Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Dying ❯ Chapter 3

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Waiting for Desdemona’s punctual announcement of dinner, instead of reading , or cramming my skull with new knowledge, I decided to lie back in my bed and reflect on the things that were happening in my life.
As always, I briefly thought about who I was, a favoured topic of mine, but again, as always, I drew a blank. I thought about Julia, and Desdemona, about how they treated me, about what they probably thought about me. I thought about the trip I was going to take tomorrow. But most of all, I thought about Silver.
I felt sorry for it, (I had been unable to discern a gender, due to there being no corporeal form, and due to the voice having a androgynous, genderless quality to it.) having been in the same situation myself. But at least I had memories at that time to look back on. Ironic now, that the things that were the salvation of my sanity would abandon me as soon as I was rescued, as if they had fulfilled their purpose and were expended.
Silver seemed to have no such defence against the horrors of such nothingness, and from the way it spoke, it had been reaching the end of it’s tether on that front.
I wondered if Julia knew if that there was a sentient pool of liquid in one of her storerooms. Thinking about it for a few minutes, I realised that I didn’t know her well enough to discern if she would consciously leave a person in such a tortuous position. I definitely couldn’t ask her, as then she’d realise that I had been snooping around the citadel, and as I said earlier, while she didn’t directly forbid me to do it, she had subtle emphasised that she didn’t want me doing such a thing. I’d rather not get on the woman’s bad side.
In truth, while I liked and respected her, I also both feared and hated her in equal amounts. She was truly frightening in her angrier moments, exuding a true aura of bloodlust, and I have no doubt, that were it required, she’d end my existence without a second thought.
I hated her because she was using me the way one uses a tool in hopes to complete her own agenda, with complete disregard for my feelings. I was treated as her inferior in every aspect of the word.
But, then again, that wasn’t to say that she was cold to me. She seemed like she had enjoyed our deeper conversations together, flashing her ear to ear grin. I wouldn’t think she’d humour me like so if she didn’t. She was too honest, and dare I say it, too upfront and callous to lie, simply to make me feel better.
On top of that, she was always endlessly confident ion her own abilities, forever putting her very heart into the things she did. She was competent, and while she acted impatient, she took most things within a very steady and unswerving stride. She wouldn’t let anything get in her way. I looked up to her, not knowing why I did, but wanting to impress her, to make her feel proud of me.
So I really didn’t know what to make of the woman. On one hand, she was honest, strong and
interesting. On the other hand, she was also blunt, manipulative and callous.
Still, Desdemona believed in the other woman, and that had to count for something.
Desdemona’s emotive range was very subtle, very subtle indeed, but I believed that I was beginning to get the hang of reading it. I was sure that I could tell when she was in a good mood, or if she was tired, or even if she was feeling a little melancholy. Granted, she seemed to look melancholy to onlookers all the time, what with the blank, slightly downcast expression, the quiet voice with a hint of sorrow in it, but I had learned that she was deeper than that.
She and Julia were both very difficult to read in some ways, being mysterious and secretive in all dealings that did not involve me. From the pieces that I had picked up, there were a large amount of things, both literal and metaphorical, passing through Julia’s Citadel on a daily basis. I was but a single thread, in this huge web of intrigue. At least I had not been forgotten. At least I still had a place in this home of machinations. Unlike Silver, who was forced to wallow in that hell.
I vowed to myself that I would visit it the next time I had a chance.
I was drawn out of my reverie by Desdemona tentatively knocking at my door.
“Dinner is ready sir,” she announced, her barely audible voice still carrying across the entire room, clear as a bell ring.
“Alright,” I answered, jumping over the railing and landing on the floor below with ease. (Desdemona had had me doing some extra-curricular exercises. One in particular was learning to survive falling from high places. In order to teach me how exactly to achieve this, she tossed me off progressively higher and higher cliff faces. I was simply showing that my current ability in said matter was fine, and that there was no need to repeat such training, hopefully ever again.)
Dinner was simple, at least by Desdemona’s standards, but that made it no less delicious. It was just Julia and I eating, Desdemona standing to a side as usual. An unhealthy quiet had settled over the table, the only sounds being the clink of cutlery against china.
I was tempted to make conversation, but the only thing I could think of was the fact that I had snuck out of my room. Not trusting myself to not accidentally blurt that unsavoury snippet of information out, I elected to stay silent.
“Have you packed up?” said Julia suddenly, not looking up from her food.
I answered in the positive.
“That’s good. The distance we’ll be travelling, while not considerable, is large enough to take more than a single jump,”
I cocked my head quizzically at the phrase. Julia sighed in an exasperated tone. “I would have thought you would have read up on travel between the different areas by this
point,”
I bowed my head sheepishly, mentally kicking myself for forgetting to look up on such an integral thing to my travels.
“You’re going to have to demonstrate much more foresight and initiative if you want to progress
in ability,” she scolded. “I’ll explain the term tomorrow, while we’re at the gate,”
She set down her utensils, and daintily dabbed at her face with a napkin.
“We’ll be departing quite early, so be sure to be fully prepared by the time Desdemona arrives. Is
that understood?” she dictated.
“Yes sir,” I said respectfully, hoping to offset my foolishness in her eyes.
“I’m feeling tired, so I’ll be turning in somewhat early. Please put any and all calls, visitors and
requests on hold Desdemona,” she said in a tired voice.
As she stood up, I could see the tiredness in her face. There were bags beneath her eyes, which had dulled, no longer shining with that insane resilience she possessed. Her hair, while normally quite luxurious, was knotted and tangled, not sitting quite straight. Stains dotted her crumpled shirt, looking as if she hadn’t changed her clothes in days.
She hadn’t looked like this earlier. In fact, she had been in quite a good mood. I wondered what she had been doing that would put such a strain on her as she left the room.
Apparently, either I had been wondering aloud, or Desdemona must have read my face or mind, because she answered.
“Master Julia has had a great influx of work in the past while. Hence your sudden employment. Although you might not know it, in the time that you and her had come home this evening and now, she’s worked on, and completed, the cases of over two hundred and forty seven clients,”
I coughed loudly, choking on my food in shock.
“Two hundred and forty seven!” I exclaimed. “How is that even possible?”
“Master Julia is adept at working under extreme circumstances. When forced to, she can be very diligent in her hard work. Unfortunately, it takes a good deal out of her,” she said, looking towards the floor, a hint of regret in her voice.
“So sir,” she announced quickly, changing the subject. “Are you finished eating, or would you like to continue?”
I looked at my plate, the appetite draining out of me.
Pushing away my plate, I answered in the negative as I got up from the table.
I found my way to my room by myself, leaving Desdemona to clean the table by herself. (I had tried to help her clean it once, but she had seemed so offended by the mere thought of it that I left it alone.)
I briefly considered returning to visit Silver, but a brief look at my watch made me change my mind, as it was beginning to stray on the beginning of late, and I needed to be up early for tomorrow.
I undressed and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep. Despite my attempts to alleviate the pressure of all the swirling thoughts in my head earlier, they continued to circle, making me feel as if there was a mounting pressure inside my skull, narrowing my field of vision until it was as though I could only see with my pensive, inward eye. Eventually, I drifted off into a restless, worried sleep.
I woke up several times during the night, thrashing and flailing, thinking that I had missed the appointed time to leave and Julia had left me behind. I kept rising out of the bed, in a state of sleep that felt wide awake, even though I wasn’t, and every time I’d look at my bedside clock, only to realize, half dreading, half relieved, that my departure was several hours away.
When the time did come for me to properly waken, I was already up, and having been up for at least an hour, twisting and turning in my sweat soaked sheets, intermittently spending stints of time staring at the flat, featureless ceiling, trying desperately to both sleep and not sleep.
So I dressed, prepared and waited for Desdemona to come to my door, trying to entertain myself by reading an odd book , but to no avail. My eyes simply gazed blankly a the pages, reading and rereading the same sentence over and over again.
Finally, Desdemona appeared at the door with a courteous knock. I sprang out of my chair, nearly launching the book across the room in my haste to answer the door.
“I trust that sir is ready?” she asked me, although a look in her eye said that she already knew the answer. A wellspring of energy erupted inside of me as she led me downstairs to Julia, and by the end of it,
I felt that I could burst from either the “mild” hyperactivity, or from the fluttering feeling in my stomach. I wanted to run like crazy, or just go nuts. I’m not exactly sure why I wanted to do these things, but I still kept my composure, although I was still fairly jittery from then on.
Julia was standing at the foot of the stairs, her now violet tinted black clad form contrasting oh so slightly with the black and white motive of the floor tiles.
She seemed to be in much greater spirits than she had been in before, the lines and bags that had been on her face the night before were gone as if they had never been there, and her characteristic crocodile grin once again graced her face.
“So my diminutive apprentice!” she exclaimed heartily, arms outstretched. “Are you ready to begin your first true test?”
I managed to say yes, although how I managed without nervously laughing, I’ll never know.
“Good!” she responded. Turning to Desdemona, she gave the briefest of chuckles.
“As for you…,” she began.
Desdemona continued her apathetic, gloomy thousand yard stare through Julia’s head.
“I believe that you, are deserving of a day off,” she mock-nonchalantly, pretending to look idly at her nails, despite the fact they were (and always had been in my presence) clad in white cotton gloves.
To any observer, they would not have noticed any perceivable difference in Desdemona’s demeanour. But I did. Her eyes got subtly wider, revealing a hairline more of white sclera around her maroon irises, and the tips of her mouth moved and quirked up an infinitesimal amount. Her ears also perked up slightly.
For Desdemona, this was her version of a loud, drawn out cry of joy, although that may be an overstatement on my part. Needless to say, she was quite happy.
“I think…” she breathed almost silently. “I think I might go shopping,”
Julia smiled, rather than grinned, a much more gentle, comfortable thing.
Desdemona ascended the stairs and Julia watched her go for a moment before returning to face me.
“As for us, I believe it’s time we began our escapades into the Pit. Wouldn’t you agree?” she
started, rapping her walking stick sharply on the tiled floor.
The stairs began to elongate downwards, pushing into and through the floor, until there was a new entryway sinking beneath the floor.
“Come now, let‘s be off,” said Julia, already beginning to go down.
The stairs descended quite far underground, the walls formed of a strange deep, dark, luminous green metal, fastened together with smooth, slightly protruding bolts of the same substance. Odd writing was engraved on raised plates, attached randomly along the walls, and long sloping geometric lines and shapes, concentric circles and ovals, all linked together, were sprawled along the walls in some unending pattern.
Even the steps were made of the same stuff. I reached out and touched the wall in passing. It felt smooth and, not cold to the touch, but not warm either. I could feel minuscule vibrations travelling through the metal into my fingertips, as if somewhere, far away, something or someone was hammering against the metal with a mechanical sense of timing. Standing still for a moment, I could feel the same thing through my shoes, only very very faintly.
Noticing that Julia was beginning to get ahead of me, I skipped a few steps to come just behind her shoulder, and remained there until we had gotten the rest of the way down.
We soon entered into another large circular room, quite likely the same size as the main ballroom upstairs. The patterns continued up the walls here, forming into grand constellations of imagery. A mass of clockwork gears and cogs protruded from the ceiling, coupled with orbs and bands that floated beneath it, spinning around gracefully. Yet all this was marred by the far side of the room.
The wall in this area, while not cracked, was sheared away haphazardly, along with a good portion of the floor. A strange silky black liquid kept the form and shape of the missing segments of the room, circling round the floor beneath the wall, similar to some primeval moat. Where the liquid met missing wall, it simply took a right angle upward and continued on. A door was situated in the very epicentre of where the liquid had intruded, a strange circular thing made of the same metal as everything else, sigils clustered around the doors frame.
The liquid was dead still, reflecting the barest of dim reflections, looking like the very night distilled. I don’t know why I thought it was liquid, despite the fact that it could have simply been black stone polished to a mirror sheen. I walked over to it looked at it closely.
Now that I inspected it, there seemed to things swimming just beneath it’s surface, like fish, but then again, not like fish. They took no notice of me, and although I could barely make them out, I could see they were swimming in strange interconnected patterns, writhing silently against the still surface of that obsidian. It seemed to me that they weren’t so much things that inhabited the pool, as the pool itself. Their moving was so complex, conveying a thousand of meanings I could only grasp at, so deep, so… hypnotic.
Without realising it, I pressed a hand automatically to the side of the pool. It’s surface was warm,
giving slightly against my hand, the barest of surface tension pressing back. In that instant, I began to see things, things in that ebony darkness, things in my head, things I couldn’t understand. It was trying to tell me something, many things, things that made my mind hurt, things that left alone would-
“Nameless!” barked Julia sharply, as if reprimanding an ill mannered child.
I broke contact with the wall abruptly, the images and ideas disappearing suddenly from my head. My breath came deeply, as if I had been running, and my mind felt curiously confused, as if someone had rifled through it, yet had neglected to restore everything to it’s proper place.
She stalked over to me and looked me deep in the eyes.
“Don’t,” she said simply.
I opened my mouth to say something but was instantly cut off.
“Just… don’t,” she finished with a pained voice, and, just for a moment, I thought I could see in her eyes the slightest hint of an old, deep hurt.
I closed my mouth slowly and walked well away from the pool, almost into the centre of the room.
Julia followed, pulling a large scroll out from inside her jacket.
Embossed with tiny, multicoloured curving lines and dots, words sprinkled every here and there, it looked just like a map, with the sole exception being that normally, the contents of maps didn’t move on their own.
“So… what’s that?” I asked curiously, peeking over Julia’s shoulder.
“This,” she explained, tapping the paper with the backs of her fingers. “Is a flow chart. The various sections of Medius are both segregated and held together by the Void, that substance by the walls,” gesturing to the odd liquid with a quick nod of her head.
“In order to travel between the areas, one needs to procure the services of a gateway, such as that one-,” again with a gesturing nod, this time towards the sealed circular door.
“-to make jumps through the Void. One of the main problems with this mode of transportation, is that the paths between the various gates are intermixed occasionally, with no order or reason to it, due to the currents of the Void, hence the chart. The chart reveals the needed paths to be taken and the required coordinates to be instated. However, due to the highly chaotic nature of the Void’s currents, these charts become irrelevant after only short periods of time, the charms upon them unable to truly map the processes
of the Void current. So, obtaining a new one should always be in order, because without one, it’s nigh impossible to ascertain where one would be truly going. Do you understand?” she asked me.
I nodded dumbly.
“As for your question earlier, regarding the jumps, well…” she started, hesitating for a moment to think, as if trying to put the explanation in a way I would understand.
“ From time to time, some area’s are so out of reach that a single jump isn’t sufficient to get to the destination of one’s choice, so another jump is required. This involves visiting another area, as a sort of stepping stone. For the farthest areas, this involves several jumps,” she explained.
“Of course, there exists other methods of traversing the Void, such as trans-dimensional vessels, but it’s always been my preference to travel in this manner. Besides, these gateways are in fixed locations, and there’s only a few of them per area. Learn the location of these devices, and one can easily travel all around Medius, flow chart or no,”
I though about this for a moment.
“Wait…” I said, confusion clouding my face.
“If there’s only a few of them in an area, how come you have access to one all for your own purposes? I mean, considering the way the Administrator tends to act, I’m surprised he hasn’t had it heavily regulated,” I stated.
Julia simply chuckled.
“There we go. That’s the initiative that I was searching for,” she said proudly.
“Always question everything. That, is the true path to knowledge. As for your question, well, let us just say that the Administrator makes certain concessions on my part regarding this gateway, such as allowing it solely for my use, and striking from the official flow chart registrars, insofar as I follow a certain condition, which, left to my own devices, I would follow regardless of his wishes,” she responded.
“That condition is to maintain strict security around this gateway. Mildly redundant, since I persist in having the entire chamber in a state of monitored lockdown whilst not in use. After all, anything can use these gates, since it’s impossible to truly close one, and I’d much prefer not to have my citadel ransacked by rampaging invaders who happen upon the entrance to my realm through pure chance,” Julia continued, ranting on to me.
“Now, in order to activate and use this portal,”
She demonstrated how by twisting the circular lock in the centre of the door, rotating it until there was an audible click. At this, metal spilt into segments, circling around and disappearing into the frame.
Behind that, and into the entrance of the door, was a vastness my mind could not conceive, and consequently, blanked out. But what I saw for that brief instant, before my mind caught up, made my breath catch in my throat.
“To depart for the destination you require, one must find the corresponding insignia and activate it,” she continued, taking a strange polyhedral shape in hand that had been floating idly next to the gate.
It, just like almost everything else in the room, was formed of the same strange dark green metal. A single symbol was inscribed neatly on every one of the many sides of the item.
Julia spun it round in a single hand, occasionally checking on the flow chart dangling from the other hand.
“Since we have to make more than a single jump, it would be best if we ventured somewhere that wasn’t inherently lethal to us,” she continued, as she rolled the shape around in her hands, her nimble fingers probing it’s surface dexterously.
She pressed down on one and the blankness within the door flipped into the entrance to what appeared to be city built into a forest, a collage of light browns and greens, the buildings blended with the flora to the point where the two were impossible to differentiate. Dappled sunlight was filtered through the canopy, and a light breeze tumbled across the branches, making them sway rhythmically, before slipping in through the door. Oddly enough, the place, although pristine in condition, had no movement, no activity, nothing in it that showed that it was inhabited. It was a veritable ghost town.
Julia glanced at this, pursing her lips. After a slight pause, she pressed another symbol.
This time the entrance opened up into a bubble deep underwater, overlooking a vast chasm rent deeply into the sea floor, like an open wound cut into the bones of the landscape itself. The canyon was black, almost infinite in it’s emptiness. The occasional bubble dotted the azure landscape, lit by unknown means. A single eyeless fish with needle like teeth briefly darted across the view, close to the door. I moved closer to the door to get a better look at it. In stayed there, motionless, before darting off again. Then something much larger went by, something so large I couldn‘t see it in it‘s entirety. As its scaled flesh suddenly obscured the entire landscape, I jumped back, but not before catching a glimpse of a massive mouth, crammed with huge, arm length fangs.
Julia changed the view again, nonplussed by the alarming scene.
This time, the view opened up into a giant white marble room, pillars and statues lining the sides, filled with chanting people, all prostrating themselves before the opening. As they looked at the door, they became ecstatic, and began gabbling away excitedly. Julia peered in for a moment and grimaced, before quickly pressing a symbol as the crowd clambered towards us.
This entrance opened up into a single room, of medium size, with a small circular table with four chairs. The walls were covered in old and fading wallpaper, which looked as if it would have been just as uninteresting even if they weren’t. There was no doors or windows, simply the thin table and chairs. Other than that, there was nothing else at all located within the room. It was highly disappointed after the other locales.
Julia took a quick reference glance at the chart, then grinned and dropped the device, which, instead of falling, just lazily floated over to it’s original position.
“Come now, we haven’t got forever,” said Julia cheerily as she stepped through the gateway. Having no choice, I hesitantly followed her.
The door behind me slid shut with a snap once I was inside. Now that I was viewing it from this closer position, the room didn’t seem as large as I had originally thought. In fact, it was actually rather cramped. And disinteresting. The wallpaper had a simple beige and gray striped pattern, an off white panel of skirting board trailed around the bottom of the walls, the floor was covered in a meek gray, wall to wall carpet, and the table and chairs were uncomfortable looking, being all wiry, composed of thick strands of metal twisted and fused seamlessly together. Another polyhedral object rested on the centre of the table.
The only item of any interest was the large gateway that we had just entered through. It took up an entire wall, touching the other two adjacent walls, the ceiling, and the floor. I noticed that the oily glint of the black liquid that had been present near the other gate was present here too, but only in the gaps between the gateway’s circumference and the corners of the surrounding walls.
I turned to Julia, who was now seated at the table, fiddling idly with the object that was on it.
“What is this place?” I asked her.
She leaned back in the chair, not looking at me, and instead focusing on the odd device in her hands.
“It’s a place that exists,” she replied eventually.
I made a quizzical sound at such a vague and unhelpful answer.
She sighed and turned to me, putting the object down for a moment.
“Reality, being infinite, dictates that all things are capable of existing. This place is one of them. It serves no real purpose, besides being an occasional way station for travellers. There’s no reason for this place to exist at all. But somewhere, a place of this nature has to exist, and so it does. Right here,” she droned, picking up the device again.
I thought about it for a few moments before trying to give up on the concept she had just explained. It was too… strange for me to process at that moment. But that didn’t stop me from wondering about it.
She sat there in silence for a few minutes, her feet propped up on the table, twisting the odd little thing this way and that. With a sigh, Julia put her feet down and stood up, opening the gateway.
Again, that curious vastness flashed just for a moment, before being blanked out once more.
Julia pressed a symbol and another site appeared suddenly in the door.
It was a tremendous hole, huge in every aspect, miles wide and implausibly deep, dwarfing everything else around it. Immense, spindly towers were clustered around its edges in clumps, like fungi growing around a rotting carcass. They were impossibly tall, scraping the dark and smoke stained sky with their spiked tops, funnels of putrid smog puked out of the chimneys and the exhaust chutes that wound up their sides. Everywhere else, there was naught but shanty towns and hovels, built out of odd bits of crumbling wreckage. A foul, infernal orange glow permeated everything, dyeing the undersides of the cloudy sky with the ugly colour. Stray stars peeked out from gaps in the pall above the land, but they too seemed diseased, pulsing with a sickly green light. Billowing vapours of pollution trailed across the landscape , hemmed in by the massive, sheer cliffs and mountains that fringed the horizon, cutting this cursed place off from whatever environment lay beyond here.
“I give you-,” announced Julia almost proudly. “-The Pit,”
I was aghast at the sheer hideousness of the place. What manner of creature would willingly call this home, let alone rule it?
I reluctantly followed Julia as she exited the room, stepping out into a large, grimy courtyard. The smell of the place immediately assaulted my olfactory senses, causing my eyes to start to water, and I descended in a fit of coughing as I inhaled the rancid smog that passed for air here.
Julia took a deep breath and exhaled contently, as if to mock me. She gave me an askance glance while I doubled over. Eventually, the fit petered out, and soon I could breath pseudo normally, but I refrained from inhaling deeply.
Looking back at the gate, I then saw that it was flanked by two massive guards, completely hidden within horned, bone white armour. There were no eye holes or anything that I could see that would allow the wearer to see outside the armour, with the exception of a fist-sized hole directly where the mouth would be. The edges of the hole were thorny, rimmed like the toothy maw of a leech. However, considering the complete darkness within that hole, and the hole’s position on the helmet, I doubted it was for seeing through. There were horns sprouting all over the armour, mainly from the head, shoulders, knees and elbows. They held long glaives, made from the same bony material that their armour was.
Neither moved at all, not even the gentle movement of breathing. It was unnerving, their stillness.
“Are you simply going to stare or would you prefer to accompany me?” asked Julia in an exasperated tone.
I threw one last glance at the two guardians, then followed Julia once more.
The streets were just how I would have expected after my first impression of the city. Filthy, overcrowded and teeming with both pollution and illness.
The populace were, at best, dressed in various protective garments, with thick rubber boots and gloves, shielding their faces (and air canals) from harm, using breathing apparatuses connected to filters and such via a series of tubes and pipes. At worse, they wore little more than filthy rags to cover their disease ridden skin.
Amongst the people, common articles included more of these breathing masks or helmets, along with a healthy dose of contagion. There were few faces I saw unmarred by disease. I almost began unconsciously touching my own face in horror. I asked Julia about the probability of me catching any of these plagues. She simply answered that I’d “had all the necessary inoculations”.
Stray individuals pestered us, asking for change, or alms, or food, some hawking their wares furiously. None truly got in our way or touched us, although I think this was mainly Julia’s doing, as she held herself in a manner that discouraged anyone from truly attempting to bother us.
Trash littered the small streets, the ground underfoot was slick with slime, oil and who knew what other substances. Occasionally we had to step over the odd dead body. I averted my eyes from such things, but Julia just walked over them the way one would a carpet, she simply didn’t care.
Now and then, there would be a shout from above and the crowd would instinctively part, a shower of liquids best not described would fall from above, dumped carelessly by someone in the higher terraces.
Slowly, we picked our way through the streets, heading for one of the towers that leaned over the Pit itself.
Then, for some strange reason, Julia stopped at a shop. The bell tinkled lightly as she entered, and she walked towards the warped wooden counter. Jars filled with cloudy liquid and grotesque little organs or creatures, lined the walls. A host of strange items, plants and talismans hung from the ceiling. Candles burned on the available surfaces, and there was a vile, disgusting smell about the air, even worse than outside. Julia took it in her stride, her face never faltering once. As I clutched at my face with a handkerchief, I wondered if her nose even worked at all.
A stooped old man, entirely masked in soiled, sodden bandages, a pauper’s shroud, and a large bell around his neck, regarded her curiously with his one good eye. The other was clouded over, milky white in colour. The good one was hardly better off, suffering from much of the same, only to a lesser degree. This would explain why he squinted at Julia balefully for a full five minutes before recognition
struck his face.
“Julia!…. It’s been a while….,”
His voice was raspy and wheezing, coughing something up heavily at the end of every sentence, to the point where he sounded like he was about to drop dead, and the bell around his neck clanged dully with every movement.
“How are things going here Ignus? The medical business working well for you?” Julia asked conversationally.
“Well… it’s been better,” he said, punctuating his speech with the occasional gasp for air. “People just ain’t interested… in all the old cures… anymore,”
His face contorted into what looked to be an angry expression, though it was hard to tell with the bandages covering the majority of his face.
“They’d much rather go for these new fancy…. Pills and needles. No room for… the old ways anymore. And… what does he do about it?…. Nuthin’, just like he always does…” he said trailing off into what seemed to be either obscenities or coughing.
“How is he? And how goes his business?”
Ignus snorted derisively before spitting rudely onto the already disgusting floor.
“Same as always. No…. change for the blood merchant…. ‘Course, he’s getting more…. Orders for weapons, and more… of ‘em are getting upset…” griping as he scratched himself obscenely.
“How about here? Any change in the attitude of the mob?”
He looked at her askance, his unnaturally coloured tongue slithering across his dried and cracked lips, looking to me, then looking back to her.
“Well…” he started, as if divulging dire secrets. “There’s been a lot of rumours…. ‘Bout that thing… they found. Nobody wants to… get near it, so they’re… forcing the bloods to work… on it, ‘cuz half of ‘em… keep dying within the week… And the ones that do survive…,”
He sighed through his teeth, the sound whistling as it passed through the gaps.
“They’re bringin’ my business up… if you know what I mean… Some of the things they’re bringin’ back… stuff I’ve never even heard of, let alone… caught,”
Julia was inexpressive upon hearing all of this news, her face not changing an inkling.
She shrugged, leaning on the tabletop (which was strangely clean, compared to the rest of the environment).
“Well, in that case, give me the usual,” she said. “Just don’t cheat me like you normally do, okay?” she intoned good naturedly.
The old man chuckled, more a series of wheezes than anything else, hobbling back to mix certain
things on the shelf behind him.
“Now Julia, would…. I do that?” he gasped.
“Yes,” she responded plainly.
This caused him to chuckle louder, or possibly descend further into an coughing fit.
After a few moments and much vigorous mixing, he handed her a grimy glass filled with, what I
can only describe as, pure molten malevolence,. Seeing the disgusted look on my face, Julia raised the glass in my direction. I reflexively moved
out of the way.
“Would you like some?” she asked honestly. “It’s not as bad as it looks,”
I moved closer and looked at the violently bubbling brew, the smell alone inducing nausea.
Still…. I didn’t want to be diminished in her eyes, or bested by the her, but likewise, I didn‘t want
to die. Again.
“I’ll… take a sip,” I murmured cautiously, going against my better judgement. After all, Julia wouldn’t offer me a drink that would kill me, would she?
I took the warm glass in my hand and raised it towards my face, causing me to gag and a fresh batch of tears to come to my eyes. Holding my nose with one hand I took a hesitant and almost unwilling sip from the edge of the glass.
The taste was something that I will not willingly recall, something so horrific and foul, so vile and nauseating, that it was like pure disgust distilled from the worst possible places imaginable. I was certain it
would have tasted better if I had simply licked one of the particularly slimy spots of dirt outside. The taste still gives me the odd nightmare, and I wake up in a cold sweat, feeling dirty and in need of a long bath.
Needless to say, I violently disagreed with the drink, dropping the frothing concoction by accident in my throes of disgust.
When I finally reclaimed my consciousness against the urge to vomit, I was surprised to see that the glass and it’s contents was not splattered across the floor, but resting amiably in one of Julia’s still immaculate gloves. There wasn’t even a splash on the floor. The laughter of Ignus, however, was not surprising, and he continued until he started to choke, breaking into a wild fit of coughing and eventually spitting something up.
She gave me a arrogant look, her grin wide and mocking, and drained the glass in a single swallow.
With a refreshed sigh (in which I swear she exhaled a small, green, noxious cloud) she placed the glass back on the counter with a clink. Ignus quickly place the glass beneath the counter, a look of admiration in his eyes.
“It does my old leprous heart well… to see someone drink an old fashioned health drink like that... If your little friend tried to do that…. death would be almost certain. Horrible death too, probably taking hours and…” he fell away into mumbling as if imagining all that would have befallen to me.
“Julia, what was in that… drink?” I asked frantically.
“The highest concentration of every know disease found in the Pit,” she announced, as if it was something everyone should know.
“How is that a health drink!?” I said, my eyes wide in panic.
Julia shrugged disinterestedly.
“It builds up your immune system. That is, if it doesn’t kill you,” she said casually, leaving a golden coin on the table, and walking towards the door.
She raised her arm, extending her fingers in a wave to Ignus.
He simply chuckled, palming the coin.
“’Till next time Julia,” he panted, as we left the shop.
“I’m not going to die again, am I? Or catch anything awful?” I asked her hurriedly, afraid of what the answer might be.
“No, you’re fine. Immune is the word I would use, but apparently not to the taste,” she reassured me.
I tried to press her on the subject, but she remained tight lipped, and, being ignored, I lapsed into silence.
We continued on without speaking, neither of us trying to initiate conversation, Julia because she simply didn’t want to, and myself because I was too busy holding a cloth to my face, gagging on the smell.
As we approached the tower, I gazed upon it’s odd construction. I was definitely much different that I had expected, what with a title like “The Castle of Bone”. In fact, it was mostly made of crudely lashed together girders, bound with steel cable and chains. Hundreds of rigging lines were cast off it, secured into place by huge screws and bolts, riveted to the very side of the chasm, as if the tower was some gargantuan beast, chained in place lest it escape.
It quickly dawned on me that there were people living inside of fastenings, made more apparent as I got closer to the castle, and the scope and surroundings came into clearer focus, little entryways becoming visible in the sides of the massive bolt heads, light and smoke pouring rampantly out of them.
The tower was circled by a roughly patched up chain link fence, topped with vigorous amount of barbed and razor wire. All around the immediate base, the ground had been scorched, scoured utterly of whatever had been there before, now only wasted dirt.
Flanking the main entrance were more of those guards that I had seen earlier at the gateway. This group could have been identical to them, with no real features to distinguish between any of the guards, all with that smooth, almost featureless faceplate, blemished only by the hideous, sucker like hole at the mouth.
Julia simply walked past them, and they made no motion to stop her, or me by extension.
So in we went into a castle pieced together from odd sheets of metal and the debris of centuries. I looked around at the unimpressive setting, rusted holes in the wall like infected gashes inside some immense metal giant, stray support struts exposed like tendons, and the ghastly wind blowing in like the smell of decay.
“We’ll be at the castle shortly,” announced Julia as we strolled through the dilapidated corridor, our footsteps reverberating through it with repeated, echoed clangs. “We simply need to take-”
“Wait, you mean this isn’t the castle?” I interrupted quite rudely.
“You think this is the castle?” she laughed, holding her hand over her mouth.
“You think this ramshackle, rickety, tumbledown, derelict hunk of rusted metal is the castle?” she continued, her mirth barely contained, leaking out in giggles from the sides of her hand. She walked on through patchwork hall quickly, and upon reaching the end, opened the corroded iron door that served as its conclusion.
The door opened out directly into the Pit itself, staring into the depths of an eternal darkness. Only there was something in the centre.
Rising out of the murky nadir of the unknown was a colossal twisted spire, a bleached bone white, warped and distorted, stray needle like branches budding from its trunk like the sinister teeth of some forgotten abomination. It was akin to an ancient, decrepit skeleton of a beast forged from the minds of the insane, or some mad tree twisted, gnarled and blighted by the vestiges of time immemorial. Images of a potent finality, both grim and frightening, sprang to mind at the mere sight of this monstrosity, making me feel small and insignificant in its mighty presence, and bringing the inevitability that is death, firmly to notice.
“That,” clarified Julia, pointing at the immense edifice. “Is the Castle of Bone”