Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 68: As above (Patreon)

Midnight moonlight shines in through the caked, dust painted windows. The dull glow that barely manages to creep in, intermingling with the light of the lantern that the girl has dulled by half closing the shutters on the small device. She holds it up above her head, shining it around the room and wiggling her nose, doing her best not to sneeze. Her presence here seems to have disturbed the long since sleeping dust, rousing it into the air. The whole room is filled with dust. Dust covers everything. As if it had been forgotten here, as if this place had been buried under it, after it was sealed off with lock and key.

“A grave,” mumbles the girl to herself, lifting the cut of her robe up to cover her nose.

The air is cold and stagnant, any warmth that she had been able to create downstairs clearly never made its way up here. Whether that warmth was of a physical nature or of a spiritual one, it didn’t quite matter as neither of those are present. There is only herself, the dull light and that strange, cold feeling in her gut. That familiar sad, lonely feeling as she looks around the tomb.

The room is simply one large open space that seems to encompass the entire floor plan of the lower floor, though it’s seemingly divided into two sections by small, waist high railings and one inner balcony to her right. Walking past the many full bookshelves that line the adjacent walls, much to the girl’s delight, she turns to look down the railing to the left of the hole. A small staircase of only two steps long separates the part she is on now from the lower one down there. In the center of the lower section, is a large table that is covered in papers and scrolls. A ring of empty chairs surrounds it, filled with nothing but forgotten memories.

Carefully, she steps down towards it, holding the lantern out above her head as she looks over the table. The small wooden steps creak beneath her weight, as if surprised at having someone step on them in so long. Outside the windows, the wind blows on, the cool draft seeping into the forgotten room through the cracks, touching her skin and causing her hairs to stand on end, as she looks over the table.

The papers here are hardly legible anymore. Any ink on them has long since faded or been buried under a mountain of dust that she doesn’t dare disturb, as its absence would be proof of her having been here. Drawings and scribbles cover the bits that she can see. Open books and ledgers with pages and lines marked are everywhere. But none of them seem to make any coherent sense to her. Some of them are about esoteric topics such as starlight and spirituality. Another one that she can see, leaning closer, is about the monsters down in the dungeon and shows a hand-drawn depiction of the sub-boss boss from floor eight. Another one still seems to just be a children’s picture book telling a story about an adventuring slime.

Looking up around her as she walks around the large table, she counts the chairs. Six. One of them, she notices, is set just a little higher than the others. Looking against the walls, she sees all manner of oddities lining the spaces where there are no books. Glass crystals, orbs, strange little figurines and statues and one thing that particularly catches her eye, a tower of horizontally laid out kegs stacked on top of each other. Quietly she taps on one and listens to the empty knock that comes back to her ears. Though whether this had been drunk empty, or if its contents simply evaporated over time, she can’t say.

But… her eyes catch the many knick-knacks and little things that fill the space. Tokens, proof of memories that had once been forged. Small charms. Little statuettes of people and creatures. A few drawings and sketches of faces that she doesn’t recognize, all of them blurred and worn out, as if time itself had erased even these last depictions of them, causing them to become vague and loose like old, forgotten memories teetering on the edge of a demented mind. The ink is mostly faded and gone, their features are entirely blurred and indistinct. As if they never really existed. As if the wind itself, creeping in through the cracks in the building, were blowing away the dust of their once having been, returning them entirely to the void.

Fresh shivers, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand on high and she straightens herself upright and walks back up the little staircase, quietly tiptoeing as she moves past the hole she climbed in from. The middle section of the room is simply an open floor, ironically with a rug in the center. A small side table is against the far wall, beneath a large nook of an alcove window that she assumes looks out over the plaza. The spot itself looks as if it was once highly valued. The little ‘bench’ beneath the window is covered in old pillows and blankets. An old book lays on the heap and she quietly walks over towards it, looking down at presumably the last thing that somebody had ever read.

“Of demons and the night sky,” mumbles the girl curiously as she looks at the thick, heavy looking and apparently well read book, but daring not to touch it.

Pursing her lips, she straightens back up again and looks to her left. She knew it. “Demons are real.” She wiggles her toes in her boots, making sure they haven’t been stolen, as she looks at the last thing remaining. A final staircase. Also short, but not as short as the one down to the ‘meeting area’ as she dubs it. Counting it, she sees nine steps of the single, railing-less staircase in the middle of the room that leads up to a tiny inner balcony which looks over the large, open space.

Quietly creeping up the protesting stairs, the witch makes her way up through the darkness, her body as if suspended in the blue light of her lantern as she peers out into the space above, just below the roof.

A single bed and a small dresser sit here. But more interestingly is the big, slanted window on the ceiling. Below it sits a large, expensive appearing bronze looking-glass that is pointed towards the heavens above. Or at least towards the grime-caked window.

Stepping up, she looks over the railing to the space below her. She isn’t sure, but if she had to give this whole place a name or a purpose, it would be a party headquarters. She assumes that this is where they all met and planned and lived their shared lives out together. Judging by the kegs and the books and the many pillows and trinkets, this is also where they relaxed and spent their free time together. It’s where they collected their memories and interests, whatever they may once have been.

She glances towards the telescope, interested in trying it out. But she doesn’t want to disturb the resting place any further than she already has. Her eyes wander to the dresser. Presumably, whoever slept in this single bed likely kept their clothes in it. The sheets of the bed are tucked in nicely, as if someone had made it in the morning but then never returned to it. Her hand reaches out for the dresser. Maybe there’s just some clothes and some old underwear. But maybe there’s a diary? A journal? Something.

Her fingers graze the edge of the bronze handle and she stops and then lowers her hand again.

She’s seen enough. This isn’t her business. Whatever is buried here, isn’t hers to dig up, no matter how curious about her friend and their past she is.

Nodding to herself, she quietly creeps back to the hole and lowers herself down it, together with the lantern, before covering it back up with the loose boards. Closing the lantern, she sets it back onto the shelf and peeking out that the coast is clear, sneaks back into her room to at least get a couple of hours of sleep tonight.

While she manages to fall asleep very quickly, her restless dreams are disturbed with images of herself looking through the telescope, gazing up at the distant night sky in terror as she sees thousands of forgotten faces staring back down at her. Demons of the night descending down into the world, coming to take her and her friend’s feet while they sleep.