Root breathed. It felt like the first real breath she’d taken in days, like gasping for air and sighing in relief all at once.
“It’s a—” she began.
A chorus cut her off. “No!”
She reached into the cubby. Her fingers brushed the cold metal. It sent a shiver down her arms and along her spine that made her hair stand on end. Her shoulders tensed as she grabbed the halo, a bristling sensation like a constrictor wrapping tight around her spine. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the king hadn’t taken the matter of his freedom into his own hands.
He still didn’t have hands. That was good news.
Still trapped, she thought, looking around. Still trapped. Might die here. Probably will die here. And the king is going to try to take it from me, take the halo, take them all!
“Incredible,” said Vit, staring at the halo in Root’s hands. “How… how did you…?”
“I guess his secrets aren’t so uncrackable after all. At least not after you’ve had some examples to draw from.”
“And how…?” They turned to the king, who was still face-down with his sixty-five in the air as he uttered some muffled string of words that probably started and ended with curses. Vit flipped him back up.
The king’s eyes found the halo almost as fast as Root had. He held his attention on it for several long, calculating seconds. Then he looked up at Root.
“Well. This, ah…”
“I don’t mean to be somewhat of a downer,” said Beel, who didn’t usually apologize for such matters, thankfully, as it was likely no one else would get a word in edgewise. “But we do still appear to be stuck in here.”
“Yeah,” said Vit, looking at the door like it might’ve sneakily cracked itself ajar when they weren’t looking. “Isn’t it supposed to be, like… the door opens when we grab the treasure?”
“Usually the other way around,” said Azriah.
“The door opens and then you grab the treasure? How does the door know you’re about to…?”
“Looks like a stalemate,” said Azriah, stepping up to the king.
“Yeah,” said Root. “You’re fucking crazy if you think we’re going to set you free now. Now that we know you’ve been lying to us. You say you’ll open the door and lead us out, but your word means jack shit.”
“That’s reasonable,” said the king with a cock of his carved face. “Let’s all just settle in, then. Sit down, have a drink. But don’t drink all your water too quick! It’ll only speed up your doom here, and I’m not likely to get much other entertainment for a good long while I suspect. Yes, I’ll sit here and I’ll watch you all shrivel away. And then what? Will you feel triumphant then, as bones?” He shivered. “I hate those creepy things. Bones. Like, why do you all leave so much behind? It’s unnatural.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll get stuck in here forever, then,” said Root. “With our bones. Our creepy—”
“Okay,” said Vit. “Let’s not die just to freak him out.”
Root hmphed her way back across the room to where Azriah sat assessing the door. Vit turned back to the king after a moment.
“No, I can see how this was supposed to work out for you, but… what if we’d been successful with the skip snare? What then? Trap us here anyway, kill us, take it?”
“Oh,” said the king with an amused smile. “That was always a lie, of course. You can’t trick or outpace a skip snare. What would be the point, then? A defense is only as good as its weaknesses. No, there is no success against a skip snare. However, if it’s your skip snare, and you still know the passphrase because the new owners never bothered to change it, then it’s easy enough to do a little… reconfiguring on the fly, you know?”
Vit seemed to regard this revelation with conflicting emotions. They said only, “Hm.” Then they turned back to the others. “So now what?”
“I think it’s gotta be the gauntlets,” admitted Azriah. “Only other option is that one of us caves—us or the king.” The king said nothing, but there was a wickedness on his tiny face now, like he’d finally learned to be his true self. “So, we could free the king after all—”
“Absolutely not,” said Beel. Root shook her head, hugging the halo closer.
“He’d surely be ready to kill us—if that’s his plan,” continued Azriah. “Which I’m willing to bet it is. Perhaps in this one regard he’s been honest, but I certainly doubt it. He’d be ready to kill us, we’d be ready to kill him. It’s anyone’s guess how that shakes out, and in these tight quarters…” He looked around at the closet they were all crammed inside of. “Not to mention that if we kill him—”
“We’re still stuck,” said Root.
“Gauntlets, then?” asked Vit.
Azriah shrugged. “Unless having the halo adds any new options to the table.”
“Barter it for our lives?” offered Beel.
“No,” said the other three in unison.
“Okay, sorry, I just wanted to help with the brainstorming.”
“How gentle can you be with the gauntlets?” asked Vit.
“I’m not exactly sure. I don’t think gentleness is their strong suit.”
“Heh. Good one.”
“?”
“Because—”
“We’ll have to get out of here fast,” said Root. “Fast if the sound alerts the guards. Faster if the ceiling starts coming down.”
“And if it’s both?” asked Beel.
Vit assessed the door. “You don’t think you could just, I don’t know, give it a gentle shove?”
“Looks like it’s in a bit of a track,” said Azriah. “Lower than the floor, seated past the walls on both sides. No shoving it open without busting out a section of wall. Or floor, or ceiling. Would have to—”
“You could use the gauntlets to rip out chunks of the floor, maybe. Sort of dig out around it.”
“Yeah,” said Root flatly. “Just rip up chunks of the floor. The stone floor. Why don’t we take. Fucking. Pickaxes and start smashing it all? Bet no one would hear that.”
“You’re being rude,” said Beel.
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re saying rudely.”
“It’s still stone. Just because we have super strong gauntlets doesn’t mean the force isn’t still there.”
“No, she’s right,” said Vit, turning to Beel. “You’re right.”
Azriah rubbed his chin. “Maybe—”
They were interrupted then by a sound. It was not a sound they expected, but it was not an unwelcome sound either. It was the sound of the door opening. The stone panel ground against its moorings. It lifted an inch as it waddled to the side, then swung back on its hinges.
“What—?” started Root.
“Maybe it got tired of listening to you all bicker,” suggested Beel.
A face appeared in the doorway, inquisitive and rodent-like, lit by a candle. Glasses over tiny wet eyes, hair slicked back, greasy or damp. The face blinked at them.
“Oh. Good,” said Syrus. His attention swept across them all—Beel, Vit, Azriah, the king’s brick, and Root, where it settled, after dripping down her collarbones and across her plunging neckline, on the halo in her hands.
Root coughed and turned aside, shielding the halo from view. Why did she cough? She didn’t know—it just felt like the thing to do. Coughs were distracting.
She stuffed the halo hastily into her bag. Syrus watched her. He said nothing.
The six of them exchanged a round of silence. Syrus finally broke it as he motioned to the wall at his side.
“Uh, there was a brick. Pivots like a release lever.”
“We just—” started Vit.
“Stepped out,” continued Root. “For some… stale air.”
“Mhm, yes.”
Azriah looked the man up and down, then checked the passageway behind him. “How did you find us?”
“Ah, well, I followed you. I was watching back in the Hall when you opened up that door in the column. Tried it myself and got it open—only took two tries, too. Then just followed along behind you and did all the same strange dancing you did over certain bits of the floor. Sorry it took so long with the door, I had to figure out how it opened…”
“Uh, yeah. No worries,” said Vit.
Syrus’s expression changed. He pointed at the king. “Who’s in there? Is that…?”
“Yeah,” said Root. “I—yeah.”
Syrus raised his eyebrows and blew out a slow breath. “I see.”
They all stared at each other for another moment.
“Uh, well, have you—that is, if you’ve had your fill of stinky air, or whatever it was you said…?” started Syrus. He took a half step back out of the doorframe.
Root glanced at Azriah, then Vit. The door was open. They hadn’t had to smash it in or cut a bad deal with the king. There were no guards grabbing them—at least not yet. All that stood between them and the tunnels beyond…
Was Syrus.
Did he have a squadron of guards waiting just around the next corner? He’d seen the halo, certainly—the light wasn’t so dim that he could’ve missed it. If he’d been uncertain before what they’d been up to—somehow—he wasn’t anymore. And surely he wasn’t going to let them leave with it, take the halo and stroll right out of Urk uncontested. Right?
Root could never manage a good read on this guy—except that he was kind of a creep. And awkward. And… probably greasy? Although if ever there was an event to shower right before…
The look on Azriah’s face conveyed the same thoughts that stirred Root’s mind. It wasn’t a great situation, but it was a better situation. And Syrus was still standing in the doorway. He could close them back in if he was quick enough—and if the lever worked both ways.
“Come on,” said Azriah at last, though he didn’t sound happy about it. He picked up his things.
“What about…?” Vit nodded at the king’s brick.
“Here,” said Root. She picked it up and carried it to the far corner of the room, where she placed it inside the cubby where they’d found the halo. “Won’t even close you in, how about that? So you have something to look at.”
“Now, hold on,” said the king. “We had a deal—”
“Oh, the deal is so extremely fucking off,” said Root. “You’re joking, right? Are you joking? I can’t read your expressions. You don’t have a lot of features.”
“Of course you don’t want to leave me behind. You still need a guide out of the tunnels.”
“That sure would be helpful. Unfortunately we don’t have one. We only have a guide into the nearest trap.” Root crossed the room, waving over her shoulder to the king. “Good luck in here.”
“Wait! I’m scared of being alone—and of being in the dark, see. What if I—?”
Whatever he said next was lost as the five of them left the room and hurried off into the labyrinth of tunnels.
Two weeks after Bradan’s passing, Vit had everything sorted.
There wasn’t much to sort, of course. They’d never owned much—neither of them, in that tiny cabin in the swamp. Linens and clothes, two cots and two chests, a set of utensils for the kitchen, a collection of books and even a few sets of game pieces and a deck of cards. There were some things for upkeep on their home and the land they stewarded—materials, tools, barrels to store water and the surplus they harvested from the gardens.
Vit packed what they thought was important for a trip—a long trip, longer than the few days’ walk to Egogbin and back. A journey. An indefinite journey. They didn’t know when they’d be back. If they’d be back.
This packing assortment included some hits and some misses. They’d packed clothes—and hadn’t even forgotten underwear this time. They had plenty of food, and the things they’d need to forage and cook in the wilds. They’d taken all of the money, a bedroll, and the coziest blanket. These were all good and appropriate things to pack, and an acceptable use of the finite amount of weight one person could carry on their back.
However, they’d also packed a book titled A Thousand and Eight Things to See in South Crenchulp by Jevter Linnts. Vit didn’t know where Crenchulp was, but they’d read the book a few times as part of what could loosely be referred to as “schooling,” and they figured if they ever found themself in South Crenchulp, they’d have a great guide to all the things they could see there. Some of them even sounded quite interesting, like the former site of the worlds’ largest soap bubble (since popped). And, as a second and more notable miss, they’d forgotten to pack a toothbrush. Rather, it wouldn’t be notable for many hours.
They’d packed away everything else into the chests and a spare barrel to keep it all safe. They’d collapsed the cots and tucked them against the wall, and pushed the low table into the corner. And that morning they had spread the extra produce through the orchard to be picked at by the wildlife or decompose and fertilize the soil.
Vit stood at the doorway and looked around at the single room. It felt so empty. It had felt empty for weeks; for years, if they were being honest. But now it looked the part.
They’d never been away from it for more than a few days. Never been farther from it than Egogbin. Leaving felt… it felt immense.
But staying felt worse. It was too quiet. Too solemn. They didn’t know if they’d ever be able to clear that dense weight in the air, that stillness that didn’t seem to waft away out the open windows or get carried out on the breeze.
It was such a dividing feeling. On the one hand, this place was their connection to Bradan—the place they’d spent their life with him, the place he’d taught them and laughed with them and loved them. This was their space, the two of them, together. It was where he’d died, and where he was buried. This was the link Vit still had to him.
But at the same time, it was too much: every day, being there, sitting in silence, feeling his presence and his absence all at once. They’d suffocate there, they knew it.
And there was something left to be done. Something they had to do, something that was going to take them a long way away.
And… well, there was a third piece, too. A third feeling that pulled at them, left them divided. It made them feel guilty, but also excited. Split there, as well; the emotions swirled about, clashing.
This was a chance to go out and see the world. They’d dreamed of that. This was their opportunity. They didn’t have anything holding them back now, tying them there to the cabin and the land around it.
With one last look around the room—oddly dark with the windows shuttered as they hardly ever were—Vit stepped out onto the deck and closed the door.
They cast a glance up the hill, to the orchard where Bradan’s still-fresh grave lay. They spoke a silent farewell.
Then they turned their feet north and set off on a long, long walk.