Chapter 17

Chapter 17: The Cave.

Cold. Damp. The stench of rotten meat. The scrape of chains against stone.

Many strange sensations flooded into Duncan’s mind, but for a time he could not manage to open his eyes. He felt as if his soul had been split in two. One part still stayed on the Vanished, while the other part had been stuffed into a completely unfamiliar body. This body was hard to control, like an old broken machine. A rush of mixed and chaotic sensations ran through its nervous system, wrapped in a dull and numb feeling. He tried to open his eyes and move his fingers, but he could not feel those parts of the body at all.

This awful feeling lasted for several seconds before the numbness and slowness in the nerves finally began to fade. Duncan felt his “body” waking from a long winter sleep and slowly regaining the ability to move.

He finally opened his eyes and saw what lay around him.

He saw a dim space that looked like an underground chamber. Torches burned on the distant stone walls, and their shaking light showed a terrible scene all around. Duncan saw many people, or rather, many dead bodies, thrown in a jumble on the wet muddy ground and rocks. Most wore ragged clothes. A few still had whole garments on their bodies.

Drops of water fell from the top of the cave. In the distance he could faintly hear the sound of dirty water flowing, like an underground river or a sewer. The sound of chains scraping seemed to come from the depths of a passageway that led off from the cave, and it was already fading.

Duncan blinked, trying to understand what had happened. He lowered his head and looked at his right hand. It was a thin, completely unfamiliar hand, with tattered sleeves around the arm. The brass spirit compass he had been holding the whole time was already gone.

He lifted his head and looked to his side. He still remembered that when he had moved through that starry web of light, he had seen a shadow following him. The outline of that shadow had looked like some kind of bird. But now, of course, he saw nothing.

That bird-like shadow seemed not to have come with him into this Mortal Realm space.

Duncan slowly flexed his hand, forcing down his nervousness. Then he tried rubbing his fingers together.

A very weak green flame rose from his fingertips.

To be honest, this little flame looked much weaker than what Duncan was used to, but it still made him feel a bit calmer. As the flame burned, his still-confused mind also steadied, and he felt more clearly a certain tearing and connection on the level of his spirit.

He clearly sensed that the other part of his spirit was not here. He sensed the Vanished, and sensed himself sitting at the desk there, with the brass spirit compass in his hand.

This feeling was very strange, but Duncan quickly began to understand what was happening.

His spirit had gone through some kind of projection, or extension. A part of his mind had crossed a distance he could not guess and had now slipped into another unfamiliar body.

And even in this projected state, he could still clearly feel the existence of his “real body”.

This had to be connected to the brass spirit compass. Was this the power of that Anomaly item?

Some guesses rose in Duncan’s mind, but he did not let them run wild for long. After he confirmed that his real body was still safe and that his spirit was still under his control, only temporarily placed in this distant, nameless body, he calmed down a little and got ready to find out what was going on with this “new body”.

First, he could be sure that this place was not on any ship.

This was land, the land he had drifted on the sea for so many days without finding!

Second, this gloomy cave clearly was not a good place. The bodies thrown all around did not look like any kind of proper burial. As for the body he now occupied… just what bad luck had trapped it in this mortal hell?

Duncan took a deep breath and pushed himself up to sit. This body had been leaning against a large rock the whole time, and the pose had not been comfortable at all.

But as he breathed in and sat up, a huge sense of wrongness rushed through the body. He felt the air he had drawn in spill right out again. A strange, empty feeling came from his chest, and even the motion of getting up felt twisted.

Startled, Duncan lowered his head and saw a big hole.

The hole gaped where the heart should have been. Everything that had once been there was, of course, gone. A chill wind blew through the opening, carrying with it the breath Duncan had just taken in and not yet let go. It drifted out into the damp air.

From a certain angle, Duncan could even clearly see the scene behind his own back.

“What the hell?!”

Even with nerves as tough as his, even after all the strange sights he had seen on the Vanished, Duncan still broke out in a cold sweat for a moment. Goosebumps rose on his skin in waves, and every hair on his body stood on end.

But right after that sharp shock, he realized that he was still standing here in one piece and even had the strength to curse.

Even with his heart gone and a huge hole in his chest, he did not feel any pain at all from this body.

“So this is… a corpse?”

A moment later, Duncan came to his senses. He understood his situation more fully and quickly calmed down.

Taking over a corpse and making it move might not be something worth too much fuss. After all, he already had a ghost ship that could sail on its own and a wooden goat First Mate who could nag a person until their brain boiled. Lately he had also met a cursed Doll who could split up and act alone and was good at riding the winds and waves on the Boundless Sea. Which of those things was not more shocking than “a dead man talking”?

At least he had only lost his heart. Alice’s head was often not on her neck at all…

With all these wild thoughts spinning in his mind, Duncan steadied himself faster than he would have believed. He checked how well this body could move and slowly got used to how the hole in his chest changed his motions. Then he stepped toward the bodies thrown around the cave.

“As I thought…”

Duncan looked at the first corpse and did not feel surprised at all when he saw the horrible hole in its chest.

It was a middle-aged man with a haggard face and ragged clothes, who looked like a beggar from the street. He had been dead for a long time, but his eyes were still wide open in anger, showing the struggle and despair of his last moment.

Duncan walked on and saw one corpse after another that had lost its heart. They lay miserably on the cold stone. Only two were different. Those two had terrible wounds on their heads, as if they had slammed into the rocks with great force and died on the spot.

Duncan could not help making a guess. Perhaps these two had killed themselves before they could suffer the pain of having their hearts cut out.

To be honest, what lay in this cave would be far too much for an ordinary person. Even Duncan felt it was hard to take after walking around and checking all the bodies. In the end he had to find a relatively clean rock a bit farther away and sit down. He slowly steadied himself and, as he cooled down, tried to work out the truth behind all this.

It was clear that this was a shocking mass murder. But from the cold, uniform way the victims had been killed, it seemed to be more than murder. It hinted at some kind of evil ritual.

Duncan called out the spirit form flame again and felt the link between himself and his real body. He knew he could cut off this “projected state” at any time and return to the safety of the Vanished.

But he felt that he had to find out what had happened here.

Even if it was only to gain some information about the land.

Duncan let out a breath and felt the wind leaking through his chest. He rose from the rock where he had been resting and looked toward the passage that led deeper into the cave. He remembered that the sound of chains scraping had come from that direction.

There were not only bodies in this underground space. Other people were moving here as well. Those who could move freely in a place this horrible should be able to give him some answers.

Rushing in to check the situation would of course not be very safe, but Duncan did not care.

After all, his heart was wide open now.