We raced up the flight of steps as fast and quiet as we could, and we came upon a cramped and dark hallway, which ended at a black door. The hall was maybe five feet across and lit by eerie green lamps. It was just tight enough to force you to move out of the way if someone was coming from the other direction. The door at the end of the hall was small, too. Alice and I could just walk through without bumping our heads, but a man as large as Bercouli would have to crouch down quite a bit.
It just didn’t sit right with me. Normally when you got into the ultimate enemy’s stronghold—the final dungeon, if you will—the design and furnishings got fancier and more imposing. And just one floor below, the Morning Star Lookout had been extravagantly outfitted. So why would it suddenly get so cramped and unpleasant, right before the very end?
“Is this…the senate you mentioned earlier…?” I murmured.
“It should be,” she replied uncertainly. “It will be clear when we go in, at least.”
She strode down the hallway, flicking her golden hair aside to blow the hesitation away. I was starting to think this might be a trap and was tempted to reach out and stop her. But then I thought better of it; the Axiom Church wouldn’t set up a trap for intruders this high in the tower. And even if they did, it would be a bold projection of its power, like those minion statues on the walls outside.
The twenty-yard-long hallway did nothing to block our way. In moments, we reached the little door and shared a glance. As the up-close attacker, I grabbed the tiny doorknob to take the lead. It clicked open, no lock, and smoothly swung outward.
There was a sudden gust of cold air from the darkness within, suggesting the thick presence of something. It was the kind of foreboding sensation I got when opening the door to a labyrinth boss chamber in Aincrad—and it made my spine crawl.
I wasn’t going to beg Alice to take the lead, of course. I pulled the door all the way open, ducked my head, and looked inside. The hallway continued a short way through, then turned into what looked like an open space with hardly any light. All I could see was a faint, flickering purple light, though the source was unclear.
The moment I moved through the doorway, I heard what sounded like mumbled chanting. I stopped to listen harder: It wasn’t just one voice. There were several, perhaps dozens, all in unison. Behind me, Alice murmured that it was sacred arts, and I realized she was right.
I tensed, preparing for multiple attacks all at once, then realized I was mistaken. From what I could hear of the spell words, none included the “generate” command that was a virtual requisite of any attack art.
If I was curious, Alice was downright proactive. “Let’s go in. If the senators are preparing some major unrelated sacred art, that suits our purposes. We can sneak through the darkness and get within sword range before they realize it.”
“…Oh, good thinking. I’ll go first, like we said. Watch my back,” I whispered, quietly drawing my black sword. The Blue Rose Sword was only likely to weigh me down in combat, but I wasn’t going to just leave it on the ground there. Once Alice had her Osmanthus Blade drawn as well, I resumed sneaking forward.
The closer we got to the dim chamber, the more I noticed a nasty smell in the cold air. It wasn’t a fetid odor like animals or blood, but more like the stink of rotting food. I tried to ignore it as I pressed my back to the wall of the corridor and peered into the dark space that I assumed was the senate.
It was large—but more than that, it was tall.
At its base, the chamber was a circle about twenty yards across. The curved walls stretched up about three floors to a ceiling hidden in darkness. The structure of it reminded me of Cardinal’s Great Library.
There were no lamps in the room, only a flickering purple light coming from the walls here and there. There was also a series of many round objects placed at set intervals, but I couldn’t tell what they were.
Then a new light source appeared very close to us. It was a square board glowing light purple—a Stacia Window. And the sphere within it was…
A human head.
Did that mean every last round object here in the cylindrical chamber was…
“…A…h-head…?” I gasped.
“No, they seem to have bodies,” Alice noted, as quietly as she could. “But it’s like they’re growing out of the walls…”
I squinted as best I could. There were indeed necks and shoulders beneath the spheres, but that was all I could make out—their bodies were stuffed right into square boxes mounted into the walls.
Based on the small size of the boxes, I had to assume their limbs were folded into an absolutely minimal space. It didn’t look comfortable in the least, but I couldn’t actually tell how the people in the boxes felt about it, because their faces showed zero emotion.
Their pale, exposed heads had no traces of hair on their scalps, chins, or brows, and their beady, glassy eyes gazed at nothing but the Stacia Windows right before them. There were complex strings of letters appearing on the windows, at the end of which the box-people would intone, “System Call…Display Rebelling Index” with washed-out, bloodless lips.
I froze. Their voices didn’t sound like they belonged to living people. “Are…are these the ones who…?!”
“You’re familiar with them?!” Alice snapped. I glanced at her and nodded.
“Yeah…There was this window that opened in the corner of the room right after we had that big fight at Swordcraft Academy two days ago. There was a white face watching me and Eugeo from it…and no doubt about it, it was one of these…”
Alice paused to listen to the box-people chant, then frowned. “The sacred art they are reciting is completely unfamiliar to me…but it seems they have the realm divided into sections. I am not certain what all those numbers are supposed to mean, however.”
“Numbers,” I repeated to myself, hearing a voice in my head.