Chapter 10 - Stranger Things
An entomancer? I’ve no idea what that is. I’d never heard the term on Nexus before, but it nagged in the back of my head, echoing around my empty skull and on the tip of my tongue. Maybe from one of those old games Micah always played. I cursed under my breath at the half-remembered thought, abandoning my pride enough to ask.
“I’ve never heard of one of your kind before.”
For a brief moment, as I gazed into her eyes, I could feel her sadness, could feel that bottomless pit of despair that welled up inside me. It was so deep and lonely that I couldn’t breathe; her grief suffocating under the weight of it all, then she blinked, and the moment passed.
“Has it truly been so long that we’ve been forgotten?” she sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best. A fitting punishment for the crimes we committed.”
“What crimes?” I asked, leaning back against the table, pulling at the short hairs on my chin.
History had never been important to me, but even I would have remembered if someone had mentioned a race of insectoid demi-humans living on Nexus. I’ve never even heard of the Hive or entomancers or met anyone else who talked about them. Must be a reason for it…or a good story if nothing else.
I gave her my full attention, but the entomancer girl next to me was hesitant to speak, shifting on the spot, trying to work out something in her head. “Cat got your tongue?” I asked.
She looked up, startled. “That’s disgusting. Why would you ever let a cat hold your tongue?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “It’s just an expression. All I meant was that you seem to have a lot on your mind.”
“I do, and it’s not that I mind telling you, it’s just…it’s just a very long story.”
“Well, then I won’t push you to tell me,” I said, hopping onto the table. “What do you want to talk about then?”
“Doesn’t matter, just something else, sorry,” she said and started to poke around the room, kneeling and opening chests at random to peer inside. She opened one filled with gold, running her fingers over the numerous coins, picking them up and letting them spill out of her fingers.
I did have one question I wanted to know; it’d been burning in my mind since I met her, more so than the plethora of others I had, at least. “What's your name?”
She stopped playing with the gold and turned, staring at me, but not answering.
“You do have one, right?” I hedged.
She smirked at me, but her eyes darkened. “You had to ask a complicated question.”
“I didn’t realize it was.”
“I used to have one, but I can’t remember what it was.”
“How’d that happen?” I asked.
“Another long story,” she replied with a bitter chuckle. “But I suppose I do owe you something for saving me. I guess I should start with my mother, the true queen of the Hive. She…she wasn’t a good person, as painful as that is to admit. The day she became queen, everything changed. She took the throne by her strength alone, deposing the former king by force. And no one could stop her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but one day we were a normal enough family, and the next, my mother was the ruler of the entire kingdom,” she said, coming to lean against the table next to me. “Our society valued status and power above all else, but the power my mother received changed her, or maybe she was always that way, and I just never noticed.”
She hopped up on the table and lay back, staring at the stone ceiling above us for a minute. Her eyes held an emotion I couldn’t place, but it wasn’t a happy one.
“I loved my parents, but my family was a fine example of everything that was wrong with my people. My father only cared about advancing his station, and he couldn’t have been happier when my mother became queen, though it was short-lived. My father…he died shortly after my mother became queen.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, absentmindedly placing my hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said, placing her hand on my own. It had grown hotter, but I made no move to remove it. “Though after his death, and as awful as it is to say, some semblance of the mother I knew returned to me. I was so happy to have her back that I ignored what was happening around me.”
Her fingers clutched at my hand, curling around my fingers to wind in between them. She held my hand the way a lover does, and my heart skipped. I pulled back on reflex, and she looked up, a little confused.
“Sorry,” I said, but offered no explanation.
“It’s okay. I just feel comfortable around you.”
“Right.” I coughed. “So, this story is leading to why you lost your name?”
She inclined her head. “ I have to explain what led to it, or it won’t make any sense. Our people kept to themselves for the most part. We stayed secure in our home, the Nymirian Forest, but my mother began to expand, using our army to push well past our borders and toward Aldrust.”
Nymirian Forest? Never heard of it. Only thing next to Aldrust is the Badlands, nothing but sand and nightmares out there. I leaned back on the table, though worn, the sharp scent of brass was evident as I traced my finger over the nicks and scratches in the metal. “I’m guessing Aldrust didn’t take too kindly to that,” I said.
“That they didn’t, even though the majority of their kingdom is underground, they still owned the land above and pushed back hard. A few drops of blood were all it took for our kingdoms to go to war. But the races of the Hive were far stronger than the dwarves.”
“There are other races?” I asked, interrupting her.
She frowned at me. “Yes, there are…were five, including entomancers, but this will go much faster if you’d stop interrupting,” she said, grumbling.
“Sorry, I’m only human.”
Her frown thawed a bit. “It’s okay, I just don’t like remembering all of this. It still hurts.”
I knew that pain only too well, and I felt a twinge of guilt at basically making her tell me. “Look, you don’t have to continue—"
“Its fine, Duran. I’m almost to the end anyway.”
She shifted on the table, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her head on them. “When the war broke out, we had the upper hand, but eventually, we dragged Yllsaria into it as well. The elves and the dwarves banded together to defeat us. And they did.”
“They won the war?”
“Just barely, but yes. We’d exhausted ourselves and lost nearly all our forces. We’d brought the world to the brink of annihilation, and because of that, they demanded the eradication of our entire species.
“We couldn’t stop them from burning our forest to the ground and slaughtering us to the last. My mother took me and fled. We ran to the sacked city of Iryn, thinking it would be safe, but the dwarves quickly found us.”
“What happened after that?”
“We were punished. For instigating the war, my mother received the worst punishment possible: she was erased. Using black magic, everything she was, her entire being, was struck from the annals of time. It’s because of that I can’t remember what she looked like, what she sounded like. I don’t even remember her name.”
“Is that why you can’t remember your own name?”
She nodded, her obsidian eyes downcast as she stared at her bare feet before standing from the table. “My mother named me, and because it came from her, it too was erased. The only reason I still exist at all is that I’m not just a creation of my mother. The only thing my father was ever good for…and you already know my punishment. To be sealed away and bound as a slave to whoever freed me.”
Her eyes held such pain and loneliness as she walked away from me that I couldn’t stand it. Something in me reacted to that ocean of misery, and my body moved on its own. I jumped down from the table, crossed the room, and wrapped my arms around her.
The heat from her body was scalding, but I put it out of mind. She froze at first, going stiff as a board for a full minute, before relaxing
and returning my hug. I could tell she was trying to remain strong, but before long, she started to cry softly, fighting her tears.
“It’s okay,” I said, hugging her tighter.
At that, she broke down and started sobbing. Clutching at me, her fingers dug into my back, taking handfuls of my shirt as she cried into my chest. Crying away a millennium worth of terrible memories while I just stood there and let her.
It felt like the most natural thing in the world, and that petrified me. Why am I going so far for this girl? I kept people at arm's length for a reason and never let anyone get this close to me. Even my guildmates, who I loved as family, never really got that close to me. So why? Why her? Why now?
I had no answer as I stared down at the top of her head. A strange urge came over me, and I ran my fingers through her dirty blonde hair; it was soft as silk and dense enough that I’d need a machete to get through her thick locks.
The top of her scalp was just as heated as the rest of her, if not even more so, and my fingers burned as I stroked her head. The pain was uncomfortable, but I ignored it. Maybe the heat will burn some sense into me. I didn’t know whether me playing with her hair was doing anything, but she never told me to stop, so I kept at it as she sobbed.
She cried until she had nothing left, no more tears to cry. At some point, it seemed she’d cried herself to sleep. Her breathing deepened, yet she still clung to me. My foot had fallen asleep from standing in one spot for so long, so I tried to peel her from me, but she was stronger than she looked and wasn’t budging.
I didn’t want to wake her, so I settled for lowering to the ground and leaning against the table leg. While not the most comfortable I’d ever been, the rug was plush, and her body heat was more than hot enough to banish the chill from the room. I didn’t mean to fall asleep there, but the lingering effects of potion sickness left me very tired, and her warmth lulled me into a deep sleep.
***
It was pitch black when I woke; I couldn’t see a thing. The events of the day sped through my mind in a flash as I sat up, my head pounding with a migraine. The familiar silk told me I was in my bedroom, in my bed. My sheets bunched around me as I sat up and turned on the lamp. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I found I was alone in the room. How did I get here? Was all that just a dream? No. It was much too real.
I climbed out of bed and went out to the hallway. The flickering lights of numerous torches greeted me as I shut the door. Wilson had been waiting for me, hiding in the shadows cast by the torchlight. He was dressed in his usual attire, tailored black pants and an elegant black vest over his pristine white tunic with the sleeves rolled up. Numerous small tattoos ran up his arms, which was odd as he usually kept them covered. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, his steel gaze boring holes into me as I exited the room.
“Wilson?”
He nodded to me, no trace of humor in his eyes. “Duran,” he responded.
“What are you doing skulking about at this hour?”
“Waiting for you. Would you care to explain the demi-human we found with you in the loot room?”
I froze at his words, my mouth going dry. “Where is she?”
“In the dungeon, naturally.”
“What?”
Wilson looked at me, confusion in his eyes. “What else was I supposed to do? When I couldn’t find you in the med ward, or your room, Gil and I searched the castle for you. Only to find you unconscious in the loot room with an unfamiliar demi.”
I gnashed my teeth, fighting the urge to lash out at him. Wilson is my friend, why am I so emotional for a girl I don’t even know.
“Take me to her.”
“Of course,” he said, turning on his heels and heading down the stairs. We walked in cadence down the winding steps.
“So, where did she come from?”
“Um, she was imprisoned in a crystal. I found it amid the items from the siege. The item offered an instant boost to my stats, so I used it. The crystal shattered, and she appeared.”
He scratched at his beard, lost in thought as our footsteps echoed down the stairs. “I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
“Believe me, I was just as surprised. I don’t quite know what to make of her, either.”
“Well, it’s an easy enough fix. Send her on her way and be done with it,” he said, casting his gaze at me.
“Can’t do that.”
He turned to look at me. “And why not?”
I tugged at my ponytail, hesitant to speak. “Because she kind of belongs to me now.”
Wilson’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. The vein in his forehead pulsed as his face reddened.
“What?” he shouted, almost walking into the door that led to the second floor.
I didn’t respond, merely opened the door and made my way down to the first floor in silence, while Wilson followed after me, chewing things over and calming from his outburst.
“We don’t keep slaves, Duran. That was one of the rules you set in place when we founded the Guild.”
“You think I’m happy about it? I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.”
He held the door to the first floor open for me, and we made a sharp right and down another long hallway till we reached the entrance to the basement. “We always have a choice, D.”
“She would have died otherwise. She told me she was cursed.”
He scoffed. “And you just believed her? You’ve always been reckless, but never stupid.”
I didn’t have an answer for him. The situation was confusing as hell. Even if I tried to explain things, I had no clue what was going on, let alone a way to describe it properly.
I just accepted everything she’d told me out of hand, without doubting her for a second. Wilson’s right. I’ve never been this naive before. But as we walked down the damp steps to the dungeon, I knew without a doubt that what she’d told me was the truth. Those tears were real. She couldn’t fake that. And I also refused to believe anyone would willingly bind themselves into slavery.
“She’s given me no reason not to trust her, so until she does, I’ll take her at her word.”
Wilson just sighed and shook his head. To be fair, I couldn’t blame him for his skepticism—it’d kept us alive in the past, so I couldn’t hold it against him. But he wasn’t the one in the room with her. He didn’t hear her story.
We walked down even more steps, the air growing colder and the cleanliness worsening as we walked to the deepest level of the castle, stopping at a large iron door. The metal door to the dungeon was rusted with age and damp with moss. This level of the castle was underneath Lake Gloom, and the moisture sunk into the stone along with our lungs with every breath. Mold and rot.
The iron wailed as we shoved the door open, entering the room. There were four cells in the small room, two on either side of the walls. While the room itself was in disrepair, Gil periodically forged new iron bars and gates for the cells whenever they rusted. It had been some months since the last time, and the iron was looking worse for wear, reminding me that we would need to replace them soon.
There was only one occupant in the room. She huddled on the mildew stained cot in the corner of the first cell; her knees pushed to her chest, and her arms hugging them while her large black eyes stared straight ahead, vacant and unblinking. Not looking at anything.
Back in prison, so soon after escaping. She didn’t so much as stir as we entered and walked over to her. Wilson stood by the gate, looking at her with distrust.
“Open the door,” I commanded.
Her eyes went wide at my voice. She shot up from the cot and stared at me with nothing short of hope in them. “Duran! I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
I gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll have you out in a second.”
“I advise against this D. We should leave her here till we determine if she can be trusted.”
“Do it.”
“D—”
“Now, Wilson.”
He had to go there; he knew I felt responsible for Alistair’s death. I sighed. Any other time and I’d have listened to him. Much as he thought I didn’t, I never shirked his advice, but I didn’t always take it, either. He was right about the girl, but I wasn’t about to leave her here to rot.
“The door.”
He rubbed his eyes but didn’t fight me, pulling the key from within the pocket of his vest. I wasn’t budging, and he knew it, but that didn’t stop him from trying one last time to get me to see his reason. “You don’t even know this girl’s name, and you’re still going against me?”
My migraine worsened. Blood, too loud in my ears, my head heavy, a phantom itch in the back of my mind. I snatched the key from his hands. “Her name is Eris.”
I unlocked the door, it swung open to rattle against the iron bars. She rushed out in a flash and ran over to me, wrapping her arm around mine.
Giving me a smile of gratitude, she turned to Wilson. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I hope to prove you wrong about me.”
Wilson’s frown deepened, his crow's feet sharp against his gray eyes as he furrowed his brow and gave her a curt nod. “Doesn’t seem like my opinion matters regardless.”
He walked past us out of the room, only stopping long enough to say one last thing.
“Guild meeting, tomorrow morning, nine o’clock.”
His footsteps thumped sharply against the stone as he stormed out.
I leaned on the cell. “Best give him a minute. I don’t want to run into him again tonight, not while he’s still upset.”
“That’s probably wise. He doesn’t like me,” she said, leaning against me. “So…Eris, huh?”
My face flushed, and I grinned down at her. “Yeah, sorry. It just came to me.”
She hummed to herself for a few seconds. The beginnings of a song I’d never heard before, but it was soothing. “Eris, Eris. I like it.”
Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Page 14
