“That’s right,” the big man said. His voice had a deep, growling timbre.
“I’m Jason,” he said. “You look like Ron Perlman from that old Beauty and the Beast TV show.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Gary said.
“I’d say good to meet you,” Jason said as he continued trying keys, “but the circumstances aren’t terrific.”
“Thanks for not just running off,” Gary said.
“Are you kidding? I need you lot to get me out of wherever it is we are.”
“We’re in a storage cellar.”
“I can see that much,” Jason said. “I meant this whole place. I have no idea where we are.”
“You don’t know?” Gary asked. “Did they kidnap you?”
“Someone did,” Jason said. “I woke up in the hedge maze.”
Gary the lion-man’s voice seemed to be growly as a default.
“Look out!” Rufus called out and Jason turned to look around.
There was a doorway that seemed to lead into another section of the cellar, through which the man Dougall had returned, shovel in hand.
“Cheeky little sod,” Dougall said.
Jason tried to think quick, but his head was far from in its best state. Shoving the key ring back into his inventory, he got up from his crouch, but was hit by a dizzy spell and stumbled. The shovel came down and everything went black.
10
The Evil Pit of Evil
Jason was jerked back into consciousness as his body choked out more vomit. His throat seared as his empty stomach tried to cast out what wasn’t there, almost gagging him. His head was filled with stabbing pain and when he opened his eyes everything blurred like he was underwater. The only clear thing was the little silhouette showing his health, the head now a glaring red. His thoughts skittered about like a roach, dashing out of reach as he tried to pin them down.
Slowly, he came to something approximating his senses. There was a light source somewhere up ahead, but the light it put out was blood red. Otherwise, the tunnel was dark, but his new power allowed him to see through it. He was once again in a cage, but bigger than the last. It was the same kind of heavy cage the lion-man had been in, with thick, heavy bars. Apparently they didn’t want him kicking the door open again.
His cage was being rolled down a wide, stone tunnel, on some kind of moving platform. It was more like a train tunnel than a cave, with an arched roof and flat floors. There was even a rail, like for a mining cart, with his platform, being pushed along it. Three more cages were being pushed the same way, one ahead and two behind.
The people pushing wore bright red robes and ugly demon masks. More of them led the way up front, carrying lanterns with stained glass that produced the ominous red light.
Jason wasn’t thinking about what to do so much as desperately hoping the pain in his head would subside. He was concentrating on his breathing when a screen appeared.
Quest: [Escape!]
Objective failed: Leave the grounds of Vane Manor without being caught.
Quest failed.
New Quest: [The Blood Feast]
You have been captured and are set to be sacrificed by a blood cult. You need to avoid becoming a sacrifice.
Objective: Avoid being sacrificed 0/1.
Reward: Essence.
Optional objective: Save the other designated sacrifices 0/3.
Reward: Awakening stone.
The long tunnel ended in a pair of enormous stone doors into which impressive but grotesque images had been carved, depicting some kind of cannibalistic orgy. Four cultists stepped forward, two to a door, grabbing the handles and pulling back until the doors swung ponderously open. When they did, red light flooded the tunnel, accompanied by an incredible heat and a bitter smell. It washed through the doors and over the group like a wave, carrying with it a coppery taste that lay thick on the tongue.
“That’s a lot of red flags,” Jason said.
A fist landed hard on the side of his cage.
“Quiet,” a harsh voice barked.
Beyond the doors was a vast, circular chamber, like a great cylinder carved straight out of solid rock. Some twenty-five metres across and at least twice as high, it was enough to boggle Jason’s mind even through his punch-drunk haze. The walls were black, like some long-dormant magma chamber, but even starting from a natural cavern it would have been a monumental labour to bring it to its current state. Flat stone slabs, carved out of the same black stone, had been inserted into the walls like pegs. They made a punishingly steep set of stairs that wound their way up to the higher parts of the chamber.
Dominating the room was a red pool of roiling, bubbling liquid, taking up almost all the floor space. It was the source of the light, along with the heat and the coppery stench of blood. The centre of the pool churned, as if on the point of boiling. The sound of thick, sloshing liquid echoed up through the chamber. The red light shone from deep within the pool, washing the whole chamber in red as if everything was coated in blood.
“That isn’t good,” Jason heard from one of the other caged people. It was Rufus, who had told him how to use the spirit coins. The lion man was there in his own big cage, along with one of the two women. The other was nowhere to be seen. One of the robed cultists bashed on the side of Rufus’s cage.
“I said quiet.”
“Or what?” the lion man grumbled. “You’ll sacrifice us in your creepy ritual pit?”
The other prisoners were also dirty and ragged, but nothing like Jason. He had no shirt, no hair, and there was blood and old healing ointment crusted all over him. His face was coated in blood from his broken nose, along with puffy black eyes and flecks of vomit.
The rail that had carried the cages on platforms through the tunnel ended at the door. The cultists lifted the cages off, two people to each small cage, and four to the large ones. They carried them up the steep stairs, audibly straining at the effort. The lion-man’s cage was the most troublesome, even with four people lugging it. The stairs wound up and around the circular wall, the group pausing after a quarter turn. They had reached a platform, set into the wall like the stairs, but much larger. It extended well over the blood pit below.
“Leave the big one first,” one of the cultists said. “No point carrying the heaviest one all the way to the top.”
Jason recognised the voice of the woman he had heard in the cellar while pretending to be unconscious.
“Thank you, milady,” one of the cultists said gratefully. Jason recognised the voice as the shovel-carrying man she had addressed as Dougall.
The cage holding the big man was left against the wall. Dougall and one of the other cultists walked over to the edge of the platform and took up a waiting position, facing out over the pool below. The rest continued on. The stairs continued to wind upwards beyond the platform, making another quarter-turn around the room before reaching a second platform.
“Leave the other big cage,” the woman said.
“Isn’t he the one that killed the young master?” one of the cultists asked. “You don’t want to save that one for last?”
“I’m not going to make you haul that thing all the way up for my own satisfaction.”
“Thank you, milady.”
The four cultists roughly dropped Jason’s cage up against the wall. As at the first platform, two cultists took up positions at the platform’s edge while the rest of the cultists with the remaining two cages resumed the climb. Jason watched as they made another quarter-turn ascent to the next platform, which hid them from sight.
Jason took a look around. His vision was still blurry, like looking through a stranger’s glasses, but it was slowly improving. The platform he was on looked like rough-hewn obsidian, shiny and dark. He had no idea how the massive stone platform had been shoved into the wall like a six-ton peg.