Chương 161: 152. Just as scared

"Sorry," Luna's voice pulled me from my thoughts.

"About what?" I asked, confused.

"When we were running. I—" She took a tired breath.

"I was readying an attack on you. Just in case…" She looked at me awkwardly.

"You were behind me, one mistake and my death could be easily covered up and—" I raised my hand to stop her.

"Good call." She gave me a light, guilty smile and opened her mouth, but just sighed and sat down on the cobbled street, not saying more.

"Please tell me someone found a safe spot?" the warlock from the other Third Chamber group asked, his voice weak. I noticed his group was down one member. The Riswalts were also missing one person, as was one of the religious groups. No one answered, just as no one mentioned the missing people or the fact that one of the smaller religious parties still hadn't returned.

"We should head there," Leo spoke up, pointing to the left of the gate.

"There should be a safe spot along the way. We didn't have the time to go any deeper." I looked at him with narrowed eyes.

"Why not there?" I asked, gesturing with my head in the opposite direction. The man shrugged before explaining his reasoning.

"It seems we suffered the lightest attacks, so I say we continue where my party was." Did he go there knowing it was the safest, or was it a coincidence? I was getting a headache trying to figure out the politics of this place, as my gaze slowly wandered toward the cats, sticking by the religious faction—for now, at least. I couldn't focus on all that was going on. My thoughts just wouldn't flow as they should.

The fight that got me here was still stuck at the back of my mind, taking up whatever small processing power I had left. First, almost bleeding out, then the dumb mistake with the juice jug getting stuck to the tablecloth… I sighed and let the mortal pope continue.

"Okay, let's move slowly and—" Leo began, but Helga cut him off.

"We should wait for the last group." There was some consternation on Leo's face before he answered.

"Look, we can't waste time. Standing here in a group this big will invite trouble."

"That doesn't mean we should just leave. We weren't killed for the past few minutes. We shouldn't be for the next five," Helga argued.

"We—" Leo began, but was cut off once again.

"Do we really want to leave them behind?" the massive woman said in a harsh tone.

"This time it's them, next time…" She let her voice hang in the air.

"Or does everyone here want to tell me they didn't have any trouble returning to the spot? No unforeseen enemy? No complication that might have delayed you?" That got people thinking, and Leo quickly agreed, seeing where this was going. I looked at Helga. This was a good manipulation of the crowd. I didn't see that coming from her.

"Almost sounds like those aren't her words, doesn't it?" someone asked. I looked down to see Arash looking up at me.

"You were sitting with the church a second ago, and now you're scheming with me."

"I was doing business with the church. Now I'm here for business with you. That's how the world works."

"Let's get to a safe spot first," I said, not in the mood for negotiations. To my surprise, the cat relented easily. It was then I noticed he, too, was tired. Reading feline expressions was hard, but I was pretty sure the nerves were getting to him—like everyone here. The animal moved back, stopped midway, and turned around.

"I wonder—how much of a coincidence was it, the church ending up in the 'correct direction'?" he said before leaving.

"Fuck's sake," I groaned. We moved to the side, spreading along the roads but not too close to the buildings. We were in the open like sitting ducks. The only saving grace was that whatever creatures hunted the city seemed more interested in repeating some sort of routine rather than hunting us on sight—at least the creatures we'd seen until now. Using the short break, I sat down with the rest to go through the robe we pulled from the guest at the dinner table.

The robe itself was once an artifact, although a weak one, since I recognized the runes woven into the fabric. The enchantments were just quality-of-life ones—quite powerful temperature and elemental protection—but that was all. The interesting part of the find was in the pocket. It turned out I'd seen correctly: the man had a notebook in the robe, as well as the remains of a quill and a dried ink bottle. Everything was neatly packed into one leather binding. A stroke of luck—for once.

It seemed we'd managed to get the corpse of a scribe. I would inform the rest, but only once we all got a good read.

"Come on," William urged me as I delicately opened the notebook, making sure no old pages fell out. To my relief, not only was the writing still easy to read, but the book held well—no pages falling out, no tears. Its paper was pristine white. The writing was neat and orderly, bringing to mind historical religious texts, with the first letter on each page decorated. The one at the start of the book was an O, decorated with a vine climbing it, sporting hearts in place of leaves.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. My eyes immediately focused on the page.

"O Linda, the fairest wench ye are, huge and loud, I writ this verse a thousand times and still it makes thee not proud. I prithee, take my soul in hand like thou takest my cheese, For I am thine for evermore, even unto next week's breeze."

"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me," I groaned, looking at the verses. We all felt a sinking feeling as I started to leaf through the notebook. It became clearer and clearer that it wasn't a research journal, but something like an artist's sketchbook for a man with all the love for poetry and none of the talent for it.

We all read with growing horror descriptions of unrequited love for a poor Linda who, I'm pretty sure, might have been the one to slit the man's throat in the end—and if so, fully justified in her actions.

"Fuck's sake," William groaned.

"All that for this shit."

"Well… I rather like it," Darius said from behind us. We all snapped to him, and I was pretty sure the singularity was messing with his brain. After giving the man not-so-pleasant looks—which he just shrugged off—we turned our gazes back to the small book in front. I flipped to the last written page and read a heartwarming line about Linda's oversized blouse on a given morning. But just as I was about to turn the cursed book into a projectile, I remembered what I would sometimes do when writing a research journal.

If I had a thought that needed to be written down but was unrelated to what I was currently doing, I would just flip the book around and write from the back. I turned the small journal and opened it. There was some writing here. It no longer had the flowery letters or—and thank fuck for that—the poetry. Most notes were quickly jotted and hard to read, completely devoid of any structure, but they seemed related to whatever the person was thinking in a moment—and that meant… I quickly jumped to the last few pages.

The previously unordered scribbles were now barely readable. The pages were crumpled, and one of them had wet stains, which were too dark to be water. The overall writing took time to decipher, but the beginning sounded like multiple attempts at a last will. I went back a few lines before that and read this.

"Many faces. Many people. Lost. We should have retreated. Linda, how I miss you. Lost again. Too late, too late, too fucking late—we should have seen the shadows. Curse that fucking bell. The shadows—the shadows were just as scared as us. Should have—" The rest was more gibberish, and then the last will. I jumped over the last-will part and onto the last lines, but then stopped. Something bothered me about the shadows being as scared as them. I closed my eyes.

The exhaustion was like a wall in my mind blocking any ideas from getting in, and I could feel a thought trying to jump over it.

"Shadows, shadows—he died near the entrance, alone, but he made many notes, so not immediately, so…" I started murmuring, trying to ease my thoughts into a flow.

"Can you turn the page?" William asked, breaking me from my pondering.

"We finally have a second to relax. Let's use it well."

"Yeah—" I paused. There was something wrong with his voice. Relax was a strange word to use, but it wasn't spoken with irony. He sounded less tense—a small difference I only noticed because I knew the guy, but it was there. I concentrated and felt that I was also slightly more relaxed—the feeling of something hanging over me was lessened. I slowly raised my head with a grimace and, seeing the shadows, shouted, "We must go!" My voice was loud enough for everyone to hear.

"It's good you came around," Leo said.

"No." I interrupted his political speech and pointed to the large building near the entrance with shadows in its windows. We could only see part of it from where we sat, but the dark figures were no longer there. Instead, they were, one by one, closing curtains—some only looking through the gap between the fabric, barely sticking their heads out, only to hide a second later. They were closing the curtains from the top floor down, leaving only one last floor visible.

I didn't want to know what it was they didn't want to see, but if they were as scared as us…

"Yeah," Helga said, noticing the change.

"I think we did our due diligence. Let's go," she said. We got up quickly and arranged ourselves into proper formations—if one could call it that—and moved our asses. We didn't keep the previous order. Instead, we moved as one elongated group, turning to go deeper into the street where the church had decided to go, but a shout stopped us.

"Wait!" someone screamed. We all turned toward the voice. There, three people from the last missing group were approaching us. They were coming fast from one of the small roads branching from the direction where we'd gone previously—the direction opposite to where the church wanted to go.

"Wait!" they shouted.

"Shut up," barked one of the paladins, looking around, his hand on the sword's hilt. The group received the message and joined us in silence. As they reached us, the man dressed in a druid's clothing took a few hasty breaths and started to speak quietly.

"You have to go with us. We met someone. The priest—the, umm—""Arin," one of the priests who came with him, supplied.

"Right. Arin met someone—there was a child hiding in a side alley. We tried talking to her, and I think she wasn't of the singularity." He took a quick look over all of us and then spoke.

"There are survivors," he said firmly.

"What?" Leo exclaimed.

"Yes. She said she was a child of one of the nuns who had come on a previous expedition. They live in the city now and have a safe space." We all looked at one another, our frowns deepening. The whole group was frozen in place. Everyone was torn.

"Come," the man said, turning in the direction he'd come from.

"The other two went with the girl and will come back for us. We know the way."

"Wait," Leo said.

"We shouldn't—""Are you sure there is a safe spot where you are leading us?" asked one of the Riswalt nobles.

"Are we sure this isn't a trick?" asked another. But before we could make a decision, we heard something—drums, drums from deeper in the city.

"After them!" Leo decided, pointing at the three who were already going toward the southeast. So Leo wasn't sure about his information, I realized. We went after them, but I didn't like this. Survivors from hundreds of years ago—what were the chances? And we were headed in a similar direction to where my group had gone, just slightly off toward the city center.

As we moved, I told Darius to watch my back and opened the small journal, trying to find the spot where the unordered writing about daily life turned into thoughts about the singularity. And I did. I could tell by the style change. The previously unordered writing turned erratic, and the author had actually torn a hole in the page.

"Stop!" I screamed as we approached an alley. My shout was so loud that everyone immediately turned to me angrily. But I didn't care. My eyes were still on the passage.

'Don't follow the small creatures. There are no children here.'