24. The Dungeon (2)

— Clank.

A heavy metallic sound rang out down the silent corridor. I twirled the ring of keys around my finger and looked down at the jailer sprawled across the floor.

“I’m not really the type to hold a grudge, you know.”

The jailer lay face-down on his desk, dead to the world. The moment I’d stepped out of the cell, I’d spun on my heel and clubbed the dozing bastard in the back of the head, and this was the result.

I scooped up the key ring I’d lifted from his belt and headed for the next cell over. From the dark inside it, the man there watched me, his eyes a tangle of shock and confusion.

“…What the hell are you?”
“A prisoner with sticky fingers?”

Eve told me which one was right, but I deliberately fished out one wrong key after another, making a show of trying each in the lock to drag things out. In that little window, we kept the conversation going.

“You’re not exactly an ordinary prisoner.”
“I’m as ordinary a prisoner as they come.”
“Where do you belong?”
“The Imperial army, obviously. Why else would they have hauled me in here?”
“I don’t buy it.”

Through the gap in the bars, his eyes met mine. The cell was dark, so I could barely make him out, while he had a clear view of me. To the man watching me from the shadows, I said:

“When you ask someone to introduce themselves, you’re supposed to go first, you know.”

— Clack.

“Come see for yourself. Whether I’m friend or foe.”

— Kreeeak.

Instead of an answer, the rusted iron door swung open and the man stepped out of the dark. The torchlight in the corridor lit his face. Beneath a prisoner’s uniform identical to mine, his skin was eerily pale and his hair ash-grey, and above all, the pointed ears jutting up through that hair told me he wasn’t human.

“An elf?”
“First time seeing a knife-ear?”

Elves had existed back in my gaming days too. Even the dark elves, the ones corrupted and fallen through demonification, were elves all the same.

“I’m Beron.”
“What?”

Beron stared at me with a look of pure disbelief.

“Said the guy who told me you introduce yourself first. Do you humans forget what you said two seconds ago?”

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. This elf had a pretty fun personality.

“Kael. As you can see, I’m human.”

I tugged at one of my ears as I said it, and Beron burst out laughing. Once he’d had his fill, he asked:

“So, Kael — what’s your real identity?”
“Told you. Just your run-of-the-mill conscript hauled into this godforsaken camp.”

“Kael” was a name I’d given myself on the fly.

“For your run-of-the-mill soldier, don’t you think a little too highly of your own abilities?”
“Thanks for the compliment. So, Beron — what now?”

When I lobbed the question back, Beron jerked his chin toward the room with the unconscious jailer.

“First, let’s grab what we can.”

.

.

.

I changed into the unconscious jailer’s clothes. He and I weren’t the same size, so they hung loose on me, but I cinched the leather belt tight and managed a passable imitation.

I rummaged through the jailer’s room but turned up no spare set of clothes. Just as I was mulling it over, Beron spoke up.

“There aren’t any elves on the House Arne side anyway. If I were the one wearing the jailer’s clothes, I’d get spotted instantly.”

Beron smiled bitterly as he furtively tucked a dagger he’d pulled off the jailer’s body into his own prisoner’s outfit. Then he tossed me the same club the jailer had used to beat me earlier.

“That’s your main weapon. Keep it close.”

I looked over the club, blackened with my own dried blood, and nodded.

“Fair enough. It’d be a waste putting a face like yours into a lowly jailer’s role.”

To my joke, Beron answered with a hardened expression instead of a laugh.

“Hmm. By our people’s standards, this is an exceptionally plain face.”

He picked a pair of manacles up off the floor, turned them over in his hands a moment, and added in a self-mocking voice:

“Then again, maybe I count as a handsome one now.”
“How come?”

Beron held the manacles out toward me. His meaning was clear: put them on me.

“Since every last one of us got captured and sold off as slaves.”

I locked the manacles around his wrists without a word. I felt no urge to pity him. Pity changes nothing in the real world.

Beron pulled the hood of his prisoner’s outfit up over his head to hide his ears, and said:

“By the way — which way is the exit?”

That question would be answered by someone other than me.

Beron couldn’t hear or see her, of course.

— Clank, clank.

The key ring at my belt rang unusually loud. I took the lead, mimicking the swagger of an arrogant jailer, while Beron trailed behind with his manacled hands hanging low and his head bowed.

The corridor that started on the lowest underground floor was anything but straightforward. This prison was a masterpiece of inefficiency. Climbing a single floor meant crossing the full length of a long corridor to the staircase at the far end, then doubling back the opposite way on the next floor, a zigzag the whole way up. Which meant that, like it or not, we had to file past every last cell on every floor.

Eve, out in front, waved me on. I matched her signal and tore down the corridor without hesitation.

“…”

Behind me, Beron’s eyes narrowed. The way I never wavered as I rounded each corner was striking him as bizarre. I didn’t slow down even in the dead corners the torchlight couldn’t reach.

And that was when it happened.

Eve, racing ahead, frantically threw her arms up in an X to block my path.

I froze on the spot and pressed my back to the wall. Beron, right behind me, slammed into my back at the sudden stop.

“What — why’d you suddenly st—”
“Shh.”

I pressed a finger to my lips and pointed up the staircase. Beron tilted his head, puzzled, and strained to listen. At first there was nothing, but a moment later it reached us too.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The tread of combat boots and the murmur of soldiers’ voices filtered faintly down.

“Ah, dammit. Of all the nights to pull patrol — banquet night.”
“Let’s wrap this up quick and get back to the food.”

Beron’s pupils trembled. A human had caught a sound he himself was only now starting to register, and caught it well before his own sharp elf ears could. That was clearly more than he could quite believe.

Timing’s bad.

There was nowhere to hide. The corridor was narrow, without so much as a crevice to slip into, and doubling back would look far too suspicious. That left only one option: brazenly, head-on, straight through.

The two-man patrol came down around the bend in the stairs toward us.

“What — who goes there!”

They rounded the last of the steps, spotted us, and leveled their spears. I didn’t panic. I answered in the irritated voice of a jailer worn out by graveyard shifts:

“Sector Five. I’m assigned here.”

I held up the wooden tag I’d lifted from the jailer’s pocket, then jerked my chin at Beron behind me.

“Orders from upstairs. Said to drag this knife-ear up to the ground floor.”

The soldiers’ eyes locked onto Beron. The prison uniform, the manacles, the head bowed low. The very picture of a prisoner being hauled off.

“At this hour of the night?”

I’d been shut in the dungeon and hadn’t known, but from their reaction, it was apparently the dead of night outside.

The instant the suspicion began to bloom, I pulled out the cheat code without hesitation.

“The Saintess herself is going to interrogate him. You got a problem with it, take it up with her in person.”

The moment the Saintess’s name landed, the soldiers’ edge dulled a notch. Her authority on the House Arne side was, as expected, absolute. In the end they let go of their suspicion and stepped aside.

We were on the verge of slipping right between them.

“Hold on.”

One of the soldiers stopped, strode up to Beron, and yanked the hood off his head. The long, pointed ears that had been hidden in the dark came into the light.

“This piece of shit — he’s an elf, alright.”

And the instant the words left his mouth.

— Thwack!

The soldier drove his fist up into Beron’s gut. It was a hard blow, but Beron took it without so much as a groan, swaying only slightly.

“You have any idea how many of my comrades you bastards killed?”

The soldier cocked his fist again, like he was nowhere near finished. The hatred for elves piled up on the battlefield looked ready to boil over.

“Hey, hey! Take it easy.”

Just as I was wondering whether I’d need to step in, the other soldier held him back and shot me a glance. The kind of look that quietly asked me to look the other way.

“You get it, don’t you?”

I clapped the soldier on the shoulder, doing my best to keep my voice flat and detached:

“…I’m holding myself back from killing him right now too. What can you do — the Saintess gave the order, so we keep him alive.”

My performance, pitched to play on shared feeling, finally seemed to land. The soldier let the anger drain out of him and stepped back. He hawked and spat at Beron, then cleared the way.

“Count yourself lucky, knife-ear.”

We picked up the pace to get clear of the soldiers’ line of sight. Only once we’d rounded a dark corner and put a safe distance between us did I glance back at Beron.

“You alright?”
“Tickled a little.”

Beron answered with total indifference, not even rubbing his throbbing stomach. His face was so calm it was hard to believe he was the one who’d taken a fist to the gut a moment ago.

I stared steadily into his dry, level eyes and said:

“Doesn’t look like you’re just some ordinary elf prisoner who got lucky to still be alive.”

I wasn’t the only one in this corridor who was no ordinary soldier. Still holding his gaze, I added:

“From the look of it, you’ve gotten your hands plenty bloody too.”

Beron didn’t deny the probe. If anything, he gave a wry smile and shrugged.

“Just what happens when you flail around hard enough to stay alive.”
“Hmm.”

I cocked my head, exaggerated and performative.

“Last I heard, elves sang of peace in the shade of the World Tree and lived as friends to nature… seems elves these days are pretty unrestrained when it comes to slaughter, though.”

When I trotted out the standard fantasy-elf image, Beron snorted.

“Peace? Songs?”

Beron’s eyes went cold and quiet.

“The comrades who sang of peace and walked in nature were all kidnapped. But the so-called chieftain feared change more than he feared his missing comrades.”

I held my response and let him keep talking.

“Elves who refused to learn the song were branded malcontents and banished.”

A thick disillusionment seeped through his level tone.

“And the Empire took you in, since you’d been driven out.”

Beron flicked the dagger he’d hidden in his clothes and cut the conversation short. His posture said it plainly: no more talk of the past.

“Save the chit-chat for later. We need to move before they catch on.”

He had a point. This was no time to be sitting around airing each other’s life stories. I nodded and kept my eyes on the path ahead.

We climbed for a while longer.

We reached the end of the tediously zigzagging corridors. At the top stood a massive iron door, sealing off every sound from beyond.

I shoved it hard with both hands.

— Kreeeak.

The instant the door opened, an ear-splitting roar surged out on a wave of raw, sticky-hot air.

“WAAAAAH!”
“Long live Arne! Long live the Saintess!”

The exact opposite of the dungeon’s silence. In front of us spread an enormous banquet hall lit by glittering chandeliers. Long tables groaned under mountains of food, and hundreds of soldiers were heaped over one another, tearing into meat and drink.

Soldiers clinking cups and dancing brushed past us as they went. One of them even bumped shoulders with Beron. Yet not one of them stopped us; not one so much as gave us a suspicious glance.

And that was when it came.

“…”

In the banquet hall, rowdy as a marketplace a heartbeat ago, an impossible silence dropped over everything all at once. As if by prior arrangement, every soldier’s gaze swung to the same point, the top of the highest dais.

A woman stood there, tall and luminous, in a spotless white gown that shone against all the battlefield grime and reek of blood. What caught my eye first was her brown hair, cropped clean to the jawline. That sharp bob, baring the line of her neck, only sharpened her polished, worldly beauty, and when she tilted her head a fraction, the chandelier light caught the strands and they shimmered gold.

I’d never once laid eyes on her in the flesh. But even a blind man could have seen it. That dazzling woman was none other than Saintess Astraea.