I have more questions. Judging from the looks of the others, so do they. But the sight of her pumping against this young woman’s chest scares every word right out of me. I can’t help but see Tor in this woman’s place. Did his fellow Crusaders do this to him upon his death? Did the Shadow Crusade perform the bloodletting on Dimitri’s mother and sister?
Once the last droplet of sticky darkness has been drained from the dead young woman on the slab, the Spirit Keep picks the bucket up by its squeaking handle and carries it back out the way we came. She doesn’t instruct us to follow her, but our only other option is to stand here among the dead and exsanguinated. I’d rather be abandoned in the Shadowthorn than left down here, and apparently my fellow recruits agree because we all shuffle after her, never once looking back.
The bucket sloshes, the Spirit Keep swaying with the effort it takes to carry it, but even when Güthric or Dimitri offer to help, she snaps at them to remember their place.
“We each have a role,” she croaks, the exertion surely pushing her to the brink of what must be her impending death.
She manages to survive the entire journey back to the place where the many corridors convene at the base of the stairs. I’m not surprised to find Alphonse and his group already awaiting us there. He grins like a smug child who thinks he’s just bested us in a game.
Beside him, however, Maxwell grimaces, a heavy bucket clutched in his hand. I assume they spent their first hour practicing the bloodletting while we were wandering these dusty halls before the two groups switched. They had likely even been working on the man we saw when we first entered the morgue.
“There you are,” Alphonse says, examining his cuticles. “We were starting to wonder if we should begin without you.”
“No you weren’t,” says the Spirit Keep with a motherly wave of her hand. She lowers the bucket and summons us closer. “The bloodletting is how you obtain necro-ink, but the application of it is what really matters.”
Leaning down over the bucket, the Spirit Keep dips her bony finger knuckle-deep into the tarry fluid. As she stands, she drags her finger down her forehead, black ink smearing in an uneven line between her eyes.
“No way,” Sai blurts, shaking his head and backing away from the buckets set ominously before us. “I-I’m not going anywhere near that stuff, let alone putting it on my face. It’s laced with demon toxin. She said so herself.”
Alphonse sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Whatever demonic qualities possessed the blood, once the body is brought to Nigh, for whatever reason, it is absolved of its harmful effects on humans.”
“For whatever reason?” Sai throws his arms in the air. “Oh, okay. Well if it’s just for whatever reason, then by that logic, I should—” His words become emphatic, pointed—“apply black blood directly to my skin.”
Alphonse rolls his eyes. “If you must know, the Castle of Nigh once belonged to the mages, before they fled Arcathain and abandoned it. The Crusaders of that time believed this place to be crucial to efforts to find and slay the Primordial. Conclude from that what you will, but it’s of little importance—”
“It’s of little importance? Piss on a mage! I beg to differ,” Sai wails. I’ve never seen him so hysterical, so attuned to what’s being left unsaid. He’s more likely to be found saturated in booze and heavy-lidded during any topic of conversation that it is rare for him to offer anything to the conversation other than a snide remark or roguish grin. “Not only do you want us to paint demon blood directly onto our skin, but now you’re implying that said blood might be imbued with ancient magic?”
The other recruits start muttering to one another, paranoia strong among us Arcathainians. It begins soft, but their concerns become too big for them to carry quietly. An onslaught of questions and accusations are thrown at Alphonse. He staggers back with each one, utterly unprepared and increasingly more terrified. My guess is, as his back slams into a stone wall, he’s asking himself whether this trip had still been too soon. If he had just pushed it off until—well, forever—we would’ve been all too eager to never think about the catacombs or the bloodletting again.
“That’s enough!” Dimitri’s voice bellows beside me as loud as the bell tower’s toll.
The other recruits hush and turn to him. I’m almost too stunned to do the same, too fearful of seeing the disapproving way he’s staring at them all because, even though I wasn’t in an uproar with them, I wanted to be. Their hesitations are the same as mine.
Valid or not, I already know what Dimitri is going to say.
“It isn’t our place to question the ways of the Shadow Crusade!” His jaw is a taut wire about to snap as he yells. He lets the echo of his scolding ripple down every chamber of the catacombs before speaking again. “We came to learn the ways of the Crusaders. We came here to serve our country.”
Alphonse brightens, his ego thoroughly stroked. “Precisely, initiate. Well said. The rest of you would do well to heed your friend’s advice. Need I remind you that we will face an ancient Primordial, a creature with such vile power that it continues to seep across the lands, consuming Arcathainian soil and ravages our people. It has cursed our neighbors, Blighted their lands, and sent demons to devour their flesh. The mages may have been despicable for their abandonment of this country and its inhabitants, but in their haste, they left us with certain advantages.
“Your shadowsteel, for instance. Those blades can only penetrate the demons’ skin because of the magic infused with them. Would you prefer us to abandon every tool at our disposal and enter the Shadowthorn defenseless?”
Sai grumbles something as he lowers his head.
“What’s that? I don’t believe all of us could hear you.”
“I said, no,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Very good. It would be suicide to want such a thing. It would be the genocide of our people to believe that we could possibly defeat Qaeus without using every possible advantage at our disposal. Whatever means necessary.” A muscle feathers in his jaw, and I get the impression that he’s talking about something more than just shadowsteel and necro-ink. The moment passes, and he continues. “Now, either you can learn how to apply the necro-ink so that you may safely enter the Shadowthorn when the time comes, or for those of you who disagree with this philosophy, leave now. Crawl back to the dung heaps and cesspools we found you in, embrace a life of squalor and persecution, and live out the rest of your pathetic lives as deserters, knowing that you gave up on saving our country.”
With his arm extended toward the stairway, we all fall silent. Something drips from down one of the bone-lined corridors. I tell myself it’s likely just a leak, that places as old as this one often suffer from structural decay, but my mind knows better. It thinks of the young woman, of the black sludge that slithered from her veins.
After a painfully long moment, Alphonse finally lowers his arm. He turns to the Spirit Keep who’s hunched over one of the dark buckets and dipping vials inside the putrid waste until they fill.
Alphonse bows his head to her. “I believe they’re yours then.”
She gives no indication she’s heard him. She just keeps dipping her vials. Once each one is full, she twists a small cap on top to seal it before wiping the thing clean with one of the loose-hanging cloths draped over her billowing, tattered gown. We watch her so intently that when she finally stands, at least a dozen vials in hand, we all jump.