Chapter 46

“His job was set to, my guess, Necromancer. There he raised an army of undead, with the intent of wiping out the human race and freeing all the slaves. He met much opposition, but he fought through it all. The toughest opponent he faced was a hero who managed to push him hard. He had a powerful White Mage who kept healing him as they fought and hurt the necromancer with her spells.

“The necromancer grew enraged, especially because the white mage appeared to be a demi-human slave. How could a slave fight against him? He was trying to save them, yet they were spurning him. In his anger, he finally overwhelmed the white mage's spells and killed the hero. In anger, he raised up the hero and sent him to kill the white mage.

“Just as he made the order, his hood fell back, and the white mage saw his face. With tears staining her face, she spoke the last words she ever would.”

Brother?

“No!” Lydia gasped, covering her mouth, her tail swishing. “It was his lost sister all along? She was the hero’s companion?”

I was inferring a lot from the other murals, and perhaps adding a bit of storytelling flair, but that seemed to be the gist of it. The brother, in his quest to avenge his sister, had been the one to kill her.

“What happened next?” Lydia asked.

I looked at the next image and was surprised to find it empty. There was no epilogue to this lore. That’s where it ended. That’s what they meant by an incomplete story. This is what created the curse that attacked this land. That was the nature of this dungeon. Did that mean that when we headed down those stairs, it’d be the necromancer waiting for us?

“I was wrong. This isn’t Mina’s dungeon. It isn’t her curse. It’s his… the brother who failed. It’s a story with no end. If we wish to get out of this dungeon, we must destroy it.”

“Must we destroy this story?” Lydia asked. “Can’t we in some way help their spirits find peace?”

“I’m a White Mage, but I’m just too low a level. I wouldn’t know how to solve this curse.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t have theories, but they were all random and I had no clue if they would work. For example, Lydia and I could confess our love for each other. That would satisfy Mina’s part of the curse. If Lydia was an analog of Mina, and I was the hero, then we’d need to reenact what happened. That would mean I’d need to die and then kill Mina. Or perhaps save Lydia? But wouldn’t I want to save Lydia anyway? If all I had to do was keep Lydia alive, this curse would be too easy to break, wouldn’t it? Not dying would be anyone’s goal.

“I don’t know…” I spoke as I looked around past the mural at the front of the cathedral.

Then, my eyes stopped, and a smile formed on my face. Lydia noticed and stood up.

“What is it? What did you find?”

“The most beautiful thing I could ever expect,” I said.

Lydia approached me and then looked down. Sitting at my feet was a deep hole cut into the ground. It was completely empty. In the past, it must have been used for some kind of ceremony like a baptism. I saw no cracks, so it would clearly be able to hold water.

“I’m taking a bath.”