This novel taking place in the Undercroft setting developed using Creepy Assassin Game's upcoming ImagCards is being released one chapter at a time online. If you'd like to read next month's chapter early, you can find it at the $1 tier on my Patreon.
Enjoy!
-Stone
“So...the job then?” Mahyu finally asked.
Dante had continued reading his book and sipping his “whisky” while Mahyu had slowly made her way through her entire cocoa and ordered a second that was now nearly finished itself. Sem had managed to get through about half of the creamy mix that made up his tea in that same time period. The drink, laiden with as much milk and honey as the steeped tea could actually hold, was so heavy that Sem always made a point to not eat prior to coming to The Daylight Tree as it was essentially a liquid meal in itself.
The light streaming into the little bar through the simple skylights that had been drilled into the ceiling anyplace where the roots of the tree above didn’t cover had begun to dim as the mid-afternoon came on and his cup had picked up a halo of light green glow.
Honey in The Undercroft could be found in only one of two places: the markets where the Surface traders brought it from whatever beekeepers clearly still lived above and the Glowkeepers who collected it from fat little bees that buzzed about The Grotto feeding on the luminescent flowers that grew far below. There was once a time when Grotto honey had been by far the most common, but since the fall of The Keep most people had switched completely to Surface honey. A few people, like Nikolas, still held a significant supply of the stuff that glowed blue and green and, rarely, pink in their storehouses. Sometimes Sem would wonder if he would miss the light hues that acted as something of an unofficial mood light on their table when the day came that all the Glowhoney in The Undercroft was gone
Dante held up his finger as he stated “One moment, please,” and continued to read.
Sem couldn’t help but smirk and grunt a little laugh through his nose as he rested his chin on his hand and stared at the older man.
This was a common Citadelian past-time: The Waiting Game. The first person to break tipped their hand - either their impatience or their desperation - and that gave the other person the upper hand in whatever business was to follow.
Dante had been reading for over an hour now. Sem had been staring at him with his chin in his hand for nearly as long while Mahyu had grown increasingly antsy, fidgeting with various bits of her clothing and fiddling with whatever she could find in her pockets. All three of them knew that it would be Mahyu who would be the one to break the silence. She could afford the impatience, she wasn’t Citadelian and impatience lost her nothing and equally gained them nothing. It was without meaning, she had no ground to lose in this competition and it was arguable if she was even playing the game at all. She was simply bored of waiting any longer.
She huffed and sunk into her chair as she waited, her eyes shifting down to the table, over to Sem, up to the ceiling, back down to the table, and finally up to Dante in a long, exaggerated eye-roll.
She watched him for another minute in that position before she sat upright and began to tap on the table with one hand, her taps growing harder and more impatient as she stared intensely at the older man as if she were attempting to burn a hole into his forehead with thought alone.
“Right-o!” Dante finally stated as he slammed the little paperback closed, shoved it into his pocket, and sat up straight in his chair. Mahyu’s tapping stopped immediately, one finger still held partially in-air as it had prepared for its next descent.
“The nature of the job can be summed up in one word:” he began as he leaned forward on the table, waving his hands dramatically as if to frame the final word as he spoke it in a half-whisper “Demons.”
They both looked at him incredulously, their faces mirroring eachother as Sem lifted his right eyebrow in surprise and Mahyu lifted her left one.
This could mean a million different things from retaking The Keep to pushing Citadelian influence into a new strata to some rich old Citadelian getting it in his head that snorting ground-up Rhino Demon Horn would deliver an adequate enough erection to his frail, inbred form to manage to squirt out one more generation to keep his dying lineage from turning entirely to dust for another few decades. But there was one thing that all the possibilities meant: “You want us to go down into The Dark Labyrinth?” Sem asked, slowly.
The older man leaned back slightly as he picked up his cup and stated slyly “higher,” before taking a sip.
“The Glowgrotto?” Mahyu asked, a hint of surprise and excitement in her voice. It had been a long time since she had last felt the damp moss of The Glow under her bare feet and she wouldn’t mind seeing her old home again, not least of which because she had left a few things behind in her haste to escape that would be nice to have back if they had remained unmolested by delvers all these years.
“Higher,” Danted continued in a tone very close to delight as his mouth started to curl into a jaunty grin.
“The Lowers?!” Sem asked a bit too loud but still just barely under his breath as the shock of the concept of Demons in the stratum just below their feet washed over him.
“Uh-huh,” Dante nodded in authentic delight now. “In the lowest level of the stratum, just above the bottom floor. Confirmed Demon spottings.”
“Holy shit,” Mahyu stated outloud in a direct mirror of Sem’s own internal reaction.
“Confirmed Demon sightings in The Lowers,” Sem continued in a tone mixed of surprise and shock. “The actual fucking Lowers, not in one of the Towers or a mid-layer.”
“Oh yes,” Dante stated in confirmation.
“‘Confirmed’ by whom?” Sem pressed, emphasising both the first and last words to make his skepticism clear.
“Some former Keepers I’ve kept in touch with,” Dante explained calmly, understanding the younger man’s skepticism. Afterall, he hadn’t even been alive the last time a Demon had made their way all the way up the levels to reach anything that even started to look like civilization. It was very possible his grandparents hadn’t even been alive yet the last time one had even made it as far as The Keep before being either slain or convinced to slink back to whatever hole it had crawled out of.
“Good men,” he continued when Sem’s expression turned into a whole new kind of skepticism mixed with doubt and condescension as if to say “oh, you poor bastard, you don’t actually believe them, do you?”
“Solid men, no deggies there,” Dante finished.
The few Keepers who had survived the fall of The Keep hadn’t often fared well outside of the rigidity of the militaristic lifestyle that had developed there. Many, the “deggies,” had experienced significant mental and emotional degradation without their comrades and their work to give their lives purpose. A few, though, those rare ones that had managed to find a former Commander to continue to give them orders at regular intervals, had managed to make it through the fall with their wits intact. They were often a bit too preoccupied with one day restoring The Keep for his taste, but on the whole Sem had found them to be reliable men and women and his face changed to a strange twisted gesture as he mumbled “hmm” in approval before allowing his lips to settle back into a neutral pose.
“So...you want us tooooo?” Mahyu asked, allowing the final syllable to draw out into a long question.
“Find them, fight them, kill them if you can, rout them back into the Grotto if you can’t,” Dante stated casually as if this were the easiest thing in the world, carrying on with “From there you’ll meet up with some people I’ve sent ahead of you to The Keep and help them beat whatever Demons you find back into The Labyrinth, and, ultimately, start working on carving out a presence in The Labyrinth for us. Bring light to The Dark as it were.”
They both stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind, both clutching their cups in an unconscious gesture as if they hoped the large, warm vessels would comfort them. That was more than a job, it was more than a mission - fuck, it wasn’t even a campaign - it was nearly a fucking quest. If they succeeded, stories would be told for generations; if they failed, far worse stories would be told for even longer.
“Of course, that’ll all be for future negotiations,” he allowed with a kind of dismissive waving gesture. “The first Contract is just to get them out of The Lowers.”
They both continued to gaze into their drinks as they considered the difficulty of what was being set before them. They considered if they could handle fighting Demons, if the fact they were being offered the contract at all meant that someone believed they authentically could, and, almost more importantly, what kind of substantial pay such a Contract would come with.
“Look, this isn’t a hard job,” he said as he gestured imploringly with his palms opened towards them. “Really, we’re expecting one, maybe two Demons in The Lowers, tops.”
“I mean...we’ve fought Lowers gangs before,” Sem offered slowly as if he were attempting to convince himself that maybe they could handle the job while explaining to the other man why they couldn’t possibly. “The occasional crazed Tower Zealot, but still nothing that wasn’t just some highly mutated people.”
“Well, these are just highly mutated people too!” Dante said as he pointed at the younger man in a “gotcha” gesture before relenting with a shrug when he realized they clearly weren’t buying it. “Maybe.”
They stared at him a while longer, their eyebrows arching again.
“Well, it’s one possibility, at the least,” he finished, clasping his hands together as if the issue had been resolved.
In fact, explanations for who and what the Demons of The Dark Labyrinth were ranged from massively mutated human beings who had become something strange and alien over long centuries to the left-overs from Old World genetic experiments to alternate reality beings that had crossed into this world through a hole in the barrier between realities blasted by the power of the bombs that had ended The Old World to actual, factual residents of some underworld that had clawed their way upwards to feast on the remnants of humanity.
“Besides, it’s not like you’ll be on your own, not for all of it anyway” he stated as he leaned back in his chair and attempted to convey a confident air. “I’ll be travelling ahead to assess the situation in The Grotto and once you get to The Keep my people will be there. Between the Glowkeepers and the other contract workers” - he enjoyed using the long-standing euphemism for mercenaries as often as he could - “I sent ahead the place should be ready for anything.”
“How many?” Sem asked slyly. The old Commander had glossed over that detail far too casually, and that meant he was attempting to hide something. It was hard for one Citadelian to fool another, they all knew the same tricks.
“Almost everyone I trust,” Dante stated in an honest, almost hurt tone at the implication he might be hiding something. “Fifteen of the best contract workers I know, good solid Glowkin, some of your old friends in fact,” he continued with a gesture towards Mahyu. She merely casually sipped her cocoa. She had already made up her mind and he could easily see it in the twinkle in her eye. Fighting Demons was a challenge she had yet to face and one that she couldn’t resist if the Commander honestly thought she was ready for it; she was simply waiting out the usual verbal sparring between the two Highborn.
“And the Keepers?” Sem pressed knowingly. It was obvious what Dante was hiding now.
“All of them that are left,” he offered abstractly.
“Well, last I heard there wasn’t a single person still keeping The Keep, so would ‘zero’ be the number you’re looking for?” the younger man stated sarcastically more than asked.
“Three,” Dante said simply. “There were three left the last time I was there.”
“Three?” Sem asked incredulously. “You expect three Keepers and two handfuls of Glowkin to hold The Keep? Against Demons and Feral Glowkin and who knows what else? You’re more desperate than I thought.”
“They’re three of my best,” Dante stated simply, his eyes growing dark and cold and his mouth warping into something nearly sinister. “I’ve seen them mow down Demons down in The Winding Dark like blades of grass and bathe in the black blood and if they can’t take on a few stragglers in their old age then they don’t deserve the name ‘Glowkeeper,’”
“Three’s more than enough, kiddo,” he finished harshly, the Dante Sem had known for so long momentarily lost in the old Commander that was flashing in his suddenly steely eyes. He made extremely uncomfortable and intense eye contact with the younger man until Sem was forced to look away awkwardly.
He had never seen the man fight before, never seen him in true battle when the man he had certainly once been to command The Keep surfaced, not more than the occasional half-hearted brawl. He had seen the results on occasion, in those rare moments when he showed up a few moments too late to see Commander Fean take over and Dante melt away. The results were gruesome; bloody, ragged flesh torn both expertly and brutally; what had been the unfortunate souls who had chosen the old, short man as a suitable mark rendered into little more than a sickening pile of offal.
In point of fact, Sem had seen The Glowkeep Commander rarely and he was authentically happy to say that most of his interactions had been with the refined elderly Citadelian Contractor who shared this body with him. Mahyu was more familiar with what Dante was capable of being, and she seemed more comfortable with all the aspects that the man carried with him, but his other side always spooked Sem whenever he saw a glimmer of it.
“Anyway,” Dante carried on in a cheery tone. When Sem looked back up the Glowkeep Commander was gone from the man’s eyes and the friendly Contractor had returned.
“This has been deemed a top-priority job by The Citadel and they’re willing to pay top-dollar for a new push into The Labyrinth,” he finished as he fished into the pocket of his coat and produced a cream-colored suede sack which he tossed onto the table. It hit the surface of the old, warped wood with a heavy metallic thunk.
Sem watched as Mahyu undid the strap at its top and pulled it opened just wide enough to peer in.
“Ho-ly shiiit,” she stated in awe, drawing out both words as her eyes went wide. She slightly shifted the bag so Sem could peer through the opening.
Glinting within were dozens of Old World coins.
Golden and shiny, larger than most coins used as currency in The Undercroft and printed with well-preserved faces in stark contrast to the worn metal disks that served as most of the currency Sem had ever seen. He recognized them immediately: US dollar coins. They were rare, and valuable, each one worth an entire contract on its own. He had only seen them in The Citadel before and even then they were only ever spent in the highest-value of transactions where the number of quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies would be more than a normal human could actually carry. They were the kind of coins used to buy buildings, not bread.
“And that’s just the start,” Dante said with a sly smile before leaning forward over the table again and continuing “If we can go as far as The Citadel is hoping here, not just push back some Demons but explore new strata and secure it for colonization, the sky’s the limit. No more running, no more fighting, no more looking over your shoulders ever again.”
“...for any of us,” he added as an afterthought as his eyes shifted momentary downward before returning his gaze to the two of them.
“Your Glowhouse,” he said to Mahyu, who was already clearly sold on nothing more than the prospect of challenging new fights based on her wide, gleaming eyes but the idea of finally making a home for herself in the lands she had grown up in made for a delicious cherry on the top of the Demon War sundae she was envisioning. “A place to finally call home.”
“Your New Citadel,” he said to Sem, whose eyes were giving away his interest even if his well-trained posture refused to. “A new start for those few of The Genealogies who might have a future yet.”
“And my Keep, restored to its former glory,” he said for completion as a knowing smirk crossed his face. He had them and he knew it.
“Have you ever seen inside The Great Vault?” Dante asked Sem directly.
The Great Vault was The Citadel’s defacto “bank,” a large metal door within The Crystal Court behind which sat the entirety of the Highborn’s wealth.
“No,” he had to admit, his eyes wide in anticipation of what he knew the older man was going to describe next. He had only ever seen the door and even then he couldn’t remember anyone ever actually getting close to it.
“Well I have. Piles and piles of these, millions of dollars heaped up like dirt, you couldn’t even imagine how much wealth they have at their fingertips or how much they’ve promised to put behind this venture,” Dante explained, moving his hands in the air as if attempting to conjure the piles of coins out of nothingness.
“As far as The Citadel’s concerned, this is the last chance for The Underkeep’s survival, one last push to keep their society going. Expand or die,” Dante continued. “They’re willing to put everything behind one last chance to hold onto a world that still has them at the top.”
