"How could you leave me behind?!" Amy trudged over the pile of garbage and pushed past Vector. "That's so mean!"
"Amy!" Sheptilah cried out. "As you can see it's dangerous as all Hell out here; what are you doing?"
"I'm coming to kick your butt for lying to me!" The pink hedgehog took out her hammer.
"You kids are not genre savvy, are you? We wanted to get this done as quickly as possible because if anything is gonna attack us it's usually at this part of the story." Eggman was shouting, his face red with anger. Orbot and Cubot floating nearby tried to calm him down, afraid he'd give himself a stroke.
"Leave. Now!" Sheptilah stepped up on the rubble and pushed Vector back. "Before I warp all of you back myself!"
"You are so rude!" Charmy flew up to the witch and stuck his tongue out at her.
"I'll show you rude!" She stepped back and tore open a portal to the island. "Step in or I will throw you in."
"Stop. There will be no fighting," Espio tried to calm them, "We've been lost out here for hours looking for them. We should just take this opportunity to-" The chameleon was cut off by Vector knocking him out of the way.
"We want to know what you're up to!" The crocodile roared. His breath was rancid. Sheptilah winced but did not look away.
"I already explained all of it," Amy leaned on her hammer, "You don't believe me?"
"I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth." The crocodile peered down at the woman past his long snout.
"We're going to get a giant pearl and then we are getting the Hell out of Dodge," Eggman put a meaty hand on the witch's shoulder and pulled her back as he spoke, "And we're going to do it in one piece; whether you idiots bother us or not."
Sheptilah created a great gust of wind that picked up Amy along with the Chaotix and pushed them into the portal. She then closed it and beamed at Eggman.
Just then the group re-appeared with the use of a warp ring.
"You can't get rid of us that easily." Espio chuckled.
"So you're a queen." Vector huffed.
"Yes, I was a queen." Sheptilah was following behind Eggman who was using a map on his gauntlet to find the location of the grand hotel.
"And Shadow is your familiar."
"Yes."
"And Eggman is your guardian?"
"Yes!" Sheptilah was intensely annoyed by something but she couldn't put her finger on what. It was not the incessant questions from the crocodile but something far less tangible. Something about the area was pissing her off and making her hair stand on end. She shrugged it off and chalked it up to all of the raw iron laying about.
"So you are literally torn between two massive entities; both GUN and Eggman Industries." Espio butted in.
"Absolutely," Sheptilah nodded, "And that's why I am not in one place for long because it hurts to be separated; but it doesn't matter because I will always be away from one or the other."
"So sever the bond." Amy shrugged.
"GUN won't allow it and it's the only incentive they have to keep the good Doctor here from dying in a cell." The witch gestured toward the man.
"I am highly desired." He joked.
After walking among the rubble for what felt like hours, they finally came upon the remains of what was once a deluxe hotel. In the chandelier centerpiece was the giant pearl, just waiting for them. Orbot and Cubot were lamenting over how badly the place had decayed.
"It's perfect!" Sheptilah pulled the pearl free and tore open a portal to the lair, dropping the pearl at the door. "Are you going?" She asked the Chaotix.
"I guess we should." Vector looked over at the very sleepy Charmy floating beside him, rubbing his eyes. "We'll be keeping an eye on you, witch."
She sighed, letting her shoulders drop. "I have nothing to hide." She heard a chittering sound behind her. "Hm?" She turned to see it was an adorable little wisp. A drill wisp, to be exact. "Aw! You're cute."
"You should get out of here," it told her, "It's not safe here."
"Why is it not safe here?" She tilted her head. The wisp gestured to Eggman.
"I guess some of these wisps are still around," Eggman groaned, "I thought they were all released."
"This isn't a will-o-the-wisp." She seemingly ignored its warning, following it with her eyes as it bounced from side-to-side. "So what kind of wisp is it?"
"Little aliens I enslaved for their power."
"You enslaved these little things? You are a monster."
"You're just figuring this out now?" He flashed a crooked smile.
Sheptilah rolled her eyes and then turned to the wisp. "Are you alone?"
"Don't let it touch you," Amy walked up to it, "You'll absorb its power and turn into a drill."
Something fell over and startled the wisp, causing it to flee to the nearby pink hedgehog and she absorbed its power. She immediately turned into a drill and dove straight for the ground, unable to control the direction she went in or for how long.
The building shook violently and collapsed on everyone near instantly.
Then there was the sound of coughing and debris settling.
"Groan if you're alive." Eggman choked.
"I cannot move my legs," Espio's voice sounded panicked, "I cannot see anything."
"Hold on." Sheptilah sat up. She made a will-o-the-wisp to light the way. They had evidently fallen into some kind of old tunnel with the debris blocking the way out. "You okay?" Tilly asked Eggman. He had a small cut on his scalp which she promptly healed.
"Yeah," he smiled, "Thanks."
"Fuck." The witch wiped the dust out of her eyes.
"Language! We say 'fudge' in this family." Charmy scolded her.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Tilly was embarrassed that she forgot the little bee child was there. "Well, we know Charmy is okay."
"Aah!" There was a distant scream followed by a heavy thud and the sound of more rocks falling. It was Amy hitting a wall; evidently the wisp ran out of energy and escaped somewhere, leaving the hedgehog to fend for herself in the dark.
"Help, please." Espio's legs were trapped under a large chunk of scaffolding.
"Espio!" Vector cried. "I got you, buddy!" He hooked his fingers under the steel beam and strained to lift it.
"Don't move it!" Eggman shouted. "It might be the only thing keeping him alive. Look," he pointed to the pool of blood under Espio, "See that?"
"That's mine?" The chameleon sounded eerily calm. "I can't…"
"Hang on, buddy!" Charmy sobbed.
Amy trudged along the muddy ground in the dark toward the noises.
"Ivo, help Vector lift the beam. I can help Espio." Sheptilah nodded. She scooted over to the chameleon and lifted his head into her lap. His pupils were large and his breathing rapid but shallow.
"He's in shock from blood loss," Eggman stated the obvious, "What if his legs are no longer connected? "
"I can put them back," she shrugged, "I've reattached limbs." She stroked the area around Espio's horn to make him fall asleep. She let his head rest on the ground and hooked her hands under his arms. "Now you can lift it. I'll pull him out."
The Overlander and the crocodile worked together to lift the beam. They strained against its weight but the two of them combined was just enough to get Espio free. Sheptilah pulled the chameleon out and was relieved to see his legs were still attached, but barely.
She magically drew up his blood and put it back into his body. She then healed him and felt for his heartbeat in his wrist: it was thready but it was there.
Eggman and Vector let the beam drop.
"He'll be okay; he just needs a little sleep." Sheptilah gave Eggman her pack to carry and picked Espio up, carrying him on her back. "Oh gods he weighs more than Shadow does." She sighed. "Seriously, what are you kids made of?"
"My mom said I was made of honey and love," Charmy buzzed over to the witch and hugged her face, "Thank you for saving my friend!"
"Aw, it's my job." Tilly giggled. "Okay, okay! You're gonna rub my skin off."
"Yeah, thanks." Vector peered at her suspiciously. "Why did you help?" He asked Eggman.
"Because Miss Witch asked me to." He shrugged.
"Where's Amy?" Vector heard someone vomit further away, "I think that's her."
"Ow, I'm so dizzy." The hedgehog coughed. "What happened?"
"You turned into a drill and now we're under the junk heap in a tunnel," Eggman sounded annoyed, "Also the chameleon almost died."
"What?" Amy choked. "Is he okay?"
"He'll be ok," Sheptilah nodded. "You okay?"
The hedgehog nodded. She was physically okay but emotionally she was wracked with guilt.
"Tilly, open a portal so we can go home." The Overlander looked around. "Where's Orbot and Cubot?!"
"Boss! We're back here behind the rubble." Orbot yelled. "Can you see us?" He pushed a rock out of the way and peered outside. The group could see his little blue eyes glowing in the darkness.
"Where's Cubot?" Eggman looked at the trash pile and knew he couldn't get them free without everything collapsing on them.
"I'm over here." The little yellow bot chirped.
"Ivo? I can't get any knots open. I feel there's some but they won't open." It was not budging whatsoever.
"Why not?" Vector took Espio from the woman. He didn't trust her not to drop him.
"Hey," Amy felt the walls, "Bring that will-o-the-wisp closer."
Tilly pushed the wisp forward. The walls revealed anti-witchcraft runes etched in them.
"Where are we?" Charmy flew behind Vector. "So creepy."
"Oh my gods, this is a necropolis." Sheptilah pulled Amy closer. "This is why I was freaking out so much earlier. I was reacting to the runes under my feet."
"Necropolis? Like catacombs?" Vector sounded fearful, "Like… lots of dead bodies?"
"We're between France and Spain, right? Those two countries are famous for their catacombs. Especially after the black death ravaged the area during the middle ages." Amy crossed her arms. "You put your junkyard on top of a cemetery, you huge idiot."
"I didn't know!" Eggman said. "This area was supposed to be totally uninhabited."
"To be fair… a cemetery isn't really inhabited." Sheptilah sighed. "Great. This place has anti-magic runes and I guarantee you there are ghosts."
"So how do we get out?" Charmy asked the question on everyone's mind.
"We gotta go forward. There's always an exit or two to these kinds of places." Amy sighed. "I'm sorry I got us into this mess."
"Well, nothing is ever easy with us, is it?" Eggman tried to comfort her a little. "If it wasn't you who sent us up the creek it was probably going to be Banana Brains over here."
"Don't be rude," Tilly snorted, "But Amy is right; we gotta go forward."
"Into the necropolis." Vector shuddered. "This is the worst day."
It wasn't so bad. The tunnel was long and winding but they did not encounter any bodies at first. Most of what they did encounter was mud and old bones stacked in piles. Eventually they came to a fork that diverged in two directions.
In the wall was etched Sceleratis on the left tunnel, Sanctus to the right.
"Unholy and Holy," Eggman read, "Why is it in Latin? It should be in Basque."
"No, Latin is the vernacular of the ancient Christians." Amy explained. "The 'unholy' half is probably non-Christian and pagan corpses or those that died in massive groups and couldn't be sorted. 'Holy' must be everyone else."
"Why do you know so much about this kind of stuff?" Charmy was impressed.
"I love the occult!" Amy beamed. "And I'm training to be Sheptilah's apprentice. I have to know all this stuff."
"Hello?" Sheptilah called into the left tunnel. "Salve!"
"Phantasmatum sunt hic?" Eggman called into the right side. Neither got a response.
"It doesn't matter which road we take," Amy took charge, "Because both halves are going to have lots of anti-magic charms."
"The irony in using magic to repel magic never ceases to amuse me." The witch dug into her pack for some food. She split it up among all of them evenly so they could ration their own shares. "I want to go down the unholy side. It sounds like my kind of people."
As they walked the tunnel the mud became dry, hard cobblestone and the walls expanded to the point where it was is if they were in a giant room. Lots of caskets, ossuaries and miscellaneous piles of bones, both human and Mobian, littered the area.
"This place is sacred so I shouldn't have to tell anyone not to take anything." Amy took a stern tone.
"You don't have to tell me twice." Vector's teeth chattered.
"If you can't use magic how come you can still heal and speak?" Eggman was curious about these anti-witchcraft runes and wanted to know their limits. He was made mental note of what they looked like so he could exploit it later.
"Localized," Sheptilah shrugged, "As long as you're near me the stone will translate and my healing is an intrinsic skill. I'm pretty sure the runes are meant to keep witches and the like out, so I can't open portals to or from this place."
"This place feels so calm." Amy inhaled deeply. "And it smells like flowers."
"I smell it, too," Tilly sighed, "Perfume, maybe? Or incense?"
"Incense," Eggman huffed, "Who would be burning incense down here hundreds of years after burial?"
Little pairs of golden lights appeared in the darkness. The eyes of ghosts disturbed by the presence of the living were like hundreds of candles suddenly coming alight.
"Cautio omnibus qui ingrediuntur ibi," a small voice spoke, "Hic est locus mortuorum."
"Ghosts!" Vector yelped.
"Ghoulies!" Charmy cried out. "Don't eat my soul!"
"Shh," Sheptilah said, "Amicae, quomodo egredimur?"
"Scis linguam noster?" A different voice responded.
"Ita vero." Eggman moved closer to Tilly.
The ghosts lit up the room with their powers. It took the form of a flowery field that extended in all directions endlessly. The ghosts were wearing clothes from different periods of time.
"We have not had visitors in quite a while," a ghost of an older black man spoke, "Forgive us if we scared you."
Sheptilah smiled. "You didn't scare us. Why are you still here in the catacombs? You should be On The Other Side."
"We're stuck here." The ghost of a small girl holding her pet kitten ran up to them. "The runes that keep you out keep us in." The little girl offered her kitten to pet but when Sheptilah tried to her hand simply passed through the specter.
Charmy tried to smell the flowers but frowned when he, too, passed through them.
Espio stirred from his sleep. "What happened?" He tried to sit up in Vector's arms but couldn't.
"Hey, buddy!" The crocodile smiled, "You got hurt but the witch here saved you."
"Hmm… I remember now," he gave his feet a cursory wiggle, "Thank you."
Sheptilah nodded at the chameleon.
"For hundreds of years we've existed together like so. We learned how to manipulate our surroundings but not much else." The old man ghost looked sad.
"Why can't you leave through the exit?" Eggman was getting used to the occult at this point.
"There is no exit. The whole place is sealed. If you made a big hole in the wall then we could leave." A different ghost responded.
Sheptilah pulled her grimoire from her headspace and flipped through the pages. There was nothing in it about breaking charms from inside them and Shadow still had the royal grimoire.
"I can make a big hole." Amy took out her hammer. "Just tell me where to smash!" More ghosts appeared and began to congregate around the group, quiet chatter echoing from their incorporeal forms.
"We have no idea how far down we are or if there's anything above us," Eggman reminded the hedgehog, "If we're under a river we would drown."
"Well, where did you come in from?" An older woman asked.
"Hole in the floor, but it's been sealed off by debris." The hedgehog said. "A cave-in occurred in an abandoned junk yard."
"So make another hole in the floor right next to it." A small cat Mobian child said matter-of-factly.
"Hmm?" Tilly raised an eyebrow, "Dig ourselves out?"
Eggman dragged his hand down his face. "We're a bunch of idiots."
"Why didn't we think of that!?" Vector huffed. "We really are a bunch of dummies. Occam's Razor! Obviously the floor was the thinnest where we fell in and we know there's not much above it that could fall on us."
Sheptilah put her grimoire back in her head and turned to the ghosts. "Follow us. We'll get you out of here."
The group led the ghosts down the corridors. There were thousands of ghouls just lingering around though most were afraid of the living people that occasionally wandered through the crypts so they hid. Word spread quickly that the living visitors were going to get them out so they could be reunited with the rest of the dead and excited chatter soon filled the tunnels.
They asked so many questions of the living and wanted to know what was happening on the outside. In the dark, Sheptilah took Eggman's hand and squeezed it. Initially he didn't return the gesture but gave in and held hers. He wasn't sure why she did that but was happy she did and occasionally squeezed her hand back.
"It was here," Amy pointed to the rubble, "But I wonder how much of the building came down on top of us."
"Back up," Amy wanted to have lots of room to swing her hammer, "Time to bring down the house!"
"Hopefully not literally." Vector whined.
Swinging upwards was a bit difficult but she managed to get a hole big enough for them to climb out of after a few tries. After determining the safety of the tunnel she broke down the boulder blocking Orbot and Cubot, freeing them.
Eggman gave Sheptilah a boost out of the hole and in turn she helped pull everyone up. The ghosts immediately started pouring out of the opening, making the air shimmer like glitter as they successfully passed on to be with everyone else who had gone before them. Many of them muttered quiet thanks and prayers as they vanished. Others laughed happily now that they were free to explore the planet.
"Thank you, Amy. I'm glad you came. You proved invaluable to us." Sheptilah embraced the hedgehog after pulling her to the surface.
"But I'm what got you in trouble In the first place!"
"And you got us out of it!" She let a few hot tears roll down her cheeks. "And we freed thousands of spirits because of you."
"Why are you crying now? " Eggman tapped his foot.
"These ghosts get to go home and be with their loved ones, now. Isn't that beautiful?" Tilly's happy sobs caused Amy to cry tears of joy, too.
"Yeah," he admitted, "I guess it is."
"I wonder how many other crypts are full of ghosts who cannot leave them because of runes," Espio spoke quietly, "How sad they must be to be trapped."
"Maybe someday we can go to some famous crypts and find out!" Amy wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, "That could be fun."
"Hard pass." Charmy shook his head, "Hard, hard pass!"