Chapter 21: Having a Secret Meeting Underground… as a Rock?! (Patreon)

Chapter Twenty-One

Having a Secret Meeting Underground… as a Rock?!

Alice forgot all of her melancholy as Urd carried Alice the Rock down a night-covered street. The two men stalked ahead of them, casting nervous looks this way and that. Urd had tried to speak earlier, passing along Alice's confusion, but the two men had quickly quieted her, though not unkindly.

"We need to be very sneaky," Short One said. "Can you be sneaky for us?"

Alice's first thought was this was all a trap, but the worry had not lasted for long. Kuonrat could have destroyed Alice and slit Urd's throat back at the abbey. The two men were clearly connected to the Priest, though neither had introduced themselves.

And that bit about being friends...

Alice was not sure why, but she wanted to trust them.

Their sneaking brought them further and further away from Alice's erstwhile home, the way growing darker and grimier with each step. The buildings around them seemed thinner than those on the main street, though what they lacked in width they made up for in height. The district was crammed with what felt like a hundred oversized dominoes.

"Not long now," Short One said, shushing Urd, though she had not even opened her mouth. "Keep real quiet, OK?"

Urd nodded anxiously. She cast a glance down at Alice the Rock, and Alice said, "Just listen to him for now."

Tall One walked up to a particularly tall and narrow house. Alice would not have been surprised if a strong gust of wind knocked it over. He rapped his knuckles over and over against the house's front door in an almost musical fashion. Alice only realized what he was doing after the man's third rhythmic set of knocks.

That must be some kind of secret code...

Sure enough, after Tall One performed a fifth rat ta ta ta, rat, rat, rat ta ta, a light blossomed around the edges of the door. A moment later, a gruff voice appeared.

"What kind of noise you makin' at an hour like this?"

"The sort to wake the hard of hearing," Tall One said, and Alice felt as though the words sounded rehearsed.

"You wouldn't need to knock so much if you came by at a better hour," the gruff voice said, and here too Alice felt as though there was a certain robotic delivery of the line.

"This is the hour I chose to knock," Tall One said. "If I woke you, you can return to sleep, but don't expect to see me tomorrow."

"Secret knocks, secret messages..." Alice muttered to herself. This all felt like the clandestine meeting of two spies.

The sound of a lock clicked open after a brief moment. And then a second and third lock made a similar metallic chime.

A wrinkled man bent over with age stood before the open door. He held up a lantern that illuminated Alice, Urd, and the two hooded men. Alice did not miss how his eyes seemed to anchor onto Alice the Rock.

Tall One and Short One hurried inside, but Urd did not share in their haste.

"Quickly! Come inside!" Short One said, casting a nervous glance at the street behind her.

"L-Listen to him," Alice said. They had already come this far. "But be ready to run!"

Urd nodded glumly and stepped inside, trembling.

"They're downstairs," the old man said, the many wrinkles of his face illuminated creepily in the lamplight.

Alice's [God Sense] extended in every direction, so she could see an empty basement beneath the home's wooden floor. Nobody was waiting down there as far as she could tell.

Is this actually a trap...? Alice wondered to herself.

She had told herself that if the Priest had wanted to deal with Alice and Urd, he could have done so back at the abbey... but what if he had wanted to destroy them somewhere quieter?

"This way," Short One said, and Urd obeyed him before Alice could tell her to run.

The front door slammed shut behind them. The bent doorkeeper slid the locks back into place, the clicks of iron like three separate death sentences.

"I-I'll protect you," Alice said, more for her own comfort than Urd's. She had [Smite]. She had plenty of cursed energy. "I won't let anything happen to you."

The two hooded men knew the cramped house very well. They stopped beside a large cabinet in what looked like a kitchen and, without a word, worked together to lift it off the floor.

A dusty trapdoor appeared where the cabinet had stood just a moment before.

"Down here," Short One said as he lifted the trapdoor open, revealing the gloom of the basement underneath.

Alice stared into the darkness through Urd's eyes with a creeping sense of doom. It was one thing to help Urd get past the wizened doorkeeper if things turned sour. But if Urd went down through the trapdoor...

Before Alice could tell her otherwise, however, The Girl followed the two men as they descended into the dusty darkness. Alice fought back several words of caution. She was terrified that these strangers would do Urd harm, but all their secret doings had Alice more than a little intrigued.

Just as Alice's [God Sense] had revealed, the hidden cellar was empty but for spiderwebs and unused wine casks. A strong smell of earth tickled Urd's nostrils as the two men approached a caved-in wine cask set against the far wall.

What is going on here?!

Alice could not help but gasp in astonishment as, just like with the cabinet upstairs, the two men worked together to move the broken wine cask. There was no trapdoor underneath, but rather a wide earthen hole, the lip of which was illuminated by the flicker of distant flames.

As Urd approached the hole, Alice saw that an earthy tunnel had been dug into the cellar. Several scones burned a dull red, revealing a ladder that Tall One immediately clambered down.

"This way," Short One said unnecessarily, and he too disappeared from Urd's vision and into the tunnel. Alice saw no traps with [God Sense] but neither could she see how far the tunnel went.

Urd's face tried to hide her fear, but Alice could feel the mad thumping of her chest. Alice wished she could think of something to say to comfort the child, but she was just too distracted by all the strangeness unraveling around them.

"Made it..." Tall One said as all three entered the tunnel.

The man's shoulders seemed to deflate with relief. He turned to Urd, his gaze falling on Alice the Rock. He opened his mouth, but Short One stopped him with a raised hand.

"The Elder said to keep chatter to a minimum," he said, and Tall One rolled his eyes. "It is not for us to speak with the group's voice."

The Elder?!

Alice felt a hum of excitement run through her nonexistent body.

Both men began down the tunnel, passing scone after scone. Urd followed after them a little further behind. Her breathing quickened as a tall, iron door appeared at the end of the tunnel. It was nothing like the flimsy wooden barriers they had encountered upstairs.

Alice could hear muffled voices as they drew closer. Unfortunately, Urd seemed reluctant to approach, so Alice's [God Sense] could not reveal what lay on the other side.

"...much longer...?!"

"...unusual..."

"...if you are...!"

The voices on the other side of the door seemed to be arguing. Alice strained to hear more, but Short One chose that moment to knock on the door.

Everything went silent.

Just like with the front door, Short One rapped his knuckles in an obvious code. An almost musical clang filled the tunnel as the mystery of the night continued to deepen.

Just who were these people?

Why did they go to such lengths to maintain their secrecy?

After what felt like an entire minute of knocking, the heavy metal door creaked open to reveal a wide circular room, its walls and floors the rock and mud of a cavern. Seven people stood within, each wearing a black robe and a heavy hood over their head. Alice's first thought was that they looked like a bunch of evil cultists.

"Oh."

And with a sinking feeling in her nonexistent gut, Alice realized that they really looked like a bunch of evil cultists. Suddenly, the secret knocks and passwords took on a darker meaning. She looked from hooded face to hooded face...

...and her attention came to rest on a particularly tall man, a man so hairy that his hood did little to conceal the explosion of his beard.

Kuonrat the Priest looked like the leader of a demonic cult as he stared at Alice and Urd, his beady black eyes hidden behind his unkempt hair.

"Was the girl mistreated?" Kuonrat asked in his gravely voice. He stepped forward, beckoning Urd closer, who remained frozen at the doorway. "Come, come. You were not mistreated, I hope."

"G-Go on," Alice urged as Urd looked down at Alice the Rock for support. "You'll need... need to be my voice, Urd."

Trembling, Urd took the last few steps needed to pass over the doorway. The metal door was quickly closed behind her, however, and she froze, petrified. She turned to look at each of the seven strangers.

Everyone stared back. Whatever spirited chatter had distracted them while they waited made no reappearance as each and every pair of eyes drilled a hole into Urd and Alice the Rock.

Nobody spoke. Alice could not even be sure if they were breathing. The silence soon became more than she could bear.

"Ask them... Ask them who they are," Alice said, and Urd gave a little jump. Two of the hooded strangers jumped themselves. "Ask them what they want."

Urd opened her mouth, but no words came out. She blinked, swallowed a couple times, and then tried again.

"Wh-who are you?" Her voice was not the zealous shout from earlier in the day. "Wh-what do y-you want?"

Alice watched some of the tension leave the earthen cavern as Urd's words echoed around them.

"Kuonrat, you have much explaining to do."

The man had a nasty voice that fit his snakelike thinness. While much of his face lay hidden behind his hood, Alice imagined a perpetual sneer sat across his features.

"Did you really call us here to gawk at a sniveling child?"

Alice flared with anger. Her focus shifted unconsciously to the earthen ceiling over the man. Perhaps a [Smite] would loosen some of the stones and fix his arrogance.

"You mustn't be unkind," Kuonrat said before Alice could commit to the malice. "The child is clearly startled."

He smiled down at Urd, pulling back his hood.

"It is me, little one," Kuonrat said unnecessarily. "Everything will be fine. We just wish to... to speak with that voice you mentioned before."

Alice blinked stupidly at this revelation. Kuonrat had shown no such interest back at the abbey, but it seemed so obvious now that these people would want to speak with Alice. Why else would they have brought Alice the Rock here?

"I-It was Master Merry Weather!" Urd said quite unexpectedly. She stamped her foot, though her body continued to tremble. "M-Master Merry Weather was the o-one who asked what you wanted!"

Silence returned to the cavern. This time, Alice was fairly certain the robed figures were holding their breath.

"M-Master Merry Weather?"

The voice that broke the silence was high-pitched and squeaky. The owner of the voice, however, was as wide as an ox with hands large enough to strangle a horse.

"Th-this is all quite unacceptable!" a woman said, as if freed from her stupor by the squeaky man's mumble. She was turned decidedly away from Urd, as if frightened to even look in The Girl's direction.

"To bring us all here without the telling. To drag... To drag that poor child and a grudge stone before us." She glanced furtively at Urd and then quickly away. "Elder Kuonrat, you will tell us right now the reason for this gathering!"

Elder Kuonrat?

Alice wondered if that was a priestly title... or something else.

Kuonrat did not speak. He simply stared at Alice the Rock with an indecipherable look. As his silence continued, the mood in the room seemed to darken. Alice might have urged Urd to flee, but the door behind them was closed, and their two guides did not seem as though they would open it even if Urd asked nicely.

"The day we have been waiting for..."

Alice perked up as Kuonrat began to speak. He had the heavy voice of an orator, a voice that was well-suited to one called a [Priest].

"THE DAY WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR HAS ARRIVED!" Kuonrat's voice grew thunderous as he turned from face to face. "Let me tell you what has happened!"

He gestured to Urd, pointing at Alice the Rock held tight in her hands.

"This child! I brought this poor afflicted babe, overcome with rot, to my abbey. She had been bewitched, I told myself! You see the grudge stone she holds so tightly! I sought to heal the child, as best I could, and to shatter whatever curse lay over this rock. A spirit dwells within the stone, and I sought to uncover its true nature with [Assess] before I banished the wretched thing!"

Alice did not like the sound of that, but she kept the complaint to herself.

"But this... this is no ordinary grudge stone," Kuonrat said. "Nor is it possessed by some common spirit."

The Priest's entire body shook as he staggered closer. Alice was horrified to see that tears were rolling down his face, the salty water hardly noticeable behind his curtain of black hair.

"Elder Kuonrat!"

"What are you doing?!"

Several of the hooded figures shouted in shock as Kuonrat fell to his knees before Urd, his hairy hands clasped together in prayer.

"I SAW IT, BROTHERS!" Kuonrat boomed with an explosion of zeal. "My downtrodden brothers and sisters, I saw paradise!"

Urd staggered away, but Kuonrat grabbed hold of The Girl's shoulders before she could flee. Alice was too mesmerized by Kuonrat's sudden insanity to worry about her.

"There were impossible towers of glass!" Kuonrat continued, tears streaking down his face. "Metal chariots without horses! I saw the dragons, my brothers! Enormous white beasts that ruled the skies, my sisters, their roars unlike any I have heard before!"

Alice had no idea what he was talking about. He had seen dragons when he used [Assess]? And towers of glass? But the phrase metal chariots without horses... Why did that sound so familiar?

"The things I saw!" Kuonrat continued, his small black eyes delirious. He released Urd and turned to the others in the cavern. "Men and women trapped within black boxes. Sinners, no doubt!"

Men and women trapped in boxes...

An incredulous understanding was slowly forming in Alice's head, but that... that was impossible.

"And the feasts!" Kuonrat exclaimed to the heavens. "In paradise, the worthy gathered below the Golden Arches for such delights as you have never seen!"

"G-Golden Arches?!" It all seemed too ridiculous to be true, but... "Is he talking about McDonald's?!"

"Wh-why would a grudge stone possess such forbidden knowledge?" the squeaky man asked. "What kind of spirit?!"

Kuonrat seemed to break free from his delirium at these words. He turned to the heavy-set robed figure and shook his shaggy head.

"This is no mere grudge stone nor some base spirit," the Priest said, stabbing a finger at Alice the Rock. "Before the sights of paradise overwhelmed me, I was able to distinguish their mark."

The room erupted with excited muttering, but Alice felt even more confused. Their mark? Was he talking about Ronald McDonald? Had that colorful clown stamped a large M onto her forehead?

"Favors One Task has sent this child to us as a messenger!" Kuonrat exclaimed, and the room erupted into joyous shouts. "Favors One Task brought me to this child so that she could lead us from the tyranny of Fate!"

Alice had no idea what was going on. It sounded as if Kuonrat's [Assess] had read some of Alice's memories and given him a glimpse of her modern world.

And that phrase...

Why does Favors One Task sound so familiar...?

Divine Development

Title: Alice of the Merry Weather

Rank: Infant Divine

Caretaker: F̶͍́a̶̖͗v̷̻̚o̶̢͛r̷̛͙ș̷́ ̴̭̿O̸̺͐n̸̲̓ë̶͉́ ̴̠͠T̸͕̽a̸̗͘s̴̡̉k̸̖̄

[Geological Memory] summoned the system information, and it was as if a bucket of cold water was dumped over her head.

Why didn't I notice that before?! Alice wondered, dumbstruck. It was as if her eyes had simply glossed over the whole line. What even is a caretaker?! Who... Who is Favors One Task?!

"Our Dark Mother told us that we were not forgotten," Kuonrat continued, and Alice's attention snapped back to his sermon. "Our Unbound Queen promised us freedom! And she has now delivered!"

Kuonrat swirled around, his black robes dancing. He took a step towards Urd and knelt dramatically. Urd might have stumbled away, but she seemed too stunned to move. Kuonrat did not look at her when next he spoke, however. He stared intently at the black stone held in her trembling hands.

"SPEAK TO US!" Kuonrat bellowed, tears streaming down his face. "OUR EARS ARE OPEN TO THE MOTHER'S WISDOM!"

Several others followed the Delirious Priest's lead and fell to their knees. Alice studied each in turn, her thoughts running wild. Unbound Queen? Dark Mother?

These people are insane! Alice thought to herself. She had no idea what they were talking about! B-But that probably isn't the best thing to say...

She bit her nonexistent lip as she stared into Kuonrat's crazed eyes. She did not think these robed strangers would let Urd leave this place unharmed if Alice explained she had no Mother's Wisdom to share.

B-But what am I supposed to say?!

Alice is cooked.

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