Gale slowly descended the staircase, careful not to trip as he heard his steps barely register in his ears. It was an odd feeling. The steps should've echoed rather than muffle on this stone staircase. When his foot stepped down onto the last step, the staircase disappeared. The scenery was replaced by a stone corridor. Behind him, only a cobblestone wall.
He tested the stone wall, stepping up where the staircase should have been. His foot passed through, and the corridor disappeared into full darkness. The moment he lifted his foot off the last step, the surroundings changed back to the corridor.
Well, that's creepy as fuck. He had to still go.
Gale turned around again, examining the corridor. Vaulted ceilings hung over head. Strange for a basement, or maybe it's to prevent a collapse. Chandeliers were set up at regular intervals of a couple of steps. Their candles flickered with a familiar flame that seemed to eat up the remaining light, at least that's what it looked like.
On the sides, doors could be seen also at regular intervals, but much further away from each other than the chandeliers. They looked like ordinary wooden doors, derelict and pieces of them chopped off at the sides.
He looked at the floor. Footprints. Two distinct sets of them crisscrossing along the blood-red carpet. It looked like they couldn't see where they were going, bumping to each other and the wall. That was definitely Dmitry and Anna.
Gale followed the smaller set of footprints, tracing her path and walking along the footprints. Her trail led to the first door on the right. He tried turning the rusted knob, but it came right off as he pulled the door open.
Neat.
He pulled the door open and entered. Upon stepping onto the doorway, the previous room disappeared into the darkness just like the staircase, and a new wave of oppressive pressure hit him as if he was underwater, where water pushed inwards to his chest. And for some reason, the darkness itself felt like it had a texture that clung to his skin.
The new hallway looked exactly the same as the last one. Looks like this wasn't going to be that simple.
A maze. I think.
"Anna?" he whispered as loudly as he could.
No response.
A flickering torch caught his attention just ahead, almost unnoticeable from the darkness eating at the light. Gale walked over and crouched, taking a closer look at the toch. It looked like it was about to be blown out, except there was no wind in this underground.
His hand moved over to the torch, hesitating. In this place, light might attract attention. It'd be the same as putting a target on his head. He decided against taking the torch, focusing on Anna's trail. He could see without anyways.
Gale picked up the pace, following Anna's trail. A faint rusted metal smell wafted through everything. But where did it come from? There was only stone and pieces of door hinges. Not enough to fill the whole place with that oxidizing iron smell.
At the corner of his eyes, there were eye-like apparitions, some of them maybe even had mouths? It could've been his imagination. Breath of the Void also didn't detect anything.
He reached the end of the hallway, and it led to another door. Gale approached cautiously, silencing his footsteps.
Nudging the door open, he saw a circular chamber. No monster, check.
He opened the door fully and saw the empty room except for a pedestal in its centre. A small orb with a dim glow rested on top of the pedestal, hovering just a couple of centimetres. Its soft glow had a slow pulse, not like a heart. More like a slow gradient that grew brighter and dimmer at a constant rate.
Anna's footprints led directly to the pedestal, then vanished. It made sense. It was the only light source in this room.
He looked around. No one and nothing around.
"Anna?" he called out, no longer whispering. His voice bounced off of the stone, however, pitch of his voice sounded deeper and deeper with each bounce.
The pulse of the orb suddenly sped up, intensifying its brightness. Its became bright enough that Gale had to squint.
[The remnants of the past are watching you.]
A chill went down Gale's spine. The system ever only alerted him whenever there was danger, and that was a rare occurrence. The last time almost took his life away. Whatever this structure or maze was, was no good news.
Suddenly, a low hum filled the air. The floor vibrated. Pebbles clacked along the ground.
The orb's surface rippled like water. For a second, Gale thought a face appeared in the orb.
It was Anna's face.
The orb shimmered, and its steady pulse felt hypnotizing. His arm stretched toward it, legs moving him forward slowly. Just as his finger touched it, reality rippled. The orb dissolved into grains, leaving nothing but emptiness on top of the pedestal.
Then, Gale heard Anna's scream coming from everywhere at once. It was a raw, full-chest scream, like she was running away from something.
His hand immediately reached for the sabre at his hip. Eyes turned to every non-existent corner of the chamber, looking for where a beast could attack him from.
"Anna!" he shouted.
"Gale? Is that you?! I can't see anything!" Anna cried out.
"Wait right there," Gale said.
Gale looked all over the chamber, looking low. He couldn't see where her voice had come from. Then his eyes locked on to her.
Anna was huddled on the floor, facing the wall. Her whole body shook, scared. She was looking around, not able to see aynthing. A liquid dripped down from her hands, most likely blood. Tears streaked her cheeks, and for a moment, she stared at him before looking away.
"Gale, where are you?!" Anna shouted.
Gale slowly walked up to her and held her shoulders steady. "Where's Dmitry?"
Anna's head snapped to him. "I-I don't know. We lost each other as soon as we stepped through the door. We fell, and then it was too dark to see anything. I couldn't even see my torch… and… and…"
The hiccups and sobs interrupted her words, making her barely comprehensible. Whatever was down here had possibly ruined her mind. It was something not physical. More dangerous than something that can be slashed at in the forest.
"We need to move." Gale took her hand, and she held his back. He remembered the route he came from. Just need to take the end of the corridors until he reached the room where he could go left.
Both of them left the chamber and entered the hallway. Gale led her to the end of the hall and noticed the feeling of being stared at became stronger than before. The apparitions at the corners of his eyes became more vivid. Thousands of eyes and thousands of mouths sprawled through the darkness. Each time he snapped his head at where they appeared, they immediately disappeared.
They reached the end of the hallway. That's when they reached the original corridor. They turned left and reached the wall to the staircase.
"It's gone! It's gone!" Anna shouted.
Without hesitation, he stepped onto where the step should be, pulling Anna with him. For a second, he felt resistance that wasn't there before, like breaking through a waterfall. Then it was gone, allowing them to pass through.
The familiar worn out cobblestone steps appeared in front of him. Slowly, he helped Anna up the stairs, guiding her with a hand on her shoulder.
Finally, they reached the top as Gale slammed it open. Rachel's face greeted them, eyebrows furrowed, watching Anna.
"What happened?" she said.
"Some kind of mind fuckery… I mean, I don't know," Gale said, steadying himself. He realized his back was covered in cold sweat, not knowing when that happened. "There's something down there," he continued. "It feels… not of this world… malevolent. Its eyes… the eyes… and mouths…"
Rachel held up his face, warming her hands. "You're going to be fine, got it?"
Surprisingly, his senses came back to normal, and the chill from the darkness left his body. The slight shiver in his bones was gone as he looked into her eyes.
"What about Dmitry?" Ollie asked suddenly beside Anna.
Gale turned to Anna. Her shivering had stopped, as well as her sobs and hiccups.
"Anna, what was down there?" Gale asked.
Anna closed her eyes, concentrating.
"It was dark… not like any darkness… a deep one. And it was... cold… and," she said slowly, "not just the air. It felt like the cold was inside me. In my bones. And there were whispers. Yes… there were whispers. I couldn't make out the words, but those words hurt my head. When I try to… listen to the whispers. I… felt nothingness."
The words spread a chill through the group.
"I'm going back in there," Gale said.
"Gale," Rachel said. "Are you sure about this? We can cut our losses. Dmitry was prepared to die."
He met her eyes again, seeing the worry she tried to hide. He wasn't sure, of course. Cutting off the losses would've been the correct choice. Yet…
Abandoning a person without trying would lead to habits forming. That was the excuse he wanted to say.
"We can't abandon him," Gale said finally. "There's no chance whatever's down there will stay down there."
Gale turned back to the basement door. With a deep breath, he pulled it open once again and stepped onto the staircase.
"If I'm not back in an hour, consider me and Dmitry dead and move on," Gale said.
"We'll wait for you," Rachel said.
Without another word, he went down the steps again. He didn't want to see her face as if he was about to go on a death mission.
Quickly, he entered the beginning corridor again. Nothing changed. His skin prickled once more and the cold seeped into his bones.
He focused on Dmitry's tracks. They were the larger ones. More pronounced and dirtier than Anna's. The tracks themselves led all the way down to the end of the corridor in a zigzagging path.
The corridor was longer than he thought, but he reached the end where Dmitry had entered the doorway. He pulled open the door. This time, the knob stayed intact.
Inside showed the path split into three. The same feeling of being in deep water accompanied him as he stepped inside.
Dmitry's footprints went left. However, something tugged at him from the centre. It called to him, mesmerizing him towards its direction. His legs moved on their own, wanting to go to the place of comfort. Thoughts clouded, not wanting to look away from the centre door.
Gale tried to move his hands, picking up the bone knife slowly. He gripped it as hard as he could and then stabbed it into his thigh. Pain snapped him out of the trance, shattering the enthrallment.
He turned back to the left immediately and limped forward to follow Dmitry's trail. Blood trickled down his thigh. Now he had to worry about bleeding out.
Whispers began to attack him, and a dull ache began behind his left eye. The voices were clear, seductive feminine voices, telling him to go to the centre. At the centre path, he would find power. She would give him the tools he needed the most. She would embrace him in her arms and guide him to be the great one he desired.
He gritted his teeth, pressing on and not giving in to the temptations. At last, he reached the end of the left hallway, where another door stood before him. Its surface seemed to ripple like water, except its darkness that rippled.
Gale pushed the door open, and the darkness beyond was absolute. Deeper than the nothingness he saw in this underground. He reached his hand toward it, and he felt it alive. It pressed against his skin, coating him softly and harmlessly at the surface. He entered the room, ignoring the weird feeling.
Dmitry stood facing the wall, unmoving, barely even breathing. The bone spear was in his hands. Suddenly, he started thrusting it at the wall in front of him over and over again. It scraped against the stone wall and bounced along the walls.
What the fuck.
Gale saw the old man's eyes were completely wide and unfocused. "Dmitry!"
No sign of change. Dmitry kept hitting the wall with the spear, desperately attacking it with even more vigour.
Gale moved forward, slowly inching his way to him. "Dmitry, can you hear me? We need to leave, now."
No response again. The closer he got, the more frantic and frenzied Dmitry attacked the wall. Then, a low bass guttural sound escaped the old man's throat. A sound that should've not been possible for a human.
The whispers intensified in Gale's head. Blaming him that this was his doing. Blaming him that he should've followed the correct path to end his suffering. He shook his head, ignoring the whispers and the headache.
"Dmitry!" he reached out his fingers to Dmitry, brushing against the man's shoulder. "Stop! We gotta go!"
In an instant, the older man whirled to his direction. His eyes wild, and madness crept into every fibre of his expression. The bone spear lunged at Gale, and its tip grazed his cheek.
Gale flipped back, blood dripping from the cut. Dmitry advanced toward him once again, putting the tip aimed at his neck.
Instinct took over. His bone sabre at his hip was drawn immediately, deflecting the attack. The clash of bone on bone echoed through the chamber. Whispers turned into a low humming chant.
"Dmitry! Get your shit together!" Gale shouted as he parried another thrust.
But even then, the older man's eyes didn't light up. Dmitry lunged forward, missing Gale by a hair. The old man then spun his body, knocking him back slightly as he blocked the spear with the sabre.
He was on defence. Cutting Dmitry's neck would've been easy, but that wasn't the mission. The deep cut in his thigh also posed a problem. Straining it now in a fight would open up the wound even more.
The chant grew louder, now deafening. Dmitry crouched on the ground, then sprang towards Gale in a spin. It was something a normal human shouldn't've been able to do.
His back hit the wall as he avoided the spin of the spear to his neck. Trapped, Dmitry lunged again.
Time slowed down. Gale saw the tip aimed right between his eyes. It was kill or be killed. Instincts reacted. His hand caught the spear. Pulled it down. Snapped off the tip. Elbow to the chest. Bone guard hitting Dmitry where he had exactly aimed.
It wasn't enough.
Gale ducked. Spun around. Maneuvered himself to get behind Dmitry. In one quick motion, he aimed his palm at Dmitry's temple.
Hit.
Dmitry crumpled onto the floor. Immediately, the chanting stopped. Whispers gone. The sudden silence was almost unsettling, prickling goosebumps at the back of Gale's neck.
He checked the condition of his thigh. The clothes were soaked with blood even more, and blood started pooling below. It needed to be sealed as soon as possible or risk having to recover for a day or two from blood loss.
Gale hoisted Dmitry onto his shoulder. The man's weight made his thigh bleed even more. Time was now ticking. He could lose more blood than what he expected. Maybe even enough to not make it back.
Retracing his steps, he made his way out of the chamber into the hallway. He carefully navigated through the darkness and made his way back to the door at the centre where the path split into three.
The central path called to him again, but he ignored it. The call wasn't as strong as before, and definitely not as strong as his urgency to get immediate medical attention.
He pushed the door open, focusing on the path to the last hallway where the wall led to the outside.
At last, Gale reached the end of the straight hallway. He looked at the wall where the staircase should be and stepped forward.
He stepped onto the step, and the darkness enshrouding the staircase disappeared. He gritted his teeth once more and climbed up the steps. It took all his effort to put one foot in front of the other. Dmitry's weight felt like it increased with each step, all the while more blood leaked from his open wound.
As he neared the top of the staircase, he opened the door. The darkness was gone. The warmth thawed his bones. He saw Rachel reaching out to him.