The Book of Many People

Lore

WARNING: ALLUSIONS TO CANNIBALISM. NOTHING EXPLICIT.

Celestar came to and blinked, wondering if he'd gone blind.

He couldn't see anything; the world around him was pitch dark. He'd never not been able to see before. It worried him.

"Hello?" He called out. "Anyone there? Nevay? Kaia?"

"Kaia?" A voice echoed back. Suddenly a hand closed around his throat, cutting off his air. Celestar sputtered and jerked, but something held him down. "What do you know about her?"

"I'm her friend," Celestar gasped out. The hand tightened.

"You lie!"

"I'm not," he choked desperately. "I swear. We've come from Lallune to save her husband Lore!"

The hand let up.

"Truly?" The voice asked, sounding lost. "Truly?"

"Yes," Celestar panted. A drop of water plunked into a puddle somewhere, sound magnified by the chamber walls. "It's true. I rescued Kaia, Vraide, Tenn, and some others from a farm on Lallune. I was going to Matiquestinn, and Kaia asked if she could come along and look for her husband. You wouldn't happen to know Lore, would you?"

"Know Lore?" The voice repeated. For a moment Celestar wondered if the person had understood what he'd said. Then the voice said, "I am Lore."

"Oh," said Celestar. "Hello."

"Hello," said Lore. "Who are you?"

"I'm Celestar," said Celestar. "Er. Where are we?"

"At the bottom of a pit," said Lore. "It's where they dump the bodies of dead prisoners."

"Explains the stench," mumbled Celestar. He screwed up his nose in distaste. "Erm. Pardon me asking, but you're not dead, so what are you doing down here?"

"Not much," said Lore. "Surviving. They thought I died. They threw me down. I landed on a pile of corpses and lived. I've been down here for... I don't know how long." Celestar could sense the shudder he gave off.

Blinking, he realized he could see now. "I'm sorry, Lore," he said gently. "But I'm here with Kaia and Nevay, and we've come to get you out."

"How?" Lore moved away from him. "There's no way to get out of here."

"There's always a way," said Celestar. He sat up and winced in pain, which only made the pain worse. "Stars," he gasped. "What did I do to my shoulder?" His right hand came up and covered the hurting joint.

"You must've dislocated it in the fall," said Lore. "Here." He moved closer. "I will put it back."

"Oh, no no no- Ah!" Celestar yelped as Lore snapped his shoulder back into the proper position. "Ow. Thank you."

"No problem," said Lore. "Don't move it."

"... Right."

Celestar surveyed the space around them. He was sitting on a slab of stone elevated from the rest of the floor. The wall was circular. It looked like the bottom of a well. Water dripped down the stone and pooled on the ground. Some of the puddles were rancid-smelling, and had corpses floating in them. More dead bodies were scattered around the area. Some were contorted into awful positions. Some were missing limbs. Others, and Celestar found this the most disturbing, had chunks torn from them. Around the edges of the missing chunks were imprints of what Celestar could only assume was teeth.

A person's teeth.

He turned his gaze away from them and onto his current companion.

Lore was a short male. He was covered in grubby rags, and sported a pair of spectacles on his face. They were extremely dirty. The entirety of him was covered in a layer of grime, making it impossible to discern any coloration. Not that Celestar could see any color anyways; it was too dark.