MillionNovel

Font: Big Medium Small
Dark Eye-protection
MillionNovel > Decedent Dues > 3 - Where the Dead Sleep

3 - Where the Dead Sleep

    Where he might have otherwise worried over the impropriety of being assigned a room next to quarters of a young woman his age, Nikola felt only concern.


    Clarisse Adianoeta spoke as swiftly as a locomotive, having wasted no time unlocking the doors that connected both chambers. Where the ones granted to him, had been well-appointed, hers was the epitome of luxury. Each piece of furniture bore such details that the thought of using them for their intended purpose might as well have been blasphemy.


    All that, in contrast to the room’s owner.


    “So,” the gentlewoman all but slammed her wooden pointing stick against the board, touching a sketch she had unceremoniously nailed to it. Not for a second did Nikola doubt the hammering was all her work—she seemed the type. “I made it clear that the dragon would be at the top of the mountain, though I have yet to name either it or its dwelling. No better first foe for the heroes to face, that a thing of legend, to truly test their mettle!”


    She could have been no older than thirty, had her appearance been something he could take at face value.


    “This way, their later struggles become more believable,” Clarisse continued. “For all they may be dragonslayers, bandits can serve as a source of conflict for them. Think of the internal conflict, the emotional turmoil! Slaying their fellow humans should be a whole different beast than slaying a literal beast.”


    For his part, Nikola tried to put some honest effort into the task assigned at him—though none could force enthusiasm out of him, he still tried to deliver a job well done. “Might I ask, what led you to choose this approach, as opposed to starting them off with a weaker opponent and slowly building up to the dragon as a final antagonist?”


    “I would much prefer to break conventions,” Clarisse admitted. “Tell me—were you to find yourself among the audience, would you prefer the events to proceed as countless others have, or would you prefer to be surprised?”


    “While I believe I would personally be amenable to a surprise, you must be aware that the audience will always walk in with certain expectations,” Nikola argued. “Innovation may yet fall short of satisfying them, when they would not expect your work to stray from the norm.”


    “Yet I would rather not be one among many, Zuzen,” she addressed him as he had been introduced to her, for no one along the chain of communication had considered Benjamin hadn’t even deigned to use his full name. “My heroes will be introduced through their slaying of a dragon, and the people shall love it!”


    This had been bound to be a long evening even before he’d come to learn just how stubborn the youngest Adianoeta was.


    “Well, have you considered showing the finished work to a limited audience first, and utilizing whichever feedback they may provide to decide what the best course of action is?”


    “As if!” Clarisse scoffed, flaring her ornate paper fan. “They would take my ideas and run! Or worse yet, spoil it for everyone else!”


    “Can you not make contracts for that, then? Forbid them from revealing anything more than necessary?”


    Though Nikola was unfamiliar with the exact details, he knew it was possible. Truly binding contracts were difficult to procure for reasons lost to him—presumably, it as something about the rarity of the requisite materials—but the Adianoetas were not lacking in resources.


    Clarisse stilled, her pointing stick and fan freezing as well. She lowered them soon after, just at her eyes lit up with a spark that was nothing short of terrifying.


    “Yes, yes. Brilliant. I can hardly believe it, but this might have not been the waste of time I expected it to be…” Abruptly, she locked eyes with him, her gaze crazed. “Zuzen! Come with me! I shall draft a contract then show you my current work! I’ll then grant you the honor of being my first reader, and if we mesh well, perhaps even a cowriter.”


    Pardon? “Miss, I am afraid that would be most inappropriate on my part, were I to agree,” Nikola started. “I am here as an official of The Adianoeta Gazette, to aid our photographer in doing what is required of him. I cannot—”


    “Did my mother not command you to aid me?”


    Nikola sucked in a deep breath. “That, she did.”


    “Then aid me you shall!”You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Clarisse all but lunged forward, her hand wrapping around his wrist so tightly he felt her nails come just close of sinking into his skin. She must have been stronger than any woman and most men he knew, for she yanked him in her direction as she started making for the door, and Nikola found he could do nothing but watch his shoes skid as he reflexively tried to keep her from dragging him behind her.


    Within, he was of two minds. Instinct told him to resist, to not let her act in this manner, while years worth of education and further training told him not to refute the high-status gentlewoman.


    Either option seemed equally unappealing, and soon enough, the window for a choice closed as Clarisse shoved him between two bookcases as she fiddled with the contents of one, just beyond his sight.


    “Miss Adianoeta!” Nikola hissed out—against his wishes, it bore not a pleading tone but one of admonishment, and eyes with pinprick pupils burned into him.


    “Quiet,” she commanded with a whisper, and as when her mother had put him up to this, he found the weight of it to be irresistible, leaving no room for argument.


    The wall on his back gave, his mouth opening for a gasp that never came. Clarisse resumed her stride as the wall sealed like a door shut behind him, still holding on to his wrist as she made him follow her down the incline.


    A scent he could not quite name assaulted his nostrils—something like mildew, dust, rot. They arrived upon a tunnel of sandstone, every nook and cranny illuminated by candlelight so steady it must have been lit mere moments ago.


    Where are we?, Nikola sought to ask. The realization that neither his lips nor tongue would obey struck him like a blow to the gut.


    He writhed weakly, then, for a mere instant before Clarisse pulled him past the threshold where the path widened, into a circular room topped by a grate. Groves and niches were carved into intricate panels, no wall left unmarred. Off-white shapes peeked from within. At the center, a small structure—a cross between a well and an altar—stood, with candles and parchment placed precariously upon its edges.


    “Just how I left it,” she said, sounding pleased as her lips twisted. She let go of him then, leaving him to roam as one might let fenced-in cattle prance around a field. “Good, good.”


    Clarisse changed the placement of the ink pot on the strange choice of surface, presumably to match her preferences. Quill in hand, she began to write.


    Nikola, as stunned as he was numb, tried his best to wander. It only took a few steps for him to get close enough to the wall to find numerous empty eye sockets looking back at him amid a sea of bones.


    In lieu of the scream denied to him, he jumped back with such force that he hit the central structure, eliciting a sigh from Clarisse.


    “Ugh, young men. You are all like this,” she bemoaned. “Always so quick to blow things out of proportion. Fret not—I know now that I’ve need of someone to handle this for me. I’ll inform my mother of that. Just one less person won’t make that much of a difference.”


    Frantically, he examined the room. He could think of no way to exit save for where they came from, and he did not trust his chances at somehow getting past that hidden door. Still, he could not stay here. His panic must have struck a chord, as Clarisse let out an exasperated sigh from where she leaned, having a clear view of the room and its sole exit.


    “Speak. Is this about being the here and now?” Clarisse asked, looking up. Faint moonlight shone through the gate, somehow reflecting on her face despite the fierce candlelight beneath. “No, you wouldn’t know. But no matter. We can come to an arrangement. I can have you returned to your quarters, or someplace in the city—we own most of it, anyway. You will work for me as discussed, but you needn’t see any of this, if you so wish.”


    “Miss Adianoeta, I have agreed to none of this,” Nikola said through gritted teeth as he found the capacity to speak returned to him as if it had never felt. The tension in the air was so palpable he could hardly move, feeling as though she were holding him in place with her gaze.


    Clarisse eyed him. “Who do you think you are, to disrespect me so as to act as if you can deny me?”


    She reached forward, over the well, and gathered all his hair in one fell swoop, pulling him closer as his scalp burned. Crystalline waters filled his vision, less than an arm’s length away from his face. They shifted as if something alive were in them. So abrupt was the yank that she flinched from the whiplash of the motion just as bent knees slammed against the opposite side of the well, and tipped the ink pot over the binding contract she had been drafting. Her features twisted in fury.


    “It is far from the first time I’ve been gifted a young guest to do with as I please, and it shan’t be the last,” Clarisse said as though that were the most normal sentence in the world. “You should count yourself lucky that what I require for you is assistance and not blood.”


    She is insane, Nikola realized as she let go of him, leaving him to just barely manage to hang on without falling into the well, dazed by the pounding in his head. He’d thought her eccentric upon their recent meeting, but he could never have foreseen this. As he blinked away the tears and once again caught sight of the veritable catacombs around them, confusion and dread still ran rampant within him.


    As Clarisse began a draft anew, it struck him that he might easily become another set of scattered bones down here. His limbs strained, the effort of holding on growing to be too much, splayed as she’d left him just over the waters.


    He lacked both the strength to endure much longer and the finesse to somehow shift away without falling. His chest tightened—whether this was brought about by his position or his growing horror, he hadn’t the faintest clue.


    Nikola’s pants grew more frantic—he could hardly breathe.


    The start of a shout left Clarisse’s lips, but he couldn’t catch the meaning of the noise, not when even the frightfully speedy Adianoeta was swift enough to reach him before he hit the water.
『Add To Library for easy reading』
Popular recommendations
A Ruthless Proposition Wired (Buchanan-Renard #13) Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways #1) The Wandering Calamity Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4) A Kingdom of Dreams (Westmoreland Saga #1)