The two of us sat opposite each other on the floor of the bridge. I could have made so chairs, but this would have to do.
“You won’t harm any person here, yourself included. And you will answer all my questions truthfully,” I ordered.
“Yes, I understand,” Uncle Janos said.
“Did you not know anything about the attack on Luminar?” I asked.
Uncle Janos shook his head from side to side. “No, as I said, I knew nothing about it. I was out of the kingdom on your mission and have just returned. I was only told by a ssenger after it had already happened.”
“Ask him if there were any signs of instability in your clan,” Bowen said.
“Were there any previous signs? Instability in the clan that would lead to such drastic actions?” I asked.
Uncle Janos let his head drop slightly. “There were always disagreents—always differences of opinion. However, the Chief and Priestess factions always ca to an understanding in the end. That’s just how it has been since I have been alive. When I left, I never imagined sothing like that would have transpired,” he answered grimly.
“And do you stand by your Chief’s decision? Aunt Illyssia and many more innocent people died because of his choice. Even your wife and daughter would have perished if they had not desperately fought back,” I said.
Uncle Janos stared at the ground in silence for a long ti before answering, “I will not pretend to understand the goals of My Lord, and even though I disagree with what happened and am mournful to those we lost…I will always stand by him.”
“Have you lost your mind, Janos?! Where is the honor of innocent people dying?! If Chief Shadowstorm wanted to leave Luminar, he was free to do so at any ti! He threw away years of cooperation, trust, and friendship! For what?!” Professor Garrison spat.
Uncle Janos did not answer Professor Garrison’s vehent questions. I looked around , and those from Luminar were brimming with rage. Lord Vasquez was gripping the hilt of his sword so hard he looked ready to behead Janos at a mont’s notice.
But I see what Dad ant now… delusional. The only way to describe Janos was a delusional child. His sense of justice and honor revolved around a story he read as a boy, and my grandfather took advantage of his loyalty.
“Where did the remnants of the Shadow Clan flee to after the attack? Surely you know that,” I asked.
“I can’t—”
Uncle Janos groaned in pain as the Obedience Collar sent pain through his body for disobeying my direct orders. “Answer the question honestly,” I said firmly.
“Th—the City States…they retreated to the City States,” he answered bitterly.
I see. For them to have gotten past the undead horde also confird that the Holy Kingdom was indeed in control of it all. And it also answers just about every question. Not only was the Shadow Clan involved with the Holy Kingdom, but the City States were aware of things as well. That ant they were all in cooperation with each other. And we were being surrounded by enemies from the East and the West.
War was not only coming from the outside but from within the continent. It was only a matter of when now.
“And you do not intend to return to your family and join your wife’s faction?” I asked while standing up.
“No…” Janos said in a low voice.
There was no point in asking him any more than that. I highly doubted he knew anything. I looked down at the man I once considered an ally and uncle. But just like my paternal grandfather, that was now over. Maybe it was foolish to let him live, but it was the decision I had co to.
Mom rested a hand on my shoulder and I looked back at her. She gave a worried look but I squeezed her hand. I could tell what she was worried about without her even saying it.
“You’ll let decide things, right, Lord Vasquez? As a favor?” I asked.
Lord Vasquez sighed and sent a chilling glare my way. “That favor will co at a high cost one day, Kaladin.”
I waved his concerns away. “That’s fine.” I turned back to the knight still sitting on the ground and said, “Janos, I won’t ask that you kill yourself, nor will I make you fight here. Leave this dungeon and do not return. This is a promise kept and a debt repaid, Janos. The next ti we et, you won’t be given a second chance.”
“I understand,” Janos answered.
“And a word of advice from soone who has been in your position, Janos. Blind loyalty to those who use you will only lead to your miserable end full of regret,” I warned.
“I’ll consider your words carefully…Kaladin,” Janos said, slowly standing up.
I wonder if he ans that. Probably not. I shouldn’t have high hopes that he sees the light. It took a death for to do it.
“Sylvia, set him free and heal him, please,” I asked.
“Got it,” she said, sending her sword into her Spatial Ring. “Can you remove a gauntlet? I can’t bite through Mythril.”
Janos slowly undid the strap holding his gauntlet to his hand, and for the first ti, I saw the man underneath the armor—or, at least, his hand. His skin was far more pale than I expected; he only looked a few shades darker than I was. I hadn’t expected that, and it made wonder if he had been wearing full body armor his entire life.
It was an awkward place to bite soone, but Sylvia sank her fangs into the top of his hand, and with hers, she grabbed the Obedience Collar. There was an audible noise of sothing coming out of Janos’s flesh as the collar hit the ground with a tallic clang. A few monts passed, but Sylvia was taking a surprisingly long ti.
It took her a few minutes before she released him, and she said, “That should be good for now, but…you need more help.”
Janos secured his gauntlet back on and rolled his hand around. “Noted. I appreciate your concern. But there is little that can be done for ,” he said in his usual monotone voice.
Janos grabbed his pack and his hamr and started to walk back. “I’ll leave this place as you requested. You won’t see here again.”
The warehouse that Janos had co from had already moved on, so he waited at the edge of the bridge. Everyone continued to stare at his giant back. I thought that was the end but he slowly turned around and faced everyone.
“I have spent many years exploring this place. This dungeon is not as random as everyone believes. There is a sense of rationality in the chaos. Recurring events, if you would,” Janos said.
“And what does that an? Do you have so knowledge of how to move on from this place?” Ms. Taurus asked.
“ I cannot say for sure. But I believe if you spend enough ti here, you will notice a pattern. That pattern may be the key to moving forward to the next level, but I have yet to understand it at all,” Janos said as another platform began to glide into place.
A pattern, huh? To
"One more thing before I leave. If you didn’t fight a powerful Dullahan with bronze armor being guarded by an elite guard of Dread Knights, then you should be wary of them. They are not your typical undead,” Janos warned as he stepped onto the platform.
“We’ll be careful,” I told him.
“Then I will take my leave,” Janos said before walking off into the distance.
Sylvia nudged from the side with a worried look and said, “Kaladin…sothing is wrong with his body. He is very sick.”
“How so? Was it bad enough that you couldn’t put him back to normal?” I questioned.
Sylvia nodded weakly. “Whatever is wrong with him is permanent. I tried to heal him, but I could tell it would return after so ti. I did what I could, but…he may die from it,” she said.
What could it be? Cancer? Or sothing similar? Maybe it’s a genetic disease?
“Was it affecting his brain?” I asked curiously.
“It affected his entire body. Mostly his organs and very much so in the brain,” she explained.
“How long does he have to live if you had to guess?” I asked her.
Sylvia bit her lip in frustration and shrugged. “I bought him a few more years, but…that was it,” she said.
I never imagined that Janos would be suffering from a disease or illness. He seed perfectly fine on the outside and was still adventuring and fighting with imnse strength. Was he pushing himself to the brink of death? Or was there sothing more to it?
—
We’ve spent just over two weeks in the dungeon. Or at least, that’s what we believe so far. Figuring out the days in the dungeon has beco impossible at this point, and we simply base it on how many tis we’ve stopped to sleep and eat.
We’ve run into a few Dwarf squads from Krunbar and exchanged information, but so far, there haven’t been any developnts. We also haven’t fought the ntioned Dullahan, its guards, or any high-level undead beyond Dread Knights, for that matter. Just the usual Skeletons and Zombies with a few Ghouls mixed in.
“We’ll set up camp here for the night,” Lord Vasquez announced.
We were in a small house, which was just a bare structure. There was no furniture or any signs of soone living here at any point. It would be a tight fit with our tents, but at least it was a walled-in structure with only one entrance. It wasn’t uncommon for a new structure to connect to the one we were on and for the undead to attack us, sotis multiple tis a night.
But with the power of our group, we easily and quickly annihilated any attacks. It was almost too easy, which was worrying in and of itself.
Bowen offered to cook tonight, and he started the fire just outside the ho’s entrance on the street. I offered to watch over him while he worked, and as he was stirring the pot, he gave a pensive look.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’ve been trying to find the pattern Janos ntioned, but it has been difficult. I thought perhaps the undead we faced were the key,” he grumbled as he stopped and took out a small notebook.
Bowen thumbed through the pages and sighed, “But after all this ti, I haven’t found a pattern. In all our conflicts with the undead, their makeup appears random.”
“I did as you suggested, and I believe I may have found sothing,” I said.
Bowen raised an eyebrow. “The structures? You’ve noticed a pattern amongst those?” he asked curiously.
I nodded and rested my head in my hands. “The structures all seem unique in their own ways. Even the bridges that connect us to other places are different. I’ve tried marking structures, but nothing has co up twice. However…there is one type of structure that has appeared twice and looks very similar compared to the others. Not only that but when we’ve co up on those structures, I believe those have been our toughest battles. At least relative to what we normally face,” I answered.
“Oh? And what are those exactly?” he asked with a smile.
“Bridges. Bridges with tollhouses specifically,” I answered.
Bowen scratched his chin as he thought back to the last few days. “Yes…a bridge with a toll booth. I do rember sothing like that, but when we checked it, there was nothing special, correct? They were too small to hide anything,” he countered.
“Yes, on a first inspection, I believed the sa thing. But the fact we saw two of them, one every five days, and they were frequently the most defended structures we ca upon stuck out to . Compared to the randomness of the hos, streets, roads, buildings, and others, those two were remarkably similar,” I explained.
“A toll bridge…it’s so simple, but it makes sense in a way. Pay a toll and pass through to a specific destination. But since we never pay a toll, nothing ever happens, and we move through. When was the last toll bridge?” Bowen asked.
“Four days ago. If my theory is correct, we will co across one tomorrow,” I told him.
Bowen smiled weakly and said, “Then let’s hope you are on to sothing. Spirits appear to be low recently.”
—
The bride floated into view in the middle of the next day as we waited on a broken street. “A toll bridge. Just as you said,” Bowen mumbled from beside .
Using Soulsight, I took stock of our opponents. “A small horde of undead with two high-level ones leading them,” I announced.
“We’ll make short work of them. Varnir put up a defensive wall. We’ll move after their arrows,” Lord Vasquez ordered.
“Yes, Sir,” Varnir said as he raised his shield.
Roots sprung out from the bark shield and surrounded us in a protective barrier. A few monts later, the sound of arrows striking the wood could be heard, and Varnir dropped the roots. On the bridge were over a dozen Skeletons wearing crumbling armor and rusted weapons. Lord Vasquez and Sylvia jumped to the front, and the two of them decimated the entire pack in a fury of flas and a rain of blood. The undead were helplessly destroyed until only the archer group and the two Dread Knights remained.
The archers were ready for another volley, but Tsarra washed them away with a shield of water again. A tried and true tactic we developed over ti. She used the wave to crush the archers, leaving only the two Dread Knights. Sylvia and Lord Vasquez took one, while Professor Garrison and I took the other.
I launched a Stone Lance at the Dread Knight, which it easily deflected with its longsword, but the creature wasn’t able to defend itself from Professor Garrison’s sweeping blade. With a single attack, Professor Garrison separated the undead from its legs, and while its top half was in the air, I speared it in the chest and brought it down, only to crush its skull into dust.
Sylvia and Vasquez quickly dismantled their Dread Knight, which left us with a cleared bridge. “This is the bridge you ntioned, Kaladin?” Professor Garrison asked from behind .
“I believe it is. It has the sa structure as the other two I picked out, and there is a toll booth,” I answered.
I walked over to the small toll booth barely large enough to hold a single person. It was just a stone box with windows cut out. It was unassuming, and with a single glance, I could see the entire thing. It was easy to mistake it for being unimportant, as the average person would have a serious fight if they ca across this bridge, and looking for clues would be the least of people’s worries.
When I scanned the box with Soulsight, I saw nothing unusual either. But there was one thing that stood out. A sort of chute or slit that looked like soone could drop things into. I took a closer look and made sure no traps were lying in wait. I even took the edge of a knife and ran it along the inside, but once again, there was nothing.
I let the knife slip further into the crevice, and I felt that there was indeed a bottom to it. No silly infinite space that I had expected. The simplicity of it made second guess myself, but sotis, the answers to a problem were the simplest. From my Spatial Ring, I let a silver coin drop into the box, but… nothing again.
“Anything happen when you did that?” Bowen asked from over my shoulder.
I let my knife slip into it again, and I could move the coin with the blade. “It’s still there. Maybe it needs more?”
So I dropped another silver coin into the box only for nothing to happen, then another. It wasn’t until the fifth coin that sothing changed. In my Soulsight, there was a bright flash of mana, which disappeared a mont later. When I used my knife to check the bottom of the box, the coins were gone.
I turned my head around slowly, and Bowen patted on the back. “It appears we have a lead. Who could have imagined it would be a toll?”
The bridge began to lift away from our previous location and floated off in another direction. After a few minutes of travel, we were connected to a small residential street with two houses on either side.
“Should we investigate?” Professor Garrison asked, resting his sword on his shoulder.
“No. There isn’t anything there. I want to keep investigating this toll bridge,” I answered after checking the place with Soulsight.
“Why? This may be the first lead we have,” Bowen countered.
“Then I should be able to replicate it,” I told him.
I dropped another five silver coins into the chute, and after a few monts, the bridge retook flight. It connected us to another residential street with only one house at that ti.
“It’s taking us to hos?” Professor Garrison asked while scratching his chin.
Bowen humd to himself and said, “The cost. Five silver is a relatively tiny amount…sothing an average person could afford. So, what would happen if you increased the toll to say,…enter a more guarded place?”
“Only one way to find out.”
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