“That’s just rude,” the woman said. “You’re the one encroaching on my rightful territory.”
“There’s no rightful territory here,” he replied. “Nothing to stake a claim to in the first place. So I say again: state your business.”
“My business is my own. None of you should be here,” she said. “Except him.” She raised a finger and pointed (unsurprisingly) directly at Jay. “He has the proper look about him.”
Khashin cocked his head. “The look?”
“Oh come on now. Is he one of those that wakes you up and doesn’t let you know where you came from?” She rolled her eyes. “The least you could have done is give them a primer, random new brother of mine.”
“What do you mean ‘give them a primer’?” Jay asked. “And how are we possibly siblings?”
She shook her head. “You’re going to bring them back into this world and not even let them know what’s going on?”
“Look, lady,” Khashin broke in, “we don’t need an introduction to anything. We’re here to get him down to whatever cell is broken open and help him handle what came out of it.” Something seemed to occur to him as he was finishing the sentence. “Were you what broke out?”
“Now why would I tell you that? You just said you’d have to ‘handle’ it. I’m not much a fan of being handled, and you should know that, so you automatically can’t trust any word out of my mouth, right?”
Khashin tossed a look back at Jay. “Guess she figured me out.”
The woman’s eyes flashed green. “Oh, you really do belong here,” she crooned. “Take a good, hard look at me, new brother.”
Jay obliged but got no new information off of it. She still just seemed to be a fairly normal black-haired, almost Asian-looking, woman with a creepy giant star-centipede behind her.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Is there something I’m supposed to be seeing?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Look harder. Look deeper. You can see it.”
“No, she’s definitely crazy,” Jay muttered, hoping the dusk elf could hear his response before he swapped back to calling up to the woman. “I don’t know what that means.”
She stood up and walked off the edge of the center column. For a second, Jay thought he was going to see her plummet straight down the central shaft of the panopticon, but she just kept moving. It was like the air was solidifying under her feet to let her step down as easily as walking down normal stairs.
When she got within arm’s reach of Jay, she poked him in the chest. “What do you mean you don’t know what that means? Do you or do you not have the standard set of Abilities?”
“Define standard set.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, probably,” Jay acknowledged. “At least about this.”
“Do you have [See Death] or not?” she asked
Jay shook his head. “I have something similar. [Sense Death].”
“Kydona give me strength,” the woman muttered. “Use it. Or at least pay attention to what it’s saying, I’m not familiar with how a general sensory ability works.”
“You’ve got to give me more information than that,” Jay said. “I’m not just going to activate something on your say-so. I don’t even know your fucking name.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. I guess that was rude of me. I’m Brocia, new brother. Now try it.”
“Honestly, it’s been going off the entire time I’ve been in here.” Jay gestured around them. “This whole place is a place of significant death.”
Brocia squinted at him again. “Yours is limited to places? That makes me feel slightly better about getting limited to just sight.
“Fine then, we’ll do this the boring way. I’m a [Necromancer]. You’re a [Necromancer]. If you could see what I could see, you’d see the Curse in me the same way I can see the Curse in you.”
Huh. That was not what he had thought she was going to mean. “You’re telling me you resurrected that thing?” He pointed at the elder coronal centipede that had been following her around.
“No. Of course not. It’s my familial spirit.”
“Let’s pretend I don’t know what that means.”
“Because you don’t know what it means?”
“Yeah. But I still want an explanation,” Jay said.
“Too bad! Family secrets are family secrets. Besides, you should know the majority of it,” Brocia said. “Isn’t the big snake yours?”
Jay shook his head again. “No, but since you’re not sharing, neither will I.”
“That’s fair.” She seemed to consider something, then nodded. “How about I come along? You do whatever you need to do and I’ll watch your back. That way you’re not having to split attention between all of these other undead to keep them on track.”
“They don’t need that,” Jay said.
“They don’t? What tier are you again?”
He wagged a finger. “No telling secrets, remember?”
Hopefully she’d take that as evidence he was stronger than he was and not enact the almost inevitable betrayal. Never mind the fact that he still didn’t have a clue what it would take to hurt the centipede.
“So are we just forgotten about now?” Khashin asked, voice quieter than normal but not quiet enough to avoid getting heard entirely.
Viketsu’s reply matched that volume. “It appears so.”
“Are you toddlers?” Jay asked. “Do you need constant attention?”
“A young human child,” Cino said.
The fact that the dusk elf didn’t know what a toddler was raised a lot of extra questions, but Jay didn’t bother pursuing them right now. He’d remember and ask later.
“Accepting the help of a random person would be a bad idea, Jay,” Khashin warned. “She never did deny being the escapee.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“I’m pretty sure she isn’t,” Jay replied. He didn’t elaborate on why, since he had no intention of cluing Brocia into the entire situation. That was a lot of context to have to catch someone up on and a lot of potential issues if he did bring her up to speed.
As much as he was intending to disregard the brusant’s concerns about letting her travel with them until they found what they were looking for, he wasn’t entirely willing to disregard the fact that he knew a grand total of absolutely nothing about her. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a little bit sympathetic to someone stuck in the same situation as him.
“You can come along if you really want,” Jay said, ignoring the looks the rest of his undead gave him. “But you’re walking in front.”
“I think I do really want to,” she replied. “Even if you are going to use me as a meat shield.”
Brocia stepped along the air again, moving to the front of the pack. When she touched down onto the walkway itself, Khashin moved noticeably back. Either he was trying to make sure they had enough room to take care of the other [Necromancer] or he was scared of the coronal centipede that was curled up across her back and shoulder like a bandolier.
Jay decided, as they trooped down the stairs of the panopticon’s observation column, that he would throw a worm at him at the nearest opportunity to find out.
*
The miasma continued to grow thicker as they descended. Arus may have called this the deepest floor of the necropolis, but she had neglected to mention that it was apparently several floors of space all at once. Maybe calling it the Red City would have been better.
As they moved into a tunnel that had channels carved into the wall, a blue System window unfurled in front of Jay.
Was it a bad sign that he didn’t know immediately what he’d done to earn that? Granted, he hadn’t known that general Traits could evolve, but it still didn’t seem like a good thing that there was more than one option. The only two possibilities he could think of that might qualify were Cinri, if she’d been traveling around trying to spread word of an apparently regicidal [Necromancer] on the loose, or the rest of the expedition group, if they’d finally been told about the whole situation.
Maybe he had a way to find out. Jay called up to Brocia and Khashin for a brief halt and reached out to [Esoteric Comprehension], trying to sink into the whispers that were only ever audible at the very edges of his mental hearing.
It was like going underwater while being talked to; the real world became muted as the babbling, rushing susurrus overwhelmed it. Jay didn’t get the information he wanted. But he definitely got something. It was one voice, echoed and layered back and forth on top of itself until each syllable both clashed and complemented the others.
– TWIST WARP TURN SPIRAL TURN MINE MINE MINE JOIN ME YOU WILL JOIN ME YOU WILL JOIN ME YOU WILL JOIN ME CONTORT GNARL ADAPT DEFORM REFORM REFORM REFORM YOU WILL JOIN YOU WILL JOIN YOU WILL JOIN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE DISTORT CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE –
He snapped out of it just in time for his head to hit the ground. The next several minutes became blurry, stretching as if time had become a giant rubber band. The feeling only lifted when Salvidor’s face floated into his vision, outlined against an odd darkness in a bright silver corona of magic.
Jay’s thoughts snapped back into their proper places as the light sank into his head.
“That wasn’t the goal there.” It was a weak defense and they both knew it, but the elf’s response was lost to the sensory-deadening appearance of another System box, this one red-on–black.
“We have to go,” he said, hauling himself up from the ground. “Out of the Palace, out of this whole necropolis ideally, and probably as far away from here as possible.”
Khashin pushed his way back through the single-file line of people. “Did you touch the fog?”
Jay denied it and explained what had actually happened, including the detail of it being the second time he’d seen black-on-red boxes.
“How in the gods’ collective names did you find a way to get hunted by a divine being to the point of it knowing your name and still decide to try out an ability that puts you squarely in a place where they can always find you?” The big brusant was blatantly exasperated. “Please at least tell me it’s one of the smaller ones.”
“I don’t actually know which one it is,” Jay admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “The only one I know of is Zirrus and I have no real clue about whether this is even related to him.”
Khashin shook his head. “Not his area of expertise. There’s not enough people down here to disrupt.” He held up a finger when Jay went to speak, gesturing for time to think.
He was still muttering names when Viketsu started working his way through the group, tapping shoulders and whispering briefly into their ears. When Jay’s turn came, he was a little underwhelmed; the amount of secrecy their second brawler was devoting to it didn’t make any sense.
The message itself was two simple sentences: “Be ready to run. The poison has stopped moving.”
Ominous, sure, but not nearly enough to justify acting like a wannabe covert ops agent. Maybe if he’d known about the boxes that had popped up it would have fit but the only one of them Jay had told about that was Khashin. Unless they’d been listening.
They had probably been listening. They weren’t in a loud space, other than a very minor rustling in the background, so it was pretty likely that they would have overheard whether they’d tried to or not. A lesson for next time he was trying to pass a potentially worrying tidbit onto someone else, maybe. If something like that ever came up again.
The rustling noise duplicated as Agensyx began to uncurl from the coil he’d twined into when they stopped. Jay. There should be a room at the end of this hallway. The big snake sounded extremely certain about it.
How do you know that?
Jay moved to the front of the group, tapping shoulders and moving around the others where necessary. He may have been questioning it, but so far the only time Agensyx had led him wrong was something outside of both of their control.
I seem to be familiar with this place. There is a connection, almost a memory, about what’s coming next. A large circular room, with engravings on the walls.
Their connection revealed the layer below that thought. You want me to see the engravings.
They could be beneficial for you to memorize.
Alright, sure. Why not?
As he moved past Cino, she grabbed him by the shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going? Moving on without Khash would be a bad idea.”
Jay didn’t question the nickname. “He’ll follow. Or catch up; I’m sure he can handle himself.”
“That’s a terrible reason. Especially since even I have been holding off on going in there until he’s ready. You think you’re in the right to want to go somewhere a [Forerunner] won’t?”
They’d had a brief discussion on the classes of the resurrected statues while walking. [Forerunner] was a sight-based scouting class that ran ahead of a group and reported back whenever necessary. They weren’t completely defenseless but also very clearly weren’t as good solo as with a strong group.
“Not normally,” Jay said. He wasn’t unreasonable and definitely wasn’t trying to be. “But I have been told about something that might be up there and could apparently be good for me to see. So maybe this time is an exception.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Look. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Salvidor said we were all vulnerable to that mist stuff, and if you haven’t noticed, it’s getting thicker with every step.”
“You know, I have noticed that. Even without any special eye abilities, thank you for noticing.” It wasn’t a subtle thing. He didn’t appreciate the implication of her doubting whether he’d seen it.
“But you still think it’s a good idea to go into an uncleared room despite that,” she said, tone turning what would have been a question into a flatly disapproving statement.
Jay was pretty sure the answer to that was clear so he didn’t bother saying it again. He tried again to move past her instead.
“Nuh uh. You’re staying here.”
Was this kind of thing normal for resurrected undead? Wasn’t he supposed to be able to control them? Extreme independence was definitely not in line with what he’d been expecting. But then again, he hadn’t really tried to outright order them to do anything, had he? He’d suggested and he’d reasoned, but never a straight out command. Maybe it was time he changed that.
“I’m definitely going in. Move.” Jay did his best to keep any bit of hesitation out of his voice.
The [Forerunner] stepped aside, each movement jerky. If her glare was as sharp as her javelins were supposed to be, he’d already be dead.
He shoved down the discomfort it gave him and moved into the room beyond.