Chapter 4: Chapter 4 - Bad Question

Daniel’s lips were pried apart, a thick nail tapping the bottom row of his teeth in a rhythmic pattern. He jerked his head back, eyes opening in the same motion to see the woman in chains leaning over him.

“Why are you doing that?” he exclaimed, pushing himself upright. He was still in the barracks, but the room was quiet. The glowing woman sat awake, murmuring her prayers, but she didn’t react to Daniel’s voice, nor his patron’s.

“Bad question,” his patron said, then continued after a brief pause. “Because I’m bored.”

“Is that why you keep torturing me?” he pressed, grabbing his scarred hand and rubbing the runes.

Her vibrant golden eyes lingered on him, then wandered the room as she began to strut from person to person. “No. That’s because you irritate me.”

Daniel stared at her, incredulous. “You came to me!”

She paused her examination of one of the sleeping bodies, looking over her shoulder at him. A smile pulled apart her lip in inches, then miles, ending far too wide. She returned to him, each step louder than the last, the chains that dangled from her clothes and body dragging across the floor.

She stood over him, towering over his cot with both physical and spiritual presence. “You’re right Daniel, I did,” she cooed, hand snapping to his jaw in between his eyes blinking. The grip tightened in even increments. “So do better. We have eternity, yet you manage to waste time.”

The nausea from the night before returned. The reminder of his unintended obligations. His mind swam between fearing his gruesome death and praying for it, until her nails broke the skin on his cheek and pain chased away his overactive fears once more.

“Fuck,” he hissed, pushing away her hand on reflex. She didn’t resist. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

”Sveltana. I’m your patron.” Svel. Svel?

”What are you the god of?”

She considered the question, passing it from cheek to cheek with the tensing of her jaw and chewing of her lip. She sat on the edge of his bed, smaller than she had been, staring into her own cupped hands. Chains clinked together as she leaned forward.

Finally, Svel looked over at him. “What do you want me to be the god of?”

The question caught him off guard, the dampness of her eyes making his breath catch in his throat. Ambiguity, his kryptonite.

“I-I don’t know. Something good, I guess,” he offered, pulling his knees up to his chest. He felt like a child with how he avoided touching her. He also wanted to hug her.

Svel’s head swayed, eyes settling back on her hands. She was peeling the skin off of one of her thumbs. The exposed flesh and welt of fresh blood made him gag. “What would you want to be the god of?”

Daniel choked down his repulsion, sucking in a breath of stale air to quell his stomach. He mimicked her hesitation, stumped by the question as she seemed to be. “Something good, I guess,” he repeated.

”Do you think…” She caught her words mid sentence, scowled down at her hand. She flicked a piece of her thumb, and the fleshy strip landed with a sickening squelch a few feet away. Daniel watched, aghast, but when he looked back at her hands, the thumb had healed.

“If you’re worried I’ll be unable to fulfill your wish, don’t be. I’ve touched countless domains across all of time. There are only a few things I may be unable to do, and I know you’re too smart to ask for those,” she said instead, her voice filtered through gravel again.

“How?”

She extended a hand towards him, fingers pinned together in preparation for a flick. “Bad question,” she answered, and clicked her nail against his forehead.

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It wasn’t quite dawn, but the slice of sky visible through the only window of the barracks was beginning to show the earliest signs of daylight. Daniel’s cheek was crunchy, dried blood on his cheek where Svel had cut him, which he rubbed off with the back of his hand.

He stretched into awareness, sitting up to discover someone had piled a soft fur on top of him as he slept. A few people in the room were still asleep, or just beginning the process of waking up, but several were already gone, including the glowing woman he had seen the night before.

Daniel swung his legs over the side of the cot, standing slowly. He stank of sweat and dirt, his Earth clothes over a day old, and he got a sour look from the old, gray man curled on the bed closest to him.

He smiled sheepishly, snatched his bag up from the otherside of his cot, and scurried out of the room.

The village felt better in the daylight. More of its decay was exposed, but the flowers were brighter, and a few windows had been opened to reveal that people did actually occupy some of the round huts across the tavern.

A small man sulked by the fountain, head disproportionate to his body, features drawn out and pointy. His earlobes were stretched low and dangled near his elbows, and when he spit at the fountain they swayed with the motion. A woman hanging clothes out to dry saw this and gasped, rushing inside her home with half her clothes left unhung.

The man was unconcerned, and he stomped off to the general store soon after. Daniel hurried after, regretting leaning against the fountain as he had done last night

On approach, it was clear the sign Daniel couldn’t read before wasn’t written in a language he could understand, though it didn’t look like quality penmanship either. The creaky door was just swinging shut as he reached it, having had to navigate a few rotting steps before he could enter the store.

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The inside was dreary. All the windows were covered by thick, dark red curtains. Dried herbs dangled from the ceiling, forcing Daniel to hunch over to approach the dirty glass counter the short man stood behind.

The man picked at one of his lobes, playing with one of the many pieces of metal work and gems that pierced through the long skin again and again. His scratchy auburn beard shed hairs and dandruff onto the counter when he swapped to itching his face instead.

The man spoke in a language Daniel couldn’t understand, noises deep in his throat, lips barely moving. When he showed no recognition of the language, the man harrumphed, pointed yellow teeth bared in distaste.

Daniel spread his hands, trying to be disarming. He pointed a finger at himself, and said clearly. “Daniel.”

The man huffed, but pointed a thick fat thumb at himself in turn, slow and intentional. “Hutch.”

Daniel smiled, but Hutch didn’t return it. He scowled. Daniel turned away to examine the shelves that lined the room.

There were a wide variety of objects, many of which he didn’t recognize. Some jewelry, some jars of unknown substances, hammers, tongs, and sacks of grains. On the top shelves there were two rows of dusty books, their spines thick, hand-crafted leather. Below them were the sheets of paper Theo had used, and beside those his objective.

He picked up one of two notebooks, their spines looser than he expected. Thread was woven through the pages and a back plate, but untied. Pages could be added. He searched for something to write with and first found small tinctures of black liquid and quills, made of sleek red feathers.

He had never written with a quill before, and when he spotted slender black sticks wrapped in off-white cloth, he picked one up instead. The substance looked somewhere between graphite and charcoal, and as he handled them it was clear the thin white cloth tied around their base was to hold them without dirtying hands.

Ideally he would take both, but Theo and Kire’s shared warning made him put the quill and ink back. He approached the counter and set the notebook and writing tool down. Once at the counter, he could see a small room through a crack in the heavy curtain that bisected the room, behind Hutch and the counter. There was a bed in sight, and a hatch beneath it — a small wooden door with a metal X crossing it.

Hutch snorted and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Then he reached behind the counter and pulled out a crude drawing of three coins — gold, silver, and bronze. He tapped the gold coin twice.

The price being exactly what he had on him wasn’t lost on Daniel. He wondered for a moment if he was being watched, or if Kire was on better terms with Hutch than he let on. He eyed the crude drawing on the counter, regretting not asking Theo more about the currency. He had no idea how much the coins were worth of each other, but the progression of value was obvious.

He hesitated a moment longer and Hutch snorted his disapproval, rolling his knuckles against the counter in agitation. Daniel stuck his finger out and tapped the drawing of the gold coin once, then the silver coin thrice. He fished the two gold coins he had remaining out of his pocket, hoping Hutch would give change.

The grouch snatched the coins up too fast and Daniel knew he had been swindled, but Hutch was honest enough to offer seventeen silver coins back to him. Twenty silver for one gold, then.

Daniel took his items, added them to his increasingly heavy bag, and left the store, trying to ignore the low chuckle behind him as he exited.

Outside, it was proper dawn and a group of people had accumulated by the gate of the village. Theo was milling about by the fountain. She no longer wore the apron from the night before, but instead a set of chainmail with solid plates layered over, though they were formed of stone rather than metal.

When she saw Daniel, she called out. “Oi, get over here. We’re heading in soon.”

As he approached, she pulled out a long, bendy strip, notches covering it in even measurements. When in reaching distance, she took his measurements with quick accuracy, directing him to lift arms and stretch legs periodically. She tracked these notes on a flat rock, written on the surface with just her nail.

“Thanks,“ they said, synchronized in words and the follow-up smile.

“Good timing, now back it up, big guy’s gonna rally us then we’re heading in,” Theo explained, grabbing his exposed forearm to pull him to the side of the village’s main path.

The aggregating group of people approached the fountain, moving in loose groups. A quick headcount showed four groups of four, each containing at least once heavily armored person and one person bearing a mighty bag on their back.

Outside of those four groups, Daniel spotted Kire skulking in the back, not a clear member of any group, much like Theo and himself.

From the barracks, a tall man emerged, covered shoulder to toe in plated armor. He carried a sword on each hip and a pointed helmet pinned under one of his arms. Behind him, the glowing woman Daniel saw before walked in step, her head bowed, lips still moving in prayer.

“Axen,” Theo whispered, tapping his hand to make sure he was listening. “And Mayline. Pious cunt.”

When Axen reached the fountain, he turned to address the small force of Crawlers.

“Morning lads and ladies. This will be a routine sweep — we know our objective and the dungeon’s been cleared and sealed for a few dozen years. Inspectors from more than five years ago may not be worth a damn, but there shouldn’t be anything living down there. Our primary concern will be missed traps,” Axen announced, eyes sweeping the crowd and making contact with each and every pair looking back at him, if only for a second.

When he met Daniel’s gaze, eyes a film of pale water, a shard of ice pierced his skull, worse than any headache he had ever felt, but only for a moment. Daniel winced, head reeling from the second of pain before he lifted his chin again to look at Axen. The other man was no more emotional than a mannequin.

Daniel, a quiver to his hand, reached up to tap his chest, the greeting he had been shown by Kire and Mayline. But Theo caught his hand, quick as lightning. “Not to him…” she murmured, lips pressed tight after.

“We have a new Reborn joining us, born of Irel,” Axen continued, turning his attention back to the crowd. “May her gift bring us the blessing of a bountiful clear.”

The crowd echoed the last sentence, Mayline loudest of all. Sweat trickled down Daniel’s back, a sheen to his forehead.

“This is an underground small crypt-type. At each fork in the road, we’ll send a splinter team down excess paths until we’re out of teams, at which point the primaries will wait until we hear back from the first splinter. You’ll communicate your success or failure through Theothora’s sending stones. One flick for objective found, two for failure and regroup with primary, three for emergency,” Axen recapped, the reaction from the crowd ranging from yawns to passive nods from what Daniel assumed to be the team leaders.

Theo held up four different colored gems, pinned between her fingers. One for each splinter team. She gave each one a flick and a corresponding gem buzzed in each team, generally held by the team leader.

“Any questions?” There were none.

Axen clapped his hands together, the thick padding softening the sound. “Good. Mayline, if you would,” he said, turning his back to the crowd and taking a few steps backwards.

Mayline sank to her knees in front of the fountain, single hand clasped to her chest, her shiny white and gold robes bunched against the dirty road. Her silent prayers increased to an audible volume and as she chanted, the spiral markings wrapped around her limbs glowed once more.

The fountain split in half, cutting the woman depicted on it in two as each half crept from the other. Stones creaked and screeched against each other, until a large horizontal door was revealed beneath. The wooden entrance wasn’t unlike what Daniel had seen in Hutch’s shop, but the fountain’s door had golden spirals of varying sizes hovering just above the surface, stretching from corner to corner.

The spirals varied in size and flipped directions — a language Daniel couldn’t read.

Mayline lifted her right arm, the one that was severed above the elbow, then reached to the unseen stump with her left arm. She took a deep, solemn breath, exhaled another chant, then pulled another arm into existence by a golden thread buried in her robes.

The new one was shimmering gold and translucent, but otherwise mirrored her physical arm. With her newfound magic limb, she reached down to the door and peeled the spirals off as if they were tape. They disintegrated into the surrounding air like centuries old paper.

She returned to her feet and stepped aside from the entrance, physical hand and magical hand clasped together in front of her. ”By Her Light,” she said with a bow of her head.

Axen patted her shoulder as he walked up to the door and heaved them open. “Primaries, with me. Splinters in order after.”

Theo nudged an elbow into Daniel’s side, nodding the affirmative to his unspoken question and trotting after Axen. He followed her, realizing after a moment that Kire had fallen in step with him. At Daniel’s inquisitive eyebrows, Kire shrugged.

“Man likes his Reborns, what can I say? We’re all a little blasphemous on this blessed day,” Kire answered, earning a chortle from Theo and a vicious glare from Mayline, who had delayed following Axen down the first few steps.

“Silence is a virtue, scoundrel,” she hissed before descending into the dungeon, followed by Theo.

Kire turned to face Daniel, pressed a finger to his lips and let out an exaggerated ‘Shh!’, then jumped back on to the first step with dramatic flair.

Daniel sucked in his last breath of fresh air and followed his acquaintances into the dark.