Chapter 51: Guide
"Ahh! someone is finally here!"
The voice rolled through the corridor like it had been waiting for years to be used.
Hide stopped in his tracks. Hands raised and eyes wide.
The black mist curled around his legs in slow strands, thin to his eyes now but still thick enough to swallow the whole corridor for anyone else. Ahead of him, the ancient stone passage stretched into the distance between rows of grotesque statues with rusted weapons in their hands.
Behind him, Fuu made a strangled sound and almost tripped over his own feet trying not to move away from Hide.
"W-where?" Fuu asked, his voice thin and shaking. "Where is it?"
Hide did not answer immediately. His blue eyes narrowed as he looked left, then right, then up toward the vaulted dark above them.
He could see the corridor, the statues and the old cracks in the stone.
But he could not see the source of the voice.
’Should I stop and look for it? ’he thought.
A sensible person would.
A sensible person would search for the direction and the source. A sensible person would not keep walking deeper into a Calamity beast’s domain because it had politely greeted them.
But the thing about sensible people was that they usually did not make it this far.
"Straight ahead," the voice said lightly, as if answering a thought it had not been invited to hear. "Come on... follow as I say. Then turn left at the broken pillar. You’ll see a wide passage. Well if you can see."
Fuu’s hand found the back of Hide’s shirt again instantly.
"I can’t see anything," he whispered. "Hide, I really can’t see anything. Don’t move too fast. Don’t—don’t leave me."
Hide clicked his tongue and started walking.
His pace was not fast, but it was steady. Fuu stayed directly behind him, matching every step with the blind care of a man crossing over a pit. He did not place a single foot anywhere except where Hide had just stepped. Even then, his breathing was ragged, and each time the corridor widened or the mist brushed against him from the side, his shoulders jerked.
"Left," the voice said.
Hide reached the broken pillar a few seconds later. It had once been part of some decorative inner support, now cracked through the middle and leaning against the wall at an angle. He turned left.
The corridor changed.
The ancient stone remained, but the shapes along the walls became stranger. There were carvings here, depicting scenes of some kind. Hide glanced at them as he walked, but could not understand a thing.
He kept moving.
Behind him, Fuu swallowed audibly.
"Hide," he whispered after a long stretch of silence, "this thing... where is it guiding us?"
"Oh that." Hide let out a sigh. "I don’t know."
"But its worse, no?"
"Yes, and what about it? Follow if you want to, or maybe go back the way we came. You are free to do as you please, you are no longer my slave. I free you."
Fuu gulped hard hearing that, he was deeply startled. He had not expected to hear something like that. ’So, I am not a slave... I am not a... but where would I go? I can’t even see in this place.’
While he was swindling with his thoughts, Hide’s footsteps echoed in the empty castle.
"Right at the next arch," the voice said pleasantly.
Fuu shivered once and then ran back behind Hide, finding his back.
Hide turned right.
Fuu nearly crashed into him in the turn and let out a yelp, then grabbed a piece of Hide’s shirt, abandoning all pride. Hide did not tell him to let go. It made the pace slower, but it also kept him from blundering into walls, statues, or whatever other garbage this castle held.
Still, Hide’s mind worked.
The voice was too even, cultured and comfortable.
It did not sound like it was hungry or angry, if anything, It sounded entertained.
That annoyed him more than anything else.
They walked for what felt like ten more minutes through the winding passages of the castle. Sometimes the corridor widened into pillared galleries. Sometimes it narrowed so much that Fuu’s shoulder brushed the wall and he hissed.
Once they passed a chamber opening to their left where Hide saw hanging shapes in iron cages, too old and withered to identify at a glance.
"Almost there," the voice said, with something close to delight.
Hide’s jaw tightened.
Fuu was shaking continuously now. He could not see the corridor, the walls, or the grotesque things carved into them. For him there was only darkness, Hide’s back in his hands, and the voice of something ancient speaking as though it were welcoming guests to dinner.
Then, without warning, the mist began to recede.
It peeled backward from the corridor in soft streams, gathering away from them and slipping into the dark above and behind the walls like it had never been there.
The space ahead cleared first, then the sides, and finally the weight of that black concealment lifted from the air entirely.
Fuu blinked rapidly. His eyes widening as he saw that they had entered a vast hall.
The ceiling arched high overhead, supported by rows of ancient black pillars. orange flames burned in sconces at regular distances, casting a dim orange glow that made everything look bruised and diseased.
At the center of the hall, raised on a wide stone platform, stood a throne.
It was made from bones. Human bones, and all of it was stretched over with dried skin pulled tight in pale, ugly strips. It looked less built than harvested.
A few steps led up to it.
And at the base of those steps, on both sides, lances had been shoved into the stone floor.
Human heads hung from them.
The hair on some was still attached in dry clumps. One had its jaw missing. Another had no eyelids, the shriveled remains of the eyes sunk deep in the sockets.
Fuu made a choking sound and stumbled back so hard his heel scraped across the stone.
Hide felt his stomach tighten.
"Lovely thing, isn’t it?" The voice came again.
This time, it came from behind the throne!