Chapter 50: Dwarves Are Christians?

Isabella Castillo wouldn't consider Demarcus to be a cunning man.

A kind one? most definitely.

Loyal? Painfully so.

Protective, fierce, boisterous, easy-going, and sentimental? Absolutely.

Not cunning.

She was wrong.

“Man, us being underground without any sun, the lil’ nap, and all the fighting? Makes it impossible to tell what time of day it is. Plus, I got [Enhanced Endurance], so I got no idea how tired I'm supposed to be. Anybody know what time it is?” Demarcus asks the air as he, Mato, and Cy dismantle the trapped hallway, still half shrouded in magical darkness. His eyes rapidly swap between what he's doing and the back of Cy’s head, expectantly.

Mato answers first, saying “I'd say it's ‘bout late evenin’.”

Izzy picks up on what D’s trying to do, and gives him the assist, deep in thought as she pries apart the fallen robots.

“I have no idea. Cy?”

Cy replies half-attentively as he casts some spell at the edge of the dark.

“No clue.”

“You'd think this spell would be on a timer or something? As far as I can tell, all the golems that are out in there we either killed or are— terrifyingly silent somewhere in the dark.”

Izzy's gaze flits back to Demarcus, who has gone still at Cy’s response.

She was wrong. She can admit that— though she's usually loath to give anyone the opportunity to wield it against her, this mistake was safely in her head. She adjusts her mental measure of the man.

Demarcus has some cunning in him, or at least some tact. She’d guess that he just doesn't like to be underhanded. But he just delivered la puntilla, the killing blow, to Cy’s little charade.

From the moment Cy reappeared, Izzy had her suspicions. Suspicions she's telling herself are from her intuition and perceptiveness, that she knew from the start that this wasn't the same Cy, but in actuality just come from the cynical and contrarian perspective of a troubled teenager which she applies to everything.

She chalked it up to him being from the future at first; the new clothing motif, the nature spells, the distance and walls he's put between him and the group, the odd limits he's applying to himself like he's following instructions, the absence of his book about the future— and now this: he has no [Sense of Timing].

All of it could have been written off as him changing from his experiences before he came back, he could have even changed classes and had his [Sense of Timing] skill changed— but Izzy knew better. (She didn't.)

She… gets this game. Better than the guys around her, at least. Whether that comes from a mix of all the games she's played and series she's read, her artistic senses, or something inherent to the [Bard] classes, she gets the vibe of it. What would make sense to Izzy, would be that [Sense of Timing] would be useful in any class. So even if Cy’s class had changed, that one should've stuck around. Unless his class changed so drastically that the skill instead senses the stage of growth that trees are in or something. But for that to be the case, that would mean that he's no longer a time traveler, and if that's true, then how the hell did he time travel to here and now?

So, Izzy thinks as she occasionally glances at Cy while she pulls any intricate or expensive looking machinery from the robots, who the hell is this pendejo?

The quiet hiss from the traps that pervaded the room and was therefore tuned out suddenly stops, and the magical darkness in front of them begins to dissipate.

Cy stops his spell and takes several steps backwards.

“That wasn't me— I don't think.— I didn't do that. Did you do that?” He asks Demarcus, who steps back from the door he’s prying the welded plate from.

Demarcus shakes his head, and Mato stands from where he’s been trying to outline and disable the flush stone pressure plate.

“Look out! There's more!” Mato shouts, first one to be able to see through the fading dark.

He whips up his crossbow, and fires off a bolt into what Izzy can see as a smallish metal box on the floor. The bolt sparks against it, and the little thing bounces and squeaks as it begins to serpentine-weave its way across the floor. With one wheel stuck, it misses the small and open hatch along the base of the wall, and bashes against the wall, flipping itself over.

Izzy watches 3 more in various places in the now revealed hall scatter and flee into the hatches along the walls— the nicer ones that look like they should actually be there. The areas of the floor they scampered away from are suspiciously clean in a short radius.

The flipped one squeaks and beeps a high pitched and rhythmic pattern as the group gingerly approaches to better see. Mato points out the boundary of the pressure plate and makes sure no one steps on it.

The little thing is just a box with 4 wheels. It has an odd flap and a wide rotating brush on one end, below little sensors that resemble the beady black eyes of a rodent, giving the impression of a little mustachioed face. It squirts a sterile smelling liquid into the air, harmlessly, as its wheels spin.

“It's a roomba.” Cy remarks, noticing the clean patches on the floor and remembering the suspiciously clean section of hall that belied the trap.

Izzy would've said mouse droid, like from Star Wars.

Izzy edges to the front of the group, taking her guitar off her back, and tries to reach the little robot with it but gets pulled back by Mato when she comes short and nearly stumbles onto the pressure plate when she shifts her weight to her bad leg.

“This is why Pokin’ Sticks are the best.” Cy says, pulling this long, gnarled and charred branch from his fanny pack.

A slight glow emanates from the stick, far more noticeable in the dark of the dungeon. The glow grows for only a moment when he taps the side of the robot with the stick. The little droid squeaks and 3 of its wheels spin whenever he does.

Mato’s eyes are vigilant as he remains cautious, but a flush begins to enter his cheeks the more the pitiful machine reveals itself as seemingly harmless.

“D, can you reach it with your crowbar?” Izzy asks him.

“I mean, yeah, but I don't wanna break it. Look at the little dude.” He replies, adorably.

“We're not gonna break it. Just use the hook to drag it closer.” She clarifies.

He does so, and Izzy stops him when he tries to flip it back onto its wheels. She gingerly picks it up by the edge, and its rhythmic beeping and squeaking accelerandos the closer she brings it to her. She reaches with her other hand for the spot where Mato’s shot bent the sheet metal and its wheel grinds, unable to turn. She stops before she jams a finger in there, and instead turns it to “face” her.

“I don't know if you understand Spanish, but I'm going to fix you. Don't turn your wheels or I'm going to drop you. Okay?” She says, slowly trying to explain something to a magical roomba.

The wheels slow, then stop, and the squeals and beeps reduce down to a simple occasional beep, like breathing. She slowly and carefully reaches down to the stuck wheel, and jams her finger into the well. The metal cuts into her finger as she levers it out, but with a bit of elbow grease it breaks free of the rubber wheel and bends back. The droid lets out a loud squeal for a second like a motor whirring up when she does, and its wheels move for less than half a rotation then suddenly stop— like a flinch.

“There ya go.” Izzy calmly says, and bends down to set it back down on the floor.

When it touches the floor, it stays still for a second, then speeds off to the hatch it had missed before. The metal flap slams shut behind it. The group looks up to see the other 3 flaps slam shut as the peeking droids retreat into their holes once noticed.

Izzy is stunned for a second, before saying “I don't know why you would program that level of intelligence into a little cleaning droid. Seems cruel to me.”

“It was probably a skill of whomever made them. [Creations: Enhanced Intelligence] or something.” Cy says.

They simply stare at the hall for a moment more, waiting for the hatches to open and the little cleaner droids to come back out. When they don't, Mato sets back to disabling the pressure plate, grumbling to the group.

“Don't exert yer’selves. I just got ya patched up.”

Izzy steps back to her little pile of doodads, suddenly feeling a little worse about the task. She feels like a butcher, cutting apart these mechanical creatures for their “choice” parts. She's played games though. She knows they'll need money, and Cy is likely right about this melding of magic and machinery being undeniably valuable. But, maybe they could've been repaired. Probably best that they aren't— the robotic golems did try to eviscerate them, after all. But why?

The thought sticks in her brain as Mato confirms that he's done. She scoops up her little pile of odd machinery, some of which is likely worthless, but she can't determine that. She taps Mato on the shoulder, asking him to crouch a bit, and stuffs the machinery in his bag of holding.

“What's that fer?” He asks, in his strange rural American accent, which she isn't familiar enough with to place and translates oddly into Spanish for her.

“Cy said this kinda stuff will be valuable. Feel a bit bad about taking it though.” Izzy replies.

Cy and Demarcus step over the pressure plate floor, which Mato has chipped a notch into and levered up. Cy immediately begins trying to pry open the shoddy metal hatches that the darkness came from, while Demarcus crouches next to the floor hatches, baby talking to where the cleaning droids came from. Izzy thinks to stop Cy, seeing as his futzing might retrigger the trap, but Izzy and Mato are still outside the radius, so they let them mess with it. Their magical “expert” and the guy who can take a beating (but she wishes he didn't have to) are probably best suited for this.

“Yeah, this whole situation ain't sittin’ right with me. Feels like we're walkin’ on ghosts. I'd say we should report this to the proper authorities, but from what I gather we are the proper authorities. ‘Adventurers’, at least.” Mato acknowledges.

Izzy watches Demarcus kneel, gingerly trying to lift the hatch, and scowls slightly.

“Mm. I don't like how we're just traipsing about. I know that the age of this place is in question, but this could be a historical site. One we're just looting. And these golems? Something is off about them. Even if they were just mindless tools following their programming, someone had to tell them to attack us, or people like us.”

She sighs.

“Cy might be right though. If we aren't the ones to take this stuff, someone else probably will. This is a real world, with all the greed and messiness that entails. There ought to be some kind of historical society, or— or [Archaeologists] that could make sure this gets handled correctly, though.”

Mato subtly jumps when Cy snaps a hatch open and a spray of misty dark bubbles out, before Cy contains it.

“There likely is.” Mato says, resigned.

“But we're too far out from major cities fer them to get here before folks tear this place to pieces lookin’ fer a payday. B’sides, we've seen them coal crawlers, and we got these killer robits— they'd have to send adventurers in regardless to secure the site first. It's an odd system that don't feel right, but I get why it's like this. This place is a ‘dungeon,’ which I guess means it's too dangerous as is, and adventurers get to tear it apart before it gets studied. That's the motivation to get the violent fools to risk their lives clearing it out. There’s prolly contracts n’ whatnot in place for any museums n’ whatnot to have first dibs at buyin’ whatever the adventurers take.”

He chuckles, pulling out his hand crossbow.

“Only wish we weren't fightin’ metal robits. All’s I got is a crossbow and knives.”

Izzy laughs, quietly.

“Well, we don't feel motivated by tearing this place apart. So why the hell are we here?” She asks him.

Mato shrugs.

“Fell in a hole.”

After a laugh from them both, he turns to Izzy with a genuine look of infectious excitement.

“B’sides…”

His smile grows wide.

“Ain't ya curious?”

Izzy admits to herself that she is fascinated at this point. Her heart flutters as she steps back in her mind to not just react to what's in front of her, but appreciate everything as it is; Forgotten halls, ancient mysteries, danger and artifacts, risk and reward, discovery—

Adventure.

Izzy can admit she's begun to feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment she had only gotten from her music before. The leg wound she could do without, though.

Mato continues.

“Plus, we were followin’ him ‘round n’ then people needed help.” He says, nodding towards Cy, who looks enraptured by what he's looking at behind the hatch.

“You'd think he’d’ve known about the cave in. Though it looks like he doesn't know the future no more.”

Izzy snaps back to attention, glancing between Mato and Cy, then lowers her voice.

“Yeah, actually, about that… have you noticed—”

“Guys, you gotta take a look at this! This is some gourmet shit!” Cy shouts, beckoning from where he peers into one of the shoddy hatches.

“They've perfectly attuned an amplified tier 2 [Darkness] spell and a tier 3 [Disorienting Fog] to overlap without dissonance or loss of function. Easier to do when it's a [Mage] casting both spells and adjusting, or even two working in tandem, but then— they tuned it to specifically not affect a specific frequency of light, added lights back here that produce that light, and— I’m assuming— set their attack golems’ sensors to see in that frequency! To painstakingly map this stuff to— I don't even know how thin a margin of error is— insane!”

Demarcus stands and approaches, not noticing the cleaner droids’ hatch briefly open a crack, then shut again as he walks away.

“Dude. That's pretty impressive, right? None of us are [Mages], so I don't think any of us can appreciate that the same way you can, but this is cool?” D asks as Izzy and Mato limp over, crossing the pressure plate threshold.

“Hell yeah it is. I mean, it's not the best enchantment work ever, but it's above average and ya gotta remember…” Cy raps on the sheet metal hatch.

“This shit looks like it was cobbled together with scraps in under an hour. This is the equivalent of a meth-house booby trap. If this is what their meth traps look like, I shudder to imagine what they look like when the builders are prepared.”

Cy just stares into the hatch for a second, where Izzy can see a pulsing glow and a mess of wires and machinery for the brief moment she leans over. Cy is transfixed, then suddenly snaps out of it with a shake of his head.

“I'm stealing this.”

Cy summarily disconnects and snatches free several components, including what looks like just a black brick, and stuffs them into his pockets.

The party carefully moves onward, stopping to let Mato check for a second pressure plate on the other side. They find none.

Izzy turns back as they leave this trapped section of the hall, just a glance over her shoulder. She sees the hatches on the floor tenuously open, and the mousey cleaner droids hesitantly wheel out into the hall. She waves back at one with a little bent edge above a wheel. She smiles when it spins its brush-stache back at her.

Izzy follows the group from the back as they walk down the darkened stone hall. She's trying desperately not to think about the throbbing pain in her leg, the stickiness from the blood, or just all the shit that's collected in her hair. She distracts herself by thinking up little pithy song lyrics she can toss in a verse or build a chorus around. She wonders how it translates her lyrics for the guys. Does it preserve the rhyme when translated into English? If so, does it even have the same meaning as the words she chose in Spanish? There can't be that many synonyms in English, and surely it'd lose some cultural connotation. If she had to guess, if the Great Work really is all-knowing, it probably preserves the rhyme, and maybe even rhyme-scheme, translating to closest English equivalent, then just… beams the subtleties and context into the listeners heads as a subconscious understanding. That seems right. Izzy wonders why she gets this stuff so well. She'll have to ask the next person with a [Bard] type class she meets.

Lost in her thoughts, she doesn't notice where they've begun to walk into until she nearly trips over a pipe on the floor.

It is a warfront. The stone of the walls themselves have been bent and molded until they jut into the hall with crenellations and arrow-slits. They pass through a solid metal gate with rubber hoses at the top and bottom to create an airtight seal. It's clearly not originally a part of this hall, but built to seal it off near completely. They step through a sharp hole where it was rent open from the center. Plastic and metal crates are stacked on either side of the hall as improvised cover. Some have scorch marks on them. Izzy traces a line of ancient blood from behind one to a door on the side of the hall where someone had been dragged.

“My God…” Mato says, horrified.

“What the hell were they fighting? The robots, or the bugs?” Demarcus asks.

Izzy begins to follow the blood trail to the door— then catches herself, realizing she's doing the classic horror movie trope. She does that, and she either sees the silhouette of the monster that dragged the body away in the dark, or gets snatched through the door while the other people watch, the camera cutting from her perspective to over their shoulders right as she creeps up on the door.

She backs up to the opposite side of the hall, signals Cy to float his [Light] into the door, then grabs Demarcus by the shoulders and uses him as a human shield as they edge to peek inside.

They see what was once a storage closet— judging by the metal framed shelves on the walls still with various bins of goggles, gloves, and lightbulbs— but was adapted into a frontline medical station— for flesh and metal. Bloody cots are lined up with improvised trays of tourniquets, bandages, surgical tools, empty rounded potion bottles, and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. On the other side of the room is a workbench covered in various tools and parts. A bin at its side is full to bursting with bits of bent and scrapped metal. One of those scaffolding frames like they saw in the big workshop stands to the side, where the upper half of a sleek and lithe golem dangles with a rounded glass head like a security camera and several smaller simple claw arms down its side. A welding mask extended to include a beard cover is set on the corner of the frame. The shape of stout fingers is painted on one side in blood and oil.

“Spooky.” Demarcus remarks.

Izzy finds her eyes stuck on the bloodstains. She can't look away. Some curious scholar in a part of her brain remarks on the culture that would create welding masks with beards in mind, and would conflate a medical bay to include robot repair. The passionate and broken artist drinks in the tableau, the sheer emotion from the evocative imagery of what she's seeing, and everything that's implied by what she's not seeing.

The kid that she remains is stuck on the blood.

“Well, it wasn't the golems.” Cy remarks. “Unless they're repairing the ones they take down.”

“Ya do do that.” Mato says, quietly.

When we turn to him, he realizes we heard him, and clarifies.

“Heal the enemy, I mean. Geneva convention says ya gotta, once they're not a threat.” His gaze darkens as he sighs.

“Though the reality is, you can justify anyone as a ‘threat’ if ya wanna. Don't know if the Geneva conventions apply to robits… or even exist here…”

“There's an equivalent. Doesn't apply to golems. Even the sentient ones, unfortunately.” Cy says, snapping Izzy's attention back.

“Some of these are sentient?” She asks, horrified.

“None of these.” Cy replies, digging through a bin to the side.

“But they exist. We're not gonna find any here. They're rarer than rare. Aha!” He shouts, and Izzy turns to look at him when she hears the clinking.

Cy holds 3 rounded bottles between his fingers. The liquid in two of them are a deep crimson, while one is a brackish brown.

“Still had some healing potions. Looks like this one spoiled, but these two are mid-grade and held up.”

Cy passes the two usable ones to Mato, tossing the other into a corner to the sound of shattering glass.

“You're the one with healing skills, so you might make these more effective.”

Izzy quirks an eyebrow in confusion, thinking that's probably not how it works. Maybe for Mato’s [Field Triage], which she assumes would let him instinctively know which of the wounded to prioritize, and which are past the point of saving, but definitely not [Simple First-aid].

Regardless, Mato jogs to Demarcus and tells him to “shuck.” Which the group has to ferret out means he wants Demarcus to take his breastplate and gloves off.

Demarcus complains that he just got them back on, but accedes.

“Isabella, please hand me that whiskey there.” Mato says.

Izzy leans over and grabs it, looking into the bottle to see how it's holding up, still just seeing brown liquid.

“What’re you gonna do?” Izzy asks.

She has a vivid image of a documentary she saw in history class once about the American invasion, where they got soldiers incredibly drunk before amputating a limb because they had no anesthetics before that war.

“Yeah, now ain't the best time for a drink, gramps.” Cy jokes.

Mato shakes his head, then sniffs the whiskey. He mutters to himself as he dabs some out on a rag, then explains.

“Wish I had bandages or some cloth. What'd that hitchhiker's guide say ‘bout always havin’ a towel?”

“I ain't gon’ drink it. We don't know how these healin’ potions work, and I ain't likely to trust somethin’ that works on ‘magic.’ Not completely. My momma always said to ‘do the Inípi, wear the paint, then go to a pharmacy.’ So, I'm gon’ disinfect yer wounds ‘fore I give ya the potion. Not worth riskin’. This is ‘gon hurt a bit, Demarcus. Ya want a stick or somethin’?”

“I'm good. I've had worse.” Demarcus says, and Izzy is reminded of when he told them about how he died, bleeding out from half a dozen bullet wounds.

“Good instincts, by the way.” Cy says as Mato cleans out Demarcus’ wounds, who wrenches his face up in pain, making silly noises like “Hachacha—tssststs.”

“Low-grade healing potions just speed up natural healing, so if the wound is infected, it makes it ten times worse. These are mid-grade though, so it shouldn't be a problem.” Cy elaborates.

“Now ya tell me!” Demarcus says as Mato finishes disinfecting his wounds and hands him the potion bottle.

“Wasn't worth the risk. Just a swig.” Mato says as Demarcus takes a sip from the potion. His wounds are too numerous or spread out to dab the potion directly onto.

Izzy watches the bleeding canyon in Demarcus’ side stitch back together. Fleshy strands bridge the gap like searching vines until the inflammation fades and the wound scars over. The sight curdles her stomach.

Demarcus pats himself over, exclaiming with a bit of wonder at the magical healing. Mato dabs a new clean rag with the whiskey, wipes off the lip of the healing potion, gets up with a grunt, and approaches Isabella.

“Alrighty Iz, yer turn.”

Her gut sinks an inch, dreading the idea of all that pain, but she knows it’ll fix her leg.

“Ya know, I think I will take the stick.” She says.

She squeals around a mouth full of rubber tubing as Mato, incapable of doing this gently and is instead merciful by doing it quickly, shoves a rag into her open wound and does— what feels to Izzy like scraping all the meat off her bones with acid. She desperately tries to distract herself by thinking about how she knew you disinfected wounds with rubbing alcohol, but didn't know that was actual alcohol and that whiskey would work. She might've seen it in a movie once.

The burning suddenly dulls and she gasps in relief. She slowly untenses her muscles and drops the tube from her mouth as Mato pours the remainder of the healing potion directly into the long and winding cut up her leg. Izzy watches her skin knit, a few pebbles of rock get forced out from the regrowing flesh, and a new 10 inch scar etch itself into the side of her leg. She just stares at it for a moment, letting the memory of the pain fade, and dissolves into subconscious thought.

Mato pats her on the leg.

“Ya did good. Don't worry, that'll fade a bit with time. Feel better?”

Izzy nods, foggily.

“Be glad, the scar’s pretty punk. There are far worse ones to get saddled with.” Cy jokes, pointing up to the mangled right side of his face.

Izzy assumes that's what he does, at least. She still stares off until the middle distance, the comedown of pain and adrenaline paired with soft memory leaves her a little distant.

She shakes out her head, shaking off the growing mist in her eyes from the sudden thoughts about her father. She stands, testing her weight on the freshly healed leg.

She looks around at the group, taking in the scene and wondering what they should be doing, wanting to be proactive rather than reactive. She watches as Demarcus clumsily— though less clumsily than before, puts his armor back on, growing used to it. He sits on one of the bloody cots, heedless of the stains beneath him. She sees Mato stash the remaining healing potion, standing with a grunt. She thinks he makes the noise out of habit, really. Mato said his knees were fixed when he got this new body. She mulls over a thought, working over it like a tongue in the socket of empty gums when a tooth falls out, as she sees Cy standing in the doorway, peeking back out into the hall. She sees the misty, translucent dwarf drifting behind him. She can't see their expression, as they're turned away from her, facing Cy. The realization that what she's seeing is out of place only strikes her a moment before the figure’s half-real arms strike forward, and lance themselves into Cy’s back.

His short yelp of pain sounds as if he stepped on a loose nail as he was pushed off a dock into freezing water. Cy spins, getting low and swinging his arm out. The flare of light in his palm leaves afterimages in Izzy's eyes. The shriek that emanates from the space behind him is ethereal and pervasive. Izzy instinctually plugs her ears as she forces her eyes to stay open. She takes cover behind a metal filing cabinet being used as a surgical tray as Mato fights to get a clear shot in the split second exchange. Cy finishes his spin with an evasive roll out of the room and into the hall. Izzy watches the half-real dwarf— fuzzy and translucent like several layers of an image of a stout, bearded mechanic in coveralls, superimposed atop one another at only 10% opacity and slightly misaligned— as their shriek seems to cause their very being to come apart, dissipating. Wisps of smoke unaffected by the movement of air in the room are sucked back into the phantasmal being’s form as the shriek quickly stops and they regain a semblance of corporeality. They turn to face us, taking a step back as they do— into the wall. Demarcus’ reckless dive, armor still hanging half-tied to his body, has the head of his crowbar clumsily passing through the dwarf’s head to no effect and dinging off the wall as the figure disappears into the stone. The last that Izzy sees is their stoney and haunted expression of bone-deep weariness, their jaw set in sure resolve. The last to disappear are the eyes, and though Izzy can only half-see them, the living memory, she remembers the firm and foundational rage, an ocean of it, deep and distant.

Cy comes flashing back into the room with a burst of heat and speed, layers of purple and orange shields glow around him. Demarcus yells to him.

“Went through the wall!”

“Shit! Don't chase!” Cy replies, and jumps on top of one of the cots, looking all around the floor.

Izzy quickly follows his example, catching on to the fact that if it can walk through walls, it can probably reach through the floor.

“What was that?!” Izzy yells.

In the heat of the moment, hope overrules her cynicism and she hopes whatever that figure was is a known factor in this world, with a name and an easy way to defend against. She looks to Cy, waiting for him to shatter her hopes. She has her assumptions on what it was, but in a world of dwarves and golems, it really could be anything.

Cy’s eye scans the room. He kills his [Light] spell for a brief second, causing Izzy and Mato to jump at the sudden darkness, before he brings it back, having seen nothing. He scrabbles at his short hair in frustration, putting a hand to the hamhocks of his back where it grabbed him. A few of the magical shields around him dim or disappear as he replies.

“Fucker got through my shield. Nobody sees anything?”

After another look around, we shake our heads or reply in the negative.

“Well— fuck— I… I don't know. I mean, it could be any number of things.” Cy replies.

Izzy bites her lip, shaking the doubts and frustration out of her head. She speaks up.

“Ghost? I know what it looked like to me, and that's the obvious answer.”

Mato mutters something under his breath that Izzy doesn't catch. Demarcus frantically tightens straps on his armor from where he stands on the repair table, knocking tools off as he struggles to keep his armor on straight, the clattering and shifting metal makes a terrible ruckus. Somehow, the clumsy noise is reassuring, when compared to the silence there would have been.

Cy replies, thoughts not fully formulated.

“Ghosts are… unlikely. There's all kinds of apparition-like monsters or spells: summoning skills, spectres, ghasts— I mean, I'm not ruling it out and I'm no expert— probably just being contrarian— but… ghosts don't just happen. Only someone who was pretty high level or practically tortured to death might appear as a ghost.”

“You don't think that this is the exact environment where either of those things could happen?” Izzy retorts.

“Vengeful shadows.” Mato half-whispers, racking his brain for what he knows about spirits.

“I'm not saying it's not a ghost, I'm just trying to temper expectations. We don't know it's a ghost, and if we try fighting a summoned warrior with holy water and salt we're gonna get destroyed! Until we know for a fact—”

“—ya know what? I can hear myself, and this is the exact kinda shit I hate from other people. Fuck it, it's a ghost. Just, let's be Scooby-Doo about this. Let's go with ghost for now, but be prepared for something else. Anybody got salt?” Cy asks, his stance relaxing a bit as he decides to go with the flow.

“We used it all keepin’ Demarcus alive when he was crushed.” Mato replies.

“Sorry.”

“Don't apologize for having your life saved, Demarcus.” Izzy admonishes.

“Well, what else works? Anybody got a cross?” Demarcus asks.

“I doubt the dwarves are Christian, Demarcus.” Mato replies, shooing Izzy to step off of the cot with a gesture.

“Actually,” Cy replies, pulling out his stick and beginning to cast some spell. A pulse goes through the room and he shakes his head as if his spell didn’t do what he wanted it to.

“That might work.”

Mato flinches back, surprised.

“The Dwarves are Christians?”

“No. I mean, some probably are. I meant articles of faith— if you really believe in them— might protect you. I don't know too much about the faith classes, despite this being the Game of Gods, but I know it's got tangible power. Anybody religious?”

Mato hesitates for a long moment.

“I wouldn't call it a religion, but I… hold certain beliefs.”

Izzy raises her hand like she's in school still.

“I was raised Catholic?”

“Great! We'll make you a shitty cross. Try to have more conviction. Mato, I dunno if there's a symbol you can use, but believe in that stuff harder.”

Mato sets himself.

“Alright. First things first, get off the damn cot.” He says, shooing Cy off the bloody cot.

“We ought to be respectful, and somebody prolly died here. I'd be pissed at us too, the way we're stompin’ about this place, breakin’ things.”

Cy hops off the cot, raising his arms placatingly. Demarcus follows suit and gingerly steps off his repair desk as well, not understanding that they’re only stepping off the bed because it is where someone fought to stay alive and died. Maybe he's offering the same respect to the golems? Izzy thinks, then decides that if he is, it's probably not intentional or so neatly articulated.

“Alright, alright! We'll be nice. Less looting.” Cy says, stepping down.

“No looting.” Mato counters.

“Less looting. Look, the healing potions are gonna keep us alive far better than not touching anything would. You have to admit that is worth taking.” Cy reasons.

Mato grunts unhappily.

“Yer right, but there's a good way to do this. Give thanks n’ leave an offerin’ in exchange if yer gonna take anythin’— and only the necessities.”

He continues, muttering to himself.

“I dunno how to appease spirits that value technology or find robits sacred. Gam-gam never said nothin’ ‘bout rites for that.”

Izzy, meanwhile, goes over every prayer or lesson she'd been taught for the deceased. Unfortunately, most of what comes to mind is from movies rather than actual religious doctrine. Her mother was the one who actually practiced, so all that fell by the wayside once she was gone. Izzy doesn't think she can do much from dia de los muertos in this dungeon, nor does she think the dead dwarves would appreciate it much.

“Mato, there's no way you don't whittle, right?” Cy says, tossing a dry branch to Mato.

“Is that ‘cuz I'm native?” Mato asks, faux-offended.

“No it's cuz you were a park ranger. And an old man.” Cy responds, pulling a few more sticks and small logs from his fanny pack, choosing one, and handing it off to Mato, who does indeed whittle.

Mato grunts, rolling his eyes acquiescingly as he begins to smoothen and lash together a shoddy cross.

“Do you just carry wood around with you?” Demarcus asks Cy, the unused branches disappearing back into the magical bag.

“Yep. Wood’s useful, man. I got a bunch of sand and dirt in here too.” Cy responds, pulling out a handful of sand for effect.

“[Pocket Sand]!” Cy shouts, laughing as he tosses the sand at Demarcus.

Demarcus shields his eyes, startled, then laughs.

“Dude, is that a real skill?!”

Cy wipes his hand as he gigglingly replies.

“Hehe— not for me. I'm sure for someone.”

Izzy smiles as Mato hands her a cross, shaking his head to hide his own smirk. The two playing around is too valuable for him to chastise them for getting sand everywhere.

“I've got [Fight Dirty]. I bet I could get a [Pocket Sand] skill.” Demarcus replies.

“Think it'd work on ghosts?”

Cy laughs lightly, then heartily from the stomach once he thinks about it for a second. Izzy covers her mouth as she spits around a laugh, realizing the same thing Cy did.

“Ya know what? It probably would! C'mon let's—” The smile drains from Cy’s face, as he guiltily looks back at Demarcus, and takes a sobering breath.

“We— we should focus. Come on, we've gotta keep going.” Cy says, not meeting Demarcus’ eyes. He turns back to the door, and fails to disguise the fact that he rushes out and into the hall.

The joy drains from Demarcus’ face.

“Dude…”

Mato just gives him a pat on the shoulder, before hurrying to catch up to Cy, taking point. Izzy stands to Demarcus’ side, ignoring the slight growing chill from her torn pants and focusing on Demarcus’ discouraged face and his gaze towards the doorway.

“It's alright, D. We'll get you that [Pocket Sand] skill. It'd probably only work on ghosts if it was a skill, or like, holy sand or something.”

“I don't give a shit about the sand.” He says, then looks down at Izzy and remembers who he's talking to, adjusting his tone.

“Actually, nah, [Pocket Sand] would be funny as hell. I'd love to have your help. It's just…”

“That's not him.” Izzy whispers, finishing Demarcus’ thought.

Demarcus’ eyes widen, and he glances around, as if they're doing something wrong.

“You noticed too?”

“Yep. But the question is: why? And what? Is he just a future Cy? An impersonator? Or a doppelganger?” Izzy asks, a bit of fear creeping into her quickening words as she grows overwhelmed at the possibilities.

“Nah.” Demarcus rejects.

“That’s Cy. Or— a Cy. [Loyal To A Fault] confirms that. He's just— not my— our Cy. But he's so… distant. It's like he doesn't want to— or isn't allowed to be our friend.”

Izzy ponders for a second, and is about to reply, when ‘Cy’ pokes his head back into the doorway.

“You guys aren't dead or possessed, are you?”

They shake their heads.

“Then c'mon. Hop to it.”

Izzy scowls as they follow along. She adjusts the guitar on her back as they re-enter the hallway, finding Mato examining a crate along the wall. She casually asks a question, trying not to seem suspicious, and failing horribly as inexperienced teenagers are wont to do.

“So, Cy, how far in the future are you from?”

Cy stops for a second, then continues walking, brushing stone dust from a plastic crate.

“Uh— spoilers.”

“Oh come on, that can’t— fine. What level are you, at least?”

“Also spoilers.”

Izzy gets frustrated, then suddenly remembers her little statuette. She jogs up to Mato, feigning giving up.

“Ugh, fine.”

She pretends to help Mato with whatever he's doing, and dextrously slides a hand into his pack to pull out the statuette. Mato notices, but Izzy puts a finger to her lips as he turns to question.

She hides the golden statuette beneath her jacket, pressing it lightly against her poofy [Bard] shirt to feel which way the scales tip, and see whether what's being said is intentionally deceitful.

“Can you at least tell us something? There's gotta be a single thing, an anecdote about your experiences after we separated that isn't a spoiler.” She says.

“Uh, nope. Spoilers. Spoilers all the way down.” Cy replies. His eye is focused squarely on a faded label, not meeting their eyes.

Izzy feels the scales tip partially towards deceit, then tilt squarely back into truth, and wobble there. Her jaw clenches in confusion and frustration at what that even means, but decides to interpret it as dissembling and avoiding the question with the truth.

So, him telling us anything would reveal something. But would it reveal the future, or who he really is?

She almost wants to confront him, yell at him to give up the act because they know— but that's dangerous. If Demarcus is wrong and this really is an imposter or doppelganger, and it suddenly knows that there's no use pretending? While they're trapped underground? Things could get violent. If they're going to confront him, better to do it while they have a clear advantage.

The crate that Mato has been examining finally clicks open. The odd latch built for different hands snaps free from the rust and there's a clatter of tinny metal as small metal boxes burst forth and scatter on the ground before Mato can catch the sideways lid to the metal crate.

The sound causes the group to jump. There's a flare of light from Cy’s palm, and he seems almost relieved for what he assumes is an ambush. When they spin and see the sardine-tin-like boxes, their weapons lower, but their guards stay up. Izzy blinks at her hand, having punched forward clutching the cross. She feels ridiculous as she lowers it.

“Don't.”

“Hm?” Demarcus says, unsure of the small voice, distant and echoing strangely off the walls.

Mato drops the lid, raising his hands like the police were shouting. The small tins scatter against the floor in a loud avalanche, and the group’s eyes flick between the sound, the sudden movement, and trying to find the source of the voice. They don’t find it— at first.

Izzy’s subconscious receives a fax from the optical center. Everything looks nominal for the most part, largely within the standard deviation, but there's an odd blip. The subconscious snacks on a sugar cookie from the break room— it’s one of the new cells’ mitosisday— eating and reading as it walks down the hallway of nerves. Distracted, it almost bumps into another signal rushing to the adrenal gland. Subconscious feels bad about the redundancies in place right now, but better safe than sorry. They've got hormones to spare ‘til the puberty renovations are done.

Subconscious wipes a hand on its disheveled suit, knocks on the windowed door to visual processing, and hands off the readings to one of its subordinates. They run the math, having to take over some equipment for a millisecond. By this point, a few other ganglions are watching, wondering why the ‘boss’ is here. The neuron prints, and Subconscious hesitates for a second, running a hand through its thinning hair, reluctant due to all the false alarms that give it a bad rep. Damned magic makes no sense, this shit isn't what Subconscious learned in Instinct Community College. But, once the results are double— triple checked— it makes the call. It's fine being the bad guy, that's it's job, so long as she stays alive. Subconscious faxes the results up to the conscious mind, and waits, hand hovering over its walkie.

Better safe than sorry.

Out of the corner of Izzy's eye, she picks up on something in the dark. Still in the dark, despite the barest edge of Cy’s [Light] spell hitting it, for the light doesn't touch it correctly. As if it isn't really there.

Izzy turns, and feels her stomach drop and muscles tense, her body going into crunch-time as she sees the source of the small voice. Crouched behind another of the stacks of crates, stanced above a stain on the floor just their size, is the memory of a dwarf. Translucent, feathered and less real in some places, the figure crouches in reinforced cargo pants. The metal knee pads are more solid than the cloth, as if remembered more clearly. They are so terribly still, despite their fading form, uncannily still without the micro-movements of the living. They wear patchleather and scrap metal armor with a dwarvish word above a raised fist, painted in red upon their back. The paint is one of the clearest things on them, the most remembered. The chest beneath doesn't rise with breath, but their eyes— their eyes— despite being covered by a welding mask and miners helmet welded together, burn into Izzy. Not with rage, but desperation. This isn't the same ghost that attacked Cy.

She stares into those eyes, and realizes they don't stare back at her, but behind her. It takes an eternal moment to overcome paralyzing fear, her conscious mind pulling rank on the subconscious’ orders to not let the threat out of her sight, but she turns. She sees Mato, the world moving slowly, a millisecond at a time. He's still mid-step, backing away from the crate. She sees the scattered tins across the floor. Cy, turning to find the ghost, knowing something is there but needing to take that extra half of a second to see it from his left eye. She sees Demarcus, eyes and ears dulled from his thick metal helmet and a life of being the biggest guy in the room, bending down to pick up one of the tins.

Her throat works and chokes on words, until his descending hand approaches the tin and proves her freeze instinct wrong, and the word bursts forth from her mouth.

“Don't!”

They all freeze, and a cold sweat builds in the small of her back.

She gulps in a dry mouth.

“Don't. Touch. Anything.”

Her friends are confused and startled statues that follow her eyes as she turns.

Despite how adamant her subconscious was on not looking away from the ghost, looking back is somehow even harder, as if seeing it would destroy the plausible deniability that it might not be real. The fear is almost overriding, stiffening her waist and shoulders as a tremble builds, but she turns.

This time, they see it too, if the sharp intakes of breath behind her can be judged by.

The ghost doesn't move. Not like something real would. It's as though it fades between states, the same way you change locales in a dream. Like a cross dissolve in film, where the top image fades away as the image beneath solidifies, the ghost shifts from its kneeling stance where it sights down an improvised rifle at them, and back into cover behind its crates. As the group watches, frozen in fear and wonder, the ethereal figure shifts again. The crouched gunner disappears, and reveals beneath it a fighter— a casualty— laying back against the crates and clutching a hand to their gut. Those burning, desperate eyes felt beneath that half-real helmet stay fixed on the group, until the phantasmal dwarf is certain it's done its job. The eyes close, and the ghost dissolves. All that's left behind those crates is the red stain on the floor.

The haunted adventurers are quiet for a moment longer, their thoughts their own, until Izzy licks her dry lips and finds the courage to speak.

“Nobody touch the tins. ¿Capeas?”

She gets tenuous nods, and Demarcus— pale-faced and still crouched— almost tears Cy’s skin off when the brain-damaged pendejo bends down towards one of the little metal boxes.

“Ow! Let go! I ain't gonna touch it, I'm just gonna read the label!”

Demarcus releases his vice grip on Cy’s brown cloak with an “Oh, sorry.” and Cy straightens himself with a “Jeez.” Cy flops to the floor, crawling around to reorient himself to read the label on the fallen tin.

Mato beats him to it.

“‘SPAM’.” He says, reading from the myriad cans in the open crate in front of him.

“It's food.” He clarifies, looking back at them with a hidden despair behind his eyes.

“This place is like a warzone. Were they fighting over food?” Demarcus asks.

“That’s the oldest reason to fight.” Cy says, brushing himself off as he stands.

“But no, they were using these crates as cover. Unless this was their last holdout— which it doesn't look like it is, there’s an intersection further along— I'm guessing these were precious supplies, but not the impetus for… all this. My guess is crawlers. Hive broke into the compound, and forced them back here where they held out.”

“No. We're missing something.” Izzy states, only truly certain of her uncertainty.

“The golems are still working, we only found one corpse sealed away, and that queen fled into the mines. If it was just the dwarves against the bugs, we'd find something down here but I haven't seen a single living crawler or dwarf. This place is… empty. Which means…”

“There's something else down here.” Cy finishes for her.

“Somethin’ that killed the both of ‘em.” Mato confirms.

They're silent for a moment, before Demarcus throws his arms down to his sides.

“Why’d ya have to say that, man?” Demarcus asks, genuinely upset.

“Ain't you guys seen a movie? As soon as you say some shit like that, the real monster shows up. We coulda kept our mouths shut and we might've gotten away with it.”

He's half-joking, lightening the mood as best as he can, but they all stop and look around, listening closely, just in case.

“I'm startin’ to feel less adventurous. If there's a choice between uncoverin’ the mystery and gettin’ the hell outta here, we pick the exit. Agreed?” Mato asserts.

“Agreed.” They chorus.

Izzy feels the statuette beneath her jacket dink firmly to one side. Lie. She hides a nervous smirk.

“Alright, all there is is to continue I s’pose.”

“One sec.” Izzy asks.

She gets Mato to duck again, and slyly stuffs the golden lie detector statuette back into the bag, and at the same time pulls out some of the hardy bread from their supplies.

“Gettin’ hungry?”

“It's not for me.”

She approaches the red stain on the floor. She kneels, her torn pant leg lets the cold stone touch her freshly healed skin. She holds the cross close, as she places some of the bread on the ground.

She whispers, awkward and uncertain, far too aware of the eyes watching her, and worried about any others that might be watching.

“Santa Maria, I—

—don’t remember the words.”

She sighs, looks at the cross, then down at the stain and the floor. She begins to toy with the cross, turning it over in her hands distractedly as she gives up on praying and just speaks.

“I don't know who you are.” She whispers, to the memory of a ghost.

“But I hope you're resting, now. I'm sorry you died? I— hope you—”

She sighs, frustrated at her flailing tongue, but lets go.

“I know you fought well. I hope whatever it was for, it was worthy of you. It's over now. So, rest.”

Izzy leaves them the bread, a small offering, and meagre words that cannot save the dead or dying. She isn't sure if whomever that was could hear her. Or if there is anyone that remains to hear her at all. She hopes that, either way, it matters.