Following the strange tunnel was simplicity itself, though we remained cautious, just in case there were traps or sothing like that installed. My raven construct wouldn’t set those off, given that its mass was fairly negligible; only a few parts I conjured out of Ice, like the beak and the feet, had any real mass; the rest was made from the semi-tangible shadow, which didn’t really weigh anything. The door itself was, as I had concluded from the images I had seen while using my raven, made from heavy tal and quite solid, in addition to multiple sturdy locks in the fra itself and even a chain secured with a padlock completely on the outside of the door, making it obvious that that particular lock couldn’t be opened from the inside, no matter what.
Well, without magic, that is, when faced with my Earth Magic, the tal gave up fairly quickly, allowing us entrance to this strange, strange place when the door swung open with a shriek of rusty hinges. The mont it did, a strange, sowhat musty sll hit us in the face, making gag just a little when I realised it was the lingering scent of rotting at. The sll was bad enough to stun for a mont, but what truly gave pause was what I could see inside, especially the source of the sll.
What waited for us inside caused both my stunned condition and Luna’s question. She likely had never seen any of these before, and if I was honest with myself, neither had I, but I could form a sowhat educated guess from the forms and so of their obvious features.
The room contained a wooden X-shaped cross, easily three tres high, a triangular wooden contraption mounted on a fra with a narrow edge up top, multiple tables, so with tal parts attached and, lastly, a few odd tal fras I didn’t want to think about more than necessary. Each of these contraptions had so heavy-duty restraints attached, making it quite obvious that anyone secured to one of them would only be able to move if another person helped them.
That was proven by the source of said musty sll. It ca from a skeleton, the bones resting against the wall, the head secured with a tal hoop around the neck and a chain leading to a tal ring screwed into the wall. Again, locks made sure nobody but the person with the key could take these shackles off, which obviously didn’t happen here, given a bit of an idea of what this place had been used for.
That idea was confird the mont I looked at the wall. One of the walls held a row of implents, ranging from whips, which I could identify without trouble, to tools I had only seen at the gynaecologist and, lastly, so tal things I, again, didn’t want to think about, especially given their position in the strange line-up. On another table, there was a large variety of phallic objects, in addition to various clamps, plugs, needles and other items made of tal and plastic. I might have been able to guess at the use of those, but again, I had no interest or desire to do so; just standing in this place made want to throw up.
“Mom, what are those things?” Luna asked, shaking out of the stunned horror I felt when looking into what I could only describe as an underground sex dungeon, complete with the possibly unwilling victim of the person who had set this up. A part of wanted it to be nothing but so highly kinky and unusual sex, but if I were to be honest with myself, the entire set-up gave the impression of sothing entirely different.
Now, I only had to figure out how to explain this entire thing to Luna. Sure, we had talked about the biological aspect of reproduction in quite so detail, a necessity thanks to the insane maturation her body had undergone thanks to the system, but there was a massive difference between explaining what periods were, why they existed and how that played into reproduction and this. Granted, that talk had also featured an overview of relationships, dating and the emotional side of things, but, again, there was a world of difference between the average fair my talk had focused on and the question of why sobody would build a sex dungeon underground and chain another person up inside, possibly without that person being willing.
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Letting out a sigh, I decided to prevaricate, to wait until we left this place behind and got back to the surface and the sun. “I’ll explain later. For now, just consider this sothing like the cells I set up at Jademoon Tower, only a little different,” I told her, getting a questioning look in return. Not a big surprise there, given what lessons I had taught her before, but sohow, human experintation felt like it was a lesser ‘thing’ than this, though I couldn’t, for the life of , explain why I felt that way.
A quick burst of magic finished the decay of the bones, reducing them to dust, and a bit of Wind Magic blew that dust and the musty air in the dungeon out of the room, allowing us to explore a little more. That exploration revealed yet another door leading into a short hallway with a few more small cells on either side, each furnished in a highly spartan manner, with nothing but a cot inside. These cells essentially confird my earlier suspicion, and I began to feel just a little sick, especially when we ca across yet another skeleton, still in the locked cell that beca the person’s grave. A little more magic destroyed that skeleton, too, and our exploration continued until we ca to yet another door. Once we were on the other side of this one, I realised that the door was concealed quite well, giving the appearance of just another bit of wall with so shelves installed on it.
Still, it swung open almost soundlessly on hinges that had once been maintained incredibly well. This made it obvious that this entrance had been used regularly, almost certainly by the person who owned the cellar we found ourselves in.
The cellar with the hidden door was almost bizarre in its mundanity. Nothing indicated that it held that hidden door; it was completely and utterly normal. So stored food, most of it rotten, a few tools for ho repair and maintenance, a storage room filled with boxes and general clutter, and that was it. So, driven by so strange urge, Luna and I made our way upstairs and explored the rest of the house, curious to see what we would find.
There was so destruction in the house, making think that sobody had beco a Shattered here, but it wasn’t all that much, allowing to draw so fairly accurate conclusions on who had once lived here, even if it didn’t really matter. And, again, I could only shake my head and shiver just a little at the realisation that the family who had lived here seed to be completely and utterly normal, without any indication that they had their own private sex dungeon linked to their cellar and were, apparently, kidnapping people to lock inside said dungeon. We ca across a few frad photos and, again, it was almost painful how normal the people looked, reminding that, even before the change, evil could look completely and utterly benign, the type of person who you wouldn’t look twice at when you saw them at the supermarket. Or, if you did, only because their kid did sothing cute, amusing or annoyingly loud.
“Let’s leave,” I told Luna, pulling her out of the damaged front door, unwilling to keep my mind occupied with this. It was a sowhat uncomfortable reminder that the change hadn’t changed humans all that much; it only shifted the society they had built around them. But, there had always been predators, so of them looking so completely and utterly normal, like the guy whose house we had just left. Or maybe the predator hadn’t been the guy but the guy’s wife, or they had shared their twisted hobby. I wasn’t about to investigate who had used the tools we had seen in that basent; I really didn’t want to know.
“So, do you want to explain what we found down there?” Luna asked as we walked through the streets. First, I let out a soft sigh, then a loud whistle, calling Silva to us. Once that was done, I started to talk.
“If I’m being honest, no, I really don’t,” I admitted, “But I guess I should. I can talk while we leave this place behind. I don’t think I care about the mystery that may have happened here any longer. Let’s just leave.”
With those words, I started explaining what we had seen and why I was so disturbed by it. As I did, we bid goodbye to Belgrade and travelled further north. Soon, we would reach what once was Canada.
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