“And you are sure this is it?” We were on a graveyard outside the capital city, far off from the outermost unprotected district. There was nobody around except a few undead and us obviously.
“Most definitely.” Hannah told me and pushed against the doors of a small crypt.
“Edgy …” Skulls were ornamenting the walls in an orderly fashion with a large sarcophagus in the middle of the small room. Everything was dusty around here, which didn’t leave us much of a choice but to search everywhere if we didn’t already knew what we searched for. “Well, there is only one possible place, right?”
Together, Hannah and I lifted up the surpassingly light cover of the sarcophagus and stared down into a deep hole with a ladder leading downwards. Carefully, we put the cover to the side and waved the twins over who were destroying a toppled over gravestone because they didn’t like the name on it. I was pretty sure they would have dug out the corpse already if it wasn’t already resurrected and walking around somewhere.
“I hate Oliver.” Clarice told me while I was staring at her rather dumbly.
“Yeah, Olivers are dumb.” Clara reaffirmed and ran over to us, only to look down into the deep hole. “Is that the deepest hole on Solaris?” Surely not. I could see a faint magical light at the bottom of the hole illumination the ladder perfectly.
“The deepest hole was found in your brain sis. Mages still can’t figure out how you could fit so much of nothing inside it.” Clarice laughed loudly and slapped her knees loudly. She was surely having a lot of fun while Hannah and I started to regret taking them with us in the first place. These two weren’t even calming down after I threatened them with torture after all.
“You are just envious because I’m smarter.” Clara pursed her lips bummed out by the fact that Hannah and I were barely listening to them. Instead, Hannah jumped into the hole using her magic to feather the fall.
“No, I’m smarter.” Clarice stated which was a rather bold lie considering that they always attempted to be the same, no matter what … except when they were arguing. Then everything was allowed.
“The square root of sixty four?” I asked while swinging my legs into the deep hole.
“Uhm … six?” Clarice asked unsure.
“I wanted to say that!” Clarice shouted out and tried to hit her sister right away, something which was promptly blocked off by Clara.
“You are both dumb. But you have a chance of redeeming yourself. Whoever is faster in the underground tunnel wins.” I told them and jumped down as well. Hannah’s wind magic immediately picked me up to slow down my fall. Elegantly, I landed on the dry stone floor and directly made place for the twins who were tumbling down hugging each other tightly and screaming loudly as Hannah had yet to slow their fall.
At the last possible second though, the air below them compressed, creating some sort of cushion to land on. They started giggling right away, at least until I cleared my throat loudly and they stood up to salute to me.
“We both won. Are we smart now?” Clara asked happily, pointing to their feet on the ground.
“Nine plus fourteen?” I asked without any hope whatsoever.
“Fifteen!” Yep … they just don’t want to learn stuff.
“… that’s odd. You haven’t gotten any smarter whatsoever.” I turned away from them, picked up the magical lamp and held it high to see the markings on the wall.
“That’s because Hannah didn’t let us touch the ground.” Clarice complained while Clara stuck out her tongue towards Hannah.
“Well, I can don’t have to. But you two clean up the resulting mess, will you?” Hannah stepped to my side and read the markings carefully.
“Kay.” I didn’t know if the twins understood that landing without Hannah’s powers entailed scraping their brain matter off the ground, but whatever.
Following Hannah’s directions, we strolled through the dark suspiciously unused tunnel network. It did almost seem as if the tunnels had been used to a minimum to avoid detection by the heightened surveillance of the state. So far, we merely stumbled over a few cart tracks in the dust but nothing else seemed to indicate any sort of human activity down there. But alas, we found it.
The answer to everything, the truth turning right into wrong and the only sign we needed to know we had traversed this labyrinth like structure to great success.
“Street forty two … that must be it.” Hannah commented rather drily while I stopped the twins from stepping onto a pressure plate just for fun. They could do that later when I wasn’t at risk of being buried anymore. I kind of liked the silence in the tunnels, but I wasn’t too keen on spending the next days with rocks … even though you could do so much with them. Building a castle for example!
“What are you thinking about?” Hannah must have realised my wandering mind and called me out right away, probably worried I was freaking out for some reason which wasn’t that impossible considering my soul was still badly hurt.
“… rocks. Rocks and more rocks.” I told her a bit absentmindedly while watching how she opened a metal door embedded into the wall revealing a small room.
“Why is there straw in the corner?” Clara jumped into the room after us and directly picked out the unusual stuff in there.
“I don’t know …” I told her, eyeing the straw suspiciously as well. Clarice threw herself onto it, despite our attempts to stop her from doing so and revealed the straw as what it was – straw. Seriously, it was just straw.
Clarice eventually figured that out as well and directed her full attention to the stairwell on the other side of the room.
“Is this it? Are we finally there?” Clara asked a little bored already.
“We just walked ten minutes! How small do you think the capital is?” I exclaimed a bit annoyed by their behaviour.
“Ten minutes wide.” Clarice answered, still laying in that hay while Hannah felt the walls, disregarding the stairwell completely.
“Stop measuring distance with time!” I admonished her. I definitely had taught them the SI base units already, so it kind of annoyed me that they purposefully did things wrong.
“I know! It’s at least kilometre wide.” Clara said loudly which dumbfounded me a little. After all, a kilometre wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things.
“Well, she’s not wrong with that. Lucinda, can you help me a little?” Hannah asked, pressed her fingernails into a small slit in the wall and attempted to pull the hidden door to the side.
“Are we finally there or not? I need to go to the toilet.” Clara asked while I helped Hannah open the door fully.
“What for?” Hannah knew vampires had a vastly different metabolism than humans had which meant visiting the bathroom was rarely done by us.
“To brush my teeth.” Clara answered happily and showed her pristine white teeth.
“They aren’t dirty at all.” I told her and looked into the next room which did have a ladder inside.
“Huh? I was so sure of it.” Yeah … definitely not. “But now that you mention it, I’m kind of thirsty.”
“Okay, first of all, we aren’t on a vacation. And second of all, you won’t touch anyone when we are back on the surface, alright?” I looked into their eyes sternly and only turned away from them as they nodded. Then, I grabbed the ladder and followed after Hannah who went to check out the exit already.
Minutes later, we were in the outskirts of the commoner district behind the gates that were closed off. Awestruck about the sheer size of the walls, the twins opened their mouths a little and pointed towards it.
“First time in the capital?” Hannah asked while closing the lid of a fake canalisation cover again.
“I never thought humans could construct something this tall. That’s at least three metres!” Clarice exclaimed while I dragged her towards the nearest wall. We were in a desolate alley, only populated by thugs from time to time, but there was still no reason to be that obvious.
“So what’s the plan?“ Hannah looked around a little and then walked ahead once more towards a more or less busy main road.
“We pretend to be noblewoman attending the party in the palace.” It was the easiest solution I found. We would be hard pressed to enter the royal palace like this, but getting into the noble quarters with a few forged documents would be rather easy.
“There is a celebration today?” Clara was strangely active as she said that, tripping from one foot onto the other while her sister couldn’t hold still either.
“There is always some sort of party. For all I know Chungus could have his birthday today.” Finally, we arrived the larger street and instantly turned into the centre of attention.
“Who is that?” Clara asked in regards to Chungus.
“My hamster.” I did have on which was called like that four hundred years before and as I had no clue who actually partied, I just gave out a random name.
“So cool …” Clarice muttered until she realised that I grabbed her and her sisters’ hand while looking a bit dumbly at Clarice. “You don’t have a hamster, do you?”
“… no.” Where would I have one in the first place? In my pocket? This dress didn’t have one for fucks sake! These naïve twins were driving me nuts …
Holding onto their hand tightly, we made a lot of progress under the cover of the night until we arrived at the main street.
“So many people!” Both of them tugged on my arm a little bit, but didn’t go as far as shaking off my grip on their hand. As such, our way towards the first gate was indeed relatively peaceful. We even took the scenic route to show the twins the city, even though they were more interested in the people. Luckily, nobody seemed to have noticed their behaviour and keeping our heads down did allow us to hide our red eyes.
Luckily though, we didn’t have to bear with that for too long as Hannah found an alchemist near the end who did specialise into glassworks. Thus, we were fortunate enough to be equipped with three new sunglasses which suspiciously looked just like my old ones.
Maybe I was indeed a trendsetter in that regard. I could already imagining myself opening up a shop for glasses – Lucinda’s glasses, a vision for everyone. That would be my motto …
Shaking my head a little amused with the nearly acquired glasses on my nose, I looked at the twins fooling around with each other.
“Look at how intelligent I look with this!” Glasses tended to make others look more knowledgeable but knowing her … no. Not at all.
“Woah, Clara! You look like some sore of scholar now!” Clarice admitted more than excited about her sisters new look.
“Indeed. I am studying … linguistics!” Clara said and pulled her glasses down a little.
“It’s nice that you have glasses now, but could we please do that somewhere not in front of a broken shop door?” Hannah asked both of them sternly. Surely, they did pick out the worst possible place to have fun with their newly acquired glasses which was literally in front of the picked door.
“Oh. Right.”
“And you are sure this is it?” We were on a graveyard outside the capital city, far off from the outermost unprotected district. There was nobody around except a few undead and us obviously.
“Most definitely.” Hannah told me and pushed against the doors of a small crypt.
“Edgy …” Skulls were ornamenting the walls in an orderly fashion with a large sarcophagus in the middle of the small room. Everything was dusty around here, which didn’t leave us much of a choice but to search everywhere if we didn’t already knew what we searched for. “Well, there is only one possible place, right?”
Together, Hannah and I lifted up the surpassingly light cover of the sarcophagus and stared down into a deep hole with a ladder leading downwards. Carefully, we put the cover to the side and waved the twins over who were destroying a toppled over gravestone because they didn’t like the name on it. I was pretty sure they would have dug out the corpse already if it wasn’t already resurrected and walking around somewhere.
“I hate Oliver.” Clarice told me while I was staring at her rather dumbly.
“Yeah, Olivers are dumb.” Clara reaffirmed and ran over to us, only to look down into the deep hole. “Is that the deepest hole on Solaris?” Surely not. I could see a faint magical light at the bottom of the hole illumination the ladder perfectly.
“The deepest hole was found in your brain sis. Mages still can’t figure out how you could fit so much of nothing inside it.” Clarice laughed loudly and slapped her knees loudly. She was surely having a lot of fun while Hannah and I started to regret taking them with us in the first place. These two weren’t even calming down after I threatened them with torture after all.
“You are just envious because I’m smarter.” Clara pursed her lips bummed out by the fact that Hannah and I were barely listening to them. Instead, Hannah jumped into the hole using her magic to feather the fall.
“No, I’m smarter.” Clarice stated which was a rather bold lie considering that they always attempted to be the same, no matter what … except when they were arguing. Then everything was allowed.
“The square root of sixty four?” I asked while swinging my legs into the deep hole.
“Uhm … six?” Clarice asked unsure.
“I wanted to say that!” Clarice shouted out and tried to hit her sister right away, something which was promptly blocked off by Clara.
“You are both dumb. But you have a chance of redeeming yourself. Whoever is faster in the underground tunnel wins.” I told them and jumped down as well. Hannah’s wind magic immediately picked me up to slow down my fall. Elegantly, I landed on the dry stone floor and directly made place for the twins who were tumbling down hugging each other tightly and screaming loudly as Hannah had yet to slow their fall.
At the last possible second though, the air below them compressed, creating some sort of cushion to land on. They started giggling right away, at least until I cleared my throat loudly and they stood up to salute to me.
“We both won. Are we smart now?” Clara asked happily, pointing to their feet on the ground.
“Nine plus fourteen?” I asked without any hope whatsoever.
“Fifteen!” Yep … they just don’t want to learn stuff.
“… that’s odd. You haven’t gotten any smarter whatsoever.” I turned away from them, picked up the magical lamp and held it high to see the markings on the wall.
“That’s because Hannah didn’t let us touch the ground.” Clarice complained while Clara stuck out her tongue towards Hannah.
“Well, I can don’t have to. But you two clean up the resulting mess, will you?” Hannah stepped to my side and read the markings carefully.
“Kay.” I didn’t know if the twins understood that landing without Hannah’s powers entailed scraping their brain matter off the ground, but whatever.
Following Hannah’s directions, we strolled through the dark suspiciously unused tunnel network. It did almost seem as if the tunnels had been used to a minimum to avoid detection by the heightened surveillance of the state. So far, we merely stumbled over a few cart tracks in the dust but nothing else seemed to indicate any sort of human activity down there. But alas, we found it.
The answer to everything, the truth turning right into wrong and the only sign we needed to know we had traversed this labyrinth like structure to great success.
“Street forty two … that must be it.” Hannah commented rather drily while I stopped the twins from stepping onto a pressure plate just for fun. They could do that later when I wasn’t at risk of being buried anymore. I kind of liked the silence in the tunnels, but I wasn’t too keen on spending the next days with rocks … even though you could do so much with them. Building a castle for example!
“What are you thinking about?” Hannah must have realised my wandering mind and called me out right away, probably worried I was freaking out for some reason which wasn’t that impossible considering my soul was still badly hurt.
“… rocks. Rocks and more rocks.” I told her a bit absentmindedly while watching how she opened a metal door embedded into the wall revealing a small room.
“Why is there straw in the corner?” Clara jumped into the room after us and directly picked out the unusual stuff in there.
“I don’t know …” I told her, eyeing the straw suspiciously as well. Clarice threw herself onto it, despite our attempts to stop her from doing so and revealed the straw as what it was – straw. Seriously, it was just straw.
Clarice eventually figured that out as well and directed her full attention to the stairwell on the other side of the room.
“Is this it? Are we finally there?” Clara asked a little bored already.
“We just walked ten minutes! How small do you think the capital is?” I exclaimed a bit annoyed by their behaviour.
“Ten minutes wide.” Clarice answered, still laying in that hay while Hannah felt the walls, disregarding the stairwell completely.
“Stop measuring distance with time!” I admonished her. I definitely had taught them the SI base units already, so it kind of annoyed me that they purposefully did things wrong.
“I know! It’s at least kilometre wide.” Clara said loudly which dumbfounded me a little. After all, a kilometre wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things.
“Well, she’s not wrong with that. Lucinda, can you help me a little?” Hannah asked, pressed her fingernails into a small slit in the wall and attempted to pull the hidden door to the side.
“Are we finally there or not? I need to go to the toilet.” Clara asked while I helped Hannah open the door fully.
“What for?” Hannah knew vampires had a vastly different metabolism than humans had which meant visiting the bathroom was rarely done by us.
“To brush my teeth.” Clara answered happily and showed her pristine white teeth.
“They aren’t dirty at all.” I told her and looked into the next room which did have a ladder inside.
“Huh? I was so sure of it.” Yeah … definitely not. “But now that you mention it, I’m kind of thirsty.”
“Okay, first of all, we aren’t on a vacation. And second of all, you won’t touch anyone when we are back on the surface, alright?” I looked into their eyes sternly and only turned away from them as they nodded. Then, I grabbed the ladder and followed after Hannah who went to check out the exit already.
Minutes later, we were in the outskirts of the commoner district behind the gates that were closed off. Awestruck about the sheer size of the walls, the twins opened their mouths a little and pointed towards it.
“First time in the capital?” Hannah asked while closing the lid of a fake canalisation cover again.
“I never thought humans could construct something this tall. That’s at least three metres!” Clarice exclaimed while I dragged her towards the nearest wall. We were in a desolate alley, only populated by thugs from time to time, but there was still no reason to be that obvious.
“So what’s the plan?“ Hannah looked around a little and then walked ahead once more towards a more or less busy main road.
“We pretend to be noblewoman attending the party in the palace.” It was the easiest solution I found. We would be hard pressed to enter the royal palace like this, but getting into the noble quarters with a few forged documents would be rather easy.
“There is a celebration today?” Clara was strangely active as she said that, tripping from one foot onto the other while her sister couldn’t hold still either.
“There is always some sort of party. For all I know Chungus could have his birthday today.” Finally, we arrived the larger street and instantly turned into the centre of attention.
“Who is that?” Clara asked in regards to Chungus.
“My hamster.” I did have on which was called like that four hundred years before and as I had no clue who actually partied, I just gave out a random name.
“So cool …” Clarice muttered until she realised that I grabbed her and her sisters’ hand while looking a bit dumbly at Clarice. “You don’t have a hamster, do you?”
“… no.” Where would I have one in the first place? In my pocket? This dress didn’t have one for fucks sake! These naïve twins were driving me nuts …
Holding onto their hand tightly, we made a lot of progress under the cover of the night until we arrived at the main street.
“So many people!” Both of them tugged on my arm a little bit, but didn’t go as far as shaking off my grip on their hand. As such, our way towards the first gate was indeed relatively peaceful. We even took the scenic route to show the twins the city, even though they were more interested in the people. Luckily, nobody seemed to have noticed their behaviour and keeping our heads down did allow us to hide our red eyes.
Luckily though, we didn’t have to bear with that for too long as Hannah found an alchemist near the end who did specialise into glassworks. Thus, we were fortunate enough to be equipped with three new sunglasses which suspiciously looked just like my old ones.
Maybe I was indeed a trendsetter in that regard. I could already imagining myself opening up a shop for glasses – Lucinda’s glasses, a vision for everyone. That would be my motto …
Shaking my head a little amused with the nearly acquired glasses on my nose, I looked at the twins fooling around with each other.
“Look at how intelligent I look with this!” Glasses tended to make others look more knowledgeable but knowing her … no. Not at all.
“Woah, Clara! You look like some sore of scholar now!” Clarice admitted more than excited about her sisters new look.
“Indeed. I am studying … linguistics!” Clara said and pulled her glasses down a little.
“It’s nice that you have glasses now, but could we please do that somewhere not in front of a broken shop door?” Hannah asked both of them sternly. Surely, they did pick out the worst possible place to have fun with their newly acquired glasses which was literally in front of the picked door.
“Oh. Right.”
