Cursed Draw

The Cursed Deck is something strange and-

Mysteries of the Deck. Book Three Curses and Dooms -Contents torn out.

Chapter 10: Chains In The Dark

The place didn’t smell as bad as Alley had feared. There might be hundreds of corpses, but they were well past the point of decomposition. The place didn’t really smell like anything except for cold stone and dust.

Moving through the courtyard with Alley’s injuries took a long time. The ground was littered with bone fragments and rusted armor. Given how he had to walk so as not to put pressure on his broken toes, maintaining his footing meant moving with great care.

Even more so once he got to the second gate. Crammed with the massive skeletons of monstrous beasts, Alley found the entrance rather on the spiky side. Spiky and claustrophobic he tried to squeeze between the dead monsters without brushing his injured arm against anything. He got through the gateway but not without having to stop three times as his arm painfully pressed or caught on some piece of bone or rusted beast armor.

Another strange surge of lightning essence flowed over him and yet more ornate purple flamed torches ignited within the castle.

It was instantly clear despite the foreboding outside, and the horrific battle scene. This castle was closer to a pleasure palace than a true fortress.

The room he had entered was large, marble-covered, and circular. Three staircases, each larger across than a wagon lead to what he assumed were different wings of the castle.

The purple burning torches lined the railing of each of the opulent stairwells, with another larger brazier burning at the center of the circular room. Bathing the stone and marble in flickering surreal light, that seemed to accentuate each shadow.

Creepy or not for the moment light had ceased to be an issue, but Alley still had no way to get the clearly magical torches out of their fastenings. Even if he could he didn’t know if the purple flames would continue to burn once removed. If he was going to explore the area around the castle for a way back above ground he needed something he could both carry and burn. Two working arms would also be nice, but he could only play the cards he was dealt.

Each stairway was topped by a huge door similar to a small version of the ominous gate he had just passed through. These were in a much better state of repair, and not clogged with skeletal beasts. In fact, it struck Alley as odd that the dead monsters were only crowded around the gate itself. There wasn't a single body in the circular room. Nor signs of struggle or mobilization.

It was as though some arbitrary line just past the gate was the agreed-upon edge of the battle, and no fighting would take place past that point. It reminded Alley of the arena that was created when a challenge began, except it was on the scale of a siege.

While the castle and its former inhabitants were certainly an interesting mystery, this line of thought wasn't going to help him survive.

What Alley needed to be doing was searching the castle. Despite the subterranean structure's obvious age, it must contain something useful.

A way to bind his arm or toes, a map of the surroundings, and climbing equipment. The magic running the lights still worked, maybe he would get really lucky and there would be a powered Transiteration sigil. That was the sort of thing only people who built palaces could afford. But this was a palace of sorts. So…..maybe?

He had no idea where such a thing would send him.

‘But anything has to be better than spending all day with team skeleton down here.’

The teen resolved that if the castle provided a means to get back above ground be it mundane, or mystical. He was going to take it.

Each grandiose staircase and the ominous dark iron door looked much the same as the next, so Alley decided to just try the center option as he figured that was where the important things would be more likely to be.

With one last glance around the marbled room, he shuffled up the stairs. As with crossing the ground, he had to keep his right foot at an angle to avoid agitating his broken toes. Thankfully the bones had not broken his skin or anything like that, but each time weight was put on the front half of his foot some combination of pain and the strangely awful sensation of bones moving when they shouldn't surged through him.

Up close the iron and wood door was in a worse state of repair than he had first thought. While it lacked the rotten wood of the outside gate the door was covered in rust. Initially, Alley hoped this would mean the door would be easy to open. Quite the opposite in fact, the rusted lock mechanism was jammed solid and refused any attempt by the boy to shift.

It turned out not to matter, as when he frustratedly gave the ring on the front of the door a final tug. The entire construction of wood and iron came toppling forward like a card stood on its end and allowed to fall.

With a cry of shock, Alley hurled himself to the side narrowly avoiding the falling door. Which hit the staircase with an echoing slam before sliding down the stairs in a series of loud thumps.

Landing hadn’t been the most pleasant experience of his life. Leaning on the nearby railing Alley panted while the pain shooting through him from both his jarred broken arm, and his landed on broken toes ever so slowly subsided.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he stood there collecting himself, but even from here he could see the room beyond was if anything even stranger than the one he was standing in.

No smokeless purple fire here. Whatever was lighting the room beyond the doorway seemed to come from everywhere at once. A strange teal haze somehow revealed the room and blurred its details. It reminded Alley of peering into the waters of the bay on particularly clear days when the ocean would become like a green-tinted mirror.

He was trying to get a better look at what he thought was a humanoid figure without actually entering the haze when the sound of metal rattling and then clacking onto the stone floor.

“Hello?” He called out suspiciously. Alley had no idea what kind of subterranean monsters might make their home in an ancient ruin like this. The cave system was obviously extensive, and the thought that he might not be alone down here made the hairs on the back of his neck and arms stand straight.

While he didn't consider himself easily shaken he was in no condition to fight some predatory creature deep beneath the earth.

Drawing his hook with his good arm Alley held his breath listening for any further sounds of movement. None came, and after about thirty seconds he began breathing again. During that time the teal haze of the next room hadn't changed or moved in any way.

“Not gas." He muttered, before stepping through the doorway.

Once he was within the confines of the next room the blurring of his vision ceased, though the room remained lit by an unearthly pale green color, seemingly without source.

“Oh skeletons, that's refreshing,” he said with a shake of his head.

The room was long and square. Filled with long benches like one might find in a temple. In fact, Alley was fairly certain he had entered a cathedral of some sort. The far end of the room was dominated by a large altar, surrounded on all sides by human skeletons in positions of worship. There were around thirty of the figures, with all but the largest laid out on the ground faces to the floor arms extended.

The looming figure Alley had been able to almost make out from outside the haze was another body, though he first took it for a statue.

Like the men and beasts in the courtyard, this figure somehow kept its feet despite lacking skin, organs, or the animating force of life itself. The standing body was clad in a huge set of baroque plate armor. It was covered in all manner of arcane-looking runes Alley didn’t recognize.So extensive was the metal armor that had the figure not been carrying its helmet under its arm he may not have noticed its skeletal nature at all. The other hand rested on a blocky sword of slightly ludicrous proportions.

As he approached Alley saw that directly behind the figure was a small set of stairs leading up the altar on the far side of the room. Despite the nature of its surroundings there really wasn’t much to the altar itself. It was a large flat raised platform maybe five feet off the ground atop it stood four statues of gargoyle-like figures, each around the size of a toddler. The statues held a length of metal chain in each hand. It seemed as though they were supposed to link together in the center, but the chain was broken at several points. The breaks caused it to hang limp the hands of the statues where once the chain must have been taught.

What was especially strange to Alley was that there wasn’t any rust or other signs of decay. The metal links practically shone in the gloom.

There in the center of the altar, surrounded by broken links of chain sat a stack of cards. They were in their true form, small enough that he could carry the whole thing in one hand. It was too big of a stack to be a library, and Alley couldn’t see anything he recognized as a dealer with it. Still, a stack of cards was an absolute treasure, and if he could find a deck somewhere in the castle they might prove to be his key to escaping the underground. If Alley could manifest cards again, getting out of here could quickly become a trivial matter.

On the other hand, it was a stack of cards on a dark stone altar, in a secret castle, surrounded by the bodies of people that seemed to have died in the midst of worshiping the cards. So while he was more than a little interested, Alley decided to proceed with caution.

He spent the next five minutes walking around the Altar. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, traps he supposed, or some sign that grabbing the stack of cards would activate some long-dormant magic of terrible design.

When nothing happened or caught his eye the dark-haired boy proceeded to poke each of the gargoyle statues in turn with his hook. For good measure, he poked the big armored skeleton too.

“Alright.” He said with a sigh. No one come to life and attack me, okay?” Neither the statues nor the corpses replied, which was probably for the best.

Holstering the hook on his belt, Alley strode up the stairs and reached down to grab the pile of cards.