Chapter Text
“How long before the room turns on us?”
They asked quietly. Winter, who tensed each time one of the roiling shapes caused the water to faintly ripple near the bridge, muttered,
“It’s difficult to tell. Though once we can see the creatures below more clearly—teeth, eyes, scales—we need to move immediately. Otherwise we risk being swallowed alongside the bridge.”
Niko grimaced and stood, retrieving the shards from their pocket. The sunlit glow was muted by the three shards atop it, but it was nonetheless warm in their hand. They took a deep breath and proceeded to dismiss the shards containing Nashi and his companions, returning the fourth to their pocket for later. The three appeared where the shards were, looking around in a mix of surprise and wariness.
”Don’t touch the water,”
Niko said quickly. Nashi’s eyes snapped to them and Winter, confused and cautious. His friends held knives in case of a fight, and in Niko’s periphery they saw Winter’s hand resting on the handle of his own blade as he rose.
”Who are you?”
”My name’s Niko, and this is Winter. We’re… we knew the Wanderer. We came to get you out of here.”
“We were managing fine,”
Replied one of his friends, somewhat acidic. Niko sighed and asked the three,
”Are all of you alright?”
“We’re fine, I guess,”
Replied Nashi quietly, a heaviness in his words.
”I’m not sure how fine anyone can be after seeing some of their friends get turned into… those things. But we’re not hurt.”
Niko nodded in empathy. Nashi turned to address them and Winter, seemingly not wanting to remain on the subject of the Wanderer.
”I need to find my mother’s scroll. That’s why I came in here at all, and I won’t leave here without it. I’m sure of where it is, now. She keeps reaching out to me, but she’s barely there. I have to bring her back. And… three of us isn’t enough.”
The admission was solemn. Winter’s sigh was infused with scorn and exasperation.
“Your mother’s scroll is probably a lure by now. The House wants you following it.”
Nashi’s eyes, full of burning defiance, met Winter’s with stone surety.
”You don’t understand; I’m certain it’s her. I’ve heard my share of mimics here, and this isn’t one.”
After a tense moment, Winter shrugged.
”When your death is long and cruel, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
He returned to surveying their surroundings with a critical air, his eyes flicking more and more often to the shapes in the depths.
”In what direction do you hear her? Does it change?”
Niko inquired. If the scroll’s pleas were from the door they’d entered the room from, they’d be more inclined to think it a trap; perhaps that was the House’s plan from the beginning. Though Nashi had been missing for three months—they weren’t certain if the House would dedicate three months’ worth of time and energy to maintain a lure for one person.
Nashi shook his head.
“It’s always coming from the same place. I just get nearer or farther away. That’s where I hear her from,”
He added, gesturing somewhat to the left of the door on the other side of the room. Niko looked to the place he indicated, their eyes lingering on the far door a moment longer before turning back to him.
”…You said you came here to get me out. Do you have a way out of here once we find her scroll?”
Niko glanced at the scorched gadget slowly bouncing in the air, occaisonally chirping calmly.
“The group I came with was sent with these: they broadcast a signal back to the plane we entered Duskmourn from. The ones who gave them to us will discover how to make an exit.”
”But you don’t know how long it would be until they do.”
Nashi had unknowingly given voice to something they had wondered about since before stepping into the House:
Did Ravnica have a way for them to escape the House? Were they working on one? Or had they been sent in with no real expectation of them making it out?
They wouldn’t have put it past Niv-Mizzet to be indifferent to what happened to them—he seemed to be more interested in ensuring his control of Ravnica’s Omenpaths, which included learning whatever he could about Duskmourn, than eight people stuck in the House—but Alquist Proft and Etrata, they had been much more invested in the their survival. And if he had to planeswalk, they knew Kaito would do whatever he could so the rest of them could get out, too.
There were people outside the House who would ensure they could escape.
Nashi was right, though: they didn’t know how long it would take.
“…We’ll get out of here,”
They replied eventually, as sure and strong as steel.
”Our allies will figure out a way, if we don’t first.”
“We need to move,”
Winter said, barely above a whisper.
”Better we aren’t here when they rise to strike.”
Nashi nodded, standing and beginning to move towards the door at the far end of the room, its metal partially rusted. Despite this, it opened quietly and smoothly. His friends followed quickly, and soon they’d created a line, consisting of Nashi, at the front, following his mother’s voice; his friends in the middle, occaisonally exchanging words too quiet and far away to be discerned; and Niko and Winter at the back, glancing behind at every noise to ensure nothing was trailing them.
”…You said your friends would create an exit.”
”I did.”
A sound like furniture falling temporarily drew their attention to the halls they’d just passed through. It sounded like books, or maybe chairs, tumbling against a door. After lengthy scrutiny, they could find nothing, and they quickened their paces for a moment to catch up.
”Do you really believe that?”
”I do.”
Niko replied firmly, holding his gaze.
“…Why?”
”Because they wouldn’t have asked us to go in if they didn’t plan on bringing us back out.”
“There’s no escaping Duskmourn.”
”You only say that because nobody’s ever done it.”
“Because it can’t be done.”
”We are not condemned to spend the rest of our days here.”
They sidestepped a rug with a large moth in the center before continuing.
”I don’t know how much time it will take, but I do know that our companions on Ravnica, the plane we entered the House from, will find how we can get out—if they haven’t already.”
A long, pensive near-silence passed, punctuated only by the insistently-creaking floor. Eventually, Winter shook his head in disbelief, his laughter soft and bitter.
"How hasn't your glimmer manifested yet?"
Before they could respond, a frantic pounding on the door to Winter's left made them both jump. Further ahead, Nashi and his friends stopped.
What sounded like possibly a muffled voice was coming from the other side, indistinguishable but clearly pleading. Hesitant, a new shard formed in Niko's hand. The door rattled and shook as the knob clicked and trembled—and then the House was still.
The tension only grew as the quiet dragged on, the kind that can only be a premonition to something awful as the hair on the back of your neck rises and a chill creeps over you despite the air being on the warmer side of things, until—
Thump.
The door trembled once more as a softer, heavier weight slammed against it. A dark stain oozed from below the door, glistening garnet.
"What's wrong?"
A voice asked again, and their head snapped up, meeting Nashi's nervous eyes. He and his friends remained at a slight distance from the two of them, hesitant and on edge.
“A false cry for help?”
“No.”
Was Niko and Winter’s immediate response, their voices blending into one of hollow certainty. They looked at each other briefly, surprised.
“They’re… beyond our help,”
Niko concluded softly. Sympathy softened the features of one of his friends, who shook his head sadly. After a few moments of relative quiet, Nashi murmured,
“We should keep on.”
Winter nodded. Nashi slowly turned back to the hallway ahead, beckoning them forth. Carefully, his friends followed a few paces behind him.
Niko tore their gaze from the puddle of blood and took a deep, steadying breath before setting off perhaps two meters behind Nashi’s friends. Winter followed, soundless.
“That was a lure,”
Niko muttered.
“The House wanted us to try to save them, didn’t it?”
Winter considered for a moment before nodding once.
“We don’t mean anything to it. Not anymore. …Anyone can be a means to Duskmourn’s ends. They were just unlucky enough to draw the House’s eye.”
Their exchanges had fallen into a pattern of discourse interspersed with quietudes of varying lengths, and now was no different. Niko, eyes on the floor to avoid accidentally touching any moths, pressed their lips into a line as they thought, casting a glance behind them whenever sounds echoed from down the corridor.
“…Do you want to come with us when we leave?”
They asked at last.
Something brightened in Winter’s eyes for the barest moment.
”I want nothing more than to get out of here.”
They nodded. A sharp scratching sound behind one of the doors they had just walked past ended the conversation, and they brought forth a shard, just in case. The smooth, glasslike texture offered some reassurance.
They were going to escape. All of them. No others would suffer for their torment if they could help it.
Niko wouldn’t lose anyone else.