You Can't Hide Forever

His Butler, in an Isolated Castle (part 2)

"What is this?!", Ciel exclaimed as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Different skeletal figures were carved on the walls between the pillars on each side of the wall, each in a different outfit of sorts. On the ground, where the walls of the carvings meet the floor, skeletal human remains either sat or laid against the wall. Candles on the pillars dimly lit the hallway, making it all the more eery.

"A crypt, it would seem", Sebastian replied. As we began walking, Ciel stepped on a bone that belonged to one of the sets of remains and it easily snapped under the pressure.

"Please be careful", the voice of Edward called. We looked up and saw Edward appear before us out of thin air once again. "No human has set foot in here for a long time."

"Your Majesty, what is this place?", Ciel asked.

"It was originally a dungeon", Edward began before looking at the remains. "Criminals the Church refused to bury were thrown in here and eventually forgotten." Edward picked up one of the nearby skulls. As he looked at it in his hands, a dark purple strip circled above the top of the skull, the circle being almost the same size as a halo or smaller. "Their souls have been forgotten even by the grim reapers. The path to heaven is closed to them." He watched the strip fly up to a chandelier along with other strips and light the candles on it. "Once on the spur of the moment, I made something to remember them by." Edward stepped out of the way to reveal an alter that resembled a chessboard, around fifteen skulls of different shapes and sizes, but all human, arranged like chess pieces. "I'll introduce you. This is my father." He gestured to different skulls as he introduced a new one. "The king is my father, and my mother is the queen." He looked back at us. "Perhaps my choices were conventional and boring?"

I looked at him with pity, but he did not seem to notice. He and his brother had been dead for at least 400 years, meaning that if all of the skulls supposedly belonged to close family members that most likely died less than half a century after he and his brother or possibly even a little before them, then their skulls should've been in the same condition as their very own. Gone. After 400 years of decay in the corpse, the muscle, skin, and other tissue were long gone and their bones should all be no more than dust. Or at least missing. I wasn't sure if bones decayed along with the rest of the body or not, honestly. Edward turned back to the set up.

"That rook is Earl Rivers, and my uncle is a bishop", he continued. "It's a reunion of my family's bones." Ciel looked at the alter and noticed an empty square among the filled ones.

"One of the knights is missing...", he pointed out.

"That spot is for Richard", Edward said.

"Can't you find him, Sire?", Ciel asked. He looked over at us.

"That's not it. His bones are here", Edward said. "I got the bones that came from the Tower 200 years ago. But Richard took hold of the skull and won't let it go. You see, Phantomhive, all I want is to send my brother on." He looked away again. "To be with God, where there is no pain or suffering." Ciel's eyes widened slightly before narrowing and his face clouding over and closing his eyes.

"To heaven?", Ciel asked, as if that a foreign word to him. Although, knowing his contract with Sebastian, I knew his soul would never make it to any sort of afterlife and would instead be devoured by the demon. Edward gazed at the skulls, not looking back at us.

"Yes. That wish will come true if I complete this set", he said.

"In other words, if you get that skull, you'll be satisfied?", Ciel asked. I saw a scheming smile form on his face for a split second before he looked up at Edward seriously. He was planning something. "You wish to have it, correct?" Ciel smiled with an evil, scheming look of sorts. "No matter what you have to sacrifice."