Chapter 170

◈ Chapter 170:

A single carriage lantern lit the deep dark night ahead, creating a fast moving circle of paving that marked the winding road away from the city and deeper into the mountains.

It was a night to do concerning things.

The mountains that overlooked Florens were vast, a many split spine that crawled and sprawled across the land, each vertebra prong a different peak, the arc of one mountainous line butting up against the mega city. Ever deeper the carriage travelled into these mountains and the deeper the carriage went the narrower and more unmaintained the road became until it was just a tattered thing. When the road took the form of great crumbling bridges crossing bottomless ravines Jilli's heart jumped into her mouth as they looked liable to collapse at any moment.

But eventually, after what was a breakneck anxiety inducing journey, the carriage came to a stop before a great shattered wall. It was the first time Baera had allowed them pause or even to slow since leaving Florens.

The wall had been cleaved apart where the road crossed through it, as though a gatehouse had once existed in the spot but had been so utterly obliterated that only the road below remained. What was left of the wall was a partly destroyed mess of rubble. Moss and lichen crawled across strangely carved dark stone blocks that sprawled off into the forest on either side of the road.

It was curious though, the wall emanated a low worrying humm, and from a certain angle the air seemed to ripple and shimmer, extending up in a wall of its own above the broken walls and blocking off the road ahead.

Jilli eyed it nervously.

Her breath caught as she noticed the bodies, or what little was left of them, all that remained were scattered bones. How many she couldn't say, they had been picked clean and discarded, bits of bone protruding from the earth like a field of strange mushrooms.

A wooden post had been driven into the ground where the bones were heaped highest, a desiccated and badly burned corpse tied to it with twine. Its arm was held up by a crossbeam and its finger pointed directly at the wall.

A sign board had been strung around its neck, which read "I am a massive idiot who tripped and fell into the barrier." in scratchy handwriting.

Jilli looked between the corpse and the rippling barrier.

"Uhm, is this ruin a wall from a walled city? A-And it still works?!"

"Yes, it is the remains of a city wall. The city within is long gone, but the enchantment upon the wall remains. The madman who made it carved and enchanted every individual block of stone the wall was made from so it's quite unstable and extremely dangerous," murmured Baera sitting beside Jilli on the carriage bench.

"Uh, and we have to go through that thing? Uhm I don't know—"

"Yes, we do. Perhaps someone of sufficient level may survive simply walking through it, but certainly not you Jilli, you would die very quickly and in an extreme amount of pain. But not to worry."

She produced her Inquisitor's seal and held it high. The humming of the wall faltered and then slowed before dropping off, the rippling shimmering air above faded to nothing.

The red headed apprentice cowered next to her master as the carriage started rolling again, looking up at the great crumbling walls with apprehension, expecting to feel agony and death at any moment.

…But nothing happened, they passed by without issue.

Baera put away the seal and the barrier hummed back to life behind them.

Jilli shuddered at the sound, the hairs raising on the back of her neck. What was this place?

They continued on.

The broken road started to descend steeply and Jilli realised they were entering a valley, and more importantly that the barrier and wall must surround this entire valley as a wall surrounded a walled city.

Soon they found themselves amongst dense pine forest. The trees obscured the meagre light of the many coloured moon leaving only the carriage's solitary lantern to light the path amongst the tall trees, strange shadows flickering around them, becoming ever more unsettling as they went deeper and deeper into the silent forest.

As they neared the center of the valley a sheer wall emerged from the dark ahead. The wall was perfectly smooth as though cast from metal, its structure angular. As they rounded it Jilli realised it was an enormous square fort, each wall easily fifty feet in height.

"What could have made such a thing…" murmerd Jilli looking up at the perfect walls in wonder.

"That same madness that made the barrier many centuries past. Keep your mind off it, that's not why we are here."

They rounded a corner and came across the first break in the flat featureless stone. A single rusty iron door set into the wall, just large enough for a man.

The carriage rolled to a halt and they dismounted, the horses whickering nervously in the gloomy forest.

A guard was leaning idly against the wall, his spear hooked under elbow, his breath puffing slightly in the mountainous chill. He lifted an eyebrow at Baera as she approached.

Baera got straight to the point.

"Give me entrance. Immediately."

"Ah. See, that would require permission from the warden I'm afraid."

"Well bring the warden to me."

"Can't do that either."

Baera's eyes flashed with anger and she took a step forward. "And why the hell not?"

"Because I am the warden."

"...Oh." Baera deflated a bit. "...Why is the warden standing guard outside?"

"Because I take my job seriously, and a warden who isn't willing to do the job of his men now and then isn't a warden worth a damn. As for your entrance, well, I see no reason as to why you should be allowed in, especially when you're just turning up on my doorstep demanding it like some spoiled lordly sproutling."

"I'm… under directive from the Queen. My authority supersedes yours, unless you want to be glassed with dragon fire of course." As she spoke she tossed her seal to the warden who caught it and frowned down at it.

"Inquisitor. Right. But why would you come here?"

"That is entirely my own concern. Now if you would?" Baera gestured pointedly at the door.

A mixed expression crossed the warden's face, but then he slapped the seal down into Baera's hand and turned to the door.

"Very well. Can't say much when you're working for the one who commissioned this place to exist I suppose. That and the ah, dragon fire."

He rapped smartly against the rusted iron and a moment later it slowly swung inward. Judging by the empty tunnel on the other side it had moved under some kind of enchantment as there was nowhere for anyone to stand, the tunnel was as narrow as the door.

Jilli glanced up at her master as she followed the warden into the tunnel. She wasn't sure she liked where this was going, but then, with what had happened at the party… Baera must know what's best, she always did, she had believed that ever since she had picked her as her apprentice, chosen her over the other desperate teenagers, seen something in her. She had to have faith.

They emerged from the long narrow tunnel, coming out into open air once more. The inside of the great square fort was… strange. The interior was an open empty paved square surrounded by walls with no actual buildings in the fort. First a shorter wall around the paved square and then the taller outer walls. Along the top of each wall were rows and rows of massive ballista and crossbows and other devices, even a trebuchet.

The unsettling thing was that none of the powerful weapons were pointing out in defence of the fort, it was all pointed inward, pointing down toward the middle of the square where for the first time Jilli noticed that there was a pit, a perfect circular hole in the ground. There was something foreboding about that hole, the air becoming heavier and denser as they approached, her breath accelerating.

The truth finally dawned on her, the 'warden', the weapons, the walls. This wasn't a fort, none of it was, it was a place to prevent whatever was in that pit from escaping, it was a prison, a massive prison, a prison from the very moment they had passed the valley's barrier.

"There is advice I can give, so I suggest you tell me what it is you wish to talk to them about," said the warden to Baera.

"Talk? No. I will be claiming them and taking them with me."

"W-Wait, you want to do what?!"

Baera ignored him and ripped a torch from a nearby bracket and stalked toward the pit.

The warden and Jilli hurried in her wake, the warden making his protests loudly known.

As they neared, Jilli realised that a spiral stair led down into the pit, lining its walls and disappearing into the darkness below. Not waiting for anyone Baera rapidly began descending the stairs with Jilli and the warden following after. The warden sputtered with outrage with every step.

The stairs went deep deep down into the earth, and the atmosphere only became more oppressive and claustrophobic. Jilli's heartbeat pounded in her ears, the sound of the warden's arguing fading away as they descended.

She reached the bottom and found herself alone in a long hallway of stone. The walls of the hallway were featureless and blank. The end of the hallway was a solid iron door, rusted with age and scrawled with jagged runes drawn with a shaky hand, the dark of whatever they had been marked in darker than the rust of the door itself.

There was something behind that door, something deeply wrong, something twisted and warped, something abhorred by everything natural and good in this world.

Jilli stood frozen as the door started to open, a dreadful screech or rusted metal hinges, flakes of rust falling away, the sound of her heartbeat in her ears becoming an almost painful pounding.

The slightest gap and then blood started to pour through, forcing the door open further from the sheer quantity, like a lake of blood had been held back by the door and it was now being unleashed.

Jilli stood frozen, unable to make her body move an inch as the door swung wide with a long groan and a tidal wave of bloody crimson roared down the hall toward her, a wave at head height, about to hit her—

"Jilli."

Jilli flinched hearing her master's voice and blinked to find the warden and Baera looking at her. The tidal wave of blood disappeared in the moment between opening and closing her eyes.

The hallway was empty, and the door was closed. The walls weren't coated in blood and the wave didn't exist. A hallucination?

If Jilli had been feeling dread before, now it felt like a ball of frozen iron had been tossed in her guts, and her breath came fast and frantic like a scared rabbit, her eyes very round, darting left and right, searching for a threat.

If Baera noticed it didn't show, and the three of them proceeded down the hallway.

They slowed to a halt by the door.

"An interview, a talk, that I can work with, but you can't possibly want to take them out of this place, that's—"

"Open the door."

The warden hesitated, clearly struggling with whether to follow the command, but then he blew out a breath of resignation.

"This is your responsibility, I will have none of this on mine. Know that."

He reached for the handle, hand shaking slightly, turned it, and then pulled.

Jilli took a step back, hand moving to the short sword on her belt, although she doubted it would be of any use, for what horrible thing could be behind this door, this pit of a prison?

The door swung wide and Jilli looked into the room beyond.

Surprisingly, it just appeared to be a bedroom. There was a bed, a bedside cabinet, a bookshelf, and at the far end of the room, a toilet.

There was a human man sitting on the toilet, one leg crossed over a knee, a sandal dangling from his big toe as he idly waggled it. He held a book in one hand. the cover of which featured an extremely lewd image of two rabbit eared women enthusiastically giving oral to each other.

The man himself was tall and thin and wore a puffy loose shirt, rounded at the front with a beer belly. His long black hair hung lank around his shoulders. He held his hand cupped in his chin as he continued to read, sandal dangling, apparently having failed to notice they'd opened his door.

"Ahem." coughed Baera into her fist.

The man glanced over his book at them.

"Do you mind?"

Baera did not look pleased with that response.

"I am here for you Worm so sort yourself out, you're coming with me."

The man let out a long sigh and snapped the book shut. He tossed it onto the bed and stood, snatching up toilet roll and wiping off in full view of a flabbergasted Jilli and increasingly irritated Baera.

After a moment he pulled up his shorts and dashed his hands in a bucket of water.

"There's just no privacy in prison, honestly."

"You only live to be imprisoned because Tiamat chose not to obliterate you. Do not forget that."

"Yes yes, death by dragon fire, the usual stuff you Inquisitorial lot ramble on about."

"Dragon fire that you can't ever escape or survive Worm."

"Is- is he a leveler capable of killing the anomaly? Why was he locked up?" said Jilli faintly.

Worm gave her an idle grin flashing her his white teeth.

"I think you mean 'they', yes?" came a female voice.

A head like something crossed between an eel and a worm slithered over the man's shoulder, its head was nearly the size of his own head. The eel thing was snow white with pink eyes.

The eel thing looked directly at Jilli. "We are not one, we are two, and in all things we are of one mind," it spoke.

Jilli paled. "What is this?"

"Together they are known as Worm Balloon and they are a monster and leveler… symbiote… in the true sense." Baera uncomfortably shifted her metal arm as if recalling that she shared her body with a monster herself. "There is no master with Worm Balloon, there is no enslaved monster. They are equals. They are an abomination and they should not exist."

"Hey, I take offence to that," yawned the man.

"I don't care. Ready yourself Worm, there are things that your Queen requires of you."

The eel thing turned toward Baera and sniffed scornfully.

"Queen? I didn't vote for her."

"You don't vote for a Queen, especially not a dragon Queen."

"I agree with Rosaline, no vote means she's officially not my leader," nodded Worm.

Baera gripped the pommel of her sword in a white knuckle grip. "She is your Queen by right of being a bloody dragon. Now come, I have work for you."

Baera turned and strode off down the hall, Jilli and the warden glanced at each other and then rushed after her, unwilling to remain around Worm Balloon for a moment longer.

The warden caught up with Baera and whisper-hissed up at her.

"You must not do this, it's too dangerous, you don't know that thing in that room, what it speaks off when it thinks no one is listening, it makes demons look like innocent florists, and  the things it has done to my men, when it tries something, you don't know, you don't know what it's like to see."

"I am well aware of what Worm is like. If it puts your mind at ease the thing I will be setting him on has the potential to be far worse and needs to be taken care of now, as in immediately. Believe me, this is a necessary act."

Jilli glanced between Baera and the warden and then over her shoulder at Worm who had just stepped free from his cell.

He raised his arms and a horrifying wet tearing sound came from in front of her. The warden started screaming, his voice a rising ragged shriek.

Jilli turned her head back to see the warden on the ground. What was wrong with him? His body was— It— it was breaking her mind, his animalistic shrieks, the way he writhed, fingers desperately pushing into his own eye sockets, to the knuckle.

She fell against the wall and vomited profusely over and over against the stone, each raw scream behind her causing her to shudder.

And to think the man that had done that to him was walking toward her.

She could hear his footsteps now, coming closer, knowing that he could do that to her too at any given moment.

Liquid ran down her trembling legs as Jilli peed herself in terror.