Chapter 44: The last spots
Rol and his two subordinates stepped into the gate and they were teleported inside the dungeon.
They found themselves standing on a road.
Rol had entered gates before. He had the specific physical memory of it. The moment of absolute spatial ambiguity that lasted less than a second and still managed to be deeply unpleasant every time.
But it was especially weird with Spot dungeons, because it happened twice.
He widened his stance before his feet found the stone and was upright before Hues had finished blinking and before Shigo had finished the exhale he always did on entry, the one he claimed was a breathing technique from old times.
The road stretched behind them into darkness.
And ahead of them, to the door.
Rol looked at it.
The word large did not survive contact with the actual object. It was iron, and it was old, and several times his height, its surface was cold as ice. Five symbols were inlaid inside it at eye-level, vertical and each one distinct.
Two of them had already been pressed, used by the two other unknown persons who came before them.
"Two spots are already gone," Hues said, from beside him. "Just like they said."
"I can count," Rol said. "Their calculations and observations are never wrong."
They pressed the remaining three. The mechanism sounded each time, something enormous moving through an old process.
Three transitions in quick succession and then they were standing in the courtyard with the cold settling over them like a second layer of clothing, and ahead of them the castle rose to heights that had no business existing beyond a goddamn door.
The three of them stood and looked at it, their eyes moving up to where the peak was hidden behind stormy clouds.
The castle looked magnificent, covered in black, and at the same time it filled their hearts with dread.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
The central castle was flanked by two citadels on each side. Their upper section was also swallowed by the cloud layer that sat at a specific altitude above the courtyard and stayed there, thick and dark, threaded through with silent lightning.
There were four chain bridges connecting the citadels to the main body, except that the upper two bridges were broken and only the lower two were intact.
"Well," Shigo said. "That’s something-"
Before he could finish, the dungeon shuddered.
It was not an earthquake, well there could be no earthquake in a dungeon as far as Rol new. It was, but a single deep pulse from somewhere below and throughout, the flagstones rattling against each other once, the loose air between the castle towers seemed to compress and then release.
One second, maybe two. Then it stopped.
The chain bridges kept going long after the shudder ended, the metallic chord of their links swinging and dying slowly across the courtyard in overlapping resonances, longer than the shudder itself, as if the castle had said something and the bridges were still repeating it.
Rol looked at the castle and gulped hard. He had a very bad feeling about this.
"So," Hues said, in the tone of a man who had suddenly became comfortable. "This is my first time inside a dungeon, and fuck," He spat "this place is cold as the devil’s backside, and we are standing next to a castle that could eat the agency building for breakfast." He paused. "Remind me why we do this job."
"Uh... the benefits package," Shigo said immediately. "Now that you say it. Do you know the benefits package includes a dental plan that I have never once used because my fucking teeth are so strong now they could bite through the equipment’s."
They both laughed like lost men.
"..." Rol turned around and looked at them with a weird expression.
"Speaking of cold," Hues started again, looking around the courtyard, "first time I tried to sleep with a woman I was nineteen. It was the middle of winter, and her apartment had no heating, and I’m telling you—" He paused for weight.
Rol wanted to stop him, but he was interested in hearing more. A smile crept on his face and he suddenly blinked and jerked his head. What the hell was he thinking?
Meanwhile Hues continued. "My wood did not stand... not even a little. I looked at my balls and found that they had retreated back before the war even started."
Hues and Shigo burst out laughing, their voice echoing in the empty place like an invitation.
"Ahh, yeah so... the woman looked at me and I looked at her and there was just this moment of shared silence where we both understood that nature had made a decision on my behalf -"
BAM! BAM!
Rol turned around and hit both of them in the back of the head, one after the other, in the same smooth motion.
They went quiet and blinked a couple of times, frowning.
"This place has thought interference, A mind type attack." He stated. "The surface of that castle is covered in dark-type mana. Whatever the Dungeon Master is, it’s already working on you from the moment you step in."
A beat.
"...Is it," Hues asked, baffled and confused.
"Notice that neither of you have stopped rambling since we arrived."
Another beat, slightly longer this time.
"That’s," Shigo said, "actually a fair point."
"Yeah, so whatever you do. Do not look at the castle." Rol commanded.
"Aye, Captain." Both of them said in unison.
He turned back to the courtyard and let his perception spread.
It was his talent, well a branch of his talent. He had a pretty versatile talent and it had been trained over eleven years into something that operated closer to a sense than a tool.
He could feel the castle from here. The dark mana radiating from it in slow consistent waves.
He swept his gaze over the courtyard and stopped.
On the far end of the road that went to the left side, near what appeared to be a field of scattered bone fragments across the flagstones, he saw the faint trace of mana in a human shape moving.
It was a person, moving fast across the courtyard. They reached a point among the scattered bone fragments and crouched. Stayed crouched for three, four seconds. Picked something up.
The object they picked was not visible enough from here, and it had no mana traces that meant that it was a bone.
The person straightened and moved back the way they had come, but before they went away, the person had stopped and looked back towards them.
Then he ran toward the left citadel.