of the torches was gone. Theo ran into his back, no longer looking ahead nor tracing the wall. She lifted her head, confused, then turned around too.

“Axen,” Daniel said, and the leader stopped moving.

Axen didn’t bother to ask ‘what’. He was already moving backwards, pulling his helm on and fixing the straps with one hand.

“Shit!” Theo exclaimed. One of the sending stones was vibrating in her hand, in clusters of three. Axen drew his weapons.

Zzzt. Zzzt. Zzzt.

As Daniel watched, another started vibrating. Then a third. He pressed himself back up against the wall.

Emergency. Emergency. Emergency.