Indigo (NaNoWriMo13)

Chapter 21 - The Best Punishment

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Chapter 21 - The Best Punishment

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As Shift approached the Dungeon with Raph close behind him, he was struck by the overall calmness of the scene.

This was supposed to be a villain attack, an attempt to insert chaos into Sirah. One that Indigo was sworn to protect against, no matter the cost. Some villains fought harder than others, some more creatively, some with brute force, but they all fought in some way.

And yet there were no screaming civilians. There was no debris, no flames, and a distinct lack of combat that confused the living daylights out of him.

Maybe Talia and Athira just killed each other on the way over, he thought. Although we would have noticed huge clumps of ground missing on the way over, I guess.

The Dungeon did have a rather large crowd however, and that proved to be the biggest obstacle between Shift and reaching the building. He pushed through it gingerly, expecting to be recognised at any second.

 His expectations were unfounded. The onlookers spared him no more than a curious glance before continuing to stare at whatever was going on inside the Dungeon’s foyer.

Shift broke through the front line of the crowd. A woman complained before her friend pointed out who he was.

“That’s Shift, you moron.”

The woman grumbled. “Yea, well, it better be. I can barely hear what’s going on as it is.”

Her friend began to reply, but Shift shut them out.

That’s a first, thought Shift.

 Without bodies blocking his view, Shift was able to see what was going on... except he wasn’t entirely sure what that was.

The Dungeon was in pristine condition. The sandstone walls that framed the glass windows and doors, the latter of which were thrown wide open, appeared untouched. On the inside, the room he knew acted as a foyer for the store-slash-active-booby-trap of a building contained at least twenty people.

Of them, he only recognised three.

Zoe was to the left, sitting cross legged on the floor talking to a small child in her mother’s lap. Light fluttered around her fingers, followed by the wide eyes of the entranced kid. They were part of a thirteen strong crowd, none of which looked completely sure of themselves. As he watched, one moved forward. Shift was too far to hear the words, but their tone made it sound like a question. Whatever it was, Zoe nodded and gestured at the doors.

She caught sight of Shift entering the open glass doors and a large smile broke out across her face. She waved quickly before turning back to the child who was grabbing for her hands.

Shift hesitated at the doors, trying to work out exactly what it was Talia and Athira were doing.

Talia was the easiest. To some degree, she was playing warden.

The elemental stood in the middle of the room, in front of a receptionist’s desk that appeared to have been cracked in half horizontally. Her arms were folded, her gaze focused on the two unbound people kneeling at her feet, a man and a woman, while a third sat at her side, eyes cast downward while he asked a nervous looking chocolate-skinned woman how her day had been ‘before he interrupted’.

Finally, Shift looked to Athira. She was standing to the right hand side of the room, opposite from Zoe with one arm raised, her cowl hanging off her shoulders to reveal her shoulder length hair.