Tunnels-2

Julie and the Prince didn't meet for a week after their last encounter. She didn't bother to check whether he had listened to her advice or not, although she did hear that he and Lady Emore held a tea break once.

Julie meanwhile had nothing much to do but wait for the Emperor to send personal invitations for the actual Annual Ceremony.

She sat around the Manor for a day or two before getting tired of all the maids and Butler's hovering around her and feeding her non-stop.

She often went downstairs to feed the phoenix, which now seemed to be acting haughtier than usual now that the Crown Prince was around to take care of it. Of course Julie took care not to clash with the timings during which she took care of the phoenix and the crown prince did.

But today however she wasn't so lucky.

Kale was standing over the large bird, his hands patting the bird's big head which was literally on fire. The bird was lying on the ground outside the cage.

Kale was now immune to the bird's fire. That meant that it had gotten accustomed to Kale now. That goddamn betraying bird.

She dashed down the set if stairs glaring at the bird which flapped its fire wings at her face. She greeted the Prince with a quick now and then moved towards the phoenix. Julie stuck out her tongue at the bird before dangling a pair of red berries in its face.

The humongous bird stared at the red berries and instantly got on its feet, cocking it's head to one side.

"Nice try, trying to act cute you dumb phoenix", Julie said hiding the berries behind her back.

"The phoenix has a name Lady Julianna", the Crown Prince reminded her.

Julie humphed turning her head to one side.

Kale frowned but then pointed a finger to the bird's cage then. "Go inside and tell me what you see inside the cage Julianna"

Julie raised an eyebrow. "What happened to 'Lady' Julianna?"

"First become one, and then I'll rethink. For now just do as I say", he mocked.

Julie fumed but nevertheless did as he asked her to.

The Crown Prince was right. There was something on the floor. It looked like ordinary runes from inside the cage but looking closely now, she guessed that they were written in ancient text.

Just like the candle stand in her old room.

They were written in high cursive in a circular manner that she had to take a full round around the cage to read it.

"You can read it, can't you?", he asked her entering the large cage with the bird on his shoulder.

The red bird had now compressed in size to save mana loss. It flew around Julie and pecked at the red berries she had hidden behind her back.

"Naughty Wrel", she scolded catching the bird in her left hand. The bird pecked at her fingers playfully and Julie finally let it go having done with her revenge. It sat down on the floor beside the runes, eating berries.

"It's weird that I haven't noticed this before" , she muttered.

"Or maybe you knew about it, but your mother doesn't want you to remember", Kale suggested. She had hinted him on how Lady Emore had been drugging her and from his reaction, he must have taken it seriously.

"Did you find out what was in that box?", she asked running her fingers over the ancient letters.

"Yeah", he muttered, then he took out a silver object from his waistcoat pocket.

"A syringe?", she asked staring at the silver object in his hands now.

"It's more like a weapon, a blade of sorts but see this vial behind it's hilt?", he said pointing out to the small opening at its bottom. "Poison goes here. You stab the opponent and face immediate death in stabbing"

"The box had poison within it too?", she asked surprised why Julianna would go such lengths to search for a poison knife.

"There was a small vial. I've kept it hidden separately for now", he admitted. "Don't want any thief to be getting the wrong ideas. Anyway, that's all about your mysterious box. Have you translated the seal on the ground yet?"

"I'm surprised that you know it's a seal", Julie said standing up again. "It's a blood seal apparently."

Kale stared at the circle for some more time. "Do you think that it needs Wrel's blood?"

"The bird's blood?", Julie asked surprised. She figured that they would need her blood seeing that the bird's cage and maze were located under her Manor.

"Let me try mine", she said in a flat voice trying not to sound thrilled. This by far was the most exciting thing she had done all week. The Prince handed her his small dagger and she placed the knife over her index finger trying to scrape it slowly.

"What are you doing? Trying to chop your finger off?", Kale scolded taking the blade from her hands.

Julie blew her cheeks. "You do it then"

A look suddenly passed over the Prince's face then. It was too quick for Julie to figure out what that expression meant before he moved a few steps towards her and poked her index finger slightly by applying pressure at the centre.

Julie felt a sharp pain emerge from her finger but it soon became an odd numbing sensation. She turned her finger facing the ground and squeezed till a drop of blood fell on the floor.

And nothing happened.

"What went wrong?", Julie murmured pacing from both ends of the rune circle. It surely was a blood seal. Then why wasn't anything happening?

Maybe the amount of blood she had exposed was too less.

"Your highness the knife", she said suddenly turning around and grabbing for the knife in Kale's hand.

He had his fingers wrapped slightly over the blade part of the knife and then the unmistakable thing happened when Julie pulled the knife out of a sudden.

She heard the Crown Prince wince in pain as the knife cut his left hand and the blood dripped through his wrist and onto the floor.

A small sound of a bell ringing was heard.

And then, suddenly, the rune circle lit to life.

Purple words now emerged from the ground, wrapping around the Crown Prince's skin, spreading over his neck and arms.

Julie stared in horror as the runes slowly etched itself onto the Prince's skin like dirty graffiti.

She watched his eyes go from calm to pure panic, his golden green eyes more green now.

The ground suddenly made a loud creaking sound and tilted to one side, revealing a black well of nothing underneath.

Wrel, frightened; flew towards Julie who somehow managed to grab Wrel in her hands as the floor of the cage suddenly tilted.

"Run", The Prince shouted.

Julie dashed towards the gate of the cage to find out that it had been forced shut by magic. She swore as the ground tilted further and ran towards the opposite direction. Kale was grabbing at one of the bars of the cage and his footing slipped and his leg nearly went through the black well, before he scampered to his feet and dashed after Julie.

They somehow made it to the end that wasn't turning and suddenly the floor of the cage creaked louder. It was moving like a coin turning over and Julie's footing slipped again.

The Prince grabbed her by the collar of her dress trying to keep her on her feet but it was all in vain as the last of the remaining runes disappeared from the silver floor and it flipped vertically exposing the dark hole beneath it.

Kale was holding the edge of the floor by one hand and holding Julie by her arm. She was holding the bird in her other hand who tittered non-stop sending the sudden panic.

"For the temple's sake! You can fly you stupid bird", she scolded trying not to move too much as the bird dug its beak into her palm. Her arm hurt where Kale was holding her and she was sure that would form a fresh set of fingerprint bruises on her bicep.

Julie didn't dare to speak. The darkness underneath her seemed to breathe on its own and she could hear whispers echoing from its dark depths.

Kale strained to pull himself up with her weight. His eyes were laced with terror, the runes still covering his face and neck. Julie could see him trying to grip the end of the metallic floor with his fingernails.

But hanging onto that was like trying to hold onto oil.

"Jul-", Kale managed to shout as his hand suddenly slipped and they both fell into the darkness.

**************************************

The great commanders of the Empire were having a meeting. It was their first meeting after Reynolds had returned from the borders.

Reynolds had gone back and forth from the border these past few weeks on behalf of orders from the Emperor himself. He didn't even get a chance to tell either Canien or Julianna that he will be gone, or the fact that he won't be back anytime soon.

The past few weeks had been hectic with the sightings of an unearthly large sandworm which had been bothering the farmlands in the North. They had done some investigation into it and it was found out that the worm was on its way to making its pathway underneath the kingdom.

It was pretty hard to ignore the sudden appearance of a worm after Lady Julianna's warnings about danger befalling the nobles of the empire so everyone had been obsessed with hunting it down.

Not to mention the appearance of the worm just in time for the Annual Ceremony. The Elders were talking about an upcoming war anytime soon.

Reynolds Reeland was apparently the general of the knights ruling the capital. There were three generals currently in the empire: each under the control of the three great powers. Rex hadn't met the other generals yet and he wished that he wouldn't have to meet with them anytime soon.

The commanders and vice generals were all assembled in a conference hall at the Imperial Palace.

Rex had been looking into the whole worm trouble all night staying awake reading the reports. The Emperor requested him to hold a party with mages to get into the underground tunnels and kill the worm.

But the people in the room seemed to be preoccupied with discussing something else.

"Commanders", Rex called out. "What's the situation in the north now? Have the farmers been relocated yet?"

A murmur ran out of the big hall. "General Reeland", Vice commander Emory said slowly. "The Farmers have already been relocated. We are waiting for the mages to arrive"

"They say that Sir Reirs has arrived in the kingdom. We should ask him to join our platoon for taking out the worm"

"Reirs's behaviour is unpredictable ", Commander Leien countered. "You will never know when he decides to ditch us and fly off"

"Just like when he did during the Twerl Hills incident?", another commander striked.

The Twerl Hills incident was something that was like an inside joke amoung the commanders. Rex tried to remember what it was about and couldn't recall anything.

But he was bothered by the vice commanders sitting at the end of the table murmuring on their own. Their talk sure seemed to be infectious as the other commanders sitting nearby joined in heir discussion.

Rex leaned in and asked his close associate and vice general, Astin what was going on.

Astin raised his eyebrows. "You haven't heard yet?"

"Heard what?"

"Apparently the Crown Prince went missing a few days before. He was staying at the Emore's Manor"

Rex tried to hold on his surprise. Sure, Julianna had told him about the crown prince staying at the Emore Manor to look after the bird and whatnot. But to go missing?

"Did he get lost in the maze or something?", he asked, hoping that this wouldn't turn into a search mission for that idiot prince.

"Apparently the Fire phoenix and Lady Julianna is missing too", Astin continued. "The three of them were in the maze"

"What are the Emores doing?", Rex asked panicking now that he heard Julie was missing too. "Aren't they the only ones able to locate places in the maze? Why aren't they looking for them?"

"They said that Sir Reirs and Lord Emore himself went inside the maze to look for him. But it's been 4 days already since they went missing. Sir Emore fears that they may have fallen into the underground folk's traps"

Underground folks? Underground villages? What on earth were they talking about? The Sandworm was acceptable since it was part of the plot. But the underground village was something entirely out of concept. He couldn't recall even one scene with an underground villages in it.

"What did the Emperor say?", he asked slowly wondering where on earth Julie and that bastard ran off to. His mind suddenly went back to that silver book on dungeons he had given Julianna. Surely it didn't have anything related to underground passages did it? Dungeons were common but villages...

"The Emperor has refused to make a statement fearing that the news of the missing Crown Prince would alarm the public. Especially after Lady Julianna made that comment using her vision and all", Astin said rolling his eyes. "It seemed like crap to me at first, but it looks like that Lady was right? After all the scandals she managed to pull out, she finally might be onto something this time."

"Why are you talking about Lady Julianna like that Sir Queller?" , Rex asked disliking the way he talked about me.

"Don't you seriously remember captain?", Astin asked narrowing his eyes. "The lady was arrested by your own hands the last time she disappeared like that. It was common news for Lady Julianna to run away like that, but to take the Crown Prince and the Red Phoenix with her? I'd say she made a big move this time"