24. The Dungeon (2)

— Clank.

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

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

He lay face-down on his desk, dead to the world. The instant I’d walked out of the cell, I’d struck the dozing bastard on the back of the head, and this was the result.

I took the keys I’d snatched from his belt and headed for the cell next door, where the man inside was staring at me out of the darkness, his eyes a mix of shock and bewilderment.

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

Eve had told me which one was right, but I deliberately pulled out one wrong key after another and made a show of trying each in the lock, just to waste time. In that brief window, we kept the conversation going.

“You’re not exactly an ordinary prisoner.”
“I’m as ordinary a prisoner as they come.”
“Who are you with?”
“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. It was dark inside the cell, so I couldn’t see him very well, but he’d have a clear view of me. I spoke to the man watching me from that darkness.

“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 darkness, and the torchlight in the corridor lit up his face.

He wore a prisoner’s outfit identical to mine, but his skin was uncannily pale and his hair was ash-grey. More than anything, 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 future game days too. Even if they were dark elves, corrupted by demonification and fallen, an elf was an elf.

“I’m Beron.”
“What?”

Beron stared at me with a look of utter 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 into hearty laughter.

When he’d had a good laugh, he asked me, “So, Kael — what are you really?”

“Told you. Just your run-of-the-mill conscript hauled into this godforsaken camp.”

The name Kael was one I’d made up on the fly.

“You think a lot of yourself for a run-of-the-mill soldier, don’t you?”
“Thanks for the compliment. So, Beron — what now?”

With the question tossed back at him, 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 the fit was loose, but I cinched the leather belt tight and managed a decent enough imitation.

I rummaged through his room for a spare set and came up empty, and I was still thinking that over when Beron spoke up.

“There aren’t any elves on the House Arne side anyway. Stick me in jailer’s clothes and I’d get spotted instantly.”

He smiled bitterly as he furtively tucked a dagger he’d pulled off the jailer’s body inside 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. A face like yours would be wasted on a lowly jailer.”

It was a joke, but Beron answered with a hardened expression instead of a laugh.

“Hmm. Among my people, this is about as plain as a face gets.”

He picked up a pair of manacles from the floor, fiddled with them for a moment, and added in a self-mocking voice, “Then again, maybe I count as a handsome one now.”

“How come?”

He held the manacles out to me, and his meaning was put them on me.

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

I locked them around his wrists without a word. I had no inclination to feel sorry for him, because pity doesn’t change anything in reality.

Beron pulled the hood of his prisoner’s outfit up over his head to hide his ears. “By the way — which way is the exit?”

Someone other than me would be answering that.

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

— Clank, clank.

The key ring at my belt rang unusually loud. I led the way with the swagger of an arrogant jailer, and Beron followed behind me with his manacled hands hanging down and his head bowed.

The corridor that began on the lowest underground floor was anything but straightforward, because this prison was a masterpiece of inefficiency. It was laid out in a zigzag. To climb a single floor, you had to cross the length of a long corridor and reach the staircase at the far end, and on the next floor you had to cross back the other way. So, like it or not, we had to pass the countless cells laid out on each floor.

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

“…”

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

That was when —

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

I froze at once and pressed my back against the wall, and Beron, following behind, slammed into my back at the sudden stop.

“What — why’d you suddenly st—”

“Shh.” I pressed an index finger to my lips and pointed up at the staircase.

Beron tilted his head, puzzled, and listened. At first there wasn’t a sound, but a moment later —

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Combat boots and soldiers’ voices started to filter down, faintly.

“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 like me had picked up a sound long before his sharp elf ears could, a sound he was only now starting to catch, and 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 of the stairs toward us.

“What — who goes there!”

They’d rounded the staircase and spotted us, and now their spears came level.

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 taken 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’ gazes locked onto Beron: the prison outfit, the manacles, the deeply bowed head. He was the picture of a prisoner being dragged off if there ever was one.

“At this hour of the night?”

I’d been stuck in the dungeon and hadn’t known, but from that reaction, it was apparently the dead of night outside. Suspicion was starting to bloom, so 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 instant her name came out, the soldiers’ edge dulled by a notch. The Saintess’s authority on the House Arne side was, as expected, absolute. In the end they dropped their suspicion and stepped aside, and we were about to stroll past between them when —

“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 darkness came into the light.

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

And the instant he said it —

— Thwack!

The soldier drove his fist up into Beron’s gut. It was a hard blow, yet Beron took it without so much as a groan, staggering but holding on.

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

He raised his fist again, like he was nowhere near done. It looked like the hatred for elves piled up on the battlefield was boiling over.

“Hey, hey! Take it easy.”

I was just wondering whether I needed to step in when the other soldier held him back and shot me a glance, the kind that silently 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 want to kill him right now too. I’m holding back. What can you do — the Saintess gave the order, so we keep him alive.”

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

“Count yourself lucky, knife-ear.”

We picked up the pace to get out of the soldiers’ line of sight, and only after we’d rounded a dark corner and put a fully safe distance between us did I glance back at Beron.

“You alright?”
“Tickled a little.”

He said it with total indifference, not even rubbing his throbbing stomach. His expression was so calm you’d wonder if he’d really been the one punched a minute ago.

I stared steadily into his dry, level eyes. “Doesn’t look like you’re just some ordinary elf prisoner who got lucky and lived.”

I wasn’t the only one in this corridor who wasn’t an ordinary soldier. I held that dry gaze and added, “From the look of it, you’ve gotten your hands plenty bloody too.”

Beron didn’t deny my 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 in an exaggerated, performative way. “Last I heard, elves sang of peace in the shade of the World Tree and lived as friends to nature… seems elves these days aren’t too shy about slaughter, though.”

I’d trotted out the standard fantasy-elf image, and Beron snorted.

“Peace? Songs?”

His eyes went cold and quiet.

“The comrades who sang of peace and walked in nature were all kidnapped. But the so-called chieftain was more afraid of change than of losing them.”

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.

“Guess the Empire took you in after you got kicked out.”

Beron flicked the dagger he’d hidden in his clothes and cut the conversation off, his posture saying no more past-talk.

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

He had a point. This wasn’t the moment to be sitting around airing each other’s personal histories, so I nodded and kept my eyes on the path ahead.

After climbing for a while —

We’d reached the end of the tediously zigzagging corridors. Up there, a massive iron door sealed off all sound from beyond, and I pushed it with all my strength.

— Kreeeak.

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

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

It was the exact opposite of the dungeon’s silence.

In front of us lay an enormous banquet hall lit by glittering chandeliers, where long tables groaned under mountains of food and hundreds of soldiers, piled on top of each other, were devouring meat and drink. Soldiers clinking cups together and dancing brushed past us as they went by, and one of them even bumped shoulders with Beron, but not a single one stopped us. Not a single one even gave us a suspicious look.

That was when —

“…”

The hall had been noisy as a marketplace a heartbeat ago, yet an impossible silence dropped over everything in an instant. As if by prior agreement, every soldier’s gaze swung to the same point: the top of the highest dais.

There stood a woman in a pristine white gown that shone with lofty grace, out of place amid the battlefield’s grime and blood-smell.

The first thing that caught my eye was her brown hair, cropped clean to the jawline. The sharp bob bared the line of her neck and made her urbane, polished beauty stand out even more, and when she tilted her head slightly, the chandeliers’ light caught her hair and it shimmered gold.

I’d never once seen her in the flesh, but even a dog passing by would have known.

That dazzling woman was none other than Saintess Astraea.