The Sky Demons Part Two: Quest

Chapter Fourteen- Blood and bone

Ketsuo- Blood and bone

“Hey, wait up!”

I came to a stop in the doorway, taking in the view of the metal room etched with magical seals, the huge chains that lay broken on the floor and the cracks in the iron casing on the walls and floor through which plants were growing.

Brutus and Kayira stood in front of another door, looking at me with surprise.

“Ketsuo? I thought you were ill?”

“I was. The feeling just suddenly passed a few minutes ago; I feel fine now.”

“Illness does not just suddenly pass in this way, Ketsuo,” Brutus said, “it is possible that your symptoms could arise again at another crucial point. I feel that it would be wiser for you to remain behind.”

“What, I-”

“Hold on, you had nausea, right? And weakness in your muscles that just suddenly disappeared a few minutes ago?” asked Kayira.

“Um, yeah.”

Kay looked down at the seals around her feet, particularly at one that had been carved out of shape. “Do you think it’s possible for a seal to be designed that can affect others from a distance, outside the confines of the main circle?”

“I can think of no other method by which they might have transported Silvanus here,” Brutus replied after a second or two of thought.

I scuffed at the seals with a shoe, “You think I was caught by these?”

“Impossible,” said Brutus, “the seal is designed only to capture creatures with a massive amount of ketan, like deities. We were more or less unaffected by it and spectrumosi possess greater magical potency than deishani, why should you be influenced by it when we were not?”

“That… is a good question.”

“Let’s just go,” said Kayira, “arguing over whether Ketsuo should come with us or not is just wasting time. He seems well enough.”

She disappeared down the stairs without a look back and we followed after her.

This staircase was different to the others, it wound downwards in a spiral where the rest had run straight and was well-lit and more evenly formed. It led into a large living space, luxuriously furnished with plush chairs and couches. Unlike all the other living areas, which had been single rooms with bunk beds and a few other bits, this one seemed as big as an entire underground apartment with other rooms leading off from the central one. There was a huge bed and oak bookshelves in one room and in another we found a finely decorated desk topped with random piles of notebooks, parchment and various expensive looking gilded quills. Ornaments and paintings- mostly made of silver or framed in silver- decorated almost every empty space and depicted powerful and rare creatures: unicorns, taniwhas and dragons, lots of dragons of varying types.

One set of doors led into a narrow, floorless shaft through which a loud wind whistled and which was barred from entry with a locked metal grate. Ropes stretched both up and down out of sight. We left the shaft alone and, with no time to sort through that mess of a desk for anything important, stuffed as many random notes into our pockets as we could before moving on down the stairs.

The next area was almost as big, but the main room at least was sparsely furnished with a table, chairs and a desk in one corner, covered in neat stacks of paper. We slipped towards it, glancing at each of the ordered piles, looking for any that might be of interest. As we were rifling through, I heard approaching footsteps and the murmur of a voice from behind one of the closed doors and grabbed hold of Kayira and Brutus.