Thanks to Victor's pathfinding, Gaius and his companions finally left the caverns behind and found themselves looking at a spacious hollow that was anything but natural.

  Despite there not being any obvious light sources, the whole place was illuminated with a steady glow of autumn twilight. The walls were no longer rough rock and instead were smooth and metallic, covered in intricate whorls that created a less sterile atmosphere.

  That very same atmosphere took a big hit thanks to piles of whitened bones scattered throughout. And with the area stretching for the length of several blocks, there were a lot of bones there.

  Signaling for others to stay back, Gaius approached Victor. The northerner had enough sense to freeze in place in an attempt to minimize his chances of joining this impromptu ossuary.

  "I got carried away tracking and didn't notice how I entered this place," Victor said, careful not to move his mouth too much.

  Gaius liked the caution but thought it perhaps a bit unfounded. He couldn't see any imminent danger. If Lucius got past here, Gaius was fairly confident in his ability to follow in the Caladonian's footsteps.

  The question was, where to? At first glance, they were in a dead end, in more ways than one.

  Just to be on the safe side, he told Victor to stay put and moved ahead. The walls were dotted with empty niches barely high and wide enough for Gaius to step inside. He approached one of them to see if maybe it masked a hidden passage. Just as he did, he heard a swift hissing sound from behind.

  The archway connecting the strange hollow with the bigger cavern disappeared, replaced by a panel of the same wavy metal as the rest of the walls down there. Loud banging and concerned shouts streamed from the other side.

  What with all the bones around, Gaius had this feeling that a direct approach wasn't in their best interest. He quickly instructed Victor to use those strong northern lungs of his to warn the others against doing anything drastic and just sit tight for a bit.

  He then inspected the niche, found nothing of interest inside or around it, and moved to the next one. Fake passages and misdirection were far from unusual in his line of work. He wasn't getting discouraged after his first stab in the dark didn't pan out.

  A few niches and a lot of Victor's nervous jittering later, Gaius happened upon an oddity he'd encountered before. An indentation in a wall reminded him of the alef-spewing tube from the night before. He leaned in closer only to be startled with a shrill noise.

  He caught just the final moments of a bunch of pylons sliding up and filling the niches. The pylons looked identical to the ones protecting Siembra from alefs, but Gaius didn't like the swirling mist of energy accumulating above them. Something told him, these ones weren't trained to target exclusively alefs.

  Having gone this far, Gaius had no choice but to try his wild theory. Making sure Victor was distracted with the lights and sounds, he thanked himself for the foresight and produced the tablets from his inside pocket.

  He picked one at random and slid it into the inviting indentation. The tablet fit the slot perfectly and wasn't showing any signs of falling out. This was a start.

  A beam of blueish light descended upon Gaius. His initial reaction was to jump away, but as the beam wasn't hurting him in any way, he decided to fight his urge and see what would happen.

  After a few painfully long seconds, the light disappeared. The tablet jumped out of the slot with a slight click, giving Gaius just enough time to catch and pocket it again without Victor getting a glimpse of the thing.

  Just as he was doing it, the pylons grew dim and retracted. Following that, a passageway opened before Gaius, revealing a well-lit tunnel covered in the same metal as the walls preceding it.

  A gust of fresh air carried relieved voices. The archway was open again, letting in the rest of their group.

  "It should be safe to proceed now," Gaius said after beckoning for the others to join him.

  "How sure are you?" Esven asked.

  "Look around you, captain. What here makes you imagine that I, or anyone else, can be sure what to expect from this place?"

  Upon taking in the macabre grandeur of their surroundings, Esven asked, "This place? What even is it? And how'd you avoid joining all these jolly fellows?" His eyes traced a straight line to the bones.

  "It's a trade secret," Gaius shrugged.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Esven filled the air with a hearty guffaw and said, "Trade. I get it. But seriously. What's the secret?"

  There was no way Gaius was admitting to having the tablets. Even with all they've been through together, he had zero doubts that both Esven and Isabella would turn on him in an instant if they caught wind of him being the guy who stole their holy relics.

  "I'm not sure," he said. "This place responds to me. With no obvious activating mechanisms here, I must assume it runs on magic. And maybe that magic is smart enough to feel Shadow's touch on me, but not smart enough to realize the two of us aren't exactly on friendly terms."

  His words seemed to put the minds of his companions at ease and allowed Gaius to once again lead the way into what soon revealed itself to be a massive underground weave of dimly lit passageways.

  This area was unlike anything Gaius has ever encountered during his treasure hunting endeavors. The craftsmanship extended even beyond dwarven. There were no identifiable markings of any culture he knew of, and he couldn't sense any magic powering the doors that slid open when he approached them. He couldn't even tell what was producing the lights guiding his group deeper into the complex.

  There was a point, not so long ago, when discovering a place like this would unnerve Gaius and put him on edge. After living in Siembra for just several months, his nerves were thoroughly steeled against the inexplicable. He treaded ahead as if this was an ordinary old tomb that for some reason had all its dead stacked outside.

  Despite this newfound serenity, Gaius flinched when without any warning the walls around him lit up into a series of identical squares. Each of them showed a spotless bright room without much in it, and the same smiling youth wearing a modest black toga that covered the full length of his body.

  The youth spoke, and each copy of him echoed the words.

  "Greetings, friends, how are you finding yourself on this fine day?"

  There was a practiced cheerfulness in the youth's voice, quite similar to Gaius' own favored greeting, but with an extra helping of saccharine enthusiasm.

  "And who might you be, young man?" Gertrude was the first to react to the youth's appearance and was now standing with her nose all but pressed to one of his incarnations.

  "You can call me Major. And no need to introduce yourselves, friends. I've been following your progress for a while now. Great job with those lizards, by the way."

  "Major, eh?" Esven squinted. "Sitting here among the dead, all cheerful. Tell me why I shouldn't send a bolt between your eyes for spying on us?"

  "There's no need for that, captain. I'm sure you're clever enough to realize you're talking to a projection, not a hundred of mes all at once."

  Esven didn't respond to that. He simply grumbled through his mustache and lowered his weapon.

  Isabella was about to ask something too when Major raised his finger and cut her off.

  "I'm, sure you all have countless questions about this entire situation. Trust me, I understand. But you're not here to have a chat. You're here to find one Lucius, or Shadow if you will. And I believe I may be of assistance to you there, as he's been a thorn in my side for a while now."

  "Just one quick question, Major," Isabella insisted. "Are you responsible for the horrors outside?"

  "That's an exceedingly broad and complicated question, my fair Isabella."

  "There's nothing I have to discuss with a man sitting on a throne of bones." The air around Isabella was beginning to sparkle. "Now show yourself and answer for your crimes."

  A slight shift in Major's demeanor turned this excitable salesman into a man with the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.

  "And who are you to judge me, acolyte of the Moon?" he asked. "You, who blindly follows an order that has long forgotten its own origins. How dare you even show yourself here, after what your forebearers had done?"

  "What are you talking about?" The sheer intensity of Major's words put Isabella on the defensive.

  A frustrated moan rolled through the corridor, and afterwards, Major's appearance shifted once again, this time to that of tired frustration.

  "I really wanted to avoid this, but you leave me no choice," he said. "Follow me."

  As he stopped talking, the bulk of his images disappeared from the walls, leaving but a handful just around Gaius and his group.

  "Come," Major said, as another image, one closest to the exit, faded and a new one sprung to life up ahead.

  Gaius was the first to step forward on this trail of appearing and disappearing Majors. He had plenty of apprehensions about their host. But finding a friendly face, even one not entirely sincere, was way more than what Gaius could have hoped for when setting out on this quest.

  Others followed with varying degrees of hesitation. Gertrude was the most enthusiastic about seeing what Major had in store for them, while Isabella was on the verge of crushing her saber's hilt into dust with her grip.

  Guided by the images of Major and accompanied by the whooshing of doors as they slid open, Gaius' group proceeded deeper inside the complex. The winding path was leading them to a particular destination. It also left Gaius, and at least some of his companions, tantalized by the mysteries of what treasures and wonders hid behind the numerous side doors that remained closed.

  That feeling was overshadowed by a sense of unease that hung over them all. But before it could boil over into questions of the kind that usually preceded panic, Major invited Gaius' group inside a spacious room. Empty for a single metal dais in the center.

  As everyone entered, the doors behind them slid shut, causing a wave of murmurs, but with Gaius keeping his cool, the others restrained themselves from acting out.

  A single image of Major towered above them on the furthest wall. The strange man extended his arm towards them and an orb of purplish-black energy appeared above the dais.

  "How do we know this isn't some trap?" Victor asked, with his eyes darting between Major and Gaius.

  Thinking back to the pylons at the entrance, Gaius said, "If this guy wanted to harm us, he'd have done so already."

  He still wasn't a big fan of this leadership role that was forced on him. Still, he approached the orb and placed his hand on it anyway.

  A wave of borrowed feelings washed over him. It wasn't painful or unpleasant, simply overwhelming and profoundly sad.

  When it passed, Gaius was left standing there, in front of the dais, with newfound knowledge of Major, his complex, Lucius, and numerous truths about the world that he wouldn't personally mind forgetting.

  "You probably should all experience this," Gaius said, looking at his companions.

  Story Facts - Chapter 33