[x-files theme playing in the background]
The lyrics are entirely irrelevant, but Moonspell's Night Eternal and Erasure's Smoke and Mirrors are two songs that evoke the kind of creepy, grey-black solitude that I was going for with this, but likely failed to conjure. And, as usual, I can't thank any and all reviewers enough. Just knowing that someone still reads this keeps me motivated to finish this all. I promise there is a point to the story, which will hopefully become a little clearer near the end of this arc. I think this might be my 100k milestone? If not, it's the next chapter!
It was one night and one day later when the two exorcists passed under the abbey's arches.
…
After the storms, the sky had turned clear and cloud-stained, with white strands pulling across the sky like stretched cotton. In the glow of dusk, there seemed to be a violet light cast across the blackened stone and wood.
…
After the incident on the road, they'd pressed through into the night to find their contact finder, who hadn't been much use. The facts, as they knew them, were:
1. People disappeared everywhere around the abbey.
2. Finders found akuma everywhere around the abbey, and caught them.
3. Finders disappeared at the abbey.
4. No single finder had returned from the abbey alive.
There had been nothing for it but to get a good day's sleep.
Daisya looked up at the heavy wooden gates, and whistled. They were embedded in the high walls, and the tar-stained, decaying timbers were reinforced with a grid of black iron, sideways planks of different grains nailed in, and the original great metal hinges like fleur-de-lis reaching at intervals up the side. A relic from an age when your neighbours might well have tried to break in, and enlisted an army to do so.
"Now doesn't that look creepy," he commented, "You sure we should be doing this at night?"
Kanda nodded brusquely, walking past Daisya along the damp grass.
"The sooner we get this over with, the better. Come on."
The doors were open. Daisya might say they almost looked inviting, if they'd been painted a nice cheery yellow, or something, and weren't a good twenty feet high.
Something wasn't right. He hung back, scuffing his heel along the ground, kicking up the dirt. Maybe it was just the Innocence. Maybe it was an akuma.
"Hey, you coming or what?"
He looked up to meet Kanda's eyes, as the he'd turned around in the doorway.
"Yeah, yeah."
Daisya tripped forward, and Kanda muttered something he couldn't hear, then started walking again.
The moment before he stepped over the threshold, time stopped.
Or at least that's what it seemed like.
The stones in the archway weren't as solid as Daisya wanted. They might have been reinforced with mud and sand, from the original, but that wasn't too sturdy. Not at all.
People's minds don't work properly, when things get serious.
To be more exact about this whole situation: Daisya saw a block about a foot square fall from the top of the gate. Instinctively, he knew it would reach the point about five feet above the ground before Kanda moved any further forward, at this pace.
This all happened in the blink of an eye.
"Kanda–!"
Kanda's reflexes kicked in when the block had cleared about half the distance to the ground, and he leapt forwards, crossing the threshold, and the stone thudded down where he had been standing maybe half a second ago.
Daisya felt something strange run up his spine, and curl in his chest at the sound. It had all the heavy finality of a lead coffin dropped into a grave.
The sound of a sword slipping out of its sheath unfroze him, and his eyes focused, seeing Kanda waving him on. What he said could have been "careful," could have been, "hurry up."
Stone grating on stone did the rest of the work, spurring him into a run, and he crossed over with the odd, flatfooted gait of any otherwise graceful person trying to run on ice or wet grass.
"Hey, what was that?"
"Don't know."
Daisya pulled up beside Kanda, skidding to a halt on the damp, dead grass. This place was deserted. He couldn't tell if this was supposed to be a field or a floor. Half of it were uneven chunks of stone; the other half was a thick layer of yellowing grass. From the look of it, it must have been decades since anyone stayed here, but there was enough space for a town to live here. The grassy land ran in a strip between the walls and the castle — probably for defence, or something — and in front of them they saw the castle, some feet higher again than the walls.
"Yeah, and you didn't catch it in time, either."
"Quiet."
One behind the other, they skirted the inner walls as quickly as they could, looking for a way in.
…
God damn, it was dark out now. Daisya was just thankful his eyes were so used to it. Innocence liked dark places, and sometimes made its own. That was why it was always good to pay attention to how things looked the first time you went 'round them. Like that one time, back in the Balkans, with the foothills and the stream.
If Kanda hadn't been close by back then, he would have been screwed six ways to Sunday.
Speaking of which.
"D'you think we should split up once we get inside?" he asked softly.
Kanda shook his head ahead of him. There were a few small openings in the walls, and windows, but nothing wide enough to step through that opened on to a floor. The windows up above might be useful, if there was no other way.
"No. If we get separated, there's a better chance one of us is going to die."
It sounded pretty harsh (as normal — this was Kanda, after all), but it wasn't that big of a deal. Daisya understood why he'd say it like that.
"Got it."
They walked softly, trying not to be too intrusive a presence. Innocence might have been technically good, but that was its own side. The exorcists were just intermediaries.
"Hey," Daisya whispered, after a few minutes more, "Have a look over here."
He pointed at the wall. Or rather, the wall behind the wall. The outer wall had broken down, revealing an inner wall, and what looked to be a staircase climbing between the two of them, up to the upper levels. It was all in shades of darkest grey on pitch black, but there was a depth to the shadows there that implied that something led off, and into the castle.
"What?"
"If you just sneak inside the wall, there's a hallway, I think. Can you see?"
Daisya pointed, and Kanda looked down his arm.
"I guess."
Daisya shook his head, and plucked the bell off his hood.
"Let's go check it out. Innocence–!"
The bell started to burn, but the flames looked as if they were more a projection of a fire than fire itself. The old man had taught him this little trick. You might not always need a bomb, he'd said. Sometimes a flashlight is better.
He vaulted over the over the pile of rock that blocked the entrance, and held the bell out in front of him. Yep, looked like there was a hallway, just a bit out of the way of the hole. Hah. You wouldn't even notice it if you looked straight on, but from this angle it was easy to see. There was the outer wall, then a kind of tower inside, with half staircase circling around, but beneath the staircase a corridor went along the length of the fortress, between the walls, disappearing into the darkness after a few feet.
Stone ground against stone overhead, but this time Daisya was ready for it.
He heard Kanda shout a warning, and he quickly tossed the bell up, hitting it with his knee to send it flying into the stone blocks. It was a simple thing to shatter them, letting pebbles rain down where he'd been standing.
From inside the castle, Daisya turned to look back.
"This place could use some fixing up," he called, "So be careful."
Warning done, he turned to examine the hallway in detail. The Bell cast a pale light on the stones, but didn't reveal much. Stone blocks that still fit together well enough on the walls, stone floor, criss-crossing roman arches overhead to hold up the ceiling. There looked like a door about ten metres on, to the right. Couldn't hurt to try.
A thud and some grumbling from behind him told him that Kanda had gotten through the carnivorous entryway. This was definitely a bit weird. Not even akuma had aim as good as this.
He looked over at Kanda, grinning.
"Looks like this isn't that great a place to stay, eh?."
Kanda nodded.
"We should get this over with. It should be at the centre of the castle, if it's like the others."
"Yeah."
Daisya looked back at the corridor, and narrowed his eyes. Hadn't there been a door somewhere along the wall?
Hey, he was probably just getting paranoid.
In tandem, the two started to run down the hallway, using a loping gait to go as fast as possible without using too much extra energy. Daisya had been trying to get things over with as fast as possible since he'd gotten stuck in that whole mess, with the apparitions of his family.
The stone blocks flashed by, interspersed with brick and wood where they'd been pillaged to reinforce doorways or other parts of the wall. In front of them, corridor turned, and turned again, then turned into a stairwell going up about one story. There was no light but the glow of the Charity Bell, and the occasional glimpse of moonlight through a window or a hole in the wall. The old man would say it gave the place ambiance. Daisya would say it just gave him the creeps.
After the stairwell, it opened up on one of a row of chambers — the next one along was visible through the open door between them. There were all sorts of places you could hide Innocence — in the mattresses, beneath the carpet, or in the hidden drawers of rotting dressers, to give an example.
This place was so old and so broken-down, but people had definitely lived here, once. What was left in this one was a straw mattress in the corner, an ornate wardrobe, and a foot-rest, but no chair. Probably the wardrobe and foot-rest were from longer ago - they were in pretty bad shape, and definitely had been here long enough to gather a thick layer of dust.
Without speaking, every crevice was searched and every piece of furniture turned over, or in some cases punched through. The finders hadn't been able to enter the castle, let alone find the Innocence, so a slow search was necessary.
After three or so rooms, Daisya ran into one that looked like something out of a palace.
To put aside the size and the sheer amount of furniture, this one had a window. It ran high up the wall, narrow at the top and bellying out in the middle. At the centre of the room was an old, huge rug, a four-poster bed frame with no mattress, and an old chest. Along the sides, there were all sorts of wreckage. The corner of a picture frame, some long-forgotten canvas, a huge armchair — whoever had been here had trashed the place, before time did its work.
Over it all, the pale outline of moonlight falling through the window printed a tear-drop shape on the room. The shadows cast by the iron bars across it curved over the chest. For all it was just some window, it looked like an eye.
The feeling of ice near the base of his neck made Daisya look up.
Through the window, he saw the bell tower, embedded in the outer wall.
Something felt wrong.
Then — tarnished metal curled between the panes of glass, splitting the moonlight into so many sections, as if someone had smashed it like glass.
And that was not a metaphor. The metal moved, like something alive.
The bell rang, once, twice, and solemnly.
Something was wrong with this place.
For one, there was no one to ring the bell.
The grinding sound behind Daisya told him that the bell was only the start of his problems.
He whipped around, scanning the room for any more changes. The Charity Bell followed him, swooping and shining in the dimming moonlight.
The ground beneath his feet was shifting, and the walls started to look as if they were expanding, making it impossible to reach the edge of the room.
Time to go.
Daisya doubled back, trying to outrun — he wouldn't have believed it if he'd told himself — trying to outrun the floor. To his left, the window was closing over, and ahead the ceiling was crumbling in to to block the doorway between his room and Kanda's. Not good.
"Hey, Kanda, watch out!"
Mind still racing, Daisya leapt up and used a driving kick to send the Charity Bell through the wall, running hell for leather after it. The ceiling was making more suspicious noises.
The distance had stretched to a hundred metres or so, now. He scrabbled on the dusty stone, trying to keep up with the Innocence. If…
A lump of stone fell from the ceiling, and plummeted just in front of him. He plunged through it in a cloud of shards.
If something fell, his Innocence could break through it just fine.
There were only a few metres left, and Daisya was running faster than the building was moving. He'd been though way tougher things than this, but this was the first time that he'd ever have to contemplate that line of thinking.
A fraction of a second later, Daisya skidded to a halt in Kanda's room.
"Change of plan," he panted, "I found the Innocence."
Between them, the floor cracked open.