Roger stopped in his tracks. “Did you hear that?”

The rumbling overhead repeated. Water droplets trembled and plummeted from the stone ceiling. The far-off clatter of sliding stones echoed down the dank subterranean tunnel. As the young noble and disguised princess exchanged an uncertain look, the Grand Prefect spoke in an equanimous tone. “Let us interpret the noise favorably, as a sign that that the battle is still ongoing.”

“R-Right.” Evident relief showing on his face, Roger gave Princess Sophia an encouraging smile. She paid him little heed, murmuring instead in a low voice, as if to convince herself, “His Majesty my father won’t let them win. He won’t let them…”

“Are we in the catacombs?” wondered Roger aloud, hoping to distract the brooding princess from thoughts of her imperiled family.

“Not yet,” said the priest. “This is an abandoned quarry. Now, no more questions. We have a fair bit of ground to cover.”

For an indeterminate length of time they proceeded through winding tunnels, stopping whenever the Grand Prefect needed to consult a handwritten map. Roger wondered where he had procured it, and what manner of mad or eccentric individual could have possibly gone to the trouble of surveying Lutesse’s underground. Hearing a low gurgle, he turned around in alarm, only to see the princess blush faintly and quickly avert her eyes.

Did I bring anythin’ with me?

Just as Roger was reaching into his pocket to scrounge about in hopes of ferreting out a fortuitously forgotten biscuit, the priest looked up from his map. “We’re almost there. Beyond this passage lies the Crypt of the Sepulchral Flame.”

“I’ve heard of that name before,” remarked the princess as she seated herself on a flat stone.

“That does not surprise me. It houses Saint Cioran, the so-called Ambisinipedal Martyr, as well as the Chantepleure Repository. Sights well worth seeing in their own right, but the pilgrimage will have to be put off until another day. Let’s continue.”

Smooth and curving like the polished barrel of a firearm, the passageway eventually gave out into a wide, open room overhung by stalactites. Figuring it for a locus of sorts for the mine’s workers before it fell into disuse, Roger saw that it branched off in multiple directions, like the hub of a hexagonally-spoked wheel. The rocky flooring was noticeably rutted here, testifying to the repetitious movement of limestone-laden carts.

But there was ampler evidence of its more recent purpose. Lining the walls, placed in crevices carved into the soft, Lutessian stone reputed for its pliability in the hands of artisans, were bones. Bones haphazardly packed, femurs and humeri jammed into hastily gouged out stone slots, rib-cages and pelvises shoved in wherever space allowed, while on all sides, stacked like enormous mounds of white marbles, were human skulls gleaming in the soft light of the Grand Prefect’s handheld lumenosphere.

Though missing occipital bones and caved in braincases disrupted whatever hemispherical uniformity might have existed among the carelessly piled specimens, more impressive to Roger were those forward-facing and neatly disposed on carved-out ridges of stone apparently used as shelves. He stared with fascinated horror at an infinitely reproduced, fleshless risus sardonicus that seized ahold of and played with his febrile emotions. ‘The native condition of man on earth is to weep,’ he remembered translating in a class on ancient Fidenate writers, ‘but of the dead in their kingdom, to laugh.’

The young noble swallowed hard. “Just how many are there?” he asked in a hushed voice. Blazing high and a sickly chartreuse green in the center of the crypt stood the Flame, immemorial witness to the repose of the dead. It ceaselessly threw shadows which writhed across and into their unseeing sockets, the effect doing nothing to settle his agitated mind.

The Grand Prefect glanced back at him. “In this ossuary? Thousands. Yet this resting place is but one of many in the Chthonic Necropole.”

“There are about a dozen,” said the princess. Under the Grand Prefect’s surprised but approving scrutiny, she elaborated. “My uncle was in the habit of visiting the necropole. Once, he even brought back a skull.” Princess Sophia wrinkled her nose at the memory. “Her Majesty my mother thought someone had set the palace ablaze, so deafening were the shrieks of his Exalted ladyfriends.”

The Grand Prefect allowed himself a faint smile in the darkness. “With all due respect to Madame’s uncle the Duke of Ponthul, I recommend against emulating his conduct.”

“Of that you need not worry, Father.” Looking anywhere but at the strewn bones of her people’s forebears, the princess then wandered a few paces off to put a hand to one of the rare unoccupied wall surface. “It’s damp.”

“That’s only natural,” the priest replied. “It’s spring; the Seicwan is stirring from its slumber. At this very moment, with every passing second, a good 8,000 cubic feet of water rushes over our heads.”

Roger shifted nervously and the princess had a distinctly queasy expression. Reading their thoughts easily enough, Father Athand said easily, “There’s no denying we’ll be glad to be above ground once more. Come. We’ve a ways to go yet—”

The Grand Prefect’s voice trailed off as from the depths of the chamber, among the greenly illuminated dead, a brother skull appeared, a skeletal semblance suspended in mid-air, deathly-white yet unexcarnated in contradistinction to the others. Deeply sunken, its occipital cavities—filled, again unlike the others—threw out light like noonday shafts striking a well’s glittering depths, while the skin—weathered, a ceraceous, decompository yellow—seemed drawn too tightly to allow its owner a full range of expression.

A stifled cry escaped the princess; her hand clapped over her mouth, she no less than Roger stared wide-eyed at the ghastly apparition. The Grand Prefect swiftly repositioned himself in front of them both, as if to eclipse them from sight by the penumbra of his long robes.

The floating head was joined to a shrunken torso and an identical cassock as the interloper advanced further out of the darkness. Elderly, neither stout nor thin, the man revealed himself to be diminutive. His well-lined face seemed to relax into rather than form a smile, creased features forcibly ironed out by a deliberate act of the will into a benevolent smile. “My apologies for frightening you. Please, be at ease. I mean you no harm.”

“You’re!—” Roger breathed in a sharp breath as to proximity was joined recognition.

“Young dy lé Prah, is it?” The wizened cleric smiled benignly at the boy before addressing his grim-faced protector. “And, of course, my steadfast and ever-resolute Grand Prefect.”

A survivor of harrowing expeditions in the southern continent, the victor over countless fell beasts, the baseblood’s stance showed his adversary it was less a priest than a soldier who now stood before him, and that he would have no reserves spilling human blood. “Director Priol. Stand out of our way, or I will oblige you do so myself.”

This naked threat earned an indulgent smile from the priest’s superior. “That may prove a more difficult task than you anticipate,” he murmured. “Unless you came prepared to fight a dozen bluebloods singlehanded.”