We Can Be Heroes ...?

13

Entering the city made a shiver run down Shion's back. Something dark and oppressive hung in the air, but she couldn't place where the feeling came from. All the buildings appeared in ruin. Broken walls, roofs caved in, twisted, shattered doors blocking entrances into any of the structures. Her adventurer companions made tentative, halting steps forward as they came across the first evidence that anyone had lived here at all in the past.

Skeletons, bleached white skulls making silent screams toward the roof of the enormous cavern. Laid in various states of disarray. Shattered bones, crushed skulls. Adults and children alike. Shion tensed, fearing another assault by the dead, but, as the others readied themselves for another fight, the skeletons remained in place.

"Just normal skeletons." Mila kicked at a skull, sending it rattling across the pitted, upheaved road. "Don't let the calm fool you, any of you. This isn't a place we'll get out of easy."

She swept up her hand and studied her invisible parchment as the others checked the surrounding area. As they all had their weapons at the ready, Shion reached behind her to summon her father's staff. It shook in her hand. Or, rather, her hand shook. Her life back at the farm seemed so very distant, now. Even though she had only left her father less than a day before, it felt as though weeks had passed.

"More skele'ons." Dave returned, cocking his head back the way he had searched. "Where's th's to'em pieces?"

"You know of the totem?" She looked toward Dave and he nodded his head. "I thought that poor man had only tasked me with finding them."

Dave laughed, coming to sit down on a piece of rubble, starting to roll another cigarette. Shion had never seen the joy in smoking, that she could remember. It seemed odd to breathe in the smoke of burning, dried leaves, but Dave seemed to enjoy it and she couldn't begrudge anyone a little joy in their life.

"I's somethin' you can' un'erstan', gel, because i's no' somethin' you should 'ave to." His tongue whipped across the paper, gnarled, arthritic fingers making a deft, fast roll until the fresh cigarette dangled between his lips. "See, we all 'ave to accep' the ques', or the dungeon don' ge' done. I's ... I don' know 'ow to describe it to you. I's magic. To you, i's only magic, yeah."

He nodded, giving her a wink, as though that explained everything, but it left Shion none the wiser. Magic couldn't explain everything, surely? She hadn't heard the injured, dying man speak to any of the others and, magic or not, she would expect to have heard something. Yet she hadn't. They had touched the man, there was silence, and then they had removed their touch.

She wondered whether they had seen something similar when she had laid her hand upon him. Whether, to them, she had crouched before the man, in silence, until she moved away from him. For certain, Dave knew of the totem and its pieces, Shion could only assume the others also knew and, perhaps that was what Mila now looked at on her magical parchment.

With a thought and a flick of her hand, she brought up her own, seeing the 'Level 2' at the top near her name, and moved to see her map, as she had been shown. It no longer looked like the world above. Now it only showed a small area of this cavern and, with a glance back the way they had come, she recognised the features that they had already discovered.

The rest of the map remained empty, save for four glowing sigils like the one the man had had rotating above his head. The 'exclamation marks' as she had heard them called. Those marks appeared to sit some distance from where they stood, guessing from the distances of the places the map showed and she had seen. One appeared nearer than the others.

"There are more skeletons the other way, too." Jova returned, trailing her hand across Shion's shoulders. She no longer seemed as terrified as she had at the very beginning. "Either way, I think it will be a fight. Same number as the others, but there are more skeletal mages in this lot. Could be a problem."