Chapter Two #2
Bait did not know she was not alone. She heard no footsteps. Nothing breathed in the dark. Nothing spoke.
She walked for a long time, searching for a stairway that might bring her back to her level.
The excitement of her unexpected jaunt wore thin; now she felt tired, and cold.
The corridors of the Fifth seemed endless.
Hunger gnawed at her, until it felt as though her belly ate itself and left an emptiness inside her. She was hollow.
Her feet grew numb. Her toes grew cold as ice, and she did not notice dead moss crunching like frost with each footstep.
Then her fingers. She could no longer feel the stone. She clutched the necklace so tightly its edges dug into her skin, but she felt nothing.
No light. No touch.
She was floating in an onyx void. Bodiless, shapeless, voiceless.
And not alone.
Nothing spoke.
Long dead.We do not die.
Long cold.We do not feel.
Long forgotten.We do not forget.
Later Bait told me she saw a city of wonders, a city of bright spires and great halls.
A city thronged with all manner of people, humans and creatures all living side by side, the streets abuzz with life.
In the dream, she was a different girl, living a different life.
It was festival night. It was the last festival night that the city would ever see before it fell, before the Dungeon swallowed it, but Bait did not know that, nor did the other dancers in the dream.
The sky was fireworks and stars, and Bait could not tell the difference.
All sparks seemed equally fleeting. She wore the necklace of blue stones around her neck, and admired how the light caught it.
It was a gift from her father; she knew that the way you know things in a dream, but she could not picture his face.
All around her, the people sang and spoke, and in the dream she could understand the human tongue, and laughed with them.
She says she saw a bright tower in the hills above the town, and it blazed like a beacon. She said it was beautiful.
Then – the cataclysm struck. The earth heaved, shattered, screamed.
The mountain gaped open like a dragon’s maw, and darkness swallowed all the revellers.
In the dream, the darkness was terrifying.
In the dream, the girl groped blindly for her father’s hand, and found only jagged stone.
Terror like she’d never known filled her, panic hammering through her ribcage like a trapped bird.
She ran through the earthquake-wracked ruin, through dust and shadow until she died lost and alone – and Bait was dying, too, in that moment.
She lay in a corner of the corridor, her little body cold as ice.
Wraiths clustered around her, feeding on her life force.
They were the people of the city that once was.
Another few moments, and she’d have joined them, a little ghost in a host of shadows.
But in those days, Bait had a protector.
She does not remember the hands lifting her. She does not remember the hot breath driving away the chill, the strong arms that cradled her and carried her back up the stairs to the Trapsmiths’ Arcade and home.
She remembered only the sight of him, outlined for a moment against a flickering torch glow. His horns scraped against the low ceiling.
Then he was gone.
Clickglee was furious with the young goblins. The others, he punished in the traditional goblin manner by biting off their fingers. But Bait’s fingers would not grow back if he did that, and he feared her protector’s wrath if he struck her, so he shouted at her instead.
“Wraith will just drain you, silly wretch, and that’ll do the clan no good!
Go and put yourself in the stewpot next time, and at least then we’ll have the meat off your bones!
Stupid as a kobold, that’s what you are!
Not enough weight in your brain to trigger a pressure plate!
” And so on – Clickglee’s angry bellowing echoed through the upper halls, until Bait promised that she’d never again stray from the safety of the Arcade.
“Where’s the necklace?” she asked when he was done. Shouting never had much effect on Bait; rather, she responded to angry shouting in the same way as any other shouting. It upset her, but only because it disturbed the silence of the Dungeon.
Clickglee gave her what was left of it. It had been stamped on, heavily and deliberately, by a gigantic hoof, and broken into a hundred fragments.
Bait gathered the remnants and kept them safe in a little rag.
*
Bait broke her promise to Clickglee only once. This time, though, she was careful to watch the moss. Grimegable warned her it would freeze and crumble when the wraiths were near. She walked in pitch-black darkness until the moss crunched underfoot.
She stopped.
Shadows moved, darker than the dark, and one was a little smaller than the rest.
Long dead.We do not die.
Bait was trapsmith-trained. Even in the dark, her nimble fingers could unknot the little rag. From a pocket she produced a fine piece of string, and onto it she threaded the broken fragments of blue stone.
Long cold.We do not feel.
The wraiths hung back, watching her. When she was done, she placed the necklace on the floor.
“Dark’s not scary,” she said in the Dungeon Tongue. “Not for us Denizens.”
Long forgotten.We do not forget.
One of the shadows moved. A spectral hand, colder than ice, brushed against Bait’s forehead and traced a blessing.
Go now, whispered the wraith.
Bait left, feeling her way back along the corridor. There was no light at all, but when she looked back, she saw the blue stones gleaming in the dark.