145. The corridor

I kept my eyes on the gathered people. I thought this body might have been a trap, but no sudden attack came. Everyone looked around, searching for the lost key, while others examined the dead man.

I warned Darius and William, and then joined the people near the dead cardinal. But my mind wasn’t on the body. It was on one question.

‘What now?’

I was torn. On the one hand, keeping the information secret and hoping the creature would relax and make a mistake was a good option. But it also had many downsides. One was that it could hop from body to body. I wasn’t sure about the process itself, but it was its specialty. And if not warned, people wouldn’t watch out for others—situations where someone was alone with another person, away from the group, were to be prevented at all costs. Another issue was that others could help in the search. It wasn’t as if I was the only competent person around. That also meant others might have more knowledge about the creature, maybe even know its weakness. However, that meant also warning the thing and letting it into the investigation.

“There’s something strange about the body,” said Helga. “The organs aren’t torn,” she added, bending over the bloody mess.

This cemented my decision.

“Why’s that strange?” asked one of the paladins.

“Look at it. I’ve torn a few people to shreds in my life, and it never looked like that,” she said, pointing at the organs lying around. “If something tore him with enough force to do this, then the chance that none of the organs were damaged is practically zero.”

I looked to Luna, who nodded along, probably coming to the same conclusion.

“So, what—was it staged?” asked Nathan, standing next to Helga, a bit pale but in good shape.

The massive woman frowned deeply, her eyes still glued to the bloody scene.

“It’s like something burst out of him,” I said, getting everyone’s attention.

“Burst out? Was it a spell?” asked Nathan.

“Could be. But I have another theory,” I said, then continued in the most casual voice I could. “I think there’s a skinwalker between us.” I dropped the bomb and watched for anyone who didn’t seem surprised, any detail to give them away. But either the creature wasn’t here, or it was very good at its job.

“A skinwalker?” the cardinal asked with a frown. “Those are extinct.”

“It’s either a skinwalker or you had a traitor as one of your senior cardinals,” William cut into the conversation.

“This… this could have been a spell of some sort,” a paladin said, hesitation clear in his voice.

Helga shook her head. “Not likely. Why would a spell designed to kill spare organs?”

“Well, the gods’ will is unknown. Strange are the ways of our enemies. We shouldn’t assume,” Zenon said, pulling on his long cardinal robe.

Helga turned to face the opposite wall, then quickly rotated back toward the body.

“Oh my god, hey, look at the organs. I think it might be a skinwalker,” she said in fake surprise.

“What?” asked the man, his eyes darting between her and the paladins.

“Oh, sorry—I thought if the idea came from our side, you might stop arguing,” she said, clearly tired.

There was a bit of awkward silence, during which everyone looked at one another with mistrust. Eyes darted around, narrowed—the theory and its implications sinking in.

“We can’t start panicking now,” William said in a calm but authoritative voice. “We need to figure out what to do now. We still need to find the key and get out of here. We can discuss this and whether it’s really a skinwalker later.”

We went back to searching, this time making sure everyone watched each other’s backs, no one going deeper into the corridors. I loomed over the body, frowning. Luna and Ophelia still stood by my side, while Darius and William escorted Aiko for her creature to do more sniffing.

I went over the whole thing from the start, for now leaving out the ‘how’ things happened. First, they replaced the cardinal with a skinwalker, wearing his body. This might imply they couldn’t get their spies to a certain level of church officials, which was an interesting point, but it didn’t help with the case. Then they pushed the popes and the cardinals into the underground and discarded one of the keys. So what was the next move—what would they do with the key? They clearly could get someone here. They had a way to open the gate from the get-go, so what would be the point of getting the entire group down?

And the answer came to me at the same moment as the question. Escort. And something else. If my guess was correct, then we wouldn’t find the second key—but instead a new solution would be proposed. And it was one of those moments when I didn’t want to be correct—a moment that seemed to repeat as of late.

I sighed to myself. But based on my assumption, this move of leaving the corpse deep in the tunnel didn’t make sense. Didn’t make sense unless…

“Can you tell me anything about the creature from this?” I asked Luna, who was examining the body.

She took a while longer, digging through the blood, until she finally used a spell to get all the red, sticky liquid off her hands.

“His esophagus was injured, as well as the back wall of the stomach. The wounds healed quickly because the damage to the flesh from stomach acid is minimal. My guess would be something crawled inside this man and then slipped into his flesh through the stomach. This was done to get into him with minimal damage. While on the way out, it just burst forward, tearing the skin and pushing organs to the sides. Not much beyond that,” she said, clearly not satisfied with the amount of information.

“Can you say anything about its shape?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“Small enough to crawl through his throat, although barely, judging by the recent scarring. But big enough to do this much damage on the way out.”

“Maybe it grew inside him?” Ophelia proposed.

I nodded at that.

Luna clicked her tongue. “That’s all I have for now. Doesn’t give us much.”

“No—it gives us something,” I said, looking at her. “If the creature was big enough to injure his throat when getting inside, it means cats should be safe. It should be too big to wear them.”

“Right. But what does that matter? It shouldn’t be wearing anyone now, right? We would see something crawl out of the corridor, and we didn’t pass any hiding spots.”

But I shook my head.

“Miss Aiko,” I shouted into the tunnel to get the woman’s attention. “How small a trace can your spirit sense?” I asked.

“It’s much more sensitive than any hunting dog.”

“Can it trace where the man moved in this space?” I asked, pointing in a small circle around the body.

“Not sure. The amount of blood overwhelms any smell.”

“What if we move the body?”

“It’s the blood that’s the problem.”

“Doable,” Luna announced before I said anything.

Afterwards, we moved the entire crime scene, then Luna used her magic to gather the blood. Once we were done, the rest of the group came back, looking at what we were doing, the paladins whining about a burial.

Aiko went to the spot where the body had lain and bent down. The long, furry creature popped out from her sleeve and started sniffing, finally stiffening up in the direction of the wall. The woman frowned, clearly confused by something, and then approached where the spirit was pointing. She tried moving her hand to the left and right, but the spirit’s head stayed glued in one direction like a camera stabilizer. She brought her sleeve to eye level and seemed to communicate with the spirit, only to look back at us, confused.

“Um… it loses the trace at a wall,” she said with a frown. “The only spots she can smell something are where the body was and here,” she said, pointing at the carved stone. “He might have leaned over the wall.”

“No, I think your creature is correct,” I said and approached where the spirit was pointing.

There was a carving—a faun in that spot, frolicking with a few women. The style brought to mind old Greek carvings seen on temples.

“Should we also molest some stone? I’m down,” Darius said from behind my back as I started to feel up all the carved figures.

“Well, it would help, actually,” I replied and slowly pushed my consciousness onto the wall, trying to find something.

“I really hope you are looking for a hidden passage,” Ophelia said, approaching to help look as well.

We then started examining the side of the corridor. But to no effect. We checked carvings, we tried pushing mana into the stone, we tried everything—the paladins even tried to use their god’s power. But to no avail.

‘Was I wrong?’ I wondered, looking at the stone. ‘But it fit—my theory made sense, so why—’

A crash broke my thoughts. We all jumped on alert, ready to fight, only to see Darius pushing his massive sword into the wall slightly to the side where the carvings were more cracked.

“What? If it’s a passage going along the corridor, we can enter it from anywhere,” he said, shrugging.

The rest of us looked at one another, eyebrows raised.

“If it works,” Helga said, shrugging, and approached Darius.

His sword was stuck in the rock. It was then covered by a slight red aura, and I could see the massive dwarf start to struggle until he fell forward, the weapon suddenly going deeper up to the hilt.

“It’s really there,” one of the paladins whispered.

“We could barely get this sword into the wall. How do we—” the cardinal started to speak.

“Move,” Helga said, pushing Darius out of the way. Then her fists turned into literal stone as qi covered them, and she slammed her hand into the hilt. The sword vibrated, and a small explosion erupted from its edge, cracking the wall further.

“Uh, mine next!” shouted Bolo the Husar excitedly.

He then activated some technique, and two wings sprouted behind him. He jumped forward with strangely spread legs, as if sitting on a horse, and slammed his saber into the carving. The blade bit into it next to Darius’s khopesh, and Helga repeated the same procedure.

“Hehe, nice,” Darius commented.

We all looked at the three without moving from our spots.

“Well, at least they’re having fun,” Luna said, clearly not impressed.

Repeating the process three more times finally shattered the stone, opening into a small corridor that ran in both directions along the one from which we came.

After examining it, I put my head inside, snapping my irises open. The passage lit up into shades of gray. It was empty and long, disappearing farther in. There were strange bloodstains that grew lighter as they went, finally disappearing completely. The blood traces looked like very thin dog paws missing the larger back pad, but with longer nails, leaving clear red prints on the gray stone.

The rest of the people looked at the corridor and then at me, questions clear in their eyes.

“How did you know?” asked the cardinal.

“The spirit sensed the wall. It’s obvious.”

“Before that, you were clearly expecting this when you moved the body.”

“He had to get here somehow.”

“But you only got the idea after calling him a skinwalker. Why?” Zenon pressed on, noticing I knew something.

I smiled before explaining, “It’s simple… I assumed the worst-case scenario.”